Time seemed to tick away with a deceptive, liquid quality as Draco progressed through the deepening silence of the dungeon.
His boots, reinforced with alloys rare even by the standards of Orario, clicked softly against the stone…..a rhythmic cadence that was the only soundtrack to his progress.
He was bored, a deep-seated ennui that came from the lack of a genuine challenge.
For most adventurers, the journey from the upper floors to the deep floors was a harrowing odyssey, a desperate struggle for survival where every corner turned was a gamble with death. For Draco, it was a commute.
It was jarring, almost surreal, to witness the monsters and terrains he once considered life-threatening being cleared with the casual indifference one might show to clearing cobwebs.
He moved through the middle and lower floors like a ghost of destruction.
A flick of his tail, a momentary release of his overwhelming pressure, and the creatures that would have massacred a mid-tier party were reduced to ash and magic stones.
He paused for a moment on a landing, looking back at the trail of dust he had left behind.
'It almost makes it seem as though my preparations were unnecessary' he thought, his red eyes narrowing.
'Perhaps this is how Ottar feels' he mused.
It was a dangerous line of thought....hubris was the leading cause of death for high-level adventurers...but in his case, it felt like an objective observation.
Draco was overwhelmingly that strong.
The upper, middle, and even the first half of the deep floors were no longer a training ground; they were a playground he had long since outgrown.
His destination was the 45th floor, a depth few ever reached.
At his current rate, the only obstacles that held even a glimmer of interest were on the 37th floor. There sat the throne of Udaeus.
According to the Guild's current records, the titan was set to spawn sometime within the month.
Then there was the Coliseum.
Even the thought of it brought a faint, predatory tug to the corner of his lips.
A place of infinite spawning, where the dungeon's experimenting manifested in an endless tide of Level 4 and 5 monsters.
Most sane adventurers, even the "Sword Princess", viewed the Coliseum as a death trap to be circumvented at all costs.
To Draco, it sounded like the perfect place to kill time and farm high-quality drops.
But his primary objective remained, which was to retrieve the jewel fetus on the 45th floor.
And on the side, he needed to find a worthy challenge that would push his stats past the final threshold to reach Level 8.
Time was ticking, and his enemies weren't going to show any considerations.
Pushing away his distracting musings, Draco adjusted the heavy dungeon bag on his shoulder and stepped into the 37th floor.
The transition was immediate.
The 37th floor, known as the "White Palace," was a stark, haunting labyrinth.
The walls were a brilliant, milky white, carved into intricate pillars and high-vaulted ceilings that disappeared into a black abyss.
The air was colder here.
As he made his way toward the throne room where the entrance to the 38th floor lay....Draco noticed something peculiar.
The usual chorus of monsters was absent.
There were no clattering of skeletal warriors, obsidian soldiers or even skull sheeps.
Instead, there was a trail.
The white floor was littered with the remnants of battle: shards of black bone, dissipating clouds of purple smoke, fur drops and magic stones.
Lots of them.
"What idiot leaves magic stones lying around?" Draco muttered, his voice echoing in the vast hall.
He stopped, looking down at a marble-sized stones that hummed with latent magic.
It was worth a small fortune in the surface world.
He didn't pick it up.
It was an unspoken etiquette amongst adventurers: you did not claim the spoils of a kill that wasn't yours without permission.
It was a matter of pride, a code of conduct that separated the true warriors from the other trash.
He followed the trail of destruction, his curiosity piqued.
Whoever was ahead of him was moving with incredible speed and a total disregard for loot. They were focused on one thing: the kill.
He reached the threshold of the throne room, and the scene that greeted him was both unexpected and strangely domestic.
Ais was a blur of silver and gold.
She moved through a group of newly spawned Spartoi like a hurricane through dry stalks.
Her rapier, sang a song as it severed bone and shattered cores.
She wasn't just fighting; she seemed to be tethering at the brink of boredom and fun.
But there was something frantic about her movements that spoke of a deep-seated restlessness.
Near the center of the room, sitting calmly on a jagged piece of fallen masonry, was Riveria.
She seemed immersed in a thick, leather-bound book.
Beside her, a magic lamp cast a warm, steady glow against the oppressive darkness around her. Her staff, leaned against her knee, ready but currently unnecessary.
No monster got within twenty feet of her; Ais intercepted them all with a lethal, silent efficiency.
Draco stood in the shadows of the entrance for a moment, watching them.
'Ugh, what the hell is going on?' he wondered.
'Should she be this careless in the dungeon?'
It was a hypocritical thought, given his own casual stroll through the deep floors, but seeing the Vice-Captain and the star performer of the Loki Familia acting so careless was jarring.
He waited until Ais had cleared the immediate wave, ensuring she wasn't mid-lunge, before he spoke.
"Hey," Draco called out, his voice carrying easily across the cavernous room.
Ais spun around, her sword leveled, her eyes sharp and predatory.
Riveria looked up from her book, her hand reflexively closing around her staff.
"Draco?" Ais asked, her voice hovering between a question and a gasp.
She squinted, her golden eyes trying to pierce the gloom.
It was understandable.
The 37th floor was notoriously dark.
The ceiling was a black void that swallowed light, and the small phosphorescent stones embedded in the walls acted more like distant stars than actual lamps.
Draco, with his dark skin, obsidian-like scales, and dark-themed armor, practically blended into the shadows.
"The one and only," Draco replied, stepping into the circle of light provided by Riveria's lamp. He offered a small, playful smirk.
The tension drained from Ais's shoulders, and Riveria closed her book with a soft thud.
Both women looked visibly relieved, though Riveria maintained her regal composure.
"You're a long way from the surface, Draco," Riveria remarked, her emerald eyes scanning him with curiosity.
"And alone, no less. Though, I suppose for someone of your caliber, the term 'alone' is more of a choice than a circumstance."
"Are you two by yourselves?" Draco asked, looking toward the dark corridors that branched off the throne room.
"It's rare to see the Loki Familia without a small army of supporters and a mountain of supplies."
Ais sheathed her sword with a clean snick.
"Finn and the others were here, but left many hours ago" Ais responded.
"And you two stayed...…because?" Draco raised an eyebrow.
"Ais felt she hadn't had enough for the day," Riveria explained, giving the younger girl a look that was part fond and part exasperated.
"And I, predictably, stayed to ensure she didn't do anything remarkably stupid. However, our dedication has led to a slight oversight."
Riveria glanced at the large, overflowing dungeon bag Draco carried.
"You wouldn't happen to have some extra provisions with you? We will pay, of course. Thanks to a certain someone's training trance, we've been down here far longer than intended and now we are quite starved."
"Sorry," Ais murmured, looking at her boots.
Draco looked at his bag.
He had plenty of dried meat, hard biscuits, and several bladders of water.
He also had his own specialized rations…..nutrient-dense pastes made from nuts that tasted like amazing, also providing everything his muscles needed to keep firing.
He also had a small vial of his own secret sauce, a spicy concoction he'd spent a long time perfecting, but he was nearly out.
'If I give them the bland stuff, Riveria might hex me out of spite' he joked to himself.
"If you don't mind the taste of bland, store-bought rations and nut paste, then I've got plenty to share," Draco said, beginning to shrug the bag off his shoulder.
"I didn't have time to prep my usual supplies before Ouranos sent me on this errand."
"Ouranos?" Riveria's interest sharpened.
"That explains the solo deep-dive."
"Just a bit of investigation on the 45th," Draco said, keeping it vague.
"Nothing too crazy."
He knelt to open the bag, but before his fingers could touch the leather straps, his body stiffened. The air in the room didn't just get colder...it grew heavy, as if the pressure had suddenly doubled.
Quickly, he looked up, his eyes locking onto the ceiling.
"Get ready. Looks like we have company."
Riveria was on her feet in an instant, her staff glowing with a faint, preparatory light.
"It can't be. The spawn window wasn't supposed to open for another week."
Ais didn't need the warning.
She had already felt the changes
She drew her sword, the silver blade gleaming in the low light.
"It's here."
The floor beneath them didn't just shake; it groaned.
A sound like the tectonic plates of the world grinding together echoed through the throne room.
CRACK.
A fissure opened twenty yards away, a jagged rent in the white stone.
Dust and gravel sprayed into the air like a geyser.
From the depths of the earth, a massive, obsidian-black skull emerged.
It was followed by collarbones as thick as tree trunks, ribs that looked like the hull of a sunken ship, and a pelvis that could have served as a foundation for a large house.
The sound was deafening...the screech of stone being torn apart, the roar of the dungeon itself celebrating a birth.
Every movement the entity made sent shockwaves through the floor, a rhythmic pounding that Draco could feel in his very marrow.
The monster let out its first breath...a birth-cry that was more of a supernatural howl than a roar.
"GROOOOOOOOOOOHHHHH!"
The three adventurers stood their ground as the giant rose.
It stood more than ten meters tall, a gargantuan skeleton composed of bone so black it seemed to absorb the light around it.
It was like a Spartoi evolved to its most terrifying extreme.
Its lower half was still embedded in the floor, anchoring it to the very heart of the 37th level.
Two blood-red sparks ignited within the depths of its hollow eye sockets, fixating on the three intruders in its sanctuary.
In the center of its rib cage, protected by a dense lattice of black bone, a massive magic stone throbbed with a rhythmic, sickly light.
"So this is Udaeus," Draco muttered.
He didn't feel fear; he felt a sudden, sharp surge of adrenaline that cut through his boredom like a knife.
The pressure the monster exerted was real…..it was a Level 6 threat.
As a general rule, the number and type of monsters on each floor didn't change.
A single type of monster couldn't overrun a floor, and new monsters were born to replace those slain by adventurers.
While there was some difference in time required for new monsters to spawn on each floor, it usually never took more than one day.
In the middle of all that, there was a type of monster that did not revive immediately after being slain.
Its interval of rebirth was much longer.
Also, there was only one of this kind of monster on each floor at a time.
Perhaps because they were too strong or too big, the Dungeon only allowed one of them on a floor, and never more than that.
The Guild had known about these special monsters since ancient times, and had a name for them.
"A Monster Rex."
"Riveria, Draco," Ais said, her voice calm, devoid of the frantic energy from before.
She took a step forward, her wind….Ariel…..beginning to swirl around her in a shimmering, emerald aura.
"Please leave it to me."
All varieties of Monster Rex look different but have two things in common: They had a long revival interval and were extremely powerful.
It was speculated that each one was always fully two to three levels above the rest of the monsters on their floor.
Even the highest-level adventurers respected and feared them, calling them "floor bosses."
Usually many adventurers had to work together to bring one of them down.
Draco looked at her, then back at the towering skeleton.
He saw the determination in the set of her shoulders.
She wasn't just asking for the kill; she was asking for the challenge.
She needed this to grow further, just as he needed his own trial.
So he stepped back, crossing his arms over his chest.
Even if he took down Udaeus, he didn't think it would be enough for his level up.
"Ais, do you really intend to fight alone?"
A worried Riveria looked at the girl with severe eyes.
"Not a problem" Ais replied with confidence.
Riveria hearing this joined Draco at the side, though her hand remained tight on her staff, her eyes never leaving the monster's core.
"He's all yours, Sword Princess," Draco said, his voice low and steady.
"But if you take too long, I might get bored. And you wouldn't like me when I'm bored."
Ais didn't respond with words.
The wind around her erupted into a localized gale, her golden hair whipping around her face like a halo of fire.
She lunged, a silver streak against the black bones of the king, and the battle for the 37th floor began in earnest.