The party made their way through the winding corridors of the castle’s East Wing, fighting any Lycan mob that they encountered on their way.

The East Wing had a lot of rooms and many branching passageways in it, so the party’s exploration progress wasn’t fast, since they had to take detours to explore those rooms and the places that the passageways led to.

If Maria solo-raided this dungeon, she wouldn’t even try exploring those areas, but since she’d easily get lost, she’d more or less do it, though not as systematic as how she was doing it now with her party.

Lizzy would keep track of the areas they'd explored and mark them on their minimap to make sure that they wouldn’t somehow loop back to the place they already went to before.

The East Wing seemed unimpressive at first, but as they explored the place, the girls became a bit frustrated because it was enchanted to be a maze. There were no traps in the East Wing, but there was a peculiar enchantment that made it extremely annoying to explore.

The enchantment activated at set intervals and it would randomly teleport the party anywhere around the maze. The first time they got teleported, the party was split up, except for Sky and Cindy who were coincidentally touching each other and got teleported together.

It was annoying, but since everyone was strong, no one died from the mobs in the enchanted maze.

They quickly regrouped and restarted their exploration, keeping track of any signs of the random teleportation. It wasn’t until the 3rd time the random teleportation happened that Maria figured out that there was a set interval between each teleportation.

Once the party figured that out, they just held hands with each other before the teleportation happened and get teleported together instead of being separated like before.

They got stuck inside of that mage for an hour or so before finally finding the mechanism that triggered the random teleportations and destroyed it.

A corridor appeared in the room holding the mechanism after they destroyed it and it led to the next area of the castle’s East Wing. The girls happily and unhesitatingly ran through the corridor and escaped the maze once they made sure that it wasn’t booby-trapped or a fake path that led to somewhere like a dead end or worse–the entrance of the maze.

“We’re finally out of that damned maze!” Lilith cried out in relief as she fell to the floor, exhausted.

“Y-Yeah…that was exhausting,” Cindy chimed in as she too slumped to the ground.

Seeing that the party was exhausted, Lizzy decided that they should take a break and said, “Alright, let’s take a break here. Once everyone’s stamina has recovered, we’ll continue.”

“Great.”

“Let’s do that…”

Lizzy took out the [Mobile Campfire] from her inventory and set it up in the middle of the hall that they arrived at after passing through the corridor. The item created a temporary safe area in an otherwise hostile location, so hostile monsters or NPCs won’t approach the place voluntarily.

The girls took their much needed rest, except for one person. Maria was the only one who wasn’t tired at all and was restlessly looking around the hall out of boredom.

“Mary, settle down. We have to rest…how are you not tired?”

“Hm? Well…I guess I just wouldn’t? I mean, get lost pretty easily in dungeons and spend a couple of hours figuring my way around, so this much isn’t new,” Maria replied to her friend’s question.

“What?”

“It’s true! Honestly, I’m quite surprised we only spent one hour going through that maze. If I tackled that place alone, I’d probably be stuck for a few hours…or at least until I get annoyed and start breaking things.”

“...”

“I can actually see that happening…since you’re just so bad with directions…” Sky said with an empathetic look on her face.

“Anyway, I’ll just look around the hall. There doesn’t seem to be anything around, but it could just be hidden or something.”

Maria was now acting like a proper dungeon explorer. Usually, she would probably just pass through this unimpressive hall without taking a proper look at anything, but after seeing that it was fun doing a proper exploration within a dungeon, she started scrutinizing everything around her.

Thanks to this, the party was able to obtain many valuable items–even those of the miscellaneous category–and fill up their inventory with things that were practically worth their weight in gold.

This was still a castle, so many miscellaneous items like paintings, mirrors, ornamental weapons, etc. were precious and worth a lot of gold. It wasn’t just the equipment and items they obtained from chests and mobs that were important to keep, but also those kinds of items as well.

There was even a rug that Maria nabbed from one of the rooms they passed by earlier that was actually a historical piece of decoration made by a famous Lycan artisan.

At this point, Maria wasn’t a dungeon explorer but a thief. She was stealing items from the castle that would soon be hers and distributing them to her friends who were with her.

Of course, Maria didn’t care about this. She only thought that, because it was valuable, it would suit as additional compensation to her party members who were raiding the dungeon with her and making things quicker and easier for her.

After resting until their stamina bars were filled, the party resumed their exploration. Maria was able to find a few things in the hall they were resting in. She even found a hidden room there and obtained an armor set plus a skill book from the chest she found inside of it.

“Hmm, the armor set and skill isn’t too rare or amazing. Let’s set this aside for the auction!” Maria exclaimed as she put the items inside of her inventory.

“That’s a good idea. Although it isn’t too great, it should be enough for the other groups that weren’t able to participate in this dungeon raid,” Lizzy nodded in approval and said after reading through the items’ descriptions.

“That skill book, is it alright if I purchase it?” Rafflesia raised her hand and asked.

Maria turned to her and said, “Hm? Purchase it? Well, if you want it, I can just give it to you, Rafflesia.”

“No, it’s fine. I’d like to buy it.”

“Okay~”

The skill book held the thief-class skill [Dagger Storm]. It was an advanced skill that was an upgraded version of the [Dagger Throw] thief skill. It could be learned if you chose the path of becoming an assassin-branch thief, but Rafflesia was a spy-branch thief.

She couldn’t purchase the skill from her skill instructor and buying it from other assassin-branch thieves was impossible since the skill books from players were class-locked, so spy-branch thieves like her couldn’t use them.

“Oh! This book isn’t locked behind a class! This completely changes the value of the book!” Cindy exclaimed after she read through the skill book’s description once again and found that there wasn’t the usual description of the book being locked.

“Doesn’t this mean any class can use it?” Lilith said with a surprised look on her face.

Maria tested it out and a system window popped up in front of her.

*DING*

You do not possess the skill: [Dagger Throw]!

“You need to have the [Dagger Throw] skill to use this,” she quickly reported.

“Ah, I guess that makes sense since the [Dagger Storm] skill is the upgraded version of that skill, so you would need the base skill to learn it. So the only thing that’s changed is that this skill book can be used regardless of which branch of the thief class you select!”

Cindy nodded and said, “It doesn’t change the already important value of this skill book. I honestly don't think we should put it up for auction and, instead, use it for ourselves. Who knows, it might help us finish the dungeon much quicker, don’t you all think so?”

The rest of the party members nodded at her words, so Maria turned to Rafflesia and tossed her the book.

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“You heard it here, Rafflesia, just take it! You’re a part of this party and it was agreed beforehand that important items like this would have priority distribution to the members participating in the dungeon raid!”

Rafflesia caught the book and held it to her chest while looking at everyone before saying, “T-Thank you!”

She tapped the book on herself and used it, successfully upgrading her [Dagger Throw] skill to [Dagger Storm].

Now, she was one of the unique thief class players that possessed a skill that was from another thief branch that she wasn’t a part of. This absolutely made her thrilled because the [Dagger Throw] skill was something she really liked using despite it being a basic thief skill that all thief class players knew because it had the hidden effect of being able to stun an enemy if she successfully landed a ‘backstab’ using it.

This stun worked on players as well as monsters. The best thing about it, is that the backstab stun effect even worked on boss monsters and elite monsters. Not many players knew about this, so they would abandon the [Dagger Throw] skill unless they were an assassin-branch thief.

Most players would abandon the basic skills of their class if they couldn’t upgrade them because the advanced skills of a class would generally be stronger, but Rafflesia thought that it was a pretty handy skill to have as a spy-branch thief player, since it had a useful hidden effect.

Another reason that she kept the basic skill around was because, as a spy-branch thief, she didn’t have too many attack skills to learn from her class instructors. Most of the skills she learned were about setting traps, poison concoction, and for reconnaissance purposes.

With the upgraded version of the skill, Rafflesia was happy because her ‘useless skill’ wasn’t going to be so useless at all now.

The party continued deeper into the castle’s East Wing after that. Thankfully, there were no more enchanted mazes that they had to pass through and the path forward became rather forthright.

There were some branching corridors that led them to various rooms that had chests and some other valuable items that they could pick up, but the main corridor practically led them to their objective in the East Wing.

The girls eventually arrived at a large room at the end of their path and its doors were wide open. Maria and the rest of her party members could see that a person was waiting for them in the room and they could guess who this person was.

“It’s the East Wing’s boss. The castle’s quest will probably trigger once we pass through the doorway, so let’s rest here for a bit and recover our stamina before heading in,” Lizzy said to the party members.

“Mhm.”

“Okay.”

They didn’t set up camp or anything. They just waited until their stamina recovered and this didn’t take too long. While they were waiting, however, Cali decided to pop her head out of Maria’s robe and she curiously looked around.

“Oh! Is this the rumored Dire Princess?” Sky exclaimed in excitement when she saw the cute little lady pop her head out.

Sky moved over next to Maria and peered over her shoulder to look at the Dire’s cute princess. It was rare for Cali to pop her head out when her mother was traveling in a party, so the rest of the girls also clambered over to get a good look at her.

Even Lizzy was curious about Cali because, despite always being around her best friend, she rarely saw Maria’s ‘daughter’.

When traveling with Maria, Cali would usually stay in her weapon form, but from time to time, she would transform back to her soul weapon humanoid state and look around while hugging her mommy.

Usually, Cali would only transform back to her humanoid state because she wanted to ask her mother something and this time, it was because she was hungry.

“Hm? What’s wrong, Cali?”

“Mama, hungry~” Cali said as she looked up at her mother, not minding the curious eyes that were honed in on her.

Maria was a bit surprised to hear that her daughter was hungry because she could have sworn that she had given her some sweets before they entered the dungeon and just earlier, she had given her an ornamental sword to munch on during their break, “Huh? Didn’t mommy just give you something to eat a few minutes ago?”

“Un, but Cali is hungry again!”

“Huh…well, okay…but you can only have sweets once we’re done raiding the dungeon, okay?”

“Okay~”

The rest of Maria’s party began swooning over how cute her supposed daughter was and they wanted to pinch her bubbly red cheeks. They didn’t know when Maria had given her daughter something to eat earlier when they were resting, because they only remembered seeing her scanning the hall they were in and finding some nice hidden goodies for everyone.

To their surprise, however, Maria suddenly pulled out a long sword from her inventory and they silently gave each other questioning looks before seeing that their friend had given the sword to her daughter.

“Mary, what are you–”

Their surprise continued even further when Cali, with brightly lit eyes, grabbed the sword from her mother and began munching on it like it was candy.

“What the–”

“Oh, sheesh!”

“S-She’s eating it!”

“Hmmm…I guess a weapon eating another weapon does make sense?”

Lizzy, Sky, and the others just stared in complete shock and amazement as Cali finished devouring the sword that Maria had handed to her. Seeing that her daughter didn’t seem satisfied yet, Maria took out a lance and an ax from her inventory and handed it over to Cali, who finished eating those 2 weapons in no time.

“Thank you, Mama!”

“Mhm, now be a good girl and turn back into Calamity, okay? Mommy is about to go bash that person in there into the ground~”

“Okay~”

With a flash, Cali turned back to her weapon form and Maria stood up to stretch and swing her ax around a little.

The girls in her party were looking at her a little oddly now that they were reminded that the weapon Maria was swinging was actually her daughter…

“M-Mary…”

“Hm? What’s up Liz?” Maria turned her head and asked her friend before frowning and asking, “What’s wrong with everyone’s face?”

“M-Maria…you do realize that you’re swinging your daughter around…right?” Cindy said with a little bit of concern in her voice.

The image in the girls’ heads was rather comical because they were picturing Maria swinging Cali around like a lunatic. It was funny, but also wrong at the same time. This was concerning since Maria didn’t seem too bothered by the fact that the weapon she was swinging was her daughter, so Cindy’s question was something everyone in the party wanted to ask Maria out of concern.

Maria didn’t understand what was wrong, despite hearing Cindy’s question. She just tilted her head in confusion at the looks of concern she was receiving. It was obvious that Maria knew that she was swinging Cali around since she was her weapon.

However, this didn’t make her feel bad at all, since she separated her feelings for Cali when she was in her humanoid and weapon forms. Obviously, it would be bad if she swung Cali around like a weapon in her humanoid form, because even she felt that it was unethical, despite knowing that Cali was her soul weapon, but once Cali was in her weapon form, Maria didn’t care too much since her appearance was one of Calamity’s various forms.

Maria kept her feelings separated, just like Cali’s two separate forms. The rest of the girls couldn’t do that right now because they had just come to the sudden realization that the weapon Maria was swinging around was her own daughter.

“Stop acting weird guys. Let’s go fight the boss already!” Maria said as she finished warming up and placed Calamity over her shoulder.

Lizzy was the first to give in and said, “Forget it, guys. Since Mary doesn’t seem bothered by it, let’s not think too deeply about it.”

“But still…”

“L-Let’s just drop it like Lizzy said. Otherwise, it’ll just needlessly weigh on our minds and affect our performance. I mean, look, the person herself doesn’t seem to care,” Lilith spoke up and said, nudging her chin at Maria who was humming to herself… and was about to walk into the boss room.

“M-Maria! Stop! Don’t head in just yet! Let me buff everyone first!” Cindy cried out after seeing that Maria was about to put one foot through the door.

Thankfully, she stopped and turned around. This gave Cindy the chance to quickly cast some buffs on everyone and once they were all ready, the party stepped through the doorway together.

Maria used [Inspect] on the monster and found that it was the Lycan’s Royal Guard Captain.

Name: Lycan Royal Guard Captain, Barkas Level: 320 HP: ?????/?????

MP: ?????/?????

SP: ?????/?????

“Heh, he’s not so strong!” Maria mumbled under her breath. No one heard her say this, so they couldn’t have predicted what she was going to do next.

The girls knew that the boss monster was gonna go on a tangent just like any other boss monster would do before fighting, so they stood their ground and got ready to attack once it ended its monologue.

Barkas stood up from his seat, hoisting a large greatsword over his back and began talking.

“So, the invaders have finally arrived. I was beginning to think that–”

Before he could finish with his dialogue, however, Maria suddenly interrupted him.

“Shut up and DIE!”

The girl charged forward, disappearing from her spot and reappearing right in front of Barkas with her weapon already swinging towards the Lycan’s face. Barkas was caught off guard since he was still talking, so he took Maria’s attack square to the face and was sent flying into the other end of the room.

Maria’s attack launched Barkas right into the wall and embedded him in it with a loud bang, surprising the rest of Maria’s party members, who were still shocked at Maria’s sudden interruption of the boss monster’s dialogue.

“!?”

“Wha–?”

“???”

“Oh my gosh!”

“Hehehehahahaha!”

She didn’t stop her attack and disappeared from her spot again. This time, she appeared once more in front of Barkas and sent a punch to the stunned Lycan’s face.

“Garrrh!!!”

“I don’t understand why you bosses talk so much! Did you think that I would wait for you to finish?” Maria asked with a derisive laugh before grabbing Barkas’s mane and pulling him out of the wall and slamming him to the floor.

The girls who heard Maria’s words immediately yelled in their minds, “““YES! YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO WAIT!”””

Well, they couldn’t possibly wait anymore since Maria had interrupted the boss monster’s monologue and started the battle by throwing the first punch. This was the first time they had ever experienced something like this, but they quickly recovered from their shock and charged towards the boss monster who had just been slammed into the ground by Maria’s rather ‘rude’ chain of attacks.

“You dishonorable wench! How dare you sneak attack–ARHGH!”

Maria once again interrupted Barkas’s words by kicking the lycan in the face and slamming her ax onto his head. For the second time, Barkas was slammed into the ground head first and Maria said to him, a little annoyed this time, “Shut up, you dumb mutt.”

The girls arrived just in time to see Barkas transform into his lycan form and, unlike the usual transformation, the fur on his back had turned red and this could only mean that he had entered into his enraged state.

“T-The boss is enraged?! Its HP isn’t even below 10 percent!” Cindy exclaimed in shock.

Lizzy winced at her words because she could guess why the boss became like that.

“I-I think Mary triggered its rage mode by interrupting its monologue!”

“Haha, well, isn’t this something new?”

“G-Get ready guys, it’s coming!”

Barkas was enraged alright, but just as it stood up and let out a maddened roar, it was once again cut short because Maria appeared and smashed its mouth closed.

“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?”

Maria quickly used [Circle Swing]–the upgraded version of [Arc Swing]–and tossed the monster high up into the air before slamming it back down onto the ground right in front of her shocked party members.

She gave the girls a look before saying, “What are you guys waiting for? Beat it up!”

The girls didn’t need her to say another word before they began whaling on the poor boss monster who was practically abused by their friend the moment they had stepped into the room.

At this point, they began to feel a little bit sorry for Barkas because whenever it tried to stand up, Maria would always do something to make it fall back helplessly to the ground.