My first impression of the middle floors was that it sucked ass. It was humid and the monsters were annoying to deal with. See i entered the thirteenth floor expecting a grand challenge only to be met with monsters that were overall weaker than the infant dragon but much more numerous. The drops though were so worth it. Crystal mantis carapaces and wings, Wyvern hides, fangs and bones, Lamia claws and scales, Hellhound hides and fangs, Almiraj fur and horns and Dungeon worm slime could be easily obtained by me as I slaughtered my way across the floor.-
I was effectively a mid to late level two in terms of stats so naturally these high level one and low level two monsters were no match for me. My first monster encounter was with a pack of Dungeon worms that burst from the ground to attack me. I ducked under them and got them with the sharp side of my weapon that cleaved their soft bodies in two halves that writhed in pain on the ground but were helpless to stop me from refining them with my technique for those sweet guaranteed drops.-
Dungeon worm slime was an alchemical ingredient that served some purpose or another but I really didn't want to know what for my own peace of mind. I imagine that drinking potions becomes rather hard when you know exactly what sort of disgusting stuff went into making them. I am perfectly content in my ignorance for this matter thank you very much. Next up on the chopping block were a group(flock? herd? swarm?) of wyverns with those pretty pink scaled hides. I can say with absolute certainty that flying monsters are officially my most hated kind of monster. -
These pink fuckers kept diving at me from different angles before flying away while I dodged turning the entire fight into a big game of cat and mouse. Then to add insult to injury more monsters , Almiraj and Hellhounds this time, spawned in waves that i had to deal with at the same fucking time as the cowardly pink flying lizards. By the time I was finally able to kill the last wyvern I was surrounded by no less than twenty monster corpses that I needed to refine and harvest. THAT took me a good hour to finish because , guess what, more fucking monsters spawned.-
I can't say it was a waste of time though as I now had WAY more of that smoke liquid that ever before. Like three gallons of the stuff roughly by my estimation and then all these lovely new drops that I got to experiment with. All in all I'd say my first foray into the middle floors was well worth it as after getting nagged at by rose for my reckless delving I cashed out for the day at a whopping twenty six thousand valis. The value of the stones and drops grew exponentially the further down you went after all so this number would only increase as I went further and further into the dungeon.-
"I swear to heaven that if anything weird shows up during this update I'm going to tell Hephaestus that you want to go on a date!" Hestia threatened when I asked for an update after returning home.
"You wouldn't!?" I said with a look of horror.
"You deserve it for causing me so much stress!" she said with a huff.
Name: Alexander Drake
Spells: Hell's forge(Innate technique): Can use anything from a living being and reshape or refine it per ones will.(Incantation: Hell's forge)(Extensions: Hell fire, cursed tool creation)
Skills: Heavenly restriction: In exchange for the ability to wield mana and magic one gains access to cursed energy and cursed techniques.
Blessing of black: Permanently increases cursed energy efficiency, amount and control. Magic will always start at G rank after leveling up.
Vessel of Sin: Hells forgemaster carries the burden of all mortal sin and is tasked to purify it from the souls of the dead. Strengthens soul over time. Permanent increase to crafting with cursed energy. Permanent decrease to all stats for each innocent soul killed and increase for each sinful soul killed. Grants skill: Soul gaze.
Soul gaze: See the souls of all things and their sins.
Developmental Skills: Curse-smith(I)
"It's a lot less than before?" I muttered in confusion as I looked at my stat gain.
"Obviously, you're level two now so of course you aren't growing at the same pace as before." Hestia said mater of factly.
In theory what she said made perfect sense but the numbers weren't adding up here as before I leveled up a mere cup of the smoky liquid was enough to give me thousands of stats points. Yet now almost three gallons of the stuff only gave me about thirteen hundred stat points, this made no sense. I looked over all of the changes I got from leveling up and started trying to figure out what was stealing so much of this smoky liquid as that was the only thing that made sense. I almost missed it but there was a small addendum to the [vessel of sin] skill in the form of four words, Strengthens soul over time.-
'That wasn't there when I initially leveled up, a hidden attribute or did it show up because of some sort of external force?' I thought with a frown.
It was only after Syr asked why my soul looked slightly larger the next day that I realized that SHE was the external factor. Apparently my hyper awareness of my soul that detected her gaze on my soul had triggered a self defensive adaptation to form in my [vessel of sin] skill. In other words her innate ability caused my falna to nerf my smoky liquid growth, well that's not actually true as I still grew the same amount just in a different way from my stats.-
I will be honest here, I don't have a fucking clue what my soul growing stronger will do for me. Like obviously a stronger soul is just better than a weaker one but whats the difference? Will I gain better control of my cursed energy, will I be able to make better shit earlier? Shit that I really really wanted to know but could only wait to discover. I felt like a kid who got an brand new video game on christmas only to get grounded for the next month and have to stare at the thing in longing, the worst form of blue balls am I right?-
Hypothetical orgasm denial aside It kinda sucked that my stat growth got nerfed and the worst part is I genuinely can't even get mad a Syr for it as she can no more control her ability than I could mine. It was constantly active and we both just had to live with that and move on with our lives. I pouted over the next two days as I buried my head in experimenting with my new drop items with mixed results.