None of us were quite powerful enough to solo the floor boss quite yet so we fought it as if it was a floor two encounter, as in two of us would fight it together. The last time we dived into the dungeon Yuvus and Thejeon fought it so this time Aerith would be taking on the floor boss with me. The other two stood at the entrance of the room as we entered.

My wards were still up but my sword had dissipated by now so I had to recast it, as I was doing that Aerith checked her ammo and her gun to make triple sure that it was in perfect condition. I then used [Spatial Sense] to get a feel for everything that was in the room before pointing out where each of the slimes were to Aerith since they tended to move around quite a bit.

When I had first got it using [Spatial Sense] had felt quite weird and it took me a while to get used to as it made your surroundings feel like they were part of your body. The first time I used it I had gotten so disoriented that I was almost sick but now I had gotten to the point that I could use it without issue. Aerith confirmed that she had heard me before bringing the butt of her gun into the crook of her armpit and took aim at the first slime.

As she was doing this I charged at the Cockatrice before swiping at it with my shadow blade. As usual the sword went straight through the monster without doing any surface damage but I could tell that it had done some damage as the cockatrice recoiled slightly before pecking angrily at me. I was fourteen full levels over it though so I was able to easily dodge its attacks while striking it with my own.

While this was going on Aerith found the first life slime, concentrated on her aim and pulled the trigger. The magnets at the end of the gun lit up for a millisecond before a bullet shot out of the barrel and hit the slimes core, through the leaves and branches of the tree it was hiding in, shattering it. She then quickly found the second life slime before also taking care of that and immediately started running to where she would be able to get an angle on the null slime.

I had fought the cockatrice countless times over the past month so I was pretty used to all of its attacks so it didn’t manage to land a single blow on me while I managed to hit it time and again. Thirty seconds into the fight it started to slow down from all of the damage it had been sustaining before collapsing onto the floor dead. By that point Aerith had found the null slime and taken care of it.

‘Nice job, I think that was the fastest us two have taken down the first boss’ I congratulated Aerith as we were picking up the boss’s loot. It was always good to make sure that everyone knew that they were appreciated and were always improving so that morale was kept high.

‘Thanks, honestly these fights have started to get boring.’ Aerith replied, she has always been a bit of a battle maniac, although pretty much all of us were to some degree, so it wasn’t a surprise that she easily got bored when the fights were too easy. ‘Can’t wait to see what the dungeon has in store for us on the fifth floor and beyond, at least once we beat the raid we will be able to skip the first five floors so we can go straight to the challenging fights.’

None of us were tired, since the most any of us had fought had been two encounters, so we went straight through the portal and into the second floor. For the second floor we took each encounter in groups of two with each pair changing after each encounter until everyone had been paired with everyone else. This helped our teamwork grow and made sure that we would be able to fight effectively together when separated into pairs.

Since the first two fights on this floor were the easiest we made it so that the pair that fought the boss would also fight those two just with a different partner so that they would be able to rest a bit before they had to fight again. We spent a minute discussing it and I was more tired from the boss fight than Aerith was so I would take the second encounter.

While we came to an agreement the other two decided that Thejeon would fight with Aerith while I fought with Yuvus. With that done we then proceeded to go through the floor quickly getting to the first encounter. This was slightly tricky for our two ranged party members as Thejeon had no shadows to hide in due to the floor being filled with lava and Aerith was forced to act as a melee fighter to keep the monsters away from Thejeon.

Unfortunately Aerith wasn’t great at fighting someone that could burn you every time you got close to them, even with her level advantage, so she ended up leaving the encounter with a few minor burns and some soot marks from the explosions. Other than that though they did pretty well, only taking a minute to finish off the encounter. On the other hand Me and Yuvus were perfect for this floor as my sword could go straight through their armour to deal tons of damage while my wards stopped most of the heat from getting to me.

It was also good for Yuvus as his hammer could smash through the outer shell with no issue and he was sturdy enough to be able to withstand dozens of firebolts before being at risk of going down. Unfortunately the elementals were immune to his fire so he couldn’t utilise his full skill set against them, this didn’t matter though as we took down the encounter in half the time it took Thejeon and Aerith, not that it was a competition.

We then moved on, going from encounter to encounter while fighting as a new pair each time until we reached the sixth fight. Since, if we included the cockatrice, we had gone through each iteration of pairs that we could make we restarted the order back to me and Aerith. The fight went smoothly as we worked well together, I would weave between the Magmin’s attacks while striking back where I could and Aerith would shoot around me to finish them off.

The fight was one of the more difficult ones on this floor so both of us ended up being too tired to take on the next encounter so Thejeon and Yuvus quickly dealt with it before we moved on and reached the boss fight. We could have probably done the boss fight with just two of us but we didn’t want to take any risks today as we were going to be joining up with everyone for the raid and losing to the second floor boss would be embarrassing so we fought it as a full party.

This ended up being a bit overkill though as everyone could kill the add-ons in a single hit while the boss only took two hits, one from me and the other from Yuvus, the fight only taking thirty seconds. With the boss defeated we quickly moved into the portal and out of the scorching heat. We were all tired now as, even though we were over levelled for the first two floors, fighting for over forty five minutes in scorching heat would tire anyone out.

However we knew that the third floor had a safe zone where we could properly rest so we only took a five minute break to get our energy back. I used this break to think about how we did on that floor. Overall I had no complaints as everyone was able to work together extremely well with the two best pairings being Aerith plus Yuvus and Thejeon plus me.

This was because Yuvus was able to easily keep the elementals away from Aerith as she quickly decimated the monsters. On the other hand Thejeon and I were able to quickly take down most of the encounters before they became too hard. Really though any combination of ranged and melee fighter was great as the melee fighter would keep the monsters busy while the ranged fighter quickly took out each enemy.

Our short rest was quickly over and we started our journey through the third floor by having another game of rock paper scissors. This time though, instead of deciding who would get to fight the next encounter, it would decide who was going to sit the encounter out. The first to ‘win’ the game ended up being Aerith. With that decided we proceeded to go fight the first encounter which ended up being a pretty easy fight as Thejeon immediately took care of the Oozes while I dealt with the standard slimes and Yuvus dealt with the earth slimes.

In fact, thanks to being in a cave that was permanently dark, Thejeon’s ability to melt into the shadows was so OP that any fight he participated in became extremely easy. Usually he would handicap himself by not using [Umbral Sight] so that we could all get more training in but we were in a rush to be the first to the fifth floor so we decided to let him go all out.

This meant that we quickly progressed through the floor like this until about half an hour had gone by when we finally reached the safe zone. We first looked through the bookstore but only Yuvus found a useful book, then we had lunch at the tavern as it was around lunch time and we were hungry. We then continued our delve, we didn’t go to the general store as we already had all of the supplies we would need for the rest of the run.

We got through the second to last fight without issue and then went into the boss fight for this floor. This would be the first fight that we wouldn’t be completely over levelled for so we took it kind of seriously. As we walked into the boss room I recast my wards and sword, as both had ran out by that point, Aerith checked her gun while reloading it so that it was full, Yuvus ignited his hammer and Thejeon melted into the shadows before getting into an advantageous position.

With everything prepared Yuvus charged into the middle of the room before using [Taunt] to get the attention of most of the slimes, two of them were close enough to Yuvus that he was also able to hit both of them, shattering their cores immediately. While Yuvus distracted the slimes I quickly ran behind three earth slimes before striking each one twice with my shadow blade, since they were slightly stronger than previous slimes we had fought so far they wouldn’t die to just a single hit.

Meanwhile Thejeon and Aerith were taking out all of the slimes that had slipped past Yuvus’s taunt, this being three of the standard slimes and one of the earth slimes. By this point the boss Ooze had managed to reach Yuvus and had started attacking him, putting him on the defensive. While Yuvus would be able to keep the boss Ooze at bay for now he wouldn’t last long and he wasn’t able to spare any time to protect himself from the minion slimes.

Thejeon, Aerith and I quickly took care of the remaining slimes before focusing our attention on the boss. I used the fact the boss was distracted fighting Yuvus to get off a few hits on it before being forced to roll to the side to dodge an acidic spear that was thrust in my direction. Thejeon sent a couple arrows into it that penetrated a metre into its body before losing all momentum and getting dissolved while Aerith sent a few bullets into it, although they were dissolved before they even had a chance to lose all momentum.

Our various attacks had dealt so much damage that it had shrunk considerably but that just meant that it was able to move much faster which was made even worse by Yuvus’s taunt ending. It had quickly realised that it had no way of beating Yuvus so it turned its attention to the other enemy that was right beside it, me. I dodged a few more attacks before I realised that it was focusing entirely on me so I quickly turned round and started running away but the Ooze easily kept up with me.

Luckily it had lost most of its health so all it took was a few attacks from everyone to bring it down and I could rest. We spent a few minutes catching our breath before picking up all the loot it had dropped and moving on to the next floor. As the dungeon had five floors now we could have mined some of the gems on this floor, or some herbs from the first floor, but none of us had a skill for gathering materials and we were in a hurry so we decided not to.

The fourth floor was the first time we had to work together as a full team on the whole floor since we started our delve but we still found the floor relatively easy as we had done this floor seven times over the past couple of weeks. We were incredibly adept at fighting kobolds now; we didn’t even have to use many of our skills.

Aerith and Thejeon just kept as far away from the group as they reasonably could while still being able to shoot them. Yuvus would keep the warriors busy and I slowly took care of each one of the kobolds with my shadow blade until they were all dead. This meant that after just over half an hour we had collected all the key cards and entered the second half of the floor.

By now we had mapped the quickest route to the exit and so could have gone straight to the next floor. However, after everyone got there we would be resting overnight to make sure everyone was able to fight at peak condition. If we were going to be resting anyway we might as well go all out and clear out the whole floor for the extra loot.

Even though the enemies in the city were tougher than in the plains it had more places for us to hide so we were more suited to fighting in this half of the floor. It also helped that I could use [Spatial Sense] to find traps and the enemy before we stumbled into them, letting us constantly ambush them. This made it so that the fights were actually much easier, our main tactic was to walk around until I found a squad.

Yuvus would then use [Taunt] to get all the kobolds to chase after him as he ran into the closest building. The rest of us would be hiding in the building ready so that when the squad was in sight we would open fire and kill a good chunk of them as they were too surprised to block or dodge. Yuvus would then block the door so we could keep on firing at the monsters while only having to worry about the archers and shamans.

This worked extremely well as the kobolds never learnt our tactics to counter them. This was probably built in by either the system or the dungeon so that it wouldn’t be impossible for delvers in the far future to get through even the first floor. Brute force would then become your only way through the dungeon as if you were simply too strong for your enemies then no matter what they did you would beat them.

This wasn’t instilled into adventurers though as it was an incredibly bad habit to just assume you could power your way out of any situation. The dungeon also mimicked real life as dead monsters don’t usually teach other monsters about what killed them so if a tactic worked once it would most likely work again. We ended up spending a whole hour searching through the city before finding all of the chests and going through the portal into the fifth floor.