Leo held the walking fortress in his front, covering the party from magma waves. Beads of sweat poured down his cheeks. In front of them were 5 ox-like monsters and 5 hedgehogs, bat monsters just kept popping out of magma. The eel and chameleon-like monster tried to ambush them from behind. The party was in a pinch because of ambushes.
"Shea, you take care of the behind. Yue, cover her and I'll clean the front."
He sent the shield back into inventory and held a pitch-black pair of daggers in his right hand with Severance in left. A layer of ice covered the dagger as he charged at the ox.
A wave of magma seemingly came from every direction. Using supersonic step with extreme focus, he dodged the ones coming for his head. The diamond protection on his clothes was enough to tank the rest.
He appeared in front of a surprised ox monster and pierced its neck with the dagger. The monster opened its mouth in an attempt to throw magma. Holding the dagger in reverse grip, he severed its ox head off. With the gun charged up, he shot another ox monster, the beam pierced the ox head and continued its trajectory to leave a deep narrow hole in the wall.
Another wave of magma came at him, he lightly kicked the ground. The ice-clad dagger cut through the magma attack and beheaded the ox monster. He fired another frost beam to blast another head.
'One left.'
Riding the momentum, he vanished and arrived in front of an ox monster. The dagger slid across its throat without any struggle.
'Only small fries left.'
He looked over to the girl's position and saw headless bodies of various monsters and Shea raising her warhammer high like a victor.
He shook his head and ignored another wave of thin magma and hurled wind blades to shoot down the magma bat.
'Around 2400SP after this wave, with the total being 76500SP.'
He walked over to the corpses and dismantled them. Wiping sweat on his face with a towel, he said, "Let's rest here for a bit."
"Yeah! My body is all sweaty."
He looked at Yue, her eyes were hollow, the heat already started to get to her head and made her dizzy.
He searched for the farthest place from magma and borrowed Blue Waiss to create a cave in the wall and stuck his giant shield to cover it. He swirled the ice breath around the cave with remote manipulation, which quickly lowered the heat inside the cave.
"Haaah... I almost died from heat."
"...The heat almost took me away from Leo."
Shea and Yue sighed in satisfaction. He wiped their faces with towels. After the cold let them think straight, Yue gave some ingredients to Shea for cooking and bared her fangs in his neck.
He sighed and accepted his fate of her bloodbag.
"Shea, I wanted to ask… what made you fall for me? I can understand Yue… but for you, I can't wrap my finger around it."
Shea turned her head with a smile. "I… I… don't know. My heart flutters every time I think about you. I just know that I want to be with you..."
"As expected of a musclehead," he whispered with a smile.
He and Shea ate their fill and relaxed for half an hour in the cozy atmosphere.
'I need some large area killing attacks. Tempest won't work on monsters here. The rest of my attacks will destroy the mana crystal too. Intimidate doesn't work on these monsters. Wait a minute…'
He equipped the giant heavy sword he got from cyclops. He had already reworked it and increased its weight to nearly 2 tonnes.
'What if I enchant it with…'
He engraved the skill with mana crafting and swung the sword while pouring mana. A long wind blade fired forward and cut a deep slash in the wall. It was [Wind blades] one of the skills he got from hydra, he avoided using [Aurora breathe] which melted everything including his precious mana crystal.
"Time to go!"
On the next floor, a large number of magma clad monsters waited for them. All of them blasted magma toward the party.
Leo grinned and waved his sword, tracing a huge arc in the air. A giant wind blade shot forward, cutting through the magma wave it left a deep wound on monsters.
'Not going down in one strike, I can do this all day.'
He waved his sword like a madman, one wind blade after another and killed every monster on the floor. He smiled, feeling pleased about his feat. Shea and Yue were speechless at his attacks.
"Dismantle!"
Shea also helped him dismantle, Yue kept an eye for any ambush, in reality, she was just too lazy to dismantle. He only got 2560SP, the rest bodies fell in magma. He could only groan at the loss.
40th floor…
The party gazed at the river of magma completely blocking their way. Raging magma exploded from time to time. Bats jumped out of it and tried to attack them.
He turned his head and stared into Yue's eyes, she also did the same. A grin floated on his face, Yue felt a chill for some reason and ran back with teary eyes.
His grin grew wider in response, with a thick rope in his hands, he caught Yue.
Shea wiped the sweat from her brows and killed the bat monster trying to attack her.
“Poor Yue-san…”
***
Leo dashed through the air while dodging the magma exploding from the river below him. Shea followed behind using aerodynamic skill and attacked the monster with her hammer. Any monster in his back was killed by ice needles and sometimes wind blades. The one shooting those spells was Yue, strapped on his back like a bag.
They crossed the magma river and looked for stairs for the next floor, which they found easily. Another wide magma river appeared in front of them. He shook his head and used the same method to clear it.
Floor after floor, the river only became longer with swarms of bat monsters popping out of it, which Yue took care of with teary eyes as she spammed magic spells with the help of catalyst orbs.
Leo clicked his tongue, feeling irritated at the loss of SP. He caught some of them, but he failed to catch all of them. Still, he amassed a total of 86000SP.