We made really good progress as we were already on the nineteenth floor thanks to Katsuki leading us through all those floors easily.

"Mistress… There's significantly fewer people on this floor so I might not be able to find the way to the stairs as fast as before," Katsuki informed me.

Huh… Not sure if we're actually moving faster than everyone else or they just decided to skip this floor?

The last few floors have been relatively empty as well so perhaps it might be the former?

I turned to Edir who had been following behind me all this while, "I don't suppose you know the route here?"

"N… No, Mistress… I… I have not been this far into the Dungeon yet…"

Well, I guess that's to be expected for someone of her skill or she would not hunt around that level of the Dungeon.

Speaking about her, I thought she would be as clingy as Lisa but she was surprisingly docile after that to the point of being shy. Like… Where did that olfactophilia side of you go to?

I'm guessing that when she gets in the mood, she would get really turned on by my smell but when outside of it, she would just think I smell nice?

And just for the record, I did not ask her to call me 'Mistress', she decided on that on her own.

"Wahaha! I guess we have to take our time with this one!" Odeta laughed, sounding oddly happy.

Well, we had not been facing a lot of monsters since Katsuki basically followed the trail that other Dungeoneers before us had left behind which guided us directly towards the stairs to reach the next floor, bypassing almost every monster that might have been there.

For this floor however, we would only be able to rely only on Katsuki's sense of smell to give us an early warning about the monsters but not for guiding us to the stairs.

And since we don't know where the stairs are, we would need to check every single nook and cranny inside the Dungeon to look for it.

Katsuki ignored Odeta and started sniffing the air in front of us as we had three paths that diverged from each other in front of us.

"Mistress, to the left is a few Rat Knights while the other two seem to be empty of--"

"Left! Sister Aster! Pick left!!" Odeta cut in immediately while bouncing on her feet excitedly.

Katsuki turned to me, obviously hinting that it was up to me since I was the leader of this little party.

I shrugged, "We can go left I suppose? We can handle them anyway even if they are in a group."

Katsuki nodded and proceeded to lead the way towards the left passage, checking around us for traps at the same time.

Sure enough, we came across a pack of five Rat Knights, all of them wearing the same chest plate and helmet with similar weapons in their hands.

Odeta turned to me with eyes full of expectation so I gestured towards the monsters, "Feel free to go and have fun."

She let out a yelp of glee before charging ahead, surprising the Dungeon Rat Knights by leaping towards one of them.

Odeta managed to get past her target's guard and rip its throat out with her hands, the Rat gurgling for a moment before collapsing on the ground and dying in a pool of its own blood.

The other Rat Knights quickly drew their weapons to try and defend themselves against Odeta but she had already taken that chance to punch out the throat of another Rat Knight, leaving only three enemies remaining.

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The Rats raised up their weapons while interlocking their shields at the front to form a shield wall against Odeta. A wall that Odeta could easily get past of course.

She jumped over the Rats and ended up behind them, prompting them to turn back in a panic to face her.

Unfortunately for them, they were not fast enough and Odeta managed to punch the face of another Rat Knight which caused its skull to cave in.

Since the monsters had turned their backs to me, it gave me a clear shot of shooting a [Spark Strike] and a [Static Bolt] at each of them.

The Rat that was hit by my [Spark Strike] turned to me and growled angrily while the other one was momentarily stunned by my [Static Bolt].

Odeta took advantage of their distracted state to attack them again, her hands wrapping around their heads and smashing them into the ground..

There was a loud squelch as their heads were pulverised and their skulls were completely smashed from the force of Odeta pressing down on them, spilling out blood and brain matter all over the place which, of course, included on Odeta.

I huffed, "What did I say about getting yourself dirty with Rat blood again, Odeta?!"

She stood back up and wiped her face with the back of her arm, "Wahaha! But this is fun, sister Aster! You should try it too!"

"Ugh… I'm good…"

I would have used the excuse that it would make me smell bad but my [Roses] boon would make sure that I always smell good even if I'm knee deep in Rat guts.

That still does not take away the fact that it would feel quite disgusting though…

Just as I was about to cast [Aqua Ball] to wash Odeta clean, Katsuki spoke up from behind me.

"Mistress, a group of people are coming our way."

I turned to look at the direction of where she was looking and sure enough, there was a party of Dungeoneers moving towards us from the direction of the Rat Knights.

Normally this would not be an unusual sight since we would come across different parties of Dungeoneers all the time so meeting another party here was not weird in and of itself.

What was probably weird was the barely restrained killing intent emanating from them and I highly doubt that was directed to the dead Dungeon Rats at Odeta's feet.

The fact that Katsuki also took out two daggers to hide behind her back meant that she was already expecting us to engage in combat with this party of newcomers.

Odeta seemed to also realise that they were a threat to us and slowly backed up towards us while facing them.

There were eight of them, all of them male Mahuns and a quick scan of their stats revealed that each of them were at least in the four hundred range with the one leading them in the five hundreds.

I was about to ask what they wanted from us when I saw the glint of metal from within the group.

Learning from my previous experience, I knew that was an arrow flying towards me and prepared myself to avoid it.

Katsuki seemed to have anticipated something like that happening since she moved even faster than I did and deflected the projectile away with her daggers.

"Odeta! No!!" I called out, stopping Odeta from rushing forward to attack the group.

Odeta obeyed but remained where she was, positioning herself in between us to stop any more surprise attacks from reaching us.

Someone shot out a [Static Bolt] at the Amrap but I was also expecting a magic attack so I shot that down with a [Spark Strike], dispersing it without causing any damage to either side.

"Tch… And we thought this would be easy…" Someone muttered from within their group.

They then rearranged themselves so that two men wearing full plate armour and carrying two tower shields took the front of their formation.

Behind them was their leader that was using a greatsword and behind him were two archers who had their bows drawn and pointed at us over the shoulders of the shield bearers.

Taking the back of the formation were whom I assume to be two mages and a healer.

I'm pretty sure that these were people that the stupid noble hired to deal with me inside the Dungeon. The only thing I was surprised about was that they took this long to ambush me.

Then again, I guess they wanted to wait for me to be somewhere alone and out of sight before they revealed themselves.

"Do we fight or run?" I whispered ro Katsuki, already preparing to summon my [Shadow Summons] to even the odds.

"If Mistress wishes to fight, I will do my best to support you."

"What is the usual course of action for this?"

Katsuki hesitated for a moment, "If Mistress is open to suggestions, I would suggest that we escape for now and change our location of battle. We do not know if they have any other traps prepared for us and we might even be caught in a pincer attack… I would recommend moving to the next floor and setting up our own trap for them."

Oh, in that case…

"Oh no!! Look!! A UFO!!" I screamed, pointing at a spot on the ceiling.

Everyone turned to look.

I had to hide my own laughter as I grabbed Odeta and Katsuki by their hands and used my tail to wrap around Edir's wrist before pulling them along with me to run away.

Just in case, I even called up a low stats [Shadow Summon] to send towards them to distract them while we ran away.

Ahahaha! I can't believe I actually managed to make them all look! If only I could have recorded it down somehow!

Whoops, better concentrate on running first~