While the girls slumbered, the master worked tirelessly into the night. He planned to go to sleep in a few hours, but until then he wanted to check through his stats and skills to see where his current weaknesses were most prevalent.

It did not take too long before he realized something that he had suspected for a while. “I’m trying to do too much personally.”

Scott shook his head. His team needed a dedicated support member. He had attempted to take that spot for a little over a week now, but it was problematic. There were too many skills to train in conjunction with his primary skills.

“I need to focus on developing training related skills and maybe combat.” said Scott.

At the moment, he did the main cooking and minor repair work, for the team. There was nothing wrong with that, but it was difficult to do several things at once. Unlike a random online game, there was no rapid way to develop skills outside of simply grinding them with all possible attention focused on the task at hand.

His skills had increased quickly for the first two or three days, but he had not gained a single level increase in his cooking or maintenance skills in several days. It seemed that once they hit level four, it became much more difficult to increase them. He had to admit that there was a possibility that those skills were not good fits for his personality. He had been told that things had changed, and it seemed that some of those changes were related to non-class based skills.

The current skill capacity was enough for now, but if he truly wished to expand the possibilities of having an in-house support staff, he would need to find someone else who was actually good at that sort of thing. Barring that, he needed to find someone who actually liked to cook and clean. Briefly, he wondered if there was some sort of dedicated maid demi-human.

Scott rubbed his chin. “I keep holding back because I want to get to know the girls better. There’s nothing wrong with that... but...”

He sighed softly. The truth was that his class was designed to be a warlord sort of character class. What he needed was troops, not girlfriends or generals, just regular troops.

The monster girl trainer slowly nodded his head. After they undertook their grinding mission tomorrow he’d broach the subject of hiring temporary mercenaries. Even if they were not monster girls or demi-humans, whatever they wanted to be called nowadays, the larger force would be helpful for clearing future missions.

After taking into account all of the money they had earned in the last few days, especially during the last mission, he had regained fifteen gold coins. It was not much of a war chest, but it was a start.

Scott had considered the issue frequently in the last two days. Each time he had gone back to the money issues and then to how the girls might react. However, if he hired actual mercenaries then it might not be as problematic.

“I’ll check the prices for recruiting mercs after we get back tomorrow.” said the trainer. It was logical, and it would give him a means of acquiring help without having to promise his penis in trade. Four horny monster women with super human sex drives were more than enough for him at the moment. He desperately needed to build up his health and stamina a bit more before he took on any more permanent harem members!

***

There was something strange about the atmosphere of the cave system when they returned the next day. Maybe it was something in the air. Perhaps it was the fact that the rats and mushrooms all hid in the darkest areas and did not molest the group as they went deeper. Whatever it was, it was quite disturbing.

“What the hell is wrong with these things?” asked Scott. The oddness of the area was quite unsettling. The monsters acted like they were too terrified to even come out of their holes.

Scarlet shook her head. “No idea. This is definitely odd. We gained a few levels yesterday, but there is no way that we’d be strong enough to cause this reaction.”

“Perhaps another group just came through?” asked Rowan.

“Maybe, but... This is still strange.” said Scarlet. The dragon girl looked around as though she might find a clue to the reason behind the strange behavior of the monsters.

They worked their way deeper into the area. The only combat scenes that they faced were nothing more than the occasional rat or toad making an attempt to escape the area. It was not until they reached the lowest level, the area where the herbs grew, that something strange happened. The atmosphere suddenly shifted and a chill could be felt in the air.

“It’s really quiet.” said Deanna. The only noise in the area was the occasional drip of water from a stalactite.

Scott glanced at her then back at the cave. It was quiet, horribly quiet. Even in the upper levels there were sounds. A rat would skitter, or a bat would shriek. Down here, there was nothing but the sound of intermittent drops of water that fell from the stalactites.

Something caught his attention and he pointed it out. “Was that pool of water here before?”

“No, I don’t think so.” said Mina.

Rowan spoke up then as well. “Master, there’s water behind us too, now.”

Everyone turned to view the small stream of water that had appeared behind them. The entire cavern now sported a wide, but seemingly shallow, stream. The stream of water covered the entire distance across the cave and blocked off the path to the higher areas.

“We should get out of here. If the water is pooling up like this, it might get dangerous soon.” said Scott.

“Right...” said Scarlet. She eyed the wide, and still growing, stream of water carefully. Something about it seemed to be wrong on several levels.

The group moved toward the newly formed stream. However, the moment they got close to it the small stream began to ripple strangely.

“The hell?” said Scott.

The stream began to creep toward them, slowly. Tendrils of water began to form then snaked their way toward the surprised group.

“... It’s moving.” said Scarlet.

“Shit, of course!” snapped Scott. He had not realized it earlier since it had looked like nothing but water. There was another type of monster known to occasionally appear in this cave. It rarely appeared according to the information he had received during the initial mission briefing.

“Master?” asked Mina.

“We’re surrounded by slime. Scarlet, burn us a path through!” said the man.

The dragon did not bother to cry out an answer. Instead she immediately breathed out a flame breath attack that caused the closest tendrils to melt away. The quasi-magical attack caused the slime to ripple wildly in response. The entire mass began to move at a rapid pace.

“Keep it up, Scarlet. We need to break through!” shouted Scott.

The dragon had the only real magical attack among them all. Scarlet continued to fire off her flame breath attacks, but there was too much slime. Every time she burned a path forward, more moved into the area to fill in the recently cleared area.

“It’s coming!” shouted Rowan.

Scott looked up then stared ‘hard’. A tidal wave of slime had risen up from the nearby pool and was about to overtake them. They did not even have time to scream properly before the massive wave of slime crashed down atop them. Not long after, the cavern became silent once more.