For an A rank party like us, even an area boss for the fifteenth floor didn’t pose much threat.
“It’s heavy as always…”
We carried the defeated Black Minotaur to the safety zone, but because of its weight and size, we naturally couldn’t afford to carry it all the way to the deepest parts of the dungeon.
“Yes, the usual, please.”
“Thanks for your patronage.”
Perhaps due to some requests from adventurers, a service was offered in the safe zone: the temporary safekeeping of the items and the materials we had gathered. We didn’t even have to dismantle our prey first before handing it to them since they offered to do that for us.
Furthermore, if we asked for it, they could also transport our belongings back to the village. Thanks to this, some parties dived deeper and deeper into the dungeon and then deposit all their gathered items and materials whenever passing a safe zone.
At any rate, now that our load was lighter, we proceeded the sixteenth floor.
Starting from the sixteenth floor, the environment was once again that of a cavern system. This time though, it was the kind covered in ice. While the scenery was beautiful and almost magical, the fact remains that this place, with its extreme cold and its slippery ground, was deadly to us adventurers.
The monsters that frequently appeared here—like the White Grizzlies and the Ice Wolves—were all quite powerful too. On the other hand, the fur that could be obtained from them were all high-class items. Because of that, many of the more powerful adventurers preferred hunting here rather than hunting the minotaurs.
The area boss waiting in the twentieth floor was a group of Yetis—one Big Yeti and about 10 other regular Yetis. Because it was against a group of strong enemies, it understandably wasn’t a simple fight for most parties.
In fact, even our party had a difficult time on our first encounter with the group. However, we have since mastered how to deal with them and thus no longer consider them especially hard to fight.
The key was paying minimal attention to the ten regular Yetis and focus mostly on the Big Yeti. Once the Big Yeti was down, the cooperation between the others crumble at once, making the rest of the fight easy. Fire magic was quite effective against the regular Yetis, so we usually had Hazena keep them in check, while the three of us took down the Big Yeti as quickly as we could.
“…well, they’re not worth that much, so let’s just leave them be.”
The Big Yeti defeated, we decided to ignore the rest and move on to the next floor.
The Yetis’ fur wasn’t exceptionally expensive, so it usually wasn’t worth the risk—or at least, effort—to subjugate them.
Starting from the 21st floor, the scenery became that of a ruin again. Only this time, it resembled a graveyard.
The enemies that appeared around here were mainly undead-type monsters. Not much could be obtained from such monsters though.
In exchange though, rare items could often be found in the chests here. This was on top of the fact that there tended to be more chests in Ruin-type environments compared to cave-type environments.
Unsurprisingly, Kamuru—who could sense the location of the treasure chests—was even more helpful in these areas.
That being said, since our party’s primary goal was to reach the as-of-yet unexplored depths of the dungeon, we only picked up those that were on the way.
As for the area’s boss, it was a high-rank undead called a Wight.
It was naturally a strong enemy, but it was just ill-matched against our party thanks to Gai who could use light magic.
Upon defeat, this area boss always dropped an item called [Staff of the King of the Dead]. That item always sells for an extremely high price, so we made a point of subjugating it even though we had opportunities to slip past it.
Starting from the 26th floor, it was a cave-type environment again.
Lava was flowing here and there, making us sweat profusely just by standing. It was more than fair enough to say that this was an extremely harsh environment.
Actually, this was where we decided to head back last time.
Due to the excessive sweating, the water in our bodies had nearly dried out, causing us to feel ill.
We were able to deal with the cold from before simply by putting on more clothes, but the heat wasn’t so simple to deal with.
Thankfully, we had a countermeasure for it this time: the special, deep-blue liquid made by the village’s alchemist. It was a so-called freeze potion.
We took out bottles of it out from our bag of supplies and poured the liquid on our bodies. Now that we have done so, we have obtained a great deal of resistance against fire and heat for a certain amount of time.
“Woah, it’s so cold!?”
“M-my body…it’s shivering…”
“It’s far more effective than we thought.”
Just by pouring a liter of freeze potion on our bodies, it felt like we were continuously submerged in ice water.
And like that, we went further into this lave-filled place.