Cade’s exploration on the third floor was moving smoothly. It was slower than before but he did not suffer any injuries as before because he had been treading carefully since the fight against the three slimes.
Thanks to his high luck, he got more magic crystal than before. Every four to five slime he killed, he will get himself one magic crystal. He had collected about fifteen pieces of level 5 vitality crystal and five pieces of level 6 vitality crystal.
Unfortunately, he was unable to level up. He realized that once he reached level 5, it was getting harder and harder to level up.
However, he did not feel down about it because he got a good amount of magic crystal that he can use to power up his linked equipment.
He decided to stop for the day and his third day inside the dungeon ended. Just like the two days before, Cade started feeding the magic crystal to his linked equipment.
Name: Cardboard Round Shield
Level: 6
Next Level: 0 level 1 magic crystal
Durability: 150
Defense: 150
Cade kept giving the vitality crystal to his cardboard round shield and once it reached level 6, he cannot give it more crystal. He now knew that his level was the limit level of his linked equipment.
Once he leveled up to level 7, he will be able to give more crystal to his shield to level up. He still had quite a lot of vitality crystal. Cade did not know which equipment he should power up.
A few minutes of thinking, he decided to power up his cardboard short sword. The slime fluid was still a big problem for his sword but he still decided to go with it.
Name: Cardboard Short Sword
Level: 6
Next Level: 4 level 1 magic crystal
Durability: 130
Attack: 130
A grade E level 5 monsters will have the maximum endurance of 50 points and 60 points for level 6. With his cardboard short sword’s attack points, it could one-hit kill all the slime on the third floor.
However, its weakness to the slime’s fluid was the greatest enemy of Cade’s cardboard equipment. He planned to wipe his cardboard sword immediately once he killed a slime.
The cardboard can absorb the fluid but it was not that fast. If Cade cleaned it fast, it was possible to keep his sword fine throughout his exploration in the dungeon.
The slime fluid was much thicker compared to water and it will take a while to be absorbed by his cardboard short sword.
After Cade finished powering up his linked equipment, he went to sleep. Due to Cade staying in a dangerous area, he did not fall asleep for real.
He just closed his eyes and was alert of his surroundings. He did not want the slime to ambush him like earlier in the day.
Time passed and it was morning. Cade felt tired when he woke up because he was attacked by slimes a few times last night.
One of the attacks almost hit him and he got lucky that the slime missed and he did not suffer any injuries.
He also tried using his cardboard short sword like what he had planned and it worked perfectly. He wiped his sword as fast as he could and prevented the sword from absorbing the fluid.
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Just like he thought, he only needed one hit to kill the slime. His cardboard sword had a tremendous amount of attack power. Slimes inside the dungeon won’t be able to stay alive once they were hit by his sword.
Cade continued his explorations and his pace was much faster than before. He needed to slash the slime’s core once and the slime will die.
There were no exceptions, all of the slimes he found met the same fate. As he killed more and more of the slimes, the slimes became more and more aggressive.
It was like they were connected and they were angry that more and more of them died. Not only did they become more aggressive but smarter too.
Usually, they will just directly attack Cade or ambush him but now, they were different. The slime fought with strategies.
The slimes did not blindly tackle Cade. It now knew to wait, evade and wait for an opportunity to strike.
Cade was impressed with the way the latest slimes he found fought. They thought more when fighting. Cade had gotten used to one-hit kill them but now that they knew to evade, he needed to hit them more than once.
The most he had hit was ten times. That was how hard it was to kill them after they had improved themselves.
The third floor was not as big as the first and second floors. A few hours after he started his explorations on the fourth day, he found the stairs to the fourth floor.
Cade did not waste any more time and went to the fourth floor. On that floor, Cade will be able to fight level 7 and 8 slimes.
Cade had a bit of trauma entering the new floor thanks to the ambush he got on the third floor’s entrance. So, he entered the fourth floor with extreme caution. In his current stat, he couldn't survive if he was attacked.
His caution this time saved him because the slime did wait to ambush him at the entrance of the fourth floor. There were five of them.
Due to them starting to fight with strategies, Cade took a bit more time to kill them. Once he killed the fourth slime, he leveled up to level 7. Just like before, he raised his luck to 61.
The last slime he killed showed him how much luck he had because it dropped an armor. It was plain iron body armor.
Name: Iron Body Armor
Grade: E
Level: 7
Durability: 70
Defense: 70
Cade needed more protection and immediately wore that iron body armor. Once he wore it, he realized how heavy it was.
“This does not feel that good,” said Cade as he tried to move while wearing the body armor but it was better than nothing.
With the new armor, he felt a bit safer than before. It was a bit hard to move but he needed it to survive. Cade continued his explorations forwards.
The new armor did help him a lot. The slimes had gotten smarter and their attacks had started landing on him. Luckily, he had the armor or else he might have left the world.
All of the slimes he met on the fourth floor also started moving in a group. Not once he met an alone slime on the fourth floor. The slimes fighting in a group were a huge problem for Cade.
It took longer and longer for him to kill them. His fighting skills and strategies were tested to their limit. He felt really tired every time he finished fighting a group of slime.
It was evening and Cade decided to head back to the third floor. He decided to stop hunting for the day earlier than usual because he was extremely tired.
Staying the night on the fourth floor was not a good idea and thus he went to the third floor. There were still a few more slimes on the third floor but they were not a threat to Cade.
Once Cade arrived on the third floor, he set up his camp. Cade checked his haul for the day. He was extremely glad for his high luck. He got a lot of magic crystals.
He did not get any equipment other than the iron body armor he currently wore but the huge amount of magic crystal was enough to satisfy himself.
He got ten pieces of level 5, five pieces of level 6, twenty pieces of level 7 and fifteen pieces of level 8 vitality crystals. If he were to sell all of the magic crystals, he would get a lot of money.
Unfortunately, the magic crystals were important to him to increase the stat of his linked equipment.
Cade planned to sell any equipment he found because he won’t need most of them and to raise his chance of getting equipment drop, he needed to increase his luck.
Cade knew he needed to start increasing his other stat but he had a feeling that he should keep increasing his luck.
From all the knowledge he had about luck, he felt like the luck stat had its limit. He wanted to know what happened when he reached that limit. He speculated that the limit of the luck was 100 and he wanted to try reaching that limit.
However, due to him having a grade E potential, he will need to reach level 10 to be able to get 100 luck. His rate of leveling had gone slower and slower and he did not know if he would be able to reach level 10 before his time limit entry to the dungeon ended.
While he was thinking about all of that, an idea came across his mind.