Fresh lets out an extremely delighted scream, clutching her face as she looks at the odd thing. “JUBILEEEEEE~!” she howls, her fingers digging into her cheeks. “Look at it! LOOK!” exclaims Fresh, spinning around in a circle and stomping her feet like an excited child. She literally can’t handle it. “I’m going to die!”

“Pakew!” shouts the odd thing.

“I sure fucking hope so,” sighs Jubilee, rubbing their ear that was facing her way.

Basil lets out a quiet laugh and the four of them look back at the monster.

After drumming up a cute little breakfast, the four of them had gone into the cute little dungeon and the first monster here is a very cute little thing. It’s a round, woody bulb with two tiny, stubby protrusions as legs and two very useless, just as stubby arms at its sides. Adorning its head is a giant sprouting leaf. It essentially looks like a living, sprouting acorn or seed of some kind.

Waving its arms up and down, its two large eyes narrowed in furious indignation, it runs towards them. “PAKEW!” it yells, now for the third time. Jubilee just sighs, holding their hand out against its forehead and blocking it as it tries in vain to reach them.

“Fucking spriggans,” says Jubilee, shaking their head. “Useless little shits.”

“Pakew!” yells the monster, which clearly classifies as a forest-monster. Fresh is sure she could understand it, if it was actually saying something. But it isn’t really communicating, it’s literally just shouting ‘pakew’ at them. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a sound.

“Pakew!” yells Fresh in delight. She loves it. It’s adorable. The little onion-bulb is furiously flapping its stubby, branch arms, its eyes clenched down tightly as it still continues to charge at them, still held back by Jubilee’s effortlessly extended hand.

Basil leans down and pokes the large, green leaf adorning the monster’s head. “It really does have a charm to it, doesn’t it?”

“Can we keep it?” asks Fresh. “Huh?! Jubilee! Jubilee! Pleeeease?”

“No,” says Jubilee.

Basil shakes her head too. “We have enough mouths to feed as is.”

“The natural order mustn’t be disturbed,” says Shamrock, reaching for his back to grab his sword. But it isn’t there. Fresh blinks, watching as his fingers grasp the air for a moment until he realizes that it’s gone.

Fresh frowns. “Don’t worry Shamrock. I’ll make you a new sword.”

“Fucking dragon,” sighs Jubilee.

She turns back to the monster. “Can we just skip it and go to the next floor, please?” she asks. “It’s so cute.”

“Did you forget how dungeons work?” asks Jubilee, nodding to the red-fog that blocks the passage onward. Fresh stares at it for a moment, watching the swirling mist spin around and around. It’s almost mesmerizing. It reminds her of something. Of something red. But she can’t quite figure out what.

Must be the dragon.

“PA-”

[ You got {5/500} Experience ! ] (Party)

“AH!” Fresh yelps, looking back down at the dead spriggan, watching as it flops lifelessly to the ground, a piece of glass sticking out of its side. The fog vanishes.

“Five is a lot,” remarks Basil. “Especially for the very first monster in the dungeon.”

“Told you the central-dungeon is the best dungeon,” says Jubilee. “The best monsters are here.”

“The rich get richer, huh?” asks Basil. She looks down at the spriggan. “What do we loot from it? The bark, right?” she asks.

“Yup,” nods Jubilee.

Basil nods back, reaching instinctively around for her bag to grab her knife. But her bag isn’t there. The priestess blinks. “Oh… right.”

“Dragon?” asks Jubilee.

“Dragon,” nods Basil. “We need to buy new bags. New tools.”

“Can I get some glass please, Jubilee?” asks Fresh. “I’ll make us some glass knives for now.”

Jubilee nods, forming a block of glass. Following a familiar design-pattern, Fresh splits that into two chunks.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: Glassworker{Cut}]

Then, out of those two chunks, she simply uses her old glass-dagger recipe from the west.

(Fresh) uses: [Witch-crafting: Glass-Dagger]

Two pristine, shiny daggers fall to the dirt. Holding her hands above them, she sands them down, so that the glass isn’t clearly reflective anymore.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: Sand{Fine}] [Glasswork Dagger](Excellent) This keenly sharpened dagger is dangerously sharp, but fragile. Due to its nature, this weapon deals high damage, but has extremely low durability. 5 DMG Quality Effect: All attacks, even blocked attacks, cause the enemy to bleed, dealing damage equal to the number of strikes every fifteen seconds. After the effect is applied, the counter resets to 0. Weight: 0.19kg Durability: Fragile (10/10) Value: ???

Carefully picking them up and shaking them off, Fresh hands one to Basil. “We can use these for now. We’ll just buy real ones later. Careful.”

“Thank you,” replies the priestess. The two of them bend down and start removing the bark from the little spriggan. “Pakew…” mutters Fresh beneath her breath.

“Pakew,” nods Basil.

By the time they finish and make their way down to the next floor, the next monsters, more spriggans, are already essentially dead.

“It’s kind of fucked, honestly,” says Jubilee, leaning against the wall with crossed arms.

Shamrock shrugs, the three dead spriggans dissolving inside of him, right before their eyes. “Death comes for us all.”

[ You got {10/500} Experience ! ] (Party)

[ You got {15/500} Experience ! ] (Party)

[ You got {20/500} Experience ! ] (Party)

Jubilee rolls their eyes.

“If we want to make you some new armor, we’re going to have to find something pretty resilient,” notes Basil. “I think there are some good metals here that we can buy.”

“Floor nine,” says Jubilee. “We’ll find some there.”

“Really?” asks Fresh.

“Yeah,” nods Jubilee. “That’s where the orichalcum veins start to run. It’s slime-proof.”

And so, the four of them set to work. The first few floors of the dungeon are pretty unintense, all things considered. It feels like a very easy dungeon, especially compared to the west or the north. The spriggans are essentially entirely harmless. Even when a large group of seven of them make a run at them all at once, they’re just cut down on the spot and that’s that. They don’t have any attacks, they don’t have any sharp teeth or long claws or any incredible strength. They’re just kind of useless and like to shout ‘pakew’ a lot.

Fresh loves them, obviously and is heartbroken with every death of theirs to come. On the plus side, spriggan bark is apparently useful for an extremely large variety of things.

By the time they reach floor five, the spriggans finally start defending themselves properly, being armed with nature magic, using their long stems and leafy crowns as staves to cast spells their way. But these are still really low level spells.

Considering that this dungeon was technically only accessible to the highest of leveled adventurers, it seems odd that it feels like the easiest one of them all. But maybe that exactly is the point. The big slime eats the little slime.

And as for slimes, Shamrock might not have his armor or his sword right now, but he’s still extremely deadly as a fighter, making use of his natural abilities as a large slime, rather than simply chopping or tearing the monsters apart. Honestly, for a slime, he’s massive. His size and stature aren’t diminished by his lack of armor, the only difference is that he seems less rigid. But he’s as destructive a force as ever.

That being said, Fresh can see that he misses his armor, so she works extra hard to skin the spriggans, so that they can get to floor nine today and find some metal for him.

Floor six has a harpy.

Fresh looks at the familiar bird-woman. She had seen one of them up in the air when… when she…

Fresh blinks, rubbing her forehead. Wait. Did she ever see a harpy? She doesn’t think that she did. The girl shakes her head. Must’ve been some odd dream. Lifting her gaze, she stares at the bird woman, perched on a large, gnarled root.

“Harpy feathers are good for writing with,” says Jubilee. “Plus they make great blanket filler.”

“That feels a little grim,” notes Basil.

Jubilee shrugs. “Eh. It is what it is.”

The harpy doesn’t stand much of a chance, honestly. It is indeed, a little grim.

Floor eight has a giant snake as a boss. A single fang of its is the size of her whole body. The serpent winds around and around a large root that pushes through the ground, lifting its head to gaze at them with massive, haunting, yellow eyes. Fresh screams. Jubilee rolls their eyes and snaps their fingers, making a show out of yawning as they keep on walking.

The boss dies in an instant.

[ You got {358/500} Experience ! ] (Party) [Adventuring: Slither]

A shortcut opens up. But the four of them, having been down here for a few hours now, go down one more floor. The room layout changes into what looks almost like a mineshaft of some sort and lining the walls are small clumps of a shining, pink metal.

[Orichalcum ore] Unprocessed orichalcum ore. Orichalcum is a precious metal, condensed together by powerful natural magic. It has highly defensive and magic resisting properties.