Flint and Norman ran forward to meet the kobolds, who were also running towards them. Norman was the first one to clash with the monsters by jumping forward and doing a sweep attack. The move decapitated a couple of kobolds. Flint braced himself by standing in place once the group of kobolds reached him. He used his shield to stop the monsters from going past him and his axe to brain those near him.
The kobolds who got past Norman and Flint were attacked by the deadly arrows from Ariana’s bow while Anton observed the fight. The speed of the three’s attack was almost absurd since it was too fast for ordinary people who would probably only see a blur.
Anton timed the battle, and the three only took three minutes to destroy the thirteen Kobolds in that group fight. The three were getting better and better in every fight.
“Please remember that the power and speed of your attack came from my power. Once we’re done with our delve, I recommend that you practice your weapons again to get a feel for your original power,” Anton reminded everyone.
After a few minutes, all the kobolds’ corpses disappeared, but unfortunately, there was no mana stone. The three adventurers were not dismayed, though, since they had already received three mana stones, which meant that their group had already earned the gold coins that would dictate that this particular dungeon delve was a success.
Anton switched his aura from Fanaticism to Prayer, but noticed that his mana didn’t dip, and that meant that no one received any damage at all.
“You’re all getting better. Based on my healing spell’s reaction, not one of you received even a scratch!” Anton informed the three, and they all smiled.
“Just one more fight and we’ll turn in for the night,” Flint declared.
Anton checked the time and was surprised that it was already six in the evening. After 30 minutes of walking, they encountered a group of ten goblins and a very common enemy that he had seen for the first time in this world. A slime.
The slime monster looked just like its namesake. A moving slime. Its shape was irregular, and Anton could see a core inside. There were five slimes the color of green snot. Ariana told him that the easiest way to kill a slime was to destroy its core. The problem was, the most valuable part of the slime was its core, so to get anything of value from the slimes, they would either spend a lot of time cutting its body apart until it couldn’t regenerate anymore, taking care not to hit its core or if a wizard cast a spell to destroy the monster without destroying a slime.
“How much could we get if we sell a slime core?” Anton asked.
“A slime from this floor will normally sell for fifteen to twenty silver coins,” Norman replied, and because of its low value, Anton lost interest.
To be honest, he was more interested in the mana stone, but he wouldn’t get the group’s mana stone; instead, he would wait until he could dive a dungeon solo as a wizard. He reckoned that he could get as much mana stones as he could for research then.
Flint and Norman met the monsters while Ariana shot her arrows. Anton saw that the slime’s attack was powerful. They would shoot some sort of corrosive liquid. He saw Norman get hit by it, and the skin looked like it was slowly melting. It must have hurt a lot, but probably because of adrenaline, Norman ignored his wound and was focused on killing all the enemies in sight.
Soon, all of the enemies were killed. Unfortunately, all of the slime cores got destroyed, and no mana stone appeared from this set of enemies. When Anton switched his aura from Fanaticism to Prayer, Norman looked at him gratefully since everyone saw that he was starting to sweat from feeling the pain from the slime’s attack.
“We should prepare our camp for the night,” Flint said and the four moved back a little so they could set up their camp away from the recent battle and away from possible new enemies.
Anton knew that no new enemies would respawn since Tobias informed him that once a group entered a dungeon instance, the enemy count would not increase. Once all the enemies were defeated, that was when the portal to the next floor or outside the dungeon would appear.
Flint selected a campground that the dwarf said was suitable, but it looked the same as any part of the floor in the dungeon to Anton. He then used his cleaning spell to clean the place where he would place his bedroll, and then cleaned his whole body. After that, he placed the Firewall Stove enchanted item at the center of their camp and turned it on, dispelling the chill in the air that everyone was feeling.
Ariana looked at Anton’s stove appreciatively, but the elf suddenly noticed his very clean clothes.
“Do you have a cleaning spell?!” Ariana asked Anton with an almost shrill voice.
“Yes. Do you want me to cast it on you?”
“Yes, please. I prefer to sleep, not smelling like I climbed out of a sewage tunnel. There are spell scrolls that have the Cleaning spell, but we still can’t afford something like that.”
Anton then cast the Cleaning Spell onto Ariana, Flint, and Norman. The three looked grateful, then they busied themselves getting some dried food from their packs.
“Eew! Are you going to eat something like that?! Let me prepare the food, then,” Anton told everyone.
The three just shrugged, stored their dried food in the bags, and waited for Anton’s food. Anton the retrieved a couple of pans from his inventory and started cooking one of simplest dishes that he could think of which was stir-fry vegetables with pork. The he put butter on bread and heated it using the pan as well.
He could have served the prepared food that he had stored in his inventory, but he wanted to save it when he truly needed it. The raw food that he stored in his inventory had not been touched for ages. He even thought of discarding them, but it was such a waste, so Anton just let them be. Now he had the chance to use all the raw food since he planned to use it whenever he joined a beginner group.
While he was cooking, Anton thought of large bags that everyone was carrying that they had to drop whenever they encountered enemies. He was thankful that he had an extremely humongous inventory.
“Your family must have been truly rich, giving you a spatial item,” Norman said when Anton called everyone to eat when the food was ready.
Anton did not answer and just shrugged. The next few minutes were silent since everyone was enjoying the hot meal. He knew that with the activity that everyone did, even the dried meat and the hard bread that the three were preparing to eat that night would have been delicious, much less the hot stir-fried pork and vegetables, and bread with butter that Anton had prepared.
“Later, when we sleep, you don’t need to assign sentries or guards since my Raven will be able to detect coming enemies from afar and will wake us up,” Anton told the three, but if he was being honest, his single raven was capable of killing any enemies that approach them in a single hit.
“Tomorrow, I want to fight an enemy without your spell that adds to our power. I want to check our true capabilities against the enemies on this floor if we’re by ourselves,” Flint said.