Ironically, Tobias's party wasn't aware that they had gone in the direction with the hardest challenges first. As the first two rooms had neither [Monsters] nor challenges to complete, there was no need to use the garden meadow room for rest. Thus, they skipped leaving a tribute in the well and continued on to the next room.
Unfortunately for Matthias, the only path forward went through the slime parkour room. He debated returning to the garden meadow room, but decided that would be a foolish choice. The last thing he wanted was to be separated from the rest of his party in a dungeon that had recently had major renovations. Besides, if their group came across the boss room, they would need his corrosive acid and Thodin and Tobias would have to work in tandem to take down the boss. Since Mirabella had to go everywhere in the dungeon to map the first floor, that meant there would definitely be no way anyone could remain behind.
Tobias grimaced at Matthias, knowing that he wouldn't be able to make things easier for his fellow party members. He had said that Matthias wouldn't have to do the slime parkour challenge, but he couldn't do anything to change their current circumstances.
Stretching, Tobias prepared to jump across to the first platform. As he did so, he noted that the room's environment made things much easier this time around. It was like they had been playing on hard mode previously and now things were a breeze. There was no longer pitch darkness nor slipperiness from the constant rain pelting down on them.
As the first aqua slime jumped out of the water towards him, he easily struck out at it with his fist. Thanks to his ability to harden his body to be as strong as metal and just how weak slimes tend to be, in general, the slime easily dissolved as its core was destroyed. Assuming there were still just five of them in this room, that meant they would only have to worry about another four aqua slimes.
Tobias easily crossed the room, effortlessly jumping from platform to platform until he finally reached the end. He had already managed to complete this challenge once before and he had been practicing for the last month or so on their makeshift obstacle course at their rental property. All of that combined with the new, easier difficulty level made it easy enough for him to complete the challenge in one go.
Mirabella was a lower level and rank than her brother with no real skills to contribute to her ability to complete physical challenges. However, her long legs, thanks to being a half-giant, made it easy enough to follow along. She almost ended up falling over due to a stray slime, only for Thodin to save her at the last moment, falling into the water in the process. However, in the end, she made it to the other side.
After swimming over, Thodding pulled himself out of the water. Then, guffawing, he noted
"I likely wouldn't have been able to make it over anyway. I just don't think I'm built for jumping such great distances."
Mirabella smiled down at the dwarf, grateful for his kind words. She did feel a bit bad about him falling into the water like that, but she supposed it couldn't be helped. Luckily, they had stuffed his armor into her magic bag, which she had made extra space for, so he wasn't wearing it when he fell into the water. Leaving it on the other side wasn't ideal and they had known it was likely they would have to complete this challenge again sometime this week. Luckily, now that they had, she would be able to repack her bag when they returned home tonight.
Matthias was not prepared at all for such a challenge. He was nervous about the first leap and then ended up tripping over his long robe, falling into the water right away. He looked much like a wet cat, none too happy about his circumstances, by the time he reached the other side. With all of their party members now finished with the challenge, Mirabella and Tobias accepted the reward for the challenge.
Mirabella was quite surprised as she received the hefty box. There were some pretty engravings on the outside with flowers and butterflies alongside some intricate lines that covered much of the top of the box. Opening it, she was even more pleasantly surprised to find it filled with some sort of sweet-smelling food that seemed quite dense. It gave off a strong smell of walnuts and sugar and there were more than a dozen of them set into square compartments with brown wax paper to cushion them.
"This is quite nice! Since we both got one, we should be able to keep one for ourselves, right, brother?"
Tobias nodded his head in response to his sister's question. He was still deep in thought as he contemplated just how much had changed about the challenge and just what it would mean for the dungeon they had grown fond of. With the challenge being easier and the reward being this good, it was likely to become popular with adventurers come spring time. However, he did worry a bit about whether everything had been adjusted like this. It wouldn't be a good thing if Violet let her guard down too much and ended up falling to invading [Monsters].
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Right now, she would likely be safe. Most of the wild [Monsters] tended to 'hibernate' over the winter season, just like people do. The snow and ice made travel difficult for all and that would provide an extra layer of protection, for the time being, for this dungeon. However, the dungeon was now more vulnerable than it previously had been.
The classes at the adventurers' guild and the few books he had read on the subject didn't explain much. However, it would seem that stronger [Monsters] would feel a draw to higher-level dungeons. Essentially, it was possible that stronger [Monsters] than goblins and wild animals would come for the dungeon core, eventually, because they would be drawn to the stronger energy signatures it would give off. It was likely to be a gradual increase in threat levels being drawn to the dungeon, much like the ranks of adventurers interested in the dungeon would slowly increase. However, that didn't stop Tobias from worrying.
After Thodin and Mirabella finished re-equipping their armor, Tobias nodded to his group before saying
"Alright, if we are all ready to go, we should continue. I don't know how far this path will lead, but I'd like to get, at least, a few challenges taken care of today."
The boxes of walnut fudge were placed into Mirabella's magic bag. It would be more difficult to fit everything into her bag by the end of the day, but she hadn't packed more than a single quill pen, inkwell, and a few scraps of paper, so there should be plenty of room for the rest. Her supplies were quite light for a 50 Units limit magic bag, after all. While there were better magic bags out there, this was the best she could afford, so she had gotten used to packing light.
The next area they came to was the one and only roundabout hallway Violet still had in the dungeon. It had two branching paths with one very clearly leading to the boss room while the other led to a more normal room. The group could easily tell the boss room from the others as such rooms always had larger, fancier doors than the other rooms in a dungeon tended to have. It was one of the ways the dungeon helped to make things fair for adventurers. If they were going to be locked into the room and forced to defeat a tough opponent, then it was only fair for there to be some way to know what they were getting into beforehand, not that complete beginners would know what they were doing.
Of course, Tobias's party was fairly high level, save for Mirabella, so they could easily tell which room was the boss room. They ended up choosing to enter the floodplains meadow room next instead. The group groaned as they realized they would once more be completing a rather difficult challenge. Eventually, they found out that this room had undergone a difficulty adjustment as well, but that didn't change their initial feelings on the matter.
Now that the rabbit holes were gone from the room, the five basic slimes had limited places they could hide. Mere bushes did nothing to stop the party from hunting them down and stuffing them into the sacks they had obtained just for this challenge. It still took a while as the annoying things were slippery, but they, eventually, ended up rounding them all up.
With four of them there, they easily covered more ground. They stuffed the slimes into their bags one at a time and then handed them off to Thodin to look over. There was no way they were going to try and stuff two slimes into the same bag since that would increase the odds of both getting away, so they had to use a new bag each time. Once they were all rounded up, they were unceremoniously dumped into the fenced-in area.
This time around, all four of them got a notification that they could now claim the reward for this challenge. This time, they got a brown paper cone full of sugared pecans. Thodin laughed loudly as he jested
"At this rate, we're all bound to end up as heavy as my father."
Tobias snorted in response to the joke. It wasn't quite funny enough to elicit a proper laugh from him, but he could certainly understand the sentiment. Violet certainly seemed to enjoy assigning sweets as rewards, especially on this first floor. It wasn't a terrible plan, but it was certainly likely to affect the economy in interesting ways. The sweets were consumable, so there would always be demand for more of them. However, with their rarity being decreased, it was likely that it would stop being so prohibitively expensive to the point where only the nobility could afford to enjoy it.
Before heading to the tavern to celebrate their victories, their group decided to make one last stop. They already knew they could defeat the emperor rock slime, so they decided to go ahead and do so. It would allow them to check and see if anything lay on the other side or if they should head the other direction the next day.
Despite how much weaker Mirabella was than the rest of their group, Tobias encouraged her to play a more active role this time around so that she could earn some extra experience. She hated using acid on her blade as she worried it would dull it, but she went ahead and did so, knowing it was likely she'd have to get it fixed the next time she was in a city with a blacksmith. Otherwise, the fights went much the same as the first time they had done it.
Thodin and Mirabella hacked away at the rock slime's exterior with their acid-covered blades. Meanwhile, Tobias fought with his fist, breaking off chunks of its exterior to make it easier for them to get in more effective blows. Once enough of the acid made it to the slime's insides, it started to crack before exploding, throwing its rocky armor in all directions.
This time around, they were better prepared for it, though. Matthias hung back near the entrance where he wasn't likely to come to harm from any of the stray rock projectiles, Mirabella used her shield to block her party members from the final explosion, and no one managed to sustain any significant injuries.
It was a relief to find out that the other side of the boss room only led to a staircase up to the second floor. That also brought Tobias some relief on behalf of Violet. Having to go through such a tough boss [Monster] would definitely keep invaders from making it to the second floor as easily, much less the dungeon core room.