"You're coming into the Crystal Dungeon with me?" Drake asks when I step into the access ring.

"Admittedly for selfish reasons," I tell him. "There's CP in it for me, even if you'll do pretty much all of the work."

"That's 400 CP, right?" He asks. "One for each room? How much is the first completion bonus?"

"According to Daniel," I tell him. "You only earn 25 CP for completing it."

"Only 25?" He asks. "After doing four hundred rooms?"

"The purpose of the trial," I say. "Is to obtain the Crystal of Power, something worth more than thousands of CP. That's why the CP reward is so low."

"Oh," he says. "So you're doing it to take advantage of even just a few more CP?"

"Yes," I answer. "However, you receive more CP with every Elemental Trial you complete, and you can only do them under two conditions. The first is you've done the Trial of the Crystal of Power, and the second is if you're in the party that has the one you obtained. If I accompany you for all four of the Elemental Trials, the CP will add up."

The fact that we receive a higher amount of CP with each Elemental Trial we complete made me believe that each one was more difficult than the last. After coming to that conclusion last night, I asked Daniel about it, and he confirmed it to me.

He also told me that the Trial of the Crystal of Power's had a wide variety of things it could be, but we would only encounter five terrains. Each would would last for four floors, then it would change to the next one. No one ever knew which terrain they would encounter, which made preparing a little more difficult.

After he told me all of that, I did some more shopping while Drake… tried to find his way back to the apartment from the tavern. He didn't let me know he was lost, and his face made it clear he's embarrassed by his lack of navigational ability. That embarrassment explains why his face turned red when I told him I was accompanying him on his journey; he didn't want me to find out that little detail regarding him.

On my second shopping trip yesterday, which I barely managed to get in before the shops closed, I bought gear for several types of terrains and weather, just to be on the same side. It seems that there can be inclement weather in the Dungeons.

Daniel and Cassidy also gave me some more information they'd forgotten. The local Dungeons aren't as complex as some of the others, and one of the features that will definitely show up in the trial for the Crystal of Power will be the trap that can be triggered resulting in the entryways in a room being sealed until all monsters are defeated. In other words, we will, on occasion, be required to fight in order to leave.

Another type of room they told me about, which Daniel said doesn't appear during the trial, is a puzzle room, requiring us to perform some sort of puzzle before we can leave it. It makes sense that wouldn't be during the trial, though, since the trial fills up all twenty rooms on each floor with either a chest, monsters, or the boss monster.

"Let's head in," I tell Drake. "Since it's for you to obtain, you lead us in. If you don't actually want me to ride along for the free CP I'd get from your efforts, don't accept me going in with you. It gives you a choice, so you can go in by yourself."

"I'll take you in," he says quickly. "Your Mapping Skill will prove most useful in such a large Dungeon."

You're planning on taking on Treasure Hunter as your second Class, aren't you? Though I don't blame him, since it will help him out immensely if he's on his own. I don't plan on letting him be on his own, though. Not when the fate of the world depends on someone who would probably find the Wind Crystal after he dies of old age.

"Okay," I say.

Drake puts his hand on the access stone, and a few seconds pass before the runes glow, then our surroundings change.

The form the room takes here is… clouds. We're standing on fluffy clouds touched by the light of dawn. Or dusk? The clouds have an orange-pink hue to them, creating a pretty nice look.

It's strange, though. I thought clouds weren't actually thick like this, but masses of water droplets and dust? That's what Cassidy told me, long ago. Are the clouds for the cloud terrain different, then? I guess it makes sense, since there would need to be a bottom to it. The thickness of the clouds, and how they look like we could walk on them, is probably so that we don't see the 'bottom'.

Well, we aren't directly standing on the clouds. There are white stones forming paths and small platforms here, the light of dawn reflecting off of them as well.

The sky above us has the same orange-pink hue as well, with no sign of a sun or cloud above us. The walls are twenty-foot-tall walls of clouds to match the ground. The entry room has an entrance on all four walls.

Just in case, I pull up my Map and set it to the corner of my vision. While I'm confident in my ability to keep a mental track of my surroundings, even in a Dungeon, this still has the potential to throw me off just because of its size.

"Huh?" Drake looks around, confused. "We're in… clouds?"

"Yes," I answer. "And the sky can still get cloudy, too. We're not safe if it decides to rain."

"O-okay," he says. "Why are we on clouds?"

"Because that's how the first four floors are for us, apparently," I answer, then remember something I'd heard a long time ago. "Make sure to navigate on the stones. The clouds might be thick and fluffy, hard to see through, and that applies to movement as well. It will make walking tough, and since they're clouds, they'll soak your pants and boots as well."

"I thought we went through all of the Dungeons here," Drake gives me a confused look. "Out there, I mean. How do you know this?"

"I used to live in the capital," I tell him. "Where there were a lot of adventurers. I'd heard about this sort of terrain before. It's been a long time, though, and I think I'm forgetting something else about it."

Whatever it is, I'm sure we'll accidentally discover it.

"Before we move on," I look at Drake. "What's the plan? Are we going to explore every room? Look for the rooms with chests in them? Or try to find the exit and only open the chests we come across as we travel?"

"Will we fight?" He asks.

"We'll have to fight a few monsters for sure," I tell him. "This is meant to be difficult, so it would be strange if we could manage to evade all of the monsters."

"Let's try to find the exit," he answers. "Kill everything in each room we go in, rest a little, then move on, just in case the next room is the boss room."

"Okay," I say. "And I'll lead the way."

I can sense the general direction of the boss room, which is northwest of here. I've never been able to figure out if what I sense when I sense the boss monsters is the danger they pose or the treasure they might possibly drop. That's mostly because in the weaker local Dungeons, neither of those is all that great, meaning my sense for danger and my sense for treasure shouldn't register them.

So maybe I have a sense for boss monsters in Dungeons? That would be an oddly specific sense ability, though.

"Let's go this way," I tell Drake as I walk toward the western exit from the room.

My strategy is to always take the western exit, and if that's not possible, then the northern, then eastern, then southern, in that order. Basically, start west and go clockwise, skipping over any entrance we already went through, only backtracking once every path has been traveled.

Why include going south instead of simply backtracking? Because sometimes, the route takes us in the opposite direction before taking us in the proper one.

Drake and I step through the western entry and into the next chamber. The path in here consists of lone stones spaced a foot or so apart, each large enough for a single person to stand on, apart from the one we're on. I'm guessing the ones at the western and southern entrances are this large as well, to allow the party to come out.

Flying lazily around the room are four falcon-like creatures, though their bodies are easily as large as my torso, their wingspans massive. A glance at Drake shows a slight bit of drool and a hungry look in his eyes.

"Not had bird much, living in the caves?" I ask.

"Little 'uns weren't allowed to leave the cave," he says. "So we were just fed scraps. I got less than others, and birds were only for those who caught them. Those look so good."

"We can get you a bird after we leave here."

"And a giant rat," his eyes fill with excitement. "We haven't done that yet, either."

"Right, and a giant rat," I say. "We have to leave here first, though, and I'm definitely not able to take on giant predator birds."

I've had to deal with crows in the forest Dungeons a couple of times before, and they were frustrating to handle due to their speed and the added mobility of being able to fly around. While these falcon-like beasts are bigger targets, I still doubt I'd be of much use against them.

"Aim for the wings," Drake draws his sword. "Disable their flight, and they become much easier to deal with."

He charges forward, leaping from stone to stone as I think about that. I suppose as a dragon, he would need to think about how to guard against enemies grounding him as he flew. But if he were stuck in the caves, then he wouldn't have been allowed to do that yet. Was that a lesson drilled into him? Instinctual knowledge? Something he figured out on his own?

He just cut off that bird's wing with a single slash. I guess it makes sense he'd be able to do that on the first floor with a sword from Silent Valley. It's sharp and he's strong. He probably only felt the slightest resistance, but he's going to wear it out doing that, and caring for a sword properly takes time.

The bird falls to the clouds as the other three take notice of us and soar to Drake, focusing on the one who struck another of them. As the first bird hits the clouds, I notice sparks striking it from the clouds.

Ah, right, now I remember the other thing. Sometimes, lightning strikes things which go into the clouds.

Ignoring the other three for a moment, Drake rams his sword into the first bird's neck, killing it as lightning goes up the blade and onto his arm, and he pulls his sword out, before beginning the battle with the other three.

He acted like the lightning didn't bother him. That's pretty strange, in my opinion. I'm sure that even 20 Constitution isn't enough to resist lightning, and he's in human form, so it's not like he has a draconic hide, despite the scales.

Drake finishes off the monsters, then I approach him as the last of them finishes fading away and he sheathes his sword. His fighting style still seems to consist mostly of just stabbing and punching until it dies.

"Are you okay?" I ask. "You were shocked."

"It was a tingle," he tells me, then taps the scales on his sides as his tail flicks a little. "My scales absorb and disperse electrical charges before they can affect me. It seems that remains true as much in human form as it does in my true form."

That seems incredibly useful. It also grants him another way to cheat his way through this, too. I'm doubting being directionally-challenged is a flaw all dragons have. Are there any downsides to being an actual dragon?

"I see," I say. "Let's continue on."

"Okay," Drake says.

We begin walking through the various rooms following my strategy, and it takes us eleven more rooms before we reach the boss room. We had bad luck this run, not coming across a single chest room.

When I step through the entry to the fourteenth room, I'm greeted by a room three times the length and width from normal rooms with around half of the ground taken up by stones or stone platforms, with an unusual monster in here. It has the body of a lion, a serpent for a tail, the head of an eagle, and a pair of brown-and-white wings.

Glancing behind me, I find that there's no archway for me to go back through, and when Drake enters the room, it's as if he's walking out of the clouds. I suppose it's one-way until the beast is killed.

"Boss room," I tell him.

"It's a griffin," his stomach rumbles. "They're tasty."

"You've eaten them before?" I ask.

"Scraps," he nods. "They're a pest. Fresh griffin sounds good."

"It'll fade when it dies," I remind him.

"For that, no mercy."

He draws his sword and charges the griffin, aiming at it swings. It takes off into the air, and Drake jumps, his greater strength allowing him to jump higher than I could hope to jump. His sword barely strikes the wing of the griffin before it's out of range, and Drake lands on a platform.

Even though his jump seemed random, he managed to land on a platform anyway. Did he plan that? If so, then he's definitely learned his lessons from Daniel and Cassidy, even from before I made him aware of just how easily someone far weaker than him could take him down.

Drake's attacks continue, with the dragon meteor jumping from stone and platform, striking at the griffin as it attempts to claw him or bite him with its face or tail, only for them to briefly exchange blows before he lands again. He never once lands in the clouds, confirming to me that he's using some planning. His attacks are all aimed at its wings, too.

The griffin seems content to ignore me, so I wait, but remain standing, just in case. However, I never come into any danger. Drake manages to ground it by damaging its wings enough, then he cuts off its tail, then he goes for its head.

I don't think going for the tail was necessary.

Once the griffin dies, Drake turns and looks at me with a massive grin on his face.

"Griffin steaks dropped!"

"Congrats," I tell him. "Automatic drops don't spoil as long as you don't take them out of the Inventory, so-"

He pulls out the rather large steak, then takes a massive bite from it, his tail flicking in his happiness as he lets out a happy noise.

"-you can eat it now," I mutter.

This trip might end up feeling longer than it should.