We've managed to make it through the first four floors, and Drake hasn't gotten sick yet from eating raw meat, so I'm going to assume his body's able to handle it. He has, anyway. I'm glad for that, since he wasn't sure before and eating the griffin steak was an impulsing thing for him.

Same with the steaks from the next three griffins. He really had a desire for tasting fresh ones.

Thankfully, we haven't needed to rest much, either. We can probably do another two or three floors today, if they continue to grow as tough as they have been. If they begin growing even tougher, then we might only manage one or two more, especially if Drake continues to trigger traps as he fights.

"Ready to find out what the terrain for our next set of floors will be?" I ask Drake as he steps into the access ring.

"Yeah," he answers.

"Okay," I place my hand on the access stone and go through the menus to send us to the next floor.

We appear in a stone platform forty feet along each side, with stone paths leading from the platform to the archways set into the fifteen-foot-tall walls of water bordering the room. The water which makes up the walls is dark, as if from a depth, with no light passing through it. The room is the standard Dungeon room size at sixty feet along each wall, and the space not occupied by the platform or the paths is full of water.

"Looks like it's water," I tell Drake as I sniff the air. "Smells salty, too. You don't get seasick, do you?"

"No," he answers. "I've never had fish before."

"You've had some fish at the tavern," I remind him.

"That wasn't fresh," his stomach rumbles.

"We probably won't encounter fish monsters," I tell him as I look around. "Though I'm not sure what type we'd come across here. The water-based terrains I know of don't have walls like that, and the stone platform thing's a new one for me. I'd heard it was usually just dirt or sand, like small islands."

"Okay," he says. "Let's go."

We walk over to the northern entryway, and as we walk along the path, Drake looks down into the water below.

"I can't see the bottom!" He exclaims.

"I don't know how far down the water goes," I tell him, and he reaches for his belt. "We can find out if we end up in another Dungeon like this, Drake. We should try to finish this one as soon as possible."

"Right," he drops his arms back down to his sides. "Let's go."

I roll my eyes, then let him pass in front of me so that he enters the next chamber first. I follow him in, nearly bumping into him because he stopped just inside of it.

"What is it?" I step to the side, setting my eyes upon the monster in the center of the chamber. "Oh."

It's a toad. Not just any type of toad, though. This one is about as tall as Drake is, with oily-looking skin and a big, black eyes.

"That's a big toad," Drake draws his sword and begins to advance.

"Watch out for its tongue."

"It's tongue?" He's already halfway to the platform.

"Yeah," I answer. "It can-"

The toad flicks out its tongue, which smacks Drake, sending him tumbling back. Its tongue quickly retreats, and as Drake catches himself, I notice blood on his sword. Did he cut it? When?

"Tch!" Drake clicks his tongue in agitation, then charges forward.

This time, when the toad flicks out its tongue, Drake sidesteps it, and I see the strike of his sword, along with the previous cut. I probably missed the first one because it happened in front of Drake, but the second strike was definitely intentional.

I wait here as Drake battles the toad, advancing closer and closer to it as it flicks out its tongue. When he draws within ten feet, the toad leaps over him, landing closer to me and fixing its gaze on me

"Oh, no you don't!" Drake exclaims, and the toad shifts to the side. "You fight me, toady boy! Not him!"

That was a random bout of childishness.

The toad hops away, and I watch as Drake begins chasing it around the platform and defending against its attacks, which seem to mostly consist of flicking its tongue out, even though Drake's managed to cut it up pretty bad.

After a few minutes, I realize that the toad isn't just hopping around. Some of its leaps are an attempt to land on Drake, and I think the meteor dragon's realized this, the way he's moving around.

"Drake!" I call out. "When it tries to land on you, stab it as it lands!"

"Oh!" His face lights up in realization as he avoids the tongue again, striking it once more.

The next time the toad tries to land on Drake, he aims his sword straight up, and the toad lands on him. That… works a little, I guess. I'm sure he's figured out I meant from the side. A few moments pass, then the toad begins to fade, and Drake gives me an embarrassed look as he picks himself up off the ground.

"Maybe I should have gone beside where it was going to land?" He asks, inspecting his sword.

"Maybe," I tell him. "At least it didn't bend up the sword. You do need to fix it a little, though."

"Yeah," he says. "I do."

Drake takes care of his sword as I approach, and once he finishes, we move on to the next room, which contains two giant toads. Without a moment of hesitation, Drake charges in, this time moving faster than he did in the previous room when running around.

Swinging his sword, Drake aims at the nearest toad's underside, only for the other toad to flick its tongue out to protect the first. Drake struggles more with this battle than the previous due to the two toads protecting each other, but after he kills one, the other dies much, much more easily.

"You really don't like fighting, do you?" He asks as I join him.

"I can fight," I tell him. "But fighting giant toads that would probably crush me completely with their body if they landed on me or break dozens of bones when their tongue hits me? I'd rather avoid that fight."

"I could break your bones with a single strike," he says.

"Yeah," I say. "But evading your attacks are much easier. I'd be able to dodge the tongue and the body-slams for the most part as long as I acted before the toads moved, but I wouldn't be able to kill them, especially not with my knives. Blind them, maybe, but unless I'm going inside the monsters, there's no way I could kill them."

"Oh," he says.

"Come on," I tell him.

I navigate us through the floor, with Drake continuing to kill everything. If this were a regular Dungeon closer to the ones in Silent Valley in terms of difficulty, I would have a much easier time helping Drake. However, I am several Tiers too low to be of much use here.

We finally reach the boss room, which has a giant turtle instead of a giant toad.

"Don't attack the shell," I tell Drake. "You'll wear out your sword. "Aim for the head. You should be able to manage to kill it even while its head is pulled in, just shove your sword in."

"Got it!" He charges into battle, and I wait out the fight.

After he kills it, we move on to the next floor, and complete the sixth and seventh floors before stopping for the night, resting in the arrival room on the eighth floor. Drake is too exhausted for much of anything after we eat dinner, and just collapses on the ground, using his arm as a pillow. I lie beside him, watching him sleep as I fall asleep.

When morning comes, we resume traveling through the Dungeon, completing the eighth floor and advancing to the ninth. It appears that our next terrain is caves, with torches set in the walls to illuminate it, providing enough light for us to see by even from the center of the room.

"I don't like caves," Drake mutters.

Having lived in caves all his life, I would expect him to feel more at home in them. I suppose that as a dragon, though, he felt cooped-up instead and longed for freedom and open skies.

"Well," I tell him. "We should manage to make it through this set of floors today, let's go."

"Yeah," he mutters. "Let's go."

Our first room in here is a monster room featuring two giant moles and a large salamander. Drake attacks them rather viciously, and I think he wants to get through here as fast as possible. Because of that, I do my best to navigate us through as quickly as possible and try to warn him in advance if we're in a room with a trapped floor, before he triggers them.

It doesn't help much, though, because he can't easily tell when he's about to step on a trap trigger. After a couple of hours, we finally make it through the floor, with Drake killing the giant mole at the end in just a couple of minutes.

The next three floors go much the same way, with each one taking a little bit longer due to the monsters growing tougher. The journey is monotonous and boring for the most part, and at the end of the day, we stop in the last exit room of the twelfth floor. Drake wants to move on, but I tell him we should rest here. Just a feeling I have about the next terrain we'll be dealing with.

Reluctantly, he agrees to it, so we lie down and get some sleep as I pray for us to be able to continue moving quickly through here. It might not be as quickly as it would if we had a team of strong adventurers, but at least we're making progress. The next two sets of floors will probably take us three or four days to make it through, having only one fighter capable of handling the monsters here.

When morning comes, we eat breakfast, then enter the access ring, and I bring us to the next floor. It's similar to the second set of floors, with a platform in the center and paths leading to the entryways set into the walls. However, rather than water, the area around the platforms are molten rock, the walls made of stone. Our light comes from the molten rock, magma, I think it's called?

However, it's probably not magma. First, it doesn't emit any fumes, and I know that magma does. Second, while the temperature is hotter in here, the molten rock in dungeons is safe to be around as long as we don't touch it. Daniel's mentioned before that unprotected, getting too close to magma can be deadly due to both the heat and the fumes.

So it is probably just some sort of magical, molten rock.

Drake and I begin the journey through the thirteenth floor, and the monsters in here consist of large, flaming salamanders and golems made of molten rock. It would be better if we had a mage in the party to use water and ice magics on these things, but since we don't, Drake attacks them.

Using his sword. Which melts beyond repair after just a couple of attacks against a magma golem. He tosses it aside and starts punching with his bare fists until the golem breaks apart, then gives me a confident nod.

That's another point in the favor of it just being some form of magical molten rock. I might not be an expert, but I'm pretty sure his Constitution isn't high enough to actually protect him from punching magma.

Upon realizing that punching the golem resulted in his tunic catching fire, Drake pulls it off and puts it out, then sends it into his Inventory, and we resume our trip, with the occasional stop to put out Drake's pants as well.

The boss room here contains an even larger magma golem, which occasionally dips into the molten rock surrounding the platform to restore itself. However, that doesn't stop Drake from battering it with his fists until it dies.

We move on to the next floor, and I think we'll manage one more after this, since the thirteenth floor took us three hours to complete. After finishing this floor, we stop for lunch in the arrival room for the fifteenth floor, then resume our trip through here.

"Finally," Drake collapses on the ground in the exit room for the floor. "Let's rest here, I don't think I could do a fourth floor."

"Yeah," I say. "Ideally, we'd get through all four of the magma floors so that we didn't have so much light when trying to sleep, but that's not possible."

"Yeah," he sits up. "What's for dinner?"

"Cheese, smoked meats, and some fruit," I answer, pulling dinner out of my Inventory.

We eat dinner, then go to sleep. Morning comes, and we resume our journey, making it through the sixteenth floor in around four hours. Upon arriving in the seventeenth floor, we're greeted by the sight of a forest-based Dungeon..

"This is more comfortable," I stretch. "We'll probably face bears, wolves, and boars in here, since those are common forest monsters. But remember that this is the seventeenth floor of the trial for the Crystal of Power, so they won't be as easy as the ones in the forest Dungeons outside."

"Yeah," he nods. "Let's go."

We begin our trip through here, coming across mostly wolves with the occasional bear, Drake using his fists and feet to fight since he lost his sword several floors ago. After more than four hours, fighting most of the monsters, coming across three chests, and dealing with seven traps, we finally reach the boss room, where a giant boar awaits.

"Delicious," Drake murmurs, then charges the boar as it charges him.

Wisely, I move to the side, and the boar pushes Drake back with its charge, but he holds on to its tusks, throwing it to the side once they stop. Without a sword to use, Drake begins battering it with his fists. He manages to break off one of its tusks, and uses that to rip into its body and eventually kill it.

That was actually a little scary, and Drake now has blood coating his arms and part of his bare torso and face. The happy look he gives me only makes it seem even worse, too.

We move on to the next floor, which takes us around four and a half hours to finish, and as we settle down for the night, I realize something about the terrains we went through. Daniel said they're random and could be any Dungeon terrain, but ours were actually themed up until now.

Wind. Water. Earth. Fire.

We've encountered one which represents each of the four elements. Now, we're in a forest-themed terrain. Granny once told me that the forest is the embodiment of the four elements, combined and that the 'element' of forest represents the world.

It's a strange coincidence, especially since that's the order of the Elemental Crystals I figured we'd do. The Wind Crystal is on this continent, and the Water Crystal is on a series of islands to the west, between this continent and the eastern. The Earth and Fire Crystals are on the eastern continent.

Once we finish charging the Crystal of Power that Drake will obtain here, he'll then save the world.

It's as if the Crystal Dungeon knows the quest and tailored our terrains to it.

"What are you thinking about?" Drake asks, and I look over at him.

"Nothing important," I tell him. "Get some sleep, Drake. We should be able to finish tomorrow."

"Yeah," he nods. "Good night, Nate."