Billy began to make some progress on that very same day. Once he realized that the Water Ball created by the monsters was spinning from the sides to the front and from the front to the interior, he knew what he had to do. Billy replicated the same thing, and then the Water Ball drained a lot more water from the wall, but the Water Wall also grew smaller and thinner.
"Naturally, I suppose," Billy nodded to himself in satisfaction.
"You are going to wet this…" Alexander said and then frowned when he saw that the Water Wall was floating above and without touching the ground. "Your control of magic is insane."
While Alexander was impressed, Billy could see that he had a lot of room for improvement. As of now, he needed a lot of focus to keep controlling both spells, but he wanted to reach a level where he could do it without even thinking about it. He learned recently that a lot of strong people lived in that world, and the world had many wars, and many others were being waged. He would need all the power he could get to avoid problems that would affect his life.
"I wonder if it is because of that I was born with this power…" Billy thought while rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
Billy hadn't found a single clue as to why he had that. He never wished for something that insane, so he assumed that all those thirteen years hadn't been some sort of illusion caused by the accident of his death. The possibility of him being in a coma was also pretty low… Besides, Billy had never heard of someone before having such a long dream. His dreams didn't pass in multiple days during his previous life either. Regardless, his system probably had some connection with the dungeons since he could get experience for himself and his skills by fighting monsters created by those. While thinking about that, Billy trained, and night came, and so he decided to rest for the next day.
When they were having breakfast at the inn, Pierre joined them the next day. He looked pretty exhausted… Billy could guess the reason for that, but he didn't ask. Unfortunately, his friends didn't share the same lack of concern for other peoples' worries. Kate asked why he looked so beaten, and they heard that his sister was giving a lot of headaches with her unreasonableness.
"It seems that you all are fine, so I guess the first floor wasn't a problem to you," Pìerre said. "Since that is the case, you should find the entrance to the next floor pretty soon."
"How can you tell?" Billy asked.
"The first floors are smaller compared to the others, just like in their order, they increase in size," Pierre explained.
That was one piece of information Billy hadn't heard of until now… He thought that he was doing a pretty good job doing research, but it seemed that he was wrong… The difficulty of the dungeon was increasing in more ways than one.
"This information changes things, but we will continue to work on the same way as planned," Billy said. "Fill the boxes and they return. Repeat until we find the entrance to the second floor."
"Take a single day off to do some research and prepare for the second level," Billy replied.
It seemed like a pretty repetitive job, but Billy liked it, even though he wasn't fighting as much as everyone. The reason for that was the fact that it made him remember of a really old game where the hero had to cross many levels of an underground dungeon and eventually reach hell itself and defeat the lord of terror.
"Although the overall plan didn't change, I want to test something," Billy said. "Let's let Lily and Kate fight the monsters that spawn in front of us, while Alexander and Natalie will face the ones that appear on our back. I want to check if our hunting speed can improve that way. As usual, Sarah and me will only fight when too many enemies appear and they began to use spells."
The others nodded. It seemed like something reasonable to do after what they heard from Pierre. Regardless, as soon as they entered the dungeon, Lily and Kate entered their battle mode in a much more intense way than before. The atmosphere was quite tense around them, so Billy refrained from saying sarcastic things about it, even though they were usually such chatterboxes.
The enemies spawned pretty fast, but even so, those two put arrows and the short spears inside the monsters heads instantly. The creatures didn't have a chance to do anything… their hunting speed certainly would improve like that. However, soon Billy realized that things wouldn't be so simple. Lily was fine since she had many arrowheads, but Kate had to spend more time cleaning her weapons with each passing fight. The bodily fluids of the monsters were making a mess out of the things…
"We never had to worry about that… I wonder why?" Alexander asked.
"That is because your weapons only stay in contact with the enemy's flesh for a moment," Billy explained. "Their weapons stay in contact for longer and they usually also pierce deeper."
Although they were cleaned after every single better, the cleaning was just superficial. They couldn't stop for several minutes inside the dungeon to do a decent job. With that in mind, they returned to their usual formation.
As usual, they headed in a straight line toward the path they had reached the previous day, and they arrived in just half an hour. The number of encounters or monsters in each group didn't increase, so the group had an easy time. However, Billy had an idea…
"Say, you are using wind to manipulate your spears, right?" Billy asked.
"Yes, but once it hits the target, if I go all out, the wind disperses in the tip and it gets dirt anyway," Kate replied.
"What if you uses earth manipulation?" Billy asked. "As long as the layer isn't that thin, the tip won't get dirt with the fluids… at least not so much,"