On the way to the third floor, we engaged with a small group of ants. This time I aimed for their legs from the start and soon we had only the job to finish them off.

I noticed that other adventurers, if possible, attacked only small groups or single targets. And they did that with a lot of preparations. What a letdown, where is the thrill? At such a slow pace it will take forever to get anything done. Sure, a single mistake might force you to pay a heavy price... but I still think that just rushing and slaughtering everything in sight is way more appropriate.

Well, I guess their mages or archers can't hide inside a giant bell if things go wrong. Still, with their numbers, I was expecting them to hunt a bit more aggressively. Their mages were useful only at the start with large area-affecting spells. If monsters reach them, they become almost hopeless, only occasionally casting a single target spell here and there. Maybe they avoided friendly fire, but it still looked like a waste of time. As for archers, if monsters were ants, they were even worse, as their arrows did almost zero damage.

*

The third floor was even more like a jungle. Well, if we ignore the fact that almost all plants and trees were glowing. There were way more trees than on the second floor and in way higher variety.

We marked our teleport stones at the portal there and then sat down to have a lunch. I would like to do that somewhere else though. The stench generated by our 'safe zone' wasn't exactly helping with an appetite, but doing it in the middle of the dungeon would be stupid as well.

"New to this floor?" a dwarf approached us.

There were two more groups of adventurers resting nearby. The dwarf that just spoke belonged to a group of five people. Other than this dwarf their group had two more warriors. One was a minotaur, while another was a lad from wolf beastkin race. The other two, judging from their clothes, were mages. The thing of notice was that both elves looked exactly the same. Twins. Maybe I am just biased, but they had a long way to go if wanted to compete with my Master when it comes to looks.

There was not a single woman in their group.

"Yes. Is it that obvious?" asked Master.

"Not really, but we are hunting on this floor for a while, so by now I recognize most of the old-timers. By the way, my name is Larnok. A word of advice - avoid heading North, there is a strong irregular. D rank party gave it a try, but so far found no way to kill it." said the dwarf.

"Thanks for the warning. My name is Reveon." said Master with a smile.

"Irregular?" I asked confused.

"Every floor has specific monsters they spawn. Irregular is a monster that is unusual for that floor. They spawn rarely and usually don't live long. That's because, from the moment they are spawned, every monster seeks to kill them. Those that do survive though are usually very strong." explained to me, Master.

"Ohhh... sounds interesting. Master, I want to kill it. Can we go there ?!" I quickly stood up with excitement burning in my eyes and tail all over the place.

"Ha ha ha... Kitty... we don't know anything about..." started to object Master, but I quickly interrupted him.

"Please? Pretty please ?" I pleaded while using puppy eyes attack. With body manipulation, it was not that hard to expand eye pupils for extra effectiveness.

*Sigh* "Fine! But if I will die, I will haunt you for the rest of your life." relented Master.

"Thank you, Master. You are the best! And don't worry, I wouldn't let anyone hurt you he he." I said after happily hugging him.

"You have a weird companion. Hey Amodar, still want to take a look at that Irregular ?" asked the dwarf after looking back at his companions.

"Of course. Changed your mind Larnok?" answered the minotaur with enthusiasm.

"Well, those two want to give it a try, I thought we might as well join to take a look. Anyone against it?" with the last part the dwarf addressed the rest of his group, but no one said a word.

*

In the end, we headed to the North together with their group. I didn't detect any lies or ill intent so it was fine. Though we have not joined their party and were just traveling together.

I learned that this dwarf Larnok was a leader of their group. He, minotaur and wolf beastkin were some kind of warriors. Heavy armor was kind of screaming that.

Larnok just like wolf beastkin Glen, judging from the swords I saw him carry, preferred dual wielding. Minotaur Amodar on the other hand, had a colossal sword and a shield. The sword was obviously intended as two-handed, but Amodar was using it with one hand. His shield was very big as well and was actually even taller than me.

Mages were Morohtar and Megildur, and only slightly different robes helped to discern those twins.

On the way, we meet a new type of enemy. 'She' had four arms, four legs and slightly reminded me Arachne. An upper part of her body was mostly like a human, but lower part was an ant. Chitin armor continued from waist a bit further up, leaving only chest area exposed. Her head wasn't fully human though. An upper part of it looked like a weird helm, and her completely black eyes were almost at the size of a fist. They reminded eyes of the costume that guy in the movie liked to wear, the one that was bitten by a spider.

" Tr tra tr!" the monster released weird sounds with her human lips while facing us, blood was still dripping from the corner of her mouth.

She was in the middle of eating. Around her lay maimed corpses of three oversized wolfs. I guess those were direwolves Larnok was talking about.

"Fuck! What is formida doing on this floor." cursed Larnok.

Well, all that armor is nice and all, but it's meaningless if it doesn't cover important parts. I quickly charged at her and pierced her heart with my phantom tail. Or more precisely tried to do that. My strike left only a barely noticeable scratch on her skin. It was totally not normal skin.

"Tr Tra !!" released angry sounds formida.

"What the... What kind of attack was that?! Is she a spellblade? No... It should be something else entirely, this is... interesting. Hey girl, don't be fooled by looks of skin. Every part of her body is covered in armor." shouted Larnok.

Well, it's not the first ant with an armor I dealt with. With a slight lean of the body, I avoided all of her attacks and used a sweep of my phantom tail to sever her legs... tried to do that. This is ridiculous! What kind of armor is this?! All my strike managed to accomplish was to knock her down, and she fell only because lost her balance, but otherwise, her legs were perfectly fine.

Well, this is... fun! Finally, someone else other than that cyclop that managed to survive my attacks. What about slime? That never happened! I will never acknowledge them as a worthy opponent. Never!

"Trr tra trrr!!" formida expressed her anger after rising on her legs and then charged at me.

I sidestepped to the side and let her crash into a tree. And she did it beautifully. After recovering from a slight feebleness while shaking her head, she grabbed the tree with all four arms and crushed the trunk making the tree to fall.

*whistle* That's some serious power for such small body. That tree wasn't some sorry excuse of a tree and was fourteen meters tall! I shouldn't allow her hits to reach me.

I continuously avoided her swings with slight movements of the body making formida more and more angry. It continued like this for a while now. With every missed hit I rewarded formida with three of my own. But I was using only dragon claws and they dealt almost zero damage, but then again, the damage wasn't my intent in striking her.

"Are you sure you don't need our help?" asked Larnok, "This is a dangerous monster and shouldn't be underestimated. It's impossible to take it down without all our mages working together... even then there is no guarantee we will manage."

"I am fine. Thank you." I answered in a carefree manner.

There were a few ways I could end this fight, but I wanted to use this battle to awaken a bit more of my martial arts. I already reached level 5 and I think soon I will get one more.

Unknown Martial Arts reached level 6.

Ok, that's enough. I already have few theories how to kill her. I could just drain her with mana devour and let Master drop a stone or two. But... I doubt this will kill her. With armor like this, most likely she will just sink into the ground. Could just pierce through the eye to harm her brain directly, but it would be so anticlimactic if actually succeeded. There is also an option to crush her insides with a special set of resonating strikes, I just need to perform them with the right timing, and hit from all sides... But I already decided my course of actions the moment I failed to pierce her heart.

If I was able to make a hole with my bare hands in the wall of that vault when was still a human... there is no way I will be unable to break this armor!

And then I became a blur.

One stab with a phantom claw, then another, then stab with a tail then repeat. I dodged a strike from formida and continued hitting exactly the same spot with my claws and tail. Ten hits, twenty hits, fifty, hundred, two hundred and finally on the 273rd hit her skin-armor cracked open and my tail pierced her heart.

You have gained 4392 experience points for overcoming your adversary.

Level Up.

You have reached level 13.

Level Up.

You have reached level 14.

*whistle* "Well, that was the first time I saw them die from a physical damage." said Larnok.

"Well done Kitty. We will get two gold for every intact square foot of her skin-armor. And you managed to kill her with only one wound" happily added Master.

"Eh?" I released surprised sound.

"Ehhh?!?!" I looked at the damaged parts of formida... cracks were covering more than one square foot of her body. If I used resonating hits to crush her insides... I would have killed her without damaging skin at all.

"Nooooo!!!" I screamed with tears flowing like a river.

*

After I recovered from my heartache for losing so much money we continued further. It appears that formida were supposed to spawn only on the fourth floor. And they were a bit rare even there. The fact that she came here is a bit unsettling, as they usually don't go near the stairs where stench from 'safe zone' is strong. Unless there are high numbers of monsters on that floor and they seek more space on another.

And finally, with the help of my enhanced senses of smell, we found Irregular.

It was a weird creature... or should I say - creatures? From afar you would think it's a human with a cloak. But the cloak was actually just some kind of mana aura keeping the creature intact. The creature itself was a collection of some kind of worms sticking together and forming humanoid shape. With every step, some worms were falling to the ground while more were climbing to replace them.

"What the Hell is that?!" we all shouted in unison.