Chapter 63: Chapter 62: Challenges and Bosses

The next twenty or so floors were nothing special. They just continued to gradually ramp up the difficulty from the previous floors – more monsters began showing up, more than one type began showing up on one floor, and traps became more commonplace.

The weather continued getting worse too, as much as that was even possible. The wind blew more, the fog was denser, and the snow was even worse. It became normal to have the snow they were trudging through be as deep as two feet, something that would be a great hinderance if Tess wasn’t actively melting it.

That was basically only when it actively snowing, though. In those situations, Tess preferred to keep Phoenix Fire off; there was just too much snow in the air, and the hissing of its evaporation was deafeningly loud. The high winds and low visibility would still hamper their progress significantly, so they weren’t even able to speed up that much, either.

They encountered one of the sheer, vertical climb sections that they had been warned about, but in a way, it was actually easier than the non-sheer ones. Tess and Maven naturally had no trouble getting up, and Ellie’s ride on her swords was stable, so as long as no monsters attacked her, she was safe. That meant Tess and Maven had to deal with the monsters, but they were just the birds from earlier and required no great effort to exterminate.

For their part, the instructors just…took the hoverer. Apparently, if they ramped up its power consumption, it was able to rise a fair distance in the air. They didn’t have to worry about the monsters, either, since Tess and Maven were already taking care of them for Ellie, so they had a smooth ride.

Furthermore, there were few traps on the floor, and it was much shorter than the other floors they had traversed so far. And, to add to that, the couple of traps that were there were attached to the wall, and, so as long as a certain distance was kept from the wall, there was no need to even look for the traps, since the triggers didn’t extend that far away.

It was a shame that they had hit that floor before floor fifteen, otherwise they might have been able to knock the Challenge out then and there. Tess wasn’t timing their ascent, but it certainly felt fast enough to qualify them for the Challenge. Fortunately, they encountered another vertical climb at floor twenty-three, and they were set to attempt the Challenge.

If they were fast enough, that was. Still, like Jin had said before they entered the dungeon, the instructors helped keep their students safe from monsters and traps so they could focus on speed.

Said help came in the form of Ava lounging atop the hoverer and casually sniping any monsters with a spell the moment they showed up. The ease with which she cast the spells and their precision was awe-inspiring; she had the air of someone who was casually kicking pebbles across the road, not someone who was slaughtering whole groups of monsters. She even took care of traps in the same fashion, not that it was particularly necessary.

And those acts of support alone allowed the three younger women to ascend at a reckless pace, paying little regard for normal, “safe”, dungeon crawling procedure. The Challenge’s climb was a fair bit shorter than the other climb floors, too, so it was with relatively little effort that they were able to make it to the top in time.

“I will be honest, I have not been in a Challenge room.” Maven admitted. “My instructors called them a waste of time, seeing as how we were entirely focused on raising my level. Does it operate in the same way as normal Rewards Crystals?”

“Yup.” Alice said. “Just put a hand on it and you’re done.”

Tess didn’t wait for them to finish their talk, choosing instead to place her hand on the Rewards Crystal and obtain the reward as quickly as possible.

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