Finn and Darwin went down the spiral staircase and quickly reached the second level, which was identical to the first, having a hall with four paths to choose from, the only difference being that the four paths had no name signs on them.
"What do you think are the first monsters to defeat?" asked Darwin.
"I don't know, but it will most likely be the same in all the zones, Alezy said that this and the first level were almost identical, I guess they will also have the same type of monster in all the zones so it shouldn't matter which one we go into" speculated Finn without paying too much attention to the paths
"I guess that's true... let's go in that one" said Darwin pointing to the path they had on their right side.
"Well" said finn shrugging his shoulders.
The two walked down the long passageway that was dimly lit with a few torches, slowly they approached the exit, hearing some sounds that sounded quite familiar, forming a small smile on his lips.
As they exited the passageway the first thing they saw was a large clear area of dry land next to a stream that crossed from side to side and a large amount of goblins and hobgoblins everywhere.
"This level will be very easy" mentioned Finn pulling out his slime from his right armband and his sword.
"No doubt about it" said Darwin drawing his sword and lighting it on fire with his magic, drawing the attention of all the monsters in the area.
"Ghiakk!!!" shouted the goblins closest to them as they ran towards them.
"Let's make this quick..." said Finn and the slime split into eight whips that extended towards the goblins with great speed, grabbing them by the foot and then lifting them up and slamming their heads into the ground destroying them instantly.
"I reckon it'll take about 20 or 30 minutes..." said Darwin before he made a thrust with his sword and unleashed a great flame at several goblins.
"I guess the others will be down by now too, it's already 9 am" said Finn.
"Let's hope so," replied Darwin.
-
At 8 a.m. the other teams went down to the dungeon, finding a large number of undead sitting on the worn stone seats and watching a group of undead fighting each other in the arena, as charles asked, the undead were fighting to see who was better at fighting using their head as a weapon.
Then they decided to wait for a few minutes there at the request of the mages who wanted to organize with everyone, including finn and darwin, but after a few minutes, Johnny, another skeleton arrived to tell them that finn and darwin had already arrived at the dungeon 3 hours ago and that they were currently with Alezy in the Evercity, the group of warriors left angry after hearing that and headed straight to the second level, the other groups also decided that it was time to start completing the dungeon and went down to the second level.
When they reached the second level the three groups split up, Reynolds and his team claimed that they could do it by themselves and entered the first passage on the left side, while the group of mages convinced the slayers to work together on this first level to get an idea of what the other levels would be like and to be prepared, to which they readily agreed.
"Tch, stupid goblins, I forgot how annoying they are!" said Reynolds cutting one goblin in half and stopping another with his iron bracer, not caring that the goblin was biting him.
"There's about 200 of them, but at this rate we can take them out in just over an hour!" said Annie kicking another goblin and sending it flying into other goblins.
"Ouch... stupid goblin!" exclaimed lucy touching her cheek which had a slight cut on it and then slashing the goblin with her sword.
"Yeah... I'm sure we'll finish before the others!" said Reynolds dodging a goblin and parrying a hobgoblin's punch with his huge sword.
"I'm sure the slayers are fighting for their lives right now" said Lucy, trying to join in the conversation and making her companions laugh.
"Ha, seeing how they hit that basilisk I'd be surprised if they came out of their battle uninjured!" said Annie before grabbing a goblin's head and twisting its neck "Who knows, they might not have been able to take on the hobgoblins and they're being fertilized with their babies right now."
"No... for sure they allied with the wizards, those bastards wanted us all to unite at strategic points to take out the bosses, pfft like that's going to happen, why should we give credit to them with our merits!?" said Reynolds mocking the wizards idea "The bastards know they can't do anything physically and that's why they want to use us, they know we're the only ones who can go all the way to the boss..."
-
In another area, the wizards and the slayers fought together against the large number of goblins and hobgoblins that were there, the dry and earthy area had served the wizards perfectly to create walls, spears, arrows and many other things to fight.
The huntresses took advantage of their agility and used the structures that the mages made to hunt the goblins from above and then get out of sight of the goblins, attacking them from another point further away.
"Ha, this is nothing more than a simple training for me!" said Ava putting three arrows in her bow and then shooting them killing three goblins in an instant.
"Rodrick just wanted to scare us, this thing isn't complicated at all!" said Ana killing two goblins as she jumped from one pillar of earth to another and somersaulted through the air.
"Tch, this dungeon will be a piece of cake for us!" said Gellen on the ground, piercing a hobgoblin's chest with her prosthetic arm and then firing 4 quick arrows at four enemies that were at long range 'This arm is awesome, as long as I have this arm there won't be any problems!'
While the slayers continued to boast about how easy it was to kill monsters, the mages fought calmly and with great cordiality among themselves as they listened to the slayers' comments.
"They're very energetic," said Charles, firing a fireball at a group of goblins.
"We're only on the second level, I hope killing these goblins doesn't go to their heads" commented Salma summoning an earth wall and stopping a group of goblins from attacking her and then waving her staff and slamming it into the ground, causing several spikes of earth to shoot continuously out of the earth wall.
"You guys just keep doing your job, they'll figure it out later..." said john clapping his hands together and then slowly spreading his palms apart creating a lightning bolt and then launching it at a large number of goblins generating a chain strike.
"We have to be more careful with our spells, we can't use too much carrier or natural magic, it will work against us in the long run" said Salma and the other two nodded.
"We don't have many spells that require carrier magic anyway, we should focus on taking turns killing as many goblins as we can and not overload our bodies with natural magic" said Charles.
-
An hour passed and the team of warriors emerged from their zone, watching the hunters and mages chatting amongst themselves in high spirits.
"What's the matter, are you excited to have finished just one zone between you all?" asked Reynolds teasingly, when Rodrick was with them he didn't say much as he knew very well that Rodrick was examining him and he didn't want to have a class A adventurer against him.
"What about the explorers, are they still in the city of the undead?" asked Annie.
"I don't think so, unless you guys have done two zones in this hour" replied Charles pointing to the passageway that was right next to the one where Reynolds and his group came out of.
"When we finished our zone 20 minutes ago we wanted to clear another zone, but it was already complete" said Ava.
"They've been in the dungeon for a while and maybe they've been clearing their area for a while, if you really wanted to clear another area you would have gone into that one, which obviously no one has gone into" said Lucy downplaying what Ava said and pointing to the passageway that no one was supposed to have entered yet.
"It was also cleaned" John replied, surprising Reynolds and his group this time.
"What? Who cleaned it up?" asked Reynolds.
"If it wasn't you and it wasn't us, who do you think it was, you idiot?" asked Ava.
"Tch, whatever, it doesn't change anything, they're just goblins. Now hurry up and tell us what you wanted to tell us before we leave for the next zone" said Reynolds, as John had asked him to come back to this room as soon as he finished his zone.
"Sigh, it's about the course of action, I also wanted the explorers to be here, but I see that's not going to be possible" said John leaning on his staff.
"What about the course of action, everyone takes their own path and makes their way to the boss, just like Rodrick said" said Annie.
"Just like he said we absolutely have to clear all the zones before we can move on to the next one" said John, "We need to find a way to make sure that all the zones are being cleared properly.
"Simple, everyone takes one and clears that and the next zones you get to, all the way to the boss, or can't you?" asked Reynolds with a confident smile.
"Power or no power, that's the problem, what happens if one group of us dies? how will we know that the other zones are completely clean? that's why we need to get together every time we clean a zone, so we increase our chances of survival and make sure the zones are clean" said John, drawing a laugh from Reynolds' group as well as Ava's.
"No, this time you're on your own, we only agreed to clean this area together with you because we didn't know how you guys worked, but now it's every man for himself. We are not babysitters, you do your job and we do ours" Ava ordered before turning around "We will be leaving, we have a boss to kill" Ava said before walking back to the area they had cleaned.
"Don't take too long or we might kill the boss before they even know what happened" taunted Gellen following Ava and Ana.
"We're not here for your nonsense, if you don't have enough power and skills just leave, we'll take care of cleaning the dungeon by ourselves" assured Reynolds going back into the area he had cleaned and being followed by his companions.
As John watched them leave he simply sighed knowing that he had at least tried and set out to enter one of the areas that the scouts had cleared so that they could move on to the next area.
"This is not going to end well" said John.
-
Deep in one of the areas, finn and darwin were lifting what looked like a large stone gate that was lying on the ground.
"Come on!..." exclaimed Darwin using all his strength to lift the hatch.
"Just a little bit more, I can feel it!..." said Finn also pulling.
Crack!
The hatch gave way under the force of finn and darwin and ended up breaking, knocking finn and darwin off their feet.
"We did it!" exclaimed Darwin standing up quickly and looking towards the passage they had opened. "Oh... no wonder it wouldn't open..."
"Why?" asked Finn, also standing up.
"It was a sliding door..." said Darwin looking at the beams of the door.
"No shit, I almost passed out from the effort!" said Finn looking quickly at the beams of the door "Shit!"
"Anyway, we've already made our way to the next level, we'd better rest for a few moments and then go down" recommended Darwin and Finn nodded.
"Yes that's best" said Finn plopping down on the floor "I hope the others have cleared the other two rooms, they were only goblins after all."
"I imagine they did, still on the next levels we should check the other areas even if it's hidden from the others, we don't want some monster attacking us by surprise just because we are overconfident" said Darwin.
"Yes, we will definitely do that, no matter if it takes us a bit longer" said finn.
"What do you think the next monsters will be?" asked darwin curious.
"Ogres probably, we face goblins and hobgoblins here, and if the dungeon gets more dangerous the more levels you go through then the ogres will follow" assured Finn almost completely convinced.
Finn touched his chest lightly, he could feel the twinge and the pain intensifying over time as the mark continued to advance, he didn't know what it could be, but he just hoped it wouldn't affect him during crucial moments.