Valens chuckled as he watched the adventurers bump into another wolf. They really were an unlucky group, or maybe it was his monsters who were the unlucky ones. The party was all tier two at the very least, the core was a little suspicious about the female, Kira, was it? She was very strong, she had to be near the end of tier two at the very least, but from what she had shown so far, she could be tier three for all he knew. Magnus would probably know for sure, but he was still asleep, the drake had been stirring slightly so he was hopeful that he would be waking up soon.

The core chuckled as the chi user of the group split the skull of his wolf almost completely in half with a single strike. He knew he shouldn’t be laughing at the death of one of his own creatures, but it was too ridiculous. The chi user looked like he should be toppling over backward instead of being able to swing the massive weapons around. To be honest this particular chi user seemed a lot better than most others he had seen up to this point, which was a lot as most adventurers seemed to be chi classers. Valens couldn’t quite put his imaginary finger on the reason why he was so much better, but he wanted to figure it out.

His creatures would have classes eventually too, and he wanted them to be as strong as possible when that happened. Magnus had the mage class tree down pat and the core was confident he could teach any prospective mages in the dungeon. However, the other two class trees would be a little more touch and go in the beginning at least. Chi seemed deceptively simple, but he did have a lot of human subjects to study for that energy. The one that was worrying him was how to train a chakra user. Hopefully, Magnus would have a basic idea of how to train someone with chakra, but Valens had no idea of how to do it himself.

It was funny watching this new party bumble around his upper floors, frankly, they weren’t terrible as far as most humans he had seen. They didn’t seem that familiar with fighting together though, maybe a newer party? Well regardless even if they seemed to run into every monster in their path, they were doing well finding his hidden floor exits. They were on the fifth floor currently and it looked like they might stumble across one of the shortcuts. This particular shortcut led down to the eighth floor; it was better hidden than most exits though.

The entrance to the shortcut was underneath one particularly large tree. There was a small hole at the bottom of one of the trees that was meant to look like an extra-large burrow of some kind. However, if one of the humans tried squeezing through, they would quickly find the passage widening out and turning into an actual staircase that led deeper into the dungeon.

He kind of enjoyed making fun little hidden passages throughout the dungeon, unfortunately, though he wasn’t the most creative in his design. Valens had reused the same hidden under the tree set up several times throughout the dungeon. He would come up with more ways to hide his secret passages at a later date, he had a few ideas for hiding things in the desert but hadn’t actually tried any of his ideas out so far.

Valens watched in amusement as the young mage who looked vaguely familiar poked his head into the hole underneath the tree. He was promptly dragged out by the chi user Vance who berated him for not thinking about monsters living in such a place. The core chuckled normally Vance would be correct but, in this case, the mage was on to something. What was the mage’s name again, Adam or was it, Alex? Valens couldn’t quite remember, he didn’t make an effort to remember names that often, but this was bugging him a little bit. He had figured out the names of the other two pretty quick so why couldn’t he recall what the baby mage’s name was?

Kira jumped into the conversation on Arthur’s side, Valens was pleased to have that name now. It was a lot easier to figure them out when the humans yelled at each other. Eventually, the adventurers seemed to reach a consensus and Vance jumped down the burrow feet first. To his surprise, he slid a short way before getting his feet back under him and looking around. There were a few sunstones set further down into the staircase so they wouldn’t shine up the tunnel and give away the secret passage.

Vance was quickly joined by his other two companions and together the trio made their way down the stairs. Valens was hoping this group would make it deeper into his dungeon; lately, very few parties had even been trying his second boss. Granted his tier-three floors weren’t done yet as there were still no tier-three monsters, but still, they could at least challenge Aspen for her loot. The fairy was getting incredibly lazy, especially with no boss fights to get her fighting. Valens had had to kick her out of her room several times to go hunt her fellow monsters, but the lazy fairy always did the bare minimum of fighting before going back to her boss room.

At least she was still leveling unlike Sora at this point, the fairy was level 76 and was gradually creeping her way up to tier three. Aspen was lucky she was so effective in fights when she tried, if she wasn’t Valens might have looked into replacing her, but the fairy was good at fighting when she bothered to get off her lazy butt. The core was a little interested to see if the fairy might be stronger than Sora, once she evolved again of course.

Magnus had described the fairy’s race as being strong throughout all of their tiers, while the dragon racial tree got more and more powerful for their tier as they evolved. That meant that Sora would end up being the more powerful one if the two were pitted against each other with equal levels, but Valens was still interested to see how close his two boss monsters were to each other in power at tier three. Maybe once Aspen finally evolved, he could organize a quick skirmish, as long as there weren’t that many humans around.

The core turned his attention back to the adventurers taking a brief moment to check on Magnus who stirred and yawned widely. Valens sighed, still not awake then, he hoped the drake would wake soon. For now, though it would be interesting to see how the three adventurers handled his chimera, he was pretty sure his boss would be in for a beating but maybe it would surprise him.

Vance nodded amiably as Kira talked animatedly, she had been rather quiet throughout most of their trip, but ever since Arthur had asked her about her family she had not stopped talking. Apparently, her family were rather successful merchants, and as it turned out Kira had a fondness for discussing trade routes and supply chains and other such terms that made his eyes glaze over. Arthur was doing a valiant job of trying to follow what Kira was talking about, but it was clear that most of it was going right over his head.

“...Needed to buy southern wool and trade it for northern cotton. Most of that sort of trade takes place at Fairview. It’s a major trading center due south of Olympus city; it's actually part of the Fairview duchy, not our Storm duchy. That makes the taxes a little tricky, but well worth the trouble as my father would say.”

She was just not stopping; he appreciated a more talkative traveling companion, but he had enough of economics. He had done his best to avoid those lessons as a child, he never planned on ruling his family’s duchy anyway. Even his father who was the technical duke didn’t deal with the administrative work, that was left to people who were good at it and liked that particular brand of madness. “Say Arthur we’ve heard quite a bit about Kira’s family but what about you? Where are you from?”

Kira stopped mid-sentence and looked to the side with a slight blush to her cheeks as she stopped her monologue. She looked a little embarrassed at getting so caught up in talking about her family’s merchant business. Arthur on the other hand paled and looked down, Vance got a bit of a sinking feeling in his stomach. “You don’t have to say if you don’t want to Arthur, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“It’s fine. It’s well, I used to live in a small village a little further south of here, but it is gone now.”

Vance swallowed hard; he knew that this was an unfortunate reality of the world they lived in but still. “Was it monsters or…” or soldiers he thought to himself. Skirmishes between duchies were common and outlying villages were often targeted. He didn’t think there had been much fighting in the Storm duchy since before he had been born, his grandfather tended to personally stamp such things out, but he also wasn’t the most up to date with things either.

“Monsters.” Arthur said tonelessly. “I was out hunting, and when I came back… There was nothing left.” Vance nodded, and decided not to pursue the subject further, he got the feeling there was more to the story, but some memories were best left alone. Arthur seemed to visibly shake away his dark thoughts and smiled at the rest of the party. “Anyway, what about you Vance? Where did you use to live?”

Vance froze for a second, he obviously couldn’t spill that he was a noble, but a complete lie would probably be a bad idea as well. “I’m from Olympus city, my family is rather well off so I can’t complain. Other than that, nothing extraordinary about us.” If you ignored all the lighting-crazed lunatics running around their family palace.

“Huh, the duke’s hometown, interesting,” Kira spoke oddly, and Vance could feel a trickle of sweat running down his back. Surely, she didn’t know anything, did she? He was almost positive that the guild master Silas knew who he was, but he didn’t think many others would have figured it out.

“Really? That’s so cool Vance, I’ve never been to the capital. What’s it like living there?” Arthur at least was picking up on anything being wrong and Kira seemed inscrutable when he glanced at her. Oh well, it wasn’t the end of the world if she knew, as long as she didn’t go shouting it from the rooftops things should be fine.

“It's rather busy most of the time, people running everywhere doing something. Our city might not be that big of a trading hub at least compared to other cities, but there is still a lot of traffic going on. Especially compared to a city like Corinth that is rather small, all things considered and out in the middle of nowhere.” Kira nodded appreciatively at his trading knowledge and Vance had to suppress a grimace. He might have succumbed a few times and gotten some economic information drilled into his head.

“That’s amazing, so Corinth is considered a small city? I had never seen so many people in my life, when I first arrived there, I thought I was going to get lost down a back alley for sure.”

Vance chuckled, cities could be just as confusing and tangled as a forest for those who didn’t grow up in them. Glancing up ahead the stairs seemed to narrow to a small shoot leading down to the next floor. “Looks like we’re here. Let's get ready for more monsters, we can talk more later.” It wouldn’t be a good idea to not pay attention, most of the monsters had a decent shot at being able to kill them, well with the possible exception of Kira. Arthur and he weren’t at the point where they could just ignore tier-one attacks, not yet at least.