Valens watched as the team of adventurers faced off against Aspen. They were the first group since that first batch of humans to make it this far down. Sharp blades of water cut through where the chakra user had been making him curse as he failed to get close enough to the boss again. Aspen’s smaller body naturally meant she had smaller blind spots to exploit, which meant poor Felix was only half as useful as he had been on the previous floors.

The wind gusted through the room staggering the rest of the adventurer party slightly. Valens grinned, he hadn’t noticed at first but it seemed that when Aspen had evolved into a fairy she had gotten another affinity, this time for wind. He wasn’t exactly sure why she hadn’t been using her wind affinity more, maybe she had needed to figure out how it worked first? Regardless it was good to see his boss getting stronger in such an obvious way. While levels were a decent enough way to judge strength, they didn’t make that much of a difference at least not yet.

Aspen was almost to what could be considered mid-tier two, but it still looked like she was going to be taken down by a group of low-tier two humans. At least he was pretty sure the chi users were low tier two based on their strength and speed. He could be wrong about them and he had no idea even remotely what level Felix was, he didn’t have any other people to base his guess on in that regard.

Anway Valens reflected as one of the fairy’s water blades found their mark, this group definitely isn’t going to have a chance against Sora. Their party had already lost its first member and he highly doubted Aspen would go down without taking at least one more out. After that, they would have to traverse the tier two floors where everything would be a threat to them unlike on the higher floors.

Valens scratched his head ruminating, were his bosses too hard? This was a group of probably average adventurers that were getting their party almost halved by his first boss. Then he shrugged and shook those thoughts out of his core. It wouldn’t make sense even in the slightest to mess with how his bosses fought, he wasn’t trying to cater to the adventurers, he was focusing on his long-term growth. He didn’t need the humans, but they were welcome to come and walk to their deaths if they really wanted to. With that in mind, it made sense just to let Aspen kill off as many humans as possible even if it was a little disappointing that they weren’t going to make it much further.

Aspen darted under a sword that was swung at her and the fairy sent a blast of air directly into the stomach of the offending human. The wind wasn’t that strong but it still sent the adventurer staggering away and exposed for another counter-attack. Another blade of water raced out as the boss ducked and weaved between adventurers, she had gotten better at focusing in combat and it was about to pay off. Before he could recover the fairy’s spell finished and suddenly nothing mattered to the adventurer anymore, as he was now missing something rather important, mainly his head.

Unfortunately, that spell had taken just a bit too much concentration, and Valens’ boss had lost track of Felix. The sneaky chakra user had exploited the opportunity for all it was worth and stabbed his dagger right through his poor fairy.

Well, that was that the fairy crumpled to the ground and was promptly hacked to pieces by the rest of the humans, savages. Valens supposed it was smart to make sure the enemy was dead but the adventurers were being a bit extreme about it. The core chuckled as he watched various bags of coins rain from the ceiling. It wasn’t a huge amount of money but there were still one or two silver coins in the mix. The chakra user even got a new dagger that almost clocked him over the head when it appeared.

It was interesting to see what kind of loot appeared for the humans, even though this was only the second time he had actually seen it happen. The core wondered what would happen if a monster killed one of his bosses? Would they get a reward, and what would be considered valuable to the average monster, food?

Well not like it was very likely for him to get any more monsters anytime soon with the humans monopolizing his entrance. He was still a little sore about them completely cutting off his supply of new templates, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Besides maybe sending Sora to slaughter them all, but based on what Magnus said that was unlikely to work or be beneficial in the long run.

That was too bad, at least his tier two floors were coming along nicely, the swamp floors had fully filled in with monsters, and the ice mana floor was getting there as well. He had also finally fully unlocked the templates for a few of the tier two creatures in his dungeon. The first he had gotten was the hobgoblin template, no surprises there they died quite often, but he had also managed to get ahold of the base greater wolf and crocodile templates.

He still hadn’t gotten any full templates from the tier two creatures on the ice floors but that would sort itself out eventually. Something he had overlooked at first was just how useful the tier two hawks were turning out to be. Their increase in size meant that they could hunt deer for food and even take down other isolated tier two monsters. He could very much see them picking off stray humans that ventured down to his lower floors, but it didn’t look like that was happening today.

The core watched sourly as the leader of the adventurers remembered he had a brain and decided that going any lower in the dungeon with only part of a team was a bad idea. Felix was rather upset about this conclusion, and the two of them were busy yelling threats and obscenities back and forth. Valens didn’t have much knowledge of curses, but he was impressed by how creative the two humans were being, rather disgusting too though.

They eventually left heading back out the boss room and into the upper floors. That was too bad but several other groups were making their way deeper into the dungeon. Hopefully, they would provide more entertainment, and maybe he would see some different classes besides just chi over and over again.

Carefully buzzing her way between the branches of her domain, she, Aspen, she must remember the name given by the great creator. Aspen wound her way between the trees of her domain. Aspen had a great purpose bestowed upon her by the Great One, she was to guard his domain against those who would venture further into the depths. To perform such an all-important task there were several important things for her to keep in mind, not the least of which was relaxation.

It had been a wonderful day when she had discovered the wonders of just taking things easy, and Aspen was astonished she hadn’t thought of it sooner. She wasn’t being lazy, definitely not, she needed to be in prime condition to face any invaders when they got to her. Dying wasn’t terribly pleasant, and while it was comforting to know that the Great One would never let her stay dead, she would still prefer to avoid the experience.

That led to her most recent problem, which was just strolling into her room. The loud, two-legged, and much too large, humans, at least she thought they were called humans. Their species might also be called adventurers but she wasn’t quite sure. Regardless it was her duty to halt their progress in the Great One’s dungeon but she had also failed her task when it came to these humans. Come to think of it she wasn’t quite sure how many times she had fought with this dastardly foe, surely it was dozens of times. The fairy didn’t have that firm a grasp of how numbers work but dozens sounded a lot better than whatever two was supposed to mean.

Anyway, back to work. This time things would be different, the humans were weak and she could feel it. There might be six, maybe eight of them? Well anyway, there were a lot of humans but they were all weak, far too weak to be getting past her. This would be a fun fight and a good harvest to improve her strength. Aspen had been feeling a bit guilty at her lack of progress, but it wasn’t her fault she needed to commit to relaxation or it wouldn’t work when she needed it to.

There was a large thump as a human fell flat on its face stumbling over a tree root, she sighed, maybe she wouldn’t need her secret relaxation boost this time. Weaving between the trees, Aspen began gathering her water magic, spinning her most dangerous weapon out of her very power. She wasn’t much good at magic yet, at least she didn’t think so, she only had one spell that she could figure out for her two elements, and even then they were only instinctive spells. Woven into her very being and genetics, she didn’t think it was that impressive to be able to cast them when her very essence was skewed towards being able to use mana.

The fairy snorted, quietly, as the humans wandered right into the middle of her boss room. You would think they would have known better, especially after two different groups had managed to best her, this time was going to be different though. With the element of surprise on her side, the first human didn’t even know what happened, one moment he was looking around suspiciously and the next he was looking up as his body crumpled to the ground.

The humans had quite a weird reaction, they started screaming and scrambling in all directions, some of them even running back into the trees where she was. This confused Aspen for a second, did they expect splitting up to somehow help them? The first group of humans she had fought had behaved in a somewhat similar manner at first, but they had swiftly managed to figure out what was going on and hunted her through the trees.

This group however was not doing anything so intelligent. Another water blade arched out and another human toppled to the ground. How many were left? Three maybe or was it eight? Why did numbers have to be so hard? One of the humans squealed, a high pitch and very obnoxious sound that rang in the fairy’s ears. He got a swift water blade to the face for that, so noisy, annoying human.

They were pathetic, reflected the fairy as she flew lazily between the trees following one of the humans frantically running between the trees. I mean really they weren’t even trying to hit her, all they were doing was waving their metal sticks around in the air like she would be dumb enough to fly into them. She shrugged her shoulders at a loss, tossing another water blade into the torso of the desperately scrambling human. Turning away from the fatally wounded but still alive invader, Aspen set off to find her next victim.

Flying around her little forest Aspen thought carefully and came to a revelation, she had figured out why the humans had behaved as they had. It wasn’t a strategy to fight her at all, instead, it was a tactic to run away. That annoyed her a little bit, dying was unpleasant sure, but it wasn’t that bad. They should just grow up and take it like a fairy, she chuckled at that, as she sent a blast of air to trip one of the humans. To her incredulity, he managed to impale himself through the heart with the dagger he had been clutching. Talk about doing her job for her.

Flying around Aspen noticed something weird, there weren’t any humans left in her forest. Sure there was that one who was still bleeding out but other than him, there were only slowly dissolving bodies throughout her room. Scratching her head the fairy thought hard, what was wrong with this picture. Oh yeah! There were supposed to be a few more humans around here, maybe three more? Or was it four?

Anyway, Aspen flew over to the exit of her room and saw a large tree branch wedging the door to her room open. Tricky humans, and cowardly humans running away from a perfectly good fight how terrible. The fairy boss flew out of her arena just as the doors started to open on their own. Taking a quick look around she spotted a quickly retreating form as it disappeared around a bend. There they were, the hunt was on! She wasn’t going to get much relaxing today, but that was okay, there was work to do.