"I know you gained a trait for forcing me to cross-dress. Admit it."

"Nu-uh. I'm not admitting anything."

"You made me tell you about [Test Subject]."

Cluma squirmed uncomfortably as we travelled floor twenty of the Serpent Isle dungeon, trying to get to the exit portal so I could free up a [Detach] link. "We need to concentrate on the monsters!" she complained in a blatant effort to deflect.

"How come it's one rule for you and another for me? I have to tell you things, but you don't have to tell me."

"It's not like I forced you. You could have said no," she grumbled.

"And then you'd have assumed I got a stupid trait for risking myself, and been on about it all day."

"You did get a stupid trait for risking yourself. And now you've been on about it all day! Two days."

"So I guess we're even?"

"[Loyal] evolved to [Devoted Tease]," she muttered. "The description is mostly the same, but it added a sentence about me teasing my friends to the end."

"Oh. That's nowhere near as bad as I assumed. I expected something like 'sadist' or 'frenemy', but it was just a [Loyal] evolution. See, now that you've told me what it really was, I..."

I paused as my [Mana Sight] picked up a rainbow mamba twisting to face us. I'd thought we were far enough away to not draw its attention, but I'd apparently misjudged.

"Incoming rainbow mamba. Usual strategy," I said, switching to professional mode. We couldn't afford to mess around on this floor.

Cluma already had [Stealth] active, but from our first encounter with one, we knew these rainbow mambas could sense her footsteps. They were faster at adapting to deal with her than any previous monster, too. Thankfully, they paid for their special abilities by being weaker and far less durable than the anaconda emperors, and they weren't the only ones that could adapt.

Cluma moved between me and the snake before it came close enough to detect her light footsteps. It slithered into view, spotted me, and darted forward. Cluma waited motionlessly for it to draw level with her, then stabbed downward, burying her dagger into the snake's head. It spasmed, catching Cluma with a flick of its tail, but her new armour absorbed the blow with ease and the lightweight mamba failed to shift her a single step. Seconds later, it was dead.

"I feel like bait," I complained, storing the entire corpse in [Item Box]. The guild would buy enough parts of these mambas that it wasn't worth trying to dissect them myself.

"You're the one who came up with the strategy," said Cluma, wiping down her dagger.

"Well, yes. It's a good strategy, too. Hasn't failed us so far. Doesn't stop me feeling like bait."

"Take [Scout] then, and we can swap roles."

"What, no follow-on comment about me needing to wear your silence enchanted clothing this time?"

"..."

I stared at the invisible Cluma with active [Mana Sight], trying to get a read on her mood. After yesterday, I felt I was due a spot of counter-teasing, but I didn't want to push things too far.

ding

Skill [Mana Sight] advanced to level 15

"...I know you like it really," she said quietly.

"Wait, what?"

"You enjoy it when I tease you! You've always had a very expressive face, and with those ears and my nose on top of that, do you really think you're hiding anything? Your reaction when you'd finished changing the first time wasn't all that different to seeing me in my new armour-less armour."

For the umpteenth time this dungeon, I acquired an unplanned face full of mud as her counter-counter-teasing delivered a critical hit.

"I wouldn't do it if I didn't know you liked it, or even if you just told me to stop," muttered my tormentor, ignoring my sudden face-plant. "Just how mean do you think I am? You could have said 'no' yesterday. It wasn't like I could have forced you, or would have even if I could."

I had said no yesterday! And then the entire memory of it had been wiped from her head. And I hadn't said no the second time for a couple of reasons, only one of which was not wanting to watch her lose memories again. I filed that under 'things to deal with later or preferably never', before realising that was the exact problem that had plagued our relationship already, and I really did need to communicate properly.

"Okay... Maybe I don't... totally hate it. But before next time, we need to discuss some boundaries."

"Mmmk."

We trudged on for another minute before another snake reacted to our presence. A prismatic serpent brood-mother, this time. As long as they were dealt with quickly, they turned out to be the weakest monster of the floor; unlike the boss version, they didn't have underlings pre-spawned, and would only start to create them once aggroed. They couldn't move while spawning, so we just needed to sweep in and stab them before they finished.

Sweeping in was a lot harder with an anaconda emperor sprawled between us. Not to mention a pair of rainbow mambas further away, but who may well be attracted by the noise should we fight the brood-mother where it was.

"Four enemies. A brood-mother has picked us up and started to spawn, but there's an anaconda and pair of mambas in range."

"That's... a lot."

"Use [Stealth] to rush the brood-mother and assassinate it before it produces its spawn. I'll take out the anaconda. The mambas will probably come for you, so kill the brood-mother and get back to me before they reach you."

Cluma nodded, then shot off in the direction I'd indicated, shooting up a tree and leaping between branches to bypass the anaconda. Meanwhile, I was making no attempt at stealth as I moved through the undergrowth, deliberately drawing the attention of the massive snake. Using my lightning glove would attract snakes from far around, besides not being particularly effective, so I stuck with my staff and sword. After spending the previous afternoon relearning how to move, I was at the point I could wield them properly without worrying about the added momentum throwing me off.

I drew my sword-staff back, ready to launch an attack, but the alerted anaconda whipped its tail around, aiming to strike me in the stomach. A clean hit would have launched me backward, smashing me into a tree, but I had no intention of letting that happen. A single use of [Far Step] propelled me out of the line of attack and right in front of the snake's head. Employing my enhanced strength, boosted with [Superimpose] and [Strength], as well as the increased momentum from [Superimpose] and [Mighty Swing], I plunged the sword-staff forward, adding [Armour Break] to help it penetrate the anacondas thick, leathery skin and [Swift Strike] to cut down its chances to respond. It didn't even have time to open its mouth before my sword-staff pierced through its snout, ending up three quarters buried.

The anacondas were, alas, the most resilient monsters on this floor, and even having my staff stuck through its skull didn't immediately kill it. I abandoned the staff and leapt back as it thrashed around, drawing my sword instead and making [Far Reach] powered swings.

Through [Mana Sight], I watched Cluma's successful assassination of the brood-mother. Her movements attracted the attention of the mambas, but with the brood-mother dead, Cluma fell silent and still. She must have judged them too close for her to return to me without alerting them to her presence, and since the anaconda was taking longer to go down than I expected, I wasn't going to complain. The mambas surveyed the scene before turning to face me, slithering towards the ruckus of the writhing anaconda.

One of them slithered straight past Cluma. It didn't survive.

I saw the second mamba turn back, sniffing around for their assailant, but was unable to watch more due to the anaconda starting to make more targeted attacks, demanding my full attention to evade. Its swinging tail smashed through a tree as easily as a matchstick, but the wounds from my sword were adding up, and, of course, it had more than a metre of adamantite stabbed into its face. That sort of thing tends to cause issues sooner or later, and it wasn't long before the anaconda went down. Ripping my sword-staff back out from the corpse, I hurried towards Cluma, where she was sitting on the corpse of the brood-mother, waiting for me, the pair of mamba corpses at her feet.

ding

Skill [Armour Break] advanced to level 8

Skill [Mighty Swing] advanced to level 10

"Not quite according to plan, but that went well," I observed, storing the mamba corpses. The others were too big to store whole, so I drew my dismantling knife and got to work. The way I'd taken down the anaconda resulted in a lot of damage to its skin, so I stuck to the cores only.

"Mmm. It's weird. I know that if one of those mambas bit me, or the anaconda caught me, I'd be in serious trouble, but with some tactics and the first strike, the fights become easy."

"This is why scouts are so important to a party. Imagine if we didn't have long-range sensory skills, and the monsters detected us before we detected them."

"...Except that I'm supposed to be the [Scout], but my [Monster Perception] range sucks compared to your [Mana Sight]."

"I meant scout as in the function, not the class. I find them, you stab them."

Cluma giggled as I stored the last core and cleaned off my knife. "I got [Victorious Underdog 2] from that, by the way. Apparently, the System didn't think you helped."

"I didn't. That's a single monster thing; you didn't have to deal with all of them on your own."

Back when I'd got [Victorious Underdog], I was in a fight for my life, and without Erryn cheating I'd have died. Now I'd picked up the third version of it completely by accident, and Cluma had picked up the second without us even thinking about it.

"How much further is it, anyway? We must be almost there by now."

I checked [Clock], and found that we had indeed been at this for three and a half hours. The monsters here were tough enough that fighting them took time, and I'd outright bypassed a few nests, deciding that the monster counts were too high to risk aggroing them all at once. Trying to fight a dozen rainbow mambas simultaneously was not on my day's to-do list, leading to a sizeable detour.

"Yes, we should almost be there. This has already taken us the longest out of any floor."

Ten minutes and another pair of anacondas later, and we made it to the portal, stepping through into the usual clearing. Uniquely for any boss antechamber in this dungeon thus far, it was completely empty, with no sign of other delvers. The portal to the boss was transparent and open, the hydra beyond large enough to be visible. And if it was visible... Would [Eye of Judgement] work through a portal?

Four-Headed Hydra (Level: 40)

Health: 205/205

Stamina: 205/205

Mana: 75/75

Strength: 160

Dexterity: 140

Endurance: 200

Intelligence: 30

Wisdom: 50

Charisma: 5

Abilities: [Mana Reserves 40] [Flame Breath 40] [Ice Breath 40] [Poison Breath 40] [Sonic Breath 40] [Regeneration 40]

This young hydra does not yet possess its full collection of heads, but those that have grown already give it a range of abilities. While all parts of the hydra are able to regenerate indefinitely, the heads will heal far more rapidly than the body.

The monster was without limbs, a snake's body that was easily two metres in diameter and thirty long, coiled up in the centre of the chamber. At the front end, the body split into four, each neck with the same two-meter girth and ending in a snake's head.

Four heads and four breath attacks. I saw no distinguishing marks on the heads, at least from this distance. At best, that meant we wouldn't know which head did what until we attacked it. At worst, each head could use all four attacks. I'd be willing to bet Grover's rings of ice resistance would provide good protection from its ice breath, and our antidotes could neutralise the poison breath, as long as we had the time to drink them. We had rank two amulets of fire resistance, which was better than nothing, but not enough that I would stand there and let it flame me. What about sonic attacks, though? We both had our ears covered by helmets, but they were deliberately designed to not impede sound, as far as was possible.

Besides, a loud enough attack wouldn't require ears to pose a danger.

I scanned it with [Mana Sight], the skill working through the portal with ease, looking for vital points to target. Alas, while it did have hearts and lungs, they were in each head, not in the body. As far as I could see, it had full redundancy of vital organs. It couldn't be killed with a single stab. If I had a two-metre long blade, perhaps I could sever the body just behind where the heads connected in a single swing, but I didn't. Besides, with that endurance, I didn't fancy my chances of success.

"Well, there's the final boss."

"Yup. He's even bigger than the anaconda emperor! Do you think we can take him?"

"I'm not sure. We need to get more details from delvers that have fought it before."

It regenerated, but how quickly? How did its breath attacks work? Were they weak but wide area, or focused and strong? Or worse, wide and strong, or adaptable. How did that high dexterity translate into movement speed? What senses did it have, and could it detect Cluma through her [Stealth]? All questions that needed to be answered before I'd consider stepping foot through the portal.

Best case, it required sight, and Cluma could spam [Orb of Darkness] and render it senseless. I'd be willing to bet that a level forty monster would not in any way match the best case.

"Fine. Let's get back to the surface."