The Dungeon shifted its terrain and characteristics at fixed floor boundaries.
Floors 1 to 4, for instance, were mainly made of pale blue walls forming corridor after corridor. The layout wasn't particularly complex, and both the Guild and the various exploration-type Familias had maps of the area. As long as you followed the correct route on the map, you'd never get lost, and you could find the entrance to the floor below without trouble.
From Floor 5 onward, though, the Dungeon's appearance changed to pale green walls, and the structure itself grew more complicated. Deeper down, square open spaces would start appearing, called rooms, and they were a fairly common feature of the Dungeon.
Floor 7 had quite a few of these rooms. Its overall terrain was a tangle of pale green underground passages crossing each other, with rooms connected at the midpoints or ends of those passages. Overall it was considerably more complex than Floors 1 to 4, but the space was more open, which was better for combat.
Of course, that was just the conclusion you'd reach from looking at the terrain.
In practice, fighting here was more advantageous for the monsters than for the adventurers.
Because from Floor 7 onward, the Dungeon began spawning a kind of monster called the Killer Ant, which together with the War Shadow of Floor 6 was known as a newbie killer. For newbie adventurers, they were extremely dangerous.
Not only did they have an incredibly tough shell that a low-quality weapon couldn't even scratch, but the ends of their arms were equipped with four well-developed, curved claws. Their attack power was in a completely different league from low-tier monsters like Goblins or Kobolds. Even an adventurer in full armor could be impaled and fatally wounded.
For ordinary adventurers, even those with decent skill, going up against a Killer Ant without a high-quality weapon or armor usually ended one way: before they could break through that hard carapace, the ant's sharp claws would strike them, leave them critically wounded, and finish them off. They would sleep forever in the Dungeon and never see the surface again.
The capabilities of these monsters were strikingly different from the opponents on the floors before Floor 7. Adventurers who had gotten used to the difficulty of the upper floors would often let their guard down and become food for them, one after another, dying full of regret.
And that still wasn't the most terrifying thing about Killer Ants.
The most terrifying thing about Killer Ants was that they called for backup.
When a Killer Ant was in danger, it would release a kind of pheromone-like substance, undetectable to adventurers, that drew every comrade in the vicinity over.
In other words, once you reached Floor 7 and faced Killer Ants, it was basically impossible to fight one-on-one the way you could on the floors above.
On Floor 7, the monsters adventurers encountered were almost always in groups.
Here, facing a relentless tide of monsters pressing in without pause was the norm. So once they reached Floor 7, adventurers usually had to team up. Aside from high-Level adventurers whose strength far outclassed the Upper Floors, newbie adventurers had a very hard time fighting solo down here.
And yet, on this day, there was a newbie adventurer in a pale green room lit by phosphorescent light, taking on a whole legion of Killer Ants alone.
"Skree!"
"Skreeee!"
In a chorus of shrieks so sharp and grating they felt like fingernails on glass, giant ants covered in carapace came crawling out of the passages on every side, four slender legs apiece, two thin pointed claws, and huge eyes flashing with red killing intent.
Each of them was about the size of a Pallum, deep red all over. The moment they appeared, they began grinding their mouthparts, the chittering sound like something being chewed, setting the nerves on edge.
In the midst of that ugly tide of noise, Leo's face was unnaturally calm. Short sword in one hand, small shield in the other, he met their attack.
A Killer Ant reared up on its hind legs and slashed its claws down, striking the small shield Leo had raised, the impact ringing dull and throwing sparks.
Leo pushed the ant back hard with the shield, but his feet were already retreating fast, dodging two more Killer Ants that lunged in from the left and right, opening up distance from the legion still closing in.
"Skreeee!"
Several Killer Ants climbed the walls and attacked from the sides, some even trying to circle behind Leo to flank him.
Leo's eyes kept moving. Even with enemies coming at him from the front, he didn't let his attention lock onto a single direction. He scanned the surroundings rapidly, taking in every enemy that drew near.
Finally, a Killer Ant that had climbed onto the ceiling dropped down at him, sharp forelimbs gleaming with a cold light that left no doubt a single blow would punch right through a person's skull.
But the instant it dropped, Leo moved too.
At some point his left hand, the one holding the small shield, had palmed a rock, and now he hurled it hard at the Killer Ant plummeting from above.
The rock smacked clean into the ant, knocking it flying, and it tumbled down into the middle of the swarm.
Surprise threat dealt with, Leo immediately bolted in the direction where the ants were thinner. He braced his shield, slammed two of the leading Killer Ants out of his way, and swung his sword at one behind them.
A flash of cold light, and the short sword sliced the Killer Ant's head clean off, blood spraying on the spot.
The best way to handle a Killer Ant was a one-shot kill, giving it no chance to call for backup.
That hard carapace really was tough to break, but if you aimed at the gaps in the shell and struck the soft flesh inside, a one-shot kill wasn't out of reach.
For a newbie, aiming for the gaps was no small feat, of course. But if the weapon in your hand was sharp enough to actually break the Killer Ant's shell, you could just ignore that issue.
As it happened, the eighty-thousand-valis short sword in Leo's hand could do exactly that, letting him pry through a Killer Ant's carapace with ease and lop its head off outright.
"Skree!" "Skreee!" "Skree!"
Seeing their comrades killed, the remaining Killer Ants flew into a rage and charged in without hesitation.
But Leo wasn't the type to linger in a fight. After every strike, hit or miss, he'd dart away, never giving the Killer Ants a chance to surround him or cut off his retreat.
He'd dash forward, shove their claws aside with his shield, push their bodies back, and cut down any ant that got separated from the group with a single sword stroke. Then he'd retreat at full speed, or even turn and run outright, opening up distance from the legion to regroup before charging back in at whichever direction had fewer monsters, whittling their numbers down.
Hit-and-run, over and over. Leo kept stretching out the fight with the swarm, sometimes snatching a rock off the ground in passing and hurling it hard, cracking a Killer Ant or two across the skull and leaving them dazed.
When he saw Killer Ants climbing onto the walls or ceiling, he hurried away from them. If one dropped down from above, he'd either catch the attack on his shield or just swing his sword and knock it flying. Now and then he'd fling out a kick to boot a lunging ant aside. The fight looked plain and unflashy, but he kept accumulating results, and the Killer Ants' numbers slowly dwindled.
"Skreeeee!"
A while later, the last few Killer Ants, seeing how things had turned, started to panic. They reared up on their hind legs, grinding their mouthparts, and let out a shrill cry.
That was a Killer Ant calling for its comrades.
"Like hell."
Leo wasn't about to give them the chance.
"Light of heaven, sword of stars."
The fluent chant came pouring out of Leo's mouth.
"Meteor Dance!"
A volley of meteors flew from Leo's hand, turning into flashes of starlight that came and went in an instant, dragging long tails of light, piercing the Killer Ants one after another.
The last surviving ants had their heads punched through by the meteors, or their bodies skewered. They froze where they stood and never made another sound.
A few seconds later, they slowly toppled over, every breath of life gone, dying at the feet of the adventurer they had been trying to swarm.
"Haa... haa..."
Still in his casting stance, Leo was breathing a little hard. After a moment he lowered his arms, settling his heartbeat and his breath.
"Made it through in one piece, huh?"
Muttering quietly to himself, Leo wiped the sweat off his forehead, lifted his short sword, and walked over to the Killer Ant corpses to start collecting their magic stones.
This was the tenth day since Leo had received the Falna and officially joined Loki Familia.
And from two days ago, Leo had come down to Floor 7 of the Dungeon and started adventuring here.
Compared with newbie adventurers who spent half a month grinding the upper floors, building up experience and strength before they dared to step onto Floor 5, that pace was undeniably fast.
Even so, Leo still hadn't updated his Status. He'd come down to this floor with every basic ability proficiency still sitting at 0.
...
"Hello, I'd like to exchange these magic stones for valis, please."
At Babel, at the front of the long line in front of the Exchange counter, Leo emptied out the magic stones he'd collected in his pouch and handed them over to the Guild appraiser.
A closer look showed that these magic stones were noticeably different from the fingernail-sized shards from before. They were a fair bit bigger.
Magic stones of this size were what could properly be called complete magic stones, not magic stone shards.
Naturally, magic stones like these went for quite a bit more.
"Twenty-two thousand valis in total. Please take it."
A weighty money pouch was placed in Leo's hands, filled with shining gold coins.
Leo ignored the stares from the crowd of adventurers around him. Pouch in hand, expression flat, he walked out of the Exchange.
In ten days he'd nearly doubled his earnings, which was certainly something to be happy about, but Leo didn't really care about that today.
What he was looking forward to was something else.
Namely, the fact that he was finally going to update his Status.
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200 powerstones for the extra chapter
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