Floor six was completed quickly. When we were done, we stopped at the top of the stairway leading to seven. Unlike most dungeon explorers, we didn’t need to get through the next five floors or lose progress. We could bide our time and return to exactly where we last were. The only worrisome thing about that is the potential we run right into a group of monsters upon returning.
“Is this it? Is temptation just the fact that the drops are good? This feels like every other dungeon.”
After working through the sixth floor, I felt a bit disappointed. It was really more of the same. More monsters, more pathways, slightly different theme. I had expected that since the dungeon had a theme, we’d be doing something other than killing monsters. Like, a treasure room where we couldn’t touch any of the treasure. Now, that is a temptation.
I asked this question as we rested for a moment before heading to floor seven. Floor six contained Chinchilla Beasts, a large rodent with ridiculously soft fur. They dropped their skin, which was apparently used to line coats in expensive clothing. The other monster were called Angry Salmon. It was literally a Salmon the could float through the air. It even dropped Salmon cutlets. It felt like everything this floor dropped were luxury items. I could make a killing.
“No, seriously, isn’t it you guys who are strange?” Raissa spoke up.
“How so?”
“Compared to Dirage, there is about ten times the number of traps in this dungeon. Although I’ve been doing my best to avoid them for you, it seems almost unbelievable that you’re able to completely avoid every one. On top of that, these monsters are exceptionally hard for such a low level. In Dirage, you wouldn’t find monsters like this until past level 10!”
“Oh… I guess that makes sense.”
In truth, I was using my map and sense trap to map out everything, so I managed to avoid all of the traps. After my experience with death last night, I was a lot more cautious than I was yesterday. I also hadn’t cleared the floor using the monster lures for this reason. These monsters were a bit tough to bring down, and three or more of them could become tough. Fortunately, we defeated them quickly, and when more than a few gathered, Terra used Earth to direct and delay them.
I supposed in a normal situation, creating walls of Earth at random was a taxing process that most mages could only do in a hurry. I tried it once, and it wiped out all my mana and it was still only half the size of Terra’s. That was the difference between an Earth Elemental and a human with Earth Magic. So, what would end up happening is if they got greedy and tried to bite off more than they could chew. They’d end up being overwhelmed by the rodents and torn apart.
“Well, whether or not we’re abnormal, we need to keep moving forward.” I decided to keep us moving forward.
We went on to the seventh floor.
I supposed in a normal situation, creating walls of Earth at random was a taxing process that most mages could only do in a hurry. I tried it once, and it wiped out all my mana and it was still only half the size of Terra's.
This does not make sense to me. Granted, it *does* make a lot of sense that Terra, as an earth elemental, can use earth magic at a fraction of the mana cost as a mage. However, creating just two or three walls of earth to block or slow down the progress of enemies down long, narrow dungeon halls should NOT practically wipe out a mage's mana.
That would make Earth Wall - the most fundamental and well-known spell of earth magic - absurdly mana expensive, to the point of being almost too inefficient and impractical to use at all. It's to the point that I would question why anyone would ever learn that spell or become a mage with an earth-focus if it's actually *that* expensive.
Furthermore, Deek has many different classes under his belt, including a number of different mage classes as well as the Hero class and True Dungeon Diver class. And each class he gains and levels up should increase his mana pool, particularly anything mage-related and Hero and Dungeon Diver.
My point: By now, Deek should have a larger mana pool than anyone else in his party, including Terra. And we are lead to believe that he ran out of mana just trying to replicate what Terra does out of habit - erect a few earth walls - just for one small monster encounter?
Wouldn't it make sense if his job wasn't a earth mage though? He would have to use more Mana?
BTW: I want to point out how it's cringe that the earth elemental of the party just happened to be born with the name "Terra" (literally, the Latin word for "Earth") and how "Celeste" (means "celestial" or "of the heavens") was originally a fairy who later evolved into a Sylph (a wind spirit or wind elemental).
To be fair, though, manga and anime often do similar. But, usually, it's because the MC is portrayed as having an acute lack of imagination and/or a terrible naming sense - which is always played up for laughs.
For example, Death March had the MC name his first companions - slaves that he rescued - as "Tama" the catkin beast-kin (literally means "Cat"), "Pochi" the dogkin beast-kin (literally means "Dog") and "Liza" the lizardkin (WN vs "scalekin" in LN) which is obviously just a shorthand for "Lizard".
Certainly makes it easier to keep track of who is who. It’s not exactly unique, but you really don’t need to be (about names) to tell a good story.