Rocky and Minnie decided to use the first floor to test their human invaders. To see what kind of skills they had, and how strong they were in general.

The traps started from the very first room. First room was made to check out the how flexible those humans were. At first Rocky thought of using the worker ants, but then they unanimously decided to only use those Chucha (small) ants. The plan was ingenious and Minnie praised Rocky to the end for coming out with it.

The result: Fire mage alone ended the fight.

In the second room they tried to figure out how the humans would handle pressure. And the room proved that every individual human had their own set of skills to counter the enemies, and even protect themselves.

From second room the pair understood that the humans weren’t an adversary which the little ants could handle. The trap continued with the third room, where they ambushed the humans using a worker ant.

The trap although succeeded in action, ultimately failed in the execution.

Because Minnie wanted to ambush the fire mage, even though she knew the chances of which happening were low, but she did it anyway.

But the ant in question couldn’t react properly, and missed its chance. The owners had to make do with a foot from the useless Archer, who was the weakest of the bunch.

While Minnie sulked behind him, Rocky saw the worker ant being killed and disappearing into the void, but after leaving behind a part of its exoskeleton.

His brows furrowed, he couldn’t understand at first what kind of a phenomenon it was, but then he remembered the humans talking about the dungeon monsters leaving behind stuff after their death, he understood that it was probably a function of the monsters.

He asked Minnie what that was all about, and she replied saying, “Like I told you before. Humans enter a dungeon for two reasons. First, is to gain experience and grow strong. Second are the objects or resources…” She pointed at the ants drop in the human hand, “that a dungeon monster drops on its death.”

She then told him that every summoned monster had a chance to drop a part of their body set as a default drop, unless they changed it with materials, wealth and other things.

“Their desire to get strong is understandable. Even I want to get strong enough to get over them, but I just don’t get their reason to fight to get those monster drops. I don’t think they are fools, so why, why do they do that? That is something I don’t understand.”

Minnie heard him and nodded her head. “You are right.” She said.

“Just like you said, why fight dangerous monsters and play the game of death. Its lie they are foolish not so intelligent being, but it is not like that either.”

“So what is it? What’s the reason?”

“It is simple. Humans are greedy beings. It’s their nature. Like how a wild animal has instincts, it’s their nature to greed for everything that’s not theirs. Their greed is also the reason why they let a dungeon, which houses multitude of dangerous monsters to prosper.” Minnie preached.

“So, if a dungeon doesn’t harm humans, then they won’t have a reason to hurt that dungeon, right?”Rocky asked in anticipation pointing at himself.

But Minnie reprimanded him saying, “That’s naïve of you. The humans are greedy and are also cowards. There is no way they will let anyone with a chance to gain superiority over them to live long. They don’t even care about their own fellow humans. Let’s not even talk about their behavior with other species, and especially with a special entity like you.”

Rocky gulped once and looked at the humans below him, as the worry regarding his future crept up his spine.

“So, what do they do with the monster drops? They don’t eat it right?” he asked hearing which Minnie chocked on her own saliva.

*Cough!*Cough!*Cough!*

She wanted to retort, but seeing Rockies clueless face, she decided to just explain it to him, “You know how strong that chitin is right?” Rocky nodded his head.

“Good. Now, you see the workers chitin is strong enough on its own, but what if the humans wore it.”

Rocky furrowed his brows and frowned a little. “They can?” he asked.

“Ho ho, not directly…”

Rocky took a breath of relief hearing that, but then froze when Minnie said, “but they can process the chitin, remove the impurities, improve its weakness, then add some metal into it, and a little hammering would let them shape the ants exoskeleton into a armor that won’t even break after taking the attack from a soldier ant.”

She saw him looking at her with sparkling eyes and felt flabbergasted. She asked him, what he was thinking, and Rockies answer opened a new line of monster for the dungeon.

“What do I think? I think the humans are geniuses. Who could have thought that such a crude thing could be used in such an exquisite way?”

Minnie scratched her cheek adoring a confused smile on her face.

“Well, it’s good that you understand.” She wanted to tell him more things, but got interrupted by Rocky who asked her, “So Minnie, can we make armor for our ants?”

Meanwhile the humans descended the slope to the second floor after having conquered the first floor, after much, but not a lot of difficulties.

Daniel explained to Martha what a dungeon, while Dust and Bill talked about the ant that had taken Bill’s foot off.

Thanks to Dusts Earth magic, Bill gained himself a new and solid sand foot, and his balance skill helped him in walking, but he ultimately lost his combat mobility.

Their discussion about the ant did reach William, but he just brushed it off saying there was no need to worry because of those pitiful things.

Reaching the second floor another tunnel welcomed them, but with an even tighter and narrow opening.

Their conversations and descriptions were going on and on when their leader interjected between them, and stopped their untimely girls talk. “Stop wasting time. We get it, the pit is frustrating, and the tunnel is scary, but we need to move now. We have already wasted a lot of our time. The more time we waste the lesser become the value of our reward, and also who knows when something might come to attack us. I don’t want anything to attack me while I’m crawling inside this shitty hole.”

“Yes sir you are right. Let’s move now, while our surroundings are still calm.”Daniel pointed forward, suggesting everyone to hurry.

“UUU, Martha doesn’t want to crawl. Should Martha destroy the wall?”

But William wasted no time in refusing her suggestion.

“No time. Anyone else? No, then Knight get in the front and start crawling, I’ll follow you. The archer and assassin will crawl behind me, followed by the mages. No questions allowed, it’s is for the safety of, everyone else’s and also mine.” He said.

They crawled and crawled and crawled, but nothing happened. The Knight crawling at front had his shield up in front of him, while the others behind him had their faces down. The knight was really stressed, he had been crawling expecting one or more monsters to jump come out of blue to attack them, but so far everything had remained calm.

And they once again reached the opening to a room. With Martha’s [light balls] hanging over their heads, they could clearly see a lot of those small ants standing there alone in the room, looking at the tunnel.

Daniel smirked, and was about to move out, when he felt a hand creeping over to his shoulder. He flinched as it touched him, but the voice which came after it made him calm down.

“Don’t. There might be another one of those big ants hiding in the ground.” William advised Daniel and then turned his head around.

“Dust, do you have enough mana to cast another one of those sensing skill of yours?”

And she nodded her head before closing her eyes. Half a minute later she opened her eyes and told them that like William had thought, there was a life signal coming from underneath the ground.

William asked her to find how deep the core was, but Dust shook her head saying the skill was still in the beginner realm and had a reach of only ten meters.

William told Martha to do her thing, and blow those little ants. To which she happily complied.

Martha at first was going to once again send one of those light balls hovering behind them, but then changed her mind, and started preparing a small fireball the size of a fist over her palm.

She continued pouring more and more mana into it, but unlike concentrating and controlling it like she did with the [light ball], she let the mana rampage inside it instead.

The fireball gradually lost it spherical shape as she poured gradually poured mana into it, and changed into a protruding, spiky amoeba. Thought its size never changed, but the glow it radiated grew to frightening degrees. The light it created was enough to see how tired everyone was after crawling for 20 something minutes inside the narrow and dark tunnel.

“Martha is sending the package.” Martha said when she became content with her fireball and everyone hurriedly got low on the ground. Then she sent it flying into the room. The fireball buzzed away, flying closely from the swordsman’s face and past Daniels shield, who quickly straightened it and used his [Mana shield] to cover the tunnel hole.

Everyone waited, but no explosion occurred. The all looked at Martha who simply pointed in front of her; and just as she did, the ants cry rang out. The collective sound the ants created was so loud that even the wails of a ghost would seem nothing in front of it.

When everyone looked in the room through the visible section of Daniels shield, they saw the fireball finally giving up, and raining fire upon the ants. Five seconds after the fireball broke down, the ants were burned, and they disappeared without leaving behind even ash.

Actually, fireball she created was in no way a good spell. The amount of mana that she had used would have made it explode from going out of control a long time ago, if it wasn’t for her mastery in Fire control and Manipulation. Because of her control in Fire, she was able to make the fireball hold on until it reached the center of the room and then she specifically leaked all the mana inside it in the form of fire.

Seeing that the Earth mage ‘Dust’ who was behind her couldn’t help but utter, “What kind of a skill was that?”

To her muttering, Martha replied saying it was a skill she had gained a long time ago, playing with the fireballs as a kid, which astonished the others.

“But why isn’t the fire extinguishing? Why is it still burning?”

“Oh! Martha put a lot of my mana in it you know. Martha made sure to program it to use mana as fuel, so the fire will keep on burning until the fuel lasts. With the amount of mana that Martha poured inside it, it is probably going to burn for 3-4 minutes top.” She felt butterflies in her stomach, praising herself. So, she giggled a bit while replying to Dust.

Then suddenly the ant underground came to the surface screeching as if it was hurt. Its exoskeleton was bubbling and losing its shape. The others understood that the fire was probably more dangerous than it looked.

They waited for the fire to burn out and the room to cool down before entering the room.

“Good job kid, Good job. Everyone let’s move out and see what kind of an ant it is.” William spoke as he pushed Daniel into the room. Daniel parried the ant that was running amok trying to cool it sizzling Exoskeleton.

The others didn’t have to do anything, because a casual shield bash from Daniel on the ants head broke its neck, and made it disappear into dot of lights.

“Oh!!” Martha again got lost in the spectacle of flying dots, while the others felt disappointed because the ant didn’t leave behind anything.

“Okay, nothing to see here, let’s move out.” William walked to the next tunnel, but then stopped seeing there were two of them.

The discussion about which tunnel to chose didn’t last long. Though the thought to divide the party into two groups did show its presence, curtsey of Mr. Bill, but they simply brushed it off saying there was no need, and entered the tunnel on the left.

Which unfortunately ended opened into a dead end, and made them waste fifteen minutes. They didn’t find any ants inside either.

Gritting their teeth, they wasted another fifteen minutes to travel back, and finally entering the tunnel on the left.

Though they once again didn’t meet any monsters inside the tunnel, they did find the opening which brought them to another room. Which following the routine had three tunnels.

They looked at the ever increasing number of tunnels with twitching faces, and William shook his head.

They decided to not be stubborn and divided the party into three teams.

But then Daniel placed the topic of traps in front of the party.

“What about traps then? I know myself and I can’t distinguish between a trap and normal floor at all. And the way the ants are becoming… Stronger.” And everyone looked at him like they were looking at a clown. “What don’t look at me like that? Though I have to say the ant’s are pathetic for our levels or skills,” He glanced a Martha before continuing, “But what about those who do a dungeon solo? Or those whose levels are not enough. Don’t forget I am a ranker and there is a huge difference between a ranker and a leveler.”

Bill nodded his head, thinking about the meager contribution he had made.

“So what do are you trying to say.”

“I am saying that there is a chance, though slight, for there being traps inside one of the rooms. I am just saying that we need to think about all the dangers. I don’t want to risk my life or risk getting an injury, which otherwise could have been easily avoided.”

He made his point and stepped back. Then the group once again discussed between them how to go about it. Then decided to make the teams around Enco and Dust the only two fit members who could discover traps, and then there was Bill. Who could also discover traps, not actually like how an assassin could, but his Eagle Eye skill could find the discrepancy.

So, minding about the traps and what not, the teams were divided as following. Enco with Martha, Dust with Daniel, and Bill with William. Because only William was strong enough to take care of Bill, if ants ever decided to once again ambush him.

The groups then made a final check and went inside the tunnels.

Daniel looked at the back of William, who entered following Bill In the central tunnel. He smiled thinking that William, although acted hard on the outside, had a soft heat inside. William went inside the tunnel and Daniel’s eyes met with Martha who showed him her tongue and winked, before she followed Enco.

He smiled thinking about that other worldly beauty, but a sudden cough from Dust made his cheeks turn red.

“You coming?” She asked him, seemingly uninterested in his thoughts or his interactions with Martha.

*Ahem*

Clearing his throat, Daniel patiently walked inside his tunnel of choice, with Dust in the lead, and one of Martha’s light balls following behind them.

Because Dust was an Earth mage, and had the Earth Manipulation skill in the intermediate realm, it was easy for her to find things on the ground which weren’t a part of nature; Like pits, Spikes, groves and any other odd shaped cavities and such.

She did her best to find the traps, and after using a fifth of her mana by the time they reached the room at the end of the tunnel, they were completely sure that there were no traps installed on the floors in the dungeon.

They both stopped just outside the room, and after Daniel completely blocked the path to the room with his Mana shield, Dust used her Life sense skill to check what was inside the room.

“There are only two life signs inside the room. One is on the roof directly over the door, and the other is waiting hidden in the ground.”

“Ah! What’s with this dungeon, and its hidden ants? Are the monsters trying to be an assassin?!”

“Hu… Dusts laughed, but quickly changed back to her usual cold and mean self.

Daniel looked at her with shock, which made her look down at the ground. She changed the topic asking him what to do next, to which he replied saying, “I’ll handle the one on the roof. And you take care of the other one.”

He grinned at her and started counting, “Three, two and one. Let’s go!!”

Daniel used his shield to cover their heads from the ant on the roof.

“Jump!!” he heard and did a front flip as his armor rattled inside the empty cave. The ants attacked him, but his shield saved him from the above and his jump made him out of the other one.

Making a safe landing he Looked behind and saw the ant on the roof crying in pain from having one of her pincers broken during its collision with his shield, and at the bottom was the head of the other ant which was struggling to get out of the ground, but was being successfully being held by Dust.

His eyes met with Dust’s, and he gestured at her to kill the thing. To which she reacted by sending stone projectiles hurling toward its head.

Though bullets connected squarely with the targets head, they didn’t do anything more than to make the ant shake its head vigorously.

Her cheeks turning red, a long thin spike emerged from the roof and entered the ant’s eye.

*Screech*

The ant shook in pain, but then suddenly with Dust saying [Hedgehog] thin needles grew all over the spike, and made the ant quite.

“Ouch!” Daniel made a pained expression, and prayed for the ant.

Watching its partner getting killed so easily, the other ant shook its head like an angry bull. Then it jumped toward Daniel with its Mandible glowing white and eyes calling death.

But Daniel just smirked. Using his shield as a glove, he hooked the ant right on its jaw, and on contact activated Shield Bash.

*Fuu*

*Boom*

The ant flew through the air like a rag doll, and directly collided with the wall on his right side. It fell down, struggled and somehow stood back up. Its legs shaking like a drunkard, but before it could walk a single step, Daniel who was waiting with his sword charged with mana, threw the sword at it.

The ant was still staggering, probably at its last breath, when the sword pierced its head, and made the ant fly.

The sword carried the ant with it, and got logged into the wall behind the ant. And the ant hung from it.

Daniel looked at Dust, who had finally entered the room and smiled, then nudged his head toward the ant and slowly walked to it. He reached the ant and looked into its eye, as its bottom half started disappearing midst the light dots.

The ant was jet black in Color, with wide black eyes. In terms of height, this ant was almost reaching his navel. Now compare that with his almost seven foot tall reach, and you get a five foot tall ant. It was almost the same height of the mage, who was staring at it with her perfectly round eyes.

Its legs were pointed, like spear, and had small hairs on them. But its most dangerous looking weapons were not its legs or Antennas, but its head and its mandibles.

The head appeared disproportioned according to its body size. It alone was a meter long, and equally wide. The mandibles were really big, and looked even more menacing up close. They looked ready to snap away others necks.

Having seen what he wanted to see, Daniel held the sword handle which was sticking out of the ants forehead, and slowly pulled it out. Which accelerated the ants demise and it turned into dots of light, leaving behind an artifact in the shape of its face.

Dust checked whether the ant that she killed gave her anything, but disappointingly stood back up and walked to where Daniel was.

She saw him holding a mask in the shape of the ants face, with its mandibles and eyes attached, and squinted.

Daniel saw her coming toward her, and presented the mask to her. She was going to wear it, but then heard Daniel calling her, and started walking into the next tunnel.

They walked for another fifty meters, and came across another room. Dust used her skill, but instead of telling Daniel the situation, she simply walked inside the room. Daniel frowned, but the followed her inside, and saw Enco and Martha waiting for them inside.

He saw Martha looking as happy as ever and shook his head, but then heard footsteps of someone running, and saw Martha coming towards him.

Martha stopped a meter away from him, but before he could say anything she killed him saying, “Oh Tin man you are back! Martha thought you died somewhere in the tunnels!”

But Daniel saw something, a glint in her eyes; some wetness, which gave him a different emotion from her, than what her words transferred.

For him, all of the conflicts and turn of events that they were facing held no importance. And everything that had happened from start was nothing, but a source of mild amusement. But this girl, this madly beautiful, but psychotic girl felt like an escape to him. A change in his otherwise pathetic life, that he had been looking all his life for. And for some reason she had walked toward him on her own.

A smile formed on his face, as he patted her head and played with her hair, before asking about her journey through the tunnels.

Martha got stunned at his action, but didn’t otherwise stop him and replied, “We encountered no traps, but two ants in the tunnel and two big ones in the rooms. The ones in the room were big and strong. They scared Martha a lot. Even Martha’s fireball couldn’t hurt them, so Martha obliterated them with [light balls] instead. Martha said ‘~Phew-Phew~’ when they died, but slender man looked at me angrily because he didn’t get to kill any ants.” She spoke pointing at Enco, who visually shivered hearing her call him slender man.

Even Dust smirked hearing that.

Daniel hurriedly asked her if the ants dropped anything, but she only moved her head left to right, and kicked the ground while pouting. ‘So not all monsters drop something huh’ he thought.

But Martha started jumping around Daniel asking, “You got something!! Right, right? Show Martha! Show Martha!!”

Dust felt a headache coming toward her, so she quickly recovered the ant mask from her pouch and gave it to Martha. Dust waited in anticipation of Martha yelling, ‘Oh it’s so dirty!’ or something like that, but instead she heard her yelling in amusement.

She looked at Martha and saw her wearing the ant mask on her face and yelling, “Oh, so many lights!! Martha loves it!!! Oh, Oh, even that tsundre is a light ball. Haaha this is so funny. Oh thank god slender man is not here anymore. Ah! Tin man is so blinding, my eyes hurt!”

Then Martha removed the mask from her head and sat on the ground with her head in her hands repeating ‘Ite, ite, ite!!

Dust picked up the mask with a frowning face and felling repulsive and oddly irritated she put it on.

And her world changed. The whole cave lit up in multiple dots of lights. Even the walls glowed with a soft brightness. She looked down to see Martha and saw a deep red ball instead, looking at Daniel she saw a white ball radiating soothing and warm light. She was going to see what Enco looked through the mask, but then a commotion occurred in the middle tunnel.

She saw a dark ball stumbling out from the middle cave. Hurriedly removing the mask, she saw William coming out of the tunnel, battered and wounded.

They all moved at once when, and hurriedly closed the gap between them and the shadow. But when they got closer to it, what they saw left them horrified.

Their captain, who they thought to be the most powerful of them, was stumbling around everywhere like a drunkard, but the difference being he was completely drenched in blood instead of alcohol. His clothes were ripped apart and his upper torso armor was almost nonexistent.

Entering the room, William saw his team mates running towards him. He smiled, but then fell on the ground with a thud.

Sir! Leader! Their cries, which were enough to engulf the whole cave, rang out inside the room. William who was still conscious, even after all that he had gone through, shoved his head up and saw his team mates worrying for him. He couldn’t help but will his body to move, which after some struggle did.

Martha, who was already near him moved even more fiercely, she swiftly got behind his back and helped him sit down. He thanked her, and looked toward everyone who were standing beside him.

“What happened to you? Why are there so many scars all over your body? What the hell happened inside that tunnel?” Daniel couldn’t suppress his fear and panicked. His voice started trembling. He removed his sack from his waist and pulled a red bottle out of it, before he simmered most of its content on James body, and gave him another to drink, which he unconditionally accepted and drank.

“We were ambushed.” William said while drinking the content of the bottle. “When we entered the tunnel, we saw that it was completely empty.” saying that he moved his sight to look at the roof, “But who knew that they would be waiting for us in the open space. Because we were too careless, we left the tunnel and entered the room, without checking for monsters, and just as we did, we saw how big a mistake we had made.” He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists tightly.

“There were ants inside, so many of them that they were almost everywhere. They surrounded us from every side, and blocked the way in and out of the tunnel. We knew that to survive we had to fight, it was now or never, and we just did that.” His eyes turned bloodshot thinking about all that he had to endure to keep his life.

Others were sure, instead of tears blood would start flowing from his eyes if he didn’t calm down, but they couldn’t stop him from expressing his grief, “I killed some while protecting Bill, and he killed some while I protected him. Like that, we continued to kill the ants and when only five were left something happened. And only after fighting them for a long time, could I defeat them all.” he said looking at the ceiling.

All of them were left flabbergasted. What happened inside the tunnel? They didn’t know. They only knew that two people entered the tunnel and only one of them came out from it.

“Ah!” Daniel knew that William didn’t go alone in the tunnel. Bill ‘the archer’ was also with him. He looked back toward the tunnel that he came out of, but didn’t see anything else other than a trail of blood.

He looked back at their leader and asked, “Where is Bill?”

William, who was still looking at the ceiling, didn’t even turn his head to look at the Knight. With his face devoid of expressions, but with eyes full of grief he said, “There was one ant which never came down from the roof when others did to start the hunt. It waited for the perfect opportunity, and just when I left Bill… alone… in a proper and secure place to deal with the remaining ants…. He got his neck snapped in two by it, and there he died fighting with the ants.”

“I… I told him that I would protect him, but… but I failed… I’m sorry. Bill is no more.”