Hephaestus was very angry when alex introduced his tempos to the world because it was frankly the same as slapping her face indirectly. her familia had always in the best when it came to crafting and while it stung when alex's sealing abilities showed up she could reason it away due to how rare sealers were. but when alex came out as a master level smith as well she felt angry at him , it wasn't well known but hephaestus had removed all of the high level smithing knowledge from most of the world. this meant that all of the really talented smiths who didn't want to reinvent the wheel to grow in the craft needed to join her familia giving her a monopoly.
Now that alex had not only successfully reinvented the wheel but had even improved it further by fusing seals into weapons hephaestus's monopoly was in danger. no one had gone to learn from alex yet so she still had time to make a deal with him against him spreading his knowledge out. if he was weaker she might have just tricked the denatus meeting into using divinity to get rid of him but there wasn't a god in orario who hadn't noticed the minute traces of divinity in him.
It was mostly contained in his right eye but the fact it existed meant he was uncomfortably close to ascending so if a god in their released state were to attack him it might push him into ascension. the reason for this was because the biggest step for mortals to become gods was to gather arcaenum or the energy of divinity. when gods released their state they radiated the stuff uncontrollably for a few moments before they acclimated again , but those few moments might be enough for alex to collect enough to ascend.
To make matters worse for hephaestus her sister freya was prophesied to marry alex meaning he would almost be guaranteed a successful ascension. to be honest hephaestus was very happy for her sister finding her destined mate but also conflicted because the man was frighteningly talented and seemed to have developed ties to several divine domains including her own. freya was very much aware of this fact as well since her sister had come to apologize to her and promise to try and keep alex off her toes.
Alex wasn't aware of the problems his rapid rise had caused beyond the brief bit were the loki familia wrongly thought he was competing with them. alex hadn't been in the dungeon in the last two years since he was spending that time taking care of his children. this wasn't to say his abilities had started to stall since this was very wrong. thanks to the absurdly close distance to divinity he got after reaching level seven and upgrading by a massive amount his body was actually behind his state of existence accelerating his stat gain. he had already hit A rank in all of his stats at this point but unlike before he actually needed a feat to push him to level eight.
Alex had finally decided to dive as deep into the dungeon as he could in hopes of finding something to challenge himself. reaching the fiftieth floor was actually easy for alex at this point as he cut balor in two before it could even react. the dragon vase was even more of a joke as despite being deeper the only threat was the level five valgang dragons at the bottom of the vase. the first pillar of flame he dodged was what he used to skip straight to floor fifty eight by jumping through the hole left behind.
After that alex slaughtered the dragons before heading down to floor fifty nine where he encountered a vast tropical forest and dense bone ash. there was a few strange frost type monsters in the area which completely threw off alex's preconceived thoughts. they weren't super strong either just around the same level as normal weak level six monsters like the valgang dragons. the most irritating ice monsters were by far the spiders that shot sticky webs that gave you frostbite.
If it wasn't for the fact that alex actually wanted these unique drops he probably would have flat out nuked the whole floor with celestial release. speaking of ill advised wide scale attacks , alex had heard of an interesting event that bell had gotten caught up in were some idiots summoned a juggernaut type monster on the lower floors. alex had discovered that type of thing when he was level six and used a wide scale attack on the upper floors summoning the thing. for as stupidly tricky to kill as the creature was it didn't leave behind any drops at all not even a core.
