Chapter 119: An Unexpected Problem Appears

POV Cornelius

We didn't go to the dungeon for the next two weeks. We received another letter asking us to travel to the capital. The youngest princess was turning 15 and as she was engaged to me, we had to attend the celebrations. It was a very enjoyable time which more than made up for our lack of training time. Our recruitment plans were also accepted and supported in the empire. They were also looking for someone trustworthy to replace us as soon as we left Tyros for good.

When we arrived back in Tyros, we still had one day until sunday. We used this to bring ourselves up to date. The next day we saw the first successful groups as well as new recruits. We didn't want to have those who weren't successful with us anyway. There were some promising people among the successful ones. I had them split up into groups of 6 and sent them to fight the 3rd boss. If they managed that, they had qualified for our squad.

The following week we leveled up for a few more days until we wanted to defeat the next boss ourselves. Since we reached almost level 40 in the meantime, the boss fight on floor 20 was no problem. The buffs alone, which Eli was now capable of, strengthened us so well that we made effortless progress. Our weapons alone were worth as much as 5 more levels.

Unfortunately, we made slow progress on some of the next three floors. The slimes could still only be fought effectively by Javier. Eli now had an attack spell in her light magic, but it was only moderately effective. The slimes had a high resistance to light. Dark magic would be better, but obviously nobody of us had it. However, Eli's mana was more important elsewhere, so she ignored the slimes again. In addition, they now had elemental attacks and were therefore dangerous even when attacking.

The beetles were easier again and became our main opponents despite their significantly increased size. The spiders, on the other hand, now spat their poison and were therefore much more dangerous. The poison was also much stronger. Our previous poison resistance was not enough to survive a hit unscathed. We decided to leave them alone for the time being and returned to floor 22.

But the next day we faced an unexpected problem. On the way down to the beetles, something was different than usual. We found fewer slimes than expected on floor 21 and hardly any living beetles on floor 22. But lots of dead ones. It was as if one or more groups had arrived here before us today and had defeated them all without taking their prey with them. We looked at each other in amazement. On these lower floors, we had never seen one of them fought so empty except for us. Especially as it didn't look like the group before us had fought the slimes on floor 21. It didn't fit in time. We searched this floor for a longer time, but even after an hour of searching we didn't find any living beetles, just a lot of corpses.

“What do you think? Why do we only find dead beetles?” <Cornelius>

“Hmm, I'd say someone killed them all right in front of us. Otherwise the corpses would have disappeared by now.” <Javier>

“What the fuck? Don't they know we're coming? Who am I supposed to have fun with now?” <Ansgar>

“But then why aren't they taking their loot with them? Is the group just after the EXP?” <Cornelius>

“That would be bad, very bad. They should only kill as much loot as they can carry and leave the rest for us.” <Ansgar>

“Let's search the floor for them. I don't like it when they take our EXP either. They'll make a deal when they realize they're interfering with the heroes' development.” <Cornelius>

“Hmm, good idea. But I'm surprised they're specifically fighting the bugs. Their leader must be very intelligent. These enemies provide the most EXP per unit of time and are quite harmless.”< Javier>

“Don't forget the mana cores. If the corpses are lying around, they might still be there. We should keep an eye out for them.” <Eleonore>

“Very good idea, Eli. We need a lot of good weapons and armor for our recruits, and we need every mana core we can get. We shouldn't leave them behind. It's a good thing we always have personnel with us.” <Cornelius>

“Let's follow the trail of bodies and find out where the people responsible are. I've got a bone to pick with them.” <Ansgar>

We then started to follow the trail of bodies. Even without much knowledge of tracking, we could make out the rough trail. It seemed to zigzag in order to find the largest possible masses of beetles. Nevertheless, we didn't find any other people until we reached the portal to floor 23. We didn't hear any sounds of fighting either in all the time, which made me very suspicious.

“Why can't we find anything or anyone? Just dead monsters! Damn.” <Ansgar>

“Calm down. It won't help us if you get upset. Soldiers, did you find many mana cores along the way?” <Cornelius>

“No, noble hero. Only a few were missing.” <Soldier>

“How can that be? We found about 40 or 50 beetle corpses. Any normal group can recover all the mana cores and take them with them.” <Cornelius>

“Hmm, any normal thinking person wouldn't leave the mana cores behind. Were they pressed for time? But then why did they go to the trouble of defeating every beetle?” <Javier>

“Then this group is more annoying than first thought. We urgently need to get in touch with them and ask them to stop what they're doing.” <Cornelius>

“Yes, exactly. They're just a nuisance.” <Ansgar>

“But where are they? Have they gone straight on to the spiders?” <Cornelius>

“You're not planning to follow them, are you? Please, Corni, no. Not to the spiders.” <Eleonore>

“I'm not interested in the spiders yet, but we'll have to get past them eventually. There are hardly any monsters left here that we can fight. The path leads through the floor with the spiders.” <Cornelius>

“Do we have to do that?” <Eleonore>

“Unfortunately, yes. And the knowledge from the cardinal that we no longer need to be poisoned to increase our resistance doesn't help us any more. After all, we've all improved our poison resistance to advanced and my value hasn't risen any further since then. Resistances are subject to a racial cap, unfortunately. Fortunately, we all have a ring to increase poison resistance. That should minimize the damage. We just have to get to the 5th boss quickly. Then we can avoid the spiders permanently. What do you think, do we want to take on this challenge next?” <Cornelius>

“You can take poison on that." <Ansgar>

“Better not. The spiders are enough. But first we should get back. We've lost a lot of time today and I'm annoyed with the other group. I need to calm down first.” <Cornelius>

“Hmm, wait a minute. Something's going on here. My Sense Mana skill is responding, but there's nothing and no one here. I wonder if I'm feeling the after-effects of the spells cast by the group responsible for this. Hmm, then they had cast several powerful spells." <Javier>

“Impressive, Javier. You're getting really good. Keep it up.” <Cornelius>

I took one last look at the portal to the next floor before we returned to the surface.