With knowledge about how the puzzle doors worked, the group continued on. After a while, they walked through a few small rooms along with a curved path. Following the left path, they found themselves in front of another door. However, this one was different compared to the sliding puzzle door that led into the water elemental room.

“A question? Is this similar to the puzzle you three answered at the bottom of the pond?” asked Peter scratching his head, “Although, there’s no hole to stick an arm into.”

Duzzig looked serious, “It’s completely different. I’ve never seen something like this. What ever could these lines mean? I understand the ‘What is’ and the question mark at the end, but the things in between make no sense whatsoever.”

“Dammit, Duzzig, I know it’s a simple math question,” snarled Peter. “I’m just doing my job and getting all the information before I make sure the thing won’t kill you.”

“Enough,” interceded Franc, “you can show your love for one another some other time.”

The rest of the group giggled, while Peter and Duzzig turned their heads away from one another with pouts. However, soon after, small smiles appeared on their faces.

“Teri, go ahead,” ordered Franc.

“Two minus one, a true puzzler,” she joked, but her face soon turned more serious, “It may be easy for us, but these puzzles are going to pose a problem to adventurers below D rank. Although the Emperor is trying to introduce a basic education system, it hasn’t caught on. Most won’t be able to answer this.”

Charles added his own point, “I have , so answering the question at the bottom of the pond was easy. Even if the adventurers learn the common skill compositions for different monsters, the monsters in this dungeon may have a slightly different skill compositions than normally recorded. To answer that question most groups would need a tamer with the appropriate skill level.”

“Interesting, but,” Franc stopped both of them, “that’s something we’ll discuss after we explore the floor and dungeon. Let’s open the door and see what’s on the other side.”

Teri nodded and answered, “One.”

There was a click and the door opened.

The group entered the small room that shimmered with glowing numbers and math symbols. Minuses dominated the room, but an occasional plus, multiplication symbol, and division symbol appeared. Across the room stood a long pedestal with handprints on it that glowed slightly.

“I think this room may be math related,” observed Peter.

The rest of the party rolled their eyes.

“Feel any danger, Peter?” asked Franc.

“From the pedestal with the handprints,” pointed Peter. “Enough to cause us some pain, but no damage. That means low level adventurers are liable to be killed by it.”

“Useful skill as always,” said Duzzig as he reached up to pat Peter on the shoulder, “My turn to do some math then?”

Teri stopped Duzzig as he started to walk towards the pedestal, “It might be better if I do it.”

Duzzig turned towards her and gave her a frown, “I know I’m not the best at math, but I can still do basic arithmetic.”

“I know that Duzzig,” Teri shook her head, “but even though the door was basic arithmetic, this might be something else.”

Duzzig considered it for a moment before he nodded and let her pass.

As Teri approached the pedestal, the pair of glowing hands with five digits of three segments each transformed into gnomish hands of six digits with four segments each. The pedestal also lowered to her height. Her eyebrows raised slightly, but it wasn’t that shocking. It already had a way to tell if someone was in a party or not and a way to tell the overall strength of the party, so determining the race of an individual wasn’t that farfetched.

She placed her hands on the pedestal and a simple math problem of four minus two appeared on the screen.

“I could have answered that,” muttered Duzzig behind her.

A small smirk appeared on her face before answering, “Two.”

Rather than the next math question, a question asking her if she wanted to take her prize appeared.

“Why would it ask that?” Peter questioned the group.

Teri hoped this wasn’t one of those puzzles that took anything the user said as an answer as she replied to Peter, “There’s likely tiers of questions, treasures, and-”

“Then it’s likely there’s tiers of traps as well. I wonder if the larger danger I felt was from the initial question or the final question, if there is a final question. We’ll need to test it out,” Peter interrupted her.

“We’ll test out wrong answers later. First, Teri will see if there’s any ending to the puzzle, then, after we get the reward, we’ll try the puzzle again,” said Franc. “Did you three try out the puzzle after you answered it once?”

Duzzig, Charles, and Teri turned their heads with slightly red cheeks and muttered, “No.”

All Franc did was sigh in response.

After a quick glance to stare daggers at Peter, Teri continued answering math questions and was surprised at having to use her answers from the previous questions. Luckily her memory was quite good, and she was able to successfully answer all the questions. After Teri answered the tenth question, a treasure appeared. An iron tomahawk appeared on the pedestal. She looked at it, noticed the enchantment, picked it up, and began examining it.

“Looks like another enchantment,” mused Lyra.

“What’s the enchantment this time, Teri?” asked Franc.

“Sharpness for ten minutes. The wood weapons would cut like iron, so this iron one should cut like steel. The big thing is that this axe has thirty uses,” Teri answered.

“Thirty uses is quite the jump,” said Franc astounded.

“It is, but I doubt you, Duzzig, or Peter could have answered some of the later questions considering they required memorizing previous answers.”

“True,” admitted Franc, while Duzzig and Peter nodded their heads with sour faces.

“It might be a requirement for parties to have a well educated member if this is the new normal for treasures,” concluded Charles.

Teri shook her head, “Any mage class or noble born adventurer should be able to answer the first few questions, and those should hopefully provide treasures of an appropriate value. I’ll try it out now.”

She placed her hands back on the pedestal, but nothing happened.

Teri turned to look at Franc and said, “Looks like it’s one try per trip.”

Franc’s face scrunched up at that, “It’s going to take a week per floor isn’t it.”

“Since we aren’t allowed to actively hunt outside the dungeon, just defend ourselves from attacking monsters, it’s a good thing that space mage is here. Without his magic, we’d run out of supplies,” said Lyra.

“If only the dungeon had better food drops besides fern fronds and jelly,” Duzzig slurped, “Some monster loot tastes delicious.”

“There’s the mushrooms,” Charles piped up.

“Those are poisonous.”

“Well, if we had a good cook….”

“We’ll know if the dungeon has anything good to eat after we clear all the floors,” Franc finished.

Everyone agreed and continued on with the floor exploration.

Their trek continued on, primarily consisting of long corridors. Beside the two additional math rooms, one subtraction and one multiplication, that gave them a flame sword with twenty five uses and a hard mace with fifty uses, nothing was drastically different from the first floor. The magic lights still illuminated the cave and reduced any sort of monotony simply through their presence. However, the lack of a certain something was bringing Charles down.

“Why aren’t there any spiders?” he muttered with sagging shoulders.

“It is odd considering every other creature seems to be present,” agreed Lyra. “But, water elementals are good too.

“Although, metal elementals would be better,” she whispered to herself.

“It’s just, there were so many monster variations on the first floor. The fact that there have only been two new ones is disappointing,” Charles whined.

“Of course there’s less new monsters, Charles,” Franc lightly laughed. “Every monster and creature on the first floor was new. You can’t expect a dungeon to give you all new species every floor.”

“I can expect it, and I will,” Charles pouted.

This only made Franc laugh harder.

After walking through a hallway that looped back and forth, they reached another puzzle door.

“I wonder what the picture is this time,” mused Lyra as she cocked her head to the side.

“Let’s find out,” said Teri as she walked up to the door and starting sliding the puzzle around.

In about the same time it took her to solve the first puzzle door, this new puzzle door clicked and started to open.

“Looks like a room focused around jellies,” Charles informed everyone.

The door fully opened and everyone looked into the room.

“This room is certainly interesting,” said Duzzig with a raised eyebrow.

“You want to start mining jelly?” joked Peter.

“‘Cause all dwarves work in mines.”

“You’re the one who always says, ‘When I worked in the mines….’.”

Duzzig just grunted in return.

The party entered the room with Charles, Peter, and Lyra examining the gelatinous rocks. Every step taken produced a squish sound, along with every prod from the three examiners. The three examiners soon discovered that the jelly imitating rocks only applied to the rock formations, as the walls, while covered in a layer of jelly, were still stone. The only creatures present in the room were jelly monsters, which, combined with the jelly floors, made it sound like a squish mill.

The presence of a new, but similar, trap intrigued Peter, “Hey, Lyra, this looks like the earth spike trap, but with some differences.”

Lyra turned her attention away from the gelatinous stalagmites, and jogged over to Peter. She squatted down and began to examine the magic formation.

“It’s definitely based off of the earth spike trap. I haven’t had a long time to study the ones we’ve come across, but if I was to guess, then it will likely shoot a spike of something in the same manner as the earth spike traps. What that something is, I couldn’t….” she gave a glance around the room, “actually, I might know what it is.”

“Really? What?”

However, Peter was met with silence causing him to glance up from examining the magic formation. Lyra’s smirk just made him more confused before a quick glance around gave him his answer.

“Yeah, Yeah, I supposed it would be jelly. Hey, Duzzig! Come try this trap out!”

Duzzig ambled over to them, “What’s it do?”

“Likely shoots a spike of jelly,” answered Lyra.

“Seems far less dangerous than an earth spike.”

“Agreed.”

Peter and Lyra moved back while Duzzig activated the trap. Before he could move his head, a gong sounded.

“Damn, that was fast!” exclaimed Peter.

Duzzig grasped his helmet and popped it off his head. He glared at the now jelly covered helmet.

“With that kind of speed, it will definitely hit low rank adventurers,” worried Lyra.

“But, it felt less dangerous that the earth spike,” argued Peter.

Franc interrupted them, “Considering how soft jelly is, while the jelly spike isn’t dodgeable, it won’t stab into an adventurer’s head and kill them instantly. Even if the jelly spike knocks them out, they at least have a chance to recover.”

The three of them nodded in agreement, and continued exploring the room. Soon after, the group discovered a hole puzzle.

Said hole, while present in one of the jelly columns, was not see through. There seemed to be a black void in the middle of the jelly column.

“Ready, Duzzig? We’ll help you answer, since you’re not very smart,” smirked Peter.

All he received was a growl in return as Duzzig stuck his hand into the hole.

“‘Name a skill that the jelly monsters present in this room have’,” read Charles.

Before Charles could give Duzzig the answer, Teri interrupted him, “This seems like the same kind of puzzle that was on the bottom of the pond. Should we test what the penalty is?”

As the leader, Franc was the first to speak up, “Normally, we’d do a penalty run after we cleared the floor once, but with that completion list, we’ll have to run it numerous times anyway so go ahead.”

Duzzig shrugged and answered wrong. When he took his armored hand out of the hole, a swarm of mosquitoes followed. Before anyone could react, the swarm was covered in fire from Teri’s flamethrower. She continued using it far past what any of the mosquitoes could have survived, melting a part of the jelly.

The other five party members simply turned to Teri and smirked at her. She put away her flamethrower and simply muttered, “Fine, I won’t suggest trap testing again.”

“It’s fine,” Franc chuckled. “Actually, it was a better idea than I thought. Duzzig stick your hand back in there and see if we can answer again after triggering the trap.”

Duzzig nodded in understanding, but no question appeared after sticking his hand back in.

Satisfied, the party continued on to another math room, division this time. They received a pair of throwing daggers with twenty uses of the laceration effect on each. The laceration effect didn’t have a time limit per use, simply a number of times the laceration effect could be applied to the opponent. Teri said that the effect was about a level five bleeding enchantment. Peter found them interesting even though they were far below his normal equipment. He remarked how they would be useful for low level assassins.

Down the second corridor from the jelly room, the first being the math room, they encountered another sliding puzzle.

“A room with a sliding puzzle right off of another?” wondered Charles.

“It’s slightly different. There’s an F+ above the picture,” Teri pointed out.

“You don’t think….” Franc muttered.

The group looked at each other and nodded.

While Teri solved the sliding puzzle, Franc walked over to a wall, started kicking it, and complained loudly, “You can’t really call it a G rank floor if you have monsters above that rank! Giving a warning like that F+ still means there’s an F+ rank monster to fight! This seems a bit out of the way, so I wouldn’t call it trickery. However!” he pointed at the ceiling, “If there are above G rank monsters on the only path to the boss room, then I’m really going to complain! Normally this isn’t a problem as we don’t expect dungeons to play nice, but I thought we had something going with the slowly increasing difficulty!”

Franc’s foot was starting to hurt, so he stopped.

“You okay Franc?” Lyra asked, “You don’t usually talk to the dungeons.”

“Yeah, I’m just stressed out from the workload this dungeon is producing,” he replied.

Teri had solved the sliding puzzle and the door was opening.

“Multiple jellies of some kind,” informed Charles.

The party walked into the room, where in the middle of a jelly cave, sat a single jelly.

Confused, Charles appraised it, “It’s called Split Jelly. I’ve never heard of it, but based on the picture and its name, I think we know what it does.”

They approached the Jelly, in battle positions just in case. Charles summoned Ciel, the black panther. As they approached the jelly, it noticed them and immediately split into ten. The jelly’s only problem being that it was fighting S+ rank adventurers, people it could not compare to.

Each party member took a single swing, reducing the jelly to two forms instantly. The two vanguards, Franc and Duzzig, took a step forward and ended the remaining two with a second swing each. After the last jelly disappeared into loot, a click resounded in the room.

The party cleaned their weapons as Duzzig stated, “That sounded like something being unlocked.”

“I’ll look around,” replied Peter as he walked off.

Charles stared at the loot for a while before saying, “Oh right, I should've captured it.”

“That’s true,” said Lyra as she walked up beside him, “but we always have to be careful with new monsters even if they have a low rank.”

He nodded in agreement, but still seemed disappointed.

From across the room, Peter yelled, “Treasure chest!”

The rest ambled over to his location and were met with Peter joking about them being slowpokes.

“Why haven’t you opened it yet, Peter?” asked Franc, “Is it a trap you can’t deal with?”

Peter looked offended, “Of course not! I simply wanted all of us to witness the majesty of opening a treasure chest.”

Franc rolled his eyes, “Get on with it, Peter.”

Peter pushed the lid off of the stone treasure chest, whistling a jingle as he did so. He reached into the treasure chest and pulled a composite bow out and held it above his head.

The rest of the party looked exasperated, except for Teri who snatched the bow out of Peter’s hand when he brought it down to her height.

“Hey!” yelled Peter.

“Sorry,” replied Teri already distracted by the bow.

Peter’s disgruntled face soon turned to one of intrigue, “Is it that interesting?”

However, Teri was too absorbed to answer.

With a shrug of their shoulders, the group waited a couple minutes for Teri to tell them about the bow.

“The bow itself is lackluster as any of us could easily break it by pulling too hard. The enchantment is what made me so interested,” her eyes sparkled. “Not only does it have one hundred uses, but just by pulling the string, an arrow of light is created. Of course, being a reward for an F+ rank monster means the power of the arrows aren’t amazing.”

During her explanation, the group’s eyes changed from normal interest to intense focus. No one wanted to say it, but it was on all their minds: if this was a reward on the G rank floor for a F+ rank monster, then what would an S rank floor give.

“If only the material it was made out of was better, then the weaker light arrows wouldn’t matter as it could be used against demons, undead, and other dark oriented monsters,” Teri finished.

With that, they continued through the remaining pathway from the jelly room. Beyond a path that split into three, and converged back into one, the path they followed was linear. Eventually they reached another sliding puzzle. Teri made quick work of it.

“A slime,” Charles informed the group after the picture was complete.

Peter, Lyra, Teri, and Duzzig all made faces of disgust based on the last sliding puzzle door room they were in.

As they expected, the room was covered in slime. It dripped down the walls and from the ceiling. Puddles formed beneath the stalactites that slowly dripped slime.

“We could still spot the jellies in the previous room because of their round shape. Not only will the slimes in this room be hard to spot because of their clear nature camouflaging with the rest of the slime, they might be hiding in the puddles,” cautioned Franc.

Even though the group could destroy every slime core with a single kick, they proceeded with caution. Eventually, Peter found a hole puzzle. It maintained the same pattern of questioning as the other hole puzzles, so Duzzig answered after Charles gave him the answer.

Afterwards, the party just stared at the sword covered in slime. While the rest just stood staring at it, Teri inched forward until she grasped the hande with a grimace.

“I’d normally call this a cursed weapon, but I can see the enchantment.”

Franc narrowed his eyes, “Cursed?”

Teri stared at the sword with scrunched eyebrows and a pursed mouth, “It produces slime. Slime that is acidic to itself, but not the wielder. In terms of usage, it’s worse than a normal iron sword. The detrimental effect of the enchantment is very interesting, however.”

“How long until the acidic nature of the slime dissolves the sword?” wondered Lyra.

Teri shook her head, “ can tell me the uses, time of each use, and the nature of the enchantment, but the time it will take to dissolve is based on the properties of the iron and the slime, which aren’t covered by .”

They continued exploring the room, but Lyra and Peter were crouched next to a trap.

“Looks like half of the water trap, similar to the ones it the water elemental room,” grimaced Peter.

“But in a slime room,” sighed Lyra with a hand to her head, “We have to do it don’t we. ….You’ll ask him right?”

“Why me?”

“You always get on his nerves anyway.”

“Yeah, that means he’s more liable to cut me in half than you.”

“Please!” she pleaded.

“Fine,” agreed Peter as he walked over to Duzzig.

Lyra watched as Duzzig’s eyes narrowed and his hand stroked his axe. However, after Peter finished talking, Duzzig walked over with him.

“Give me a hydrophobic spell and I’ll do it,” declared Duzzig.

“But what about-” Lyra began.

“We can test the slime’s effect some other way, I’m not getting slimed.”

A staring contest later and Lyra relented. After the slime squirted on him, he walked away squeaky clean with a smile on his face.

Lyra frowned after him, “We didn’t learn anything but what we already expected.”

“Don’t worry, Lyra,” Peter consoled her, “I’m sure Franc will order him to do it again on one of the future runs.”

Appeased, Lyra nodded in agreement.