While we first thought we would need a pair we quickly realized that was wrong. With two it would quickly cause inbreeding which would further weaken the future races. So instead what we did was simple. We cleared the first floor gather 200 bodies but as clean as possible. Instead of slashing and maiming I went with a clean shot made with the earth crystal at max power. It shoots out a small compact bullet at high speed enough to pierce the weak body. Since the rifle has automatic mode I can fire several shots at once of 30 mp shots.

Since small groups number between 5-7 we took a bit to gather them. With the scanner drone we also find the ones that have the highest growth potential, mainly the leaders obviously, and put those separately. At least half of the clones will be with them while the rest will be made with the many others to make sure we have a variety of differences.

We don’t go deeper since there was no point. We pass at Mirella’s home where everyone was waiting for us. Mirella went one by one saying her farewells and “see you later” and finally jumped into the arms of her father, mother then siblings.

Mirella’s mother probably told them all about how we would leave today after collecting sufficient samples so it they must have been waiting for this moment. I feel rather glum seeing her like this. Compared to how I was received when I graduated from the academy and how Mirella lives I could tell that a different race had so much more about it. Humans are nearly pushed out of their parents homes while goblins seem to grow closer than before.

I can still remember when I finally reached my home after graduating. My family were low ranked “nobles”, they were rich because they were developers of technology used throughout the world. They were really good researchers in the field of technology but I wasn’t like them. My passion was magic and the study of the arcane arts. My marksmanship isn’t good but that comes with training.

When I got home saying I graduated and was presented the official licence of a mage my father and mother looked at me blankly.

“Is that all there is to say? If so then we have prepared you five sets of beginner armor and we have already prepared you suitcases. We spoke with someone we know to allow you to enter her dormitory so you may proceed there once you gather your things.” My father says and looks back to the screen with his research.

“Go on and grab you things, unlike your brother who choose the correct career as a researcher of technology, you may leave this household. We are not blind adventurers, we are researcher.” My mother said and closed herself from me

As soon as we return to the ship I set the command for us to fly to the coastal port town Kosak. There are several beastman species that mainly inhabit this town. Besides humans which are all over there are fishmen, merfolk, lizardmen and a smaller number of trolls and goblin kin who work more in the heavy lifting.

The dungeon in that town has nine floors which has the features of a sea shore cavern. The cave is damp with water halfway up the knees for the first three floors. Common monster races go from Swamp frog, bullet fish, Squirters and the so called strongest monster on the first three floors, the Savage. Going one by one the Swamp Frog lives within the corridors in the areas where the dungeon allowed sunlight to enter and build flora and made the area swamp-like in nature. The areas normally have more algae in the water which help camouflage the frogs which are 70 cm wide and 40 cm high and have very powerful legs and neurotoxin that is expelled from their skin and lastly, their tongue allows for mid ranged attacks as well as capturing a prey to help others take them down.

The Bullet fish are small supposably 10 cm long and thin. They have mid level control of water magic but it is enough to attack as they do. The method of attack is swarming where from the dark shallow waters of the upper floors. They have enough control of water to make a bubble of water follow them as they fly and launch their bodies out of the water at high speeds while protected by the water bubble which is comparable to a water barrier spell. The damage is small but in large number it can be devastating. That said one hit and they die because of their size so it's almost like fighting a swarm of bees who can only sting once.

The Squirters are a branch family of the Bullet Fish. They are about twice as big and inflate storing water inside which is then used to fire pinpoint bullets of water. This one is far more dangerous than the Bullet fish because they hide while doing this and their coloration doesn’t help to aid in finding it within the dark caverns.

It is one of the monsters that cause the most defeats within this dungeon in the upper floors.

Lastly is the Mini Boss of the upper floors. He is the first beastman monster of the dungeon and freely roams the three upper floors. The races is known as Sahuagin and the look if this monster is a shark with arms and legs. It carries a trident and boasts physical strength of the shark. That said, it is still a lower class sahuagin because going down one floor you will find many of these much stronger and at the sixth floor they evolve further gaining a human like torso with huge bulging muscle while maintaining the shark head which was reduced to fit the body.

These are the current ones in the dungeon but with a change of seasons the species change a bit gaining traits of the seasons or the moons. For this dungeon there is much less chance of variants appearing in the upper three floors because different creatures are killed early on or they grow too quick and head down to lower floors

Anyway, with the orders to the AI done we head to the biolab. it was placed on the second floor with the habits and production buildings.

The lab was a large room that reached the outer wall and had windows on the far wall all of which were tinted black on the outside so it was a one way window.

The room inside had white painted steel plates. Surrounding the room attached to the walls were tons of machinery all in sets. There were ten sets of each all of each were linked to each of the cylindrical chamber for cloning in front of them. The base of the chamber held some controls that would allow us some basic monitoring systems for things like heartbeat and other life signs.

“Hey over here, drop the corpses in here, it will take me several hours to gather enough samples from one of them to clone but then I need to map the DNA strand for each of them so chances are only late at night I will have mapped enough Imps to start cloning.” Tony said.

He led us to a kind of drop zone and looking into it I saw a second room below. I didn’t question it much and released all the bodies into the drop zone.

Since we know next to nothing about bioengineering, besides what biology class would teach to help us to find monster weak points, we leave and head to the bridge. The ship was already in motion heading to Kosak. The ship moved very fast, much faster than the previous model showing how the engine had upgraded.

Speaking of I never did check out the engine though I guess since Tony takes care of most of it, repairing and so on, I never had a reason to.

We do need to get some quality personal for our crew. Let's see, basics say in a crew we need a healer for the party, tank to provide good defense, a mage for long range dps, a hacker/rogue class for infiltration, researcher to research and development, officers for ship safety and management of guard units of the ship, engineer for engine maintenance and upgrade and another to take care of the technical part on the bridge, defense system gun men which we can breed the imps into, bridge defense system officer which monitors the ship's systems and conditions of space combat which can also be an imp later on since it's not so complicated and a number of many things we can't house at this moment.

Thinking about it, we would need to find at least a healer or someone who can breed a healer. Monster Breeders are much easier to find in Spenolif which has grassland and farmland features which help promote breeding. Monster breeders provide the manpower to work on most heavy work like lifting and machine working so even if it's not for healing they are good for making creatures to build up the crews forces.

In Kosak it's less common to find breeders outside of those specialized in water creatures. Lizardmen, or Argonian, which is the race name of an alien race which were naturally born instead of bred into sentient beings. This race is knowledgeable in breeding water creatures of all kinds on any planet and are normally part of the main pioneers of a terraforming crew on new planets. They breed fish that will eventually populate new planets and by doing so they gain valuable new samples once the animals and monsters are released and evolve naturally.

The easiest to find are combat related people since anywhere with a dungeon you will find someone and newbies you can find easily by checking the rankings in each city and see how far someone has gone. Those who never go further than two floors most likely have no party or crew and are the one we can try recruiting.

As for specific ship posts we will need to go to a branch of a company (guild) and see if there are newbies looking for it.

Obviously researchers get recruited by merit and grades and real geniuses tend to get cocky or they go directly to large crews.

For now we should focus on a healer. With that in mind I just watch as the ship flies fast leaving the surrounds as a blur. The distance to Kosak is equal to the distance from Dreki to Rokita times 2.5. In other words it's far away and would take several hours even at our speed.

We talk about what would need to be done first and I discussed about trying to find recruits willing to join. She already had a grim look which told me it was a pain. New crews have it hard because we hold no fame so no one wants to join and we are left with normally rejected people. Bigger crews take the time to train recruits but we are building a new crew so we are still in training with them making the offer unappealing.

Seeing as it will take time to reach the city I tell the AI to handle all the protocols for landing and call us when we are nearing the city premises.

With that Mirella heads to the gym and I go to the biolab and find all of them filled with slowly growing imp embryo's made from cloning.

I spend my time talking with tony and trying to understand the readings on each chamber. By the time we arrive at the port town the embryo's had grown large and would soon be ready to be released.

I leave the lab and head to the bridge to land the ship and finally after we land me and Mirella leave with the the adventurers guild as our target destination.

The landing protocol was handled easily by the AI but finding a proper landing site for a ship of our size and that could handle the expansion we would make later on was a much harder task.

This was a port town, not just for transport on the sea but also a port for airships heading inland. That’s because of the high speed airships like Tony the only kind of ships used on water are hunting/fishing ships. I say hunting because the larger sea monsters in the area or out at sea are hunted for their products.

Anything smaller comes from the dungeon. The port town make a huge profit by catching bullet fish and canning them to sell inland. Tony searched it up and told me that his world had a similar animal called the sardine which suffered the same fate so it was easy for him to connect the dots. He even showed me a picture of one and confirm the bullet fish looked like them but a deeper shade of blue and about half size.

Canned Bullet fish come in several can sizes but the smallest holds four of them.

Unlike with the imps, bullet fish are purchased by the city because of large demand so it offers an amazing amount to adventurers. The adventurer's association even puts it as a request to do on their quest boards.

Obviously the pay depends on how much is caught and you need to be careful to keep them as well preserved and the highest quality without damage as possible. In other words, you need to net them and kill them by suffocation unlike the normal monster hunt. Still waiting for fish to die would take to long so the guild created an item that can hold a number of bullet fish, 200 to be exact, that can store the living fish in a storage ring.

We would probably be doing that to gain money we need for materials. Unlike the Imp dungeon, I doubt we would be able to bring the monsters back. Nearly all of them are used for food items including the sahuagin who are walking sharks. The meat is said to be exquisite and the fins are used for a shark fin soup. The better the quality of the sahuagin gathered from the better the fin will be, so they say.

Anyway, for the landing zone, we were pushed outside of the regular landing zone. Every spot was taken by either cargo ships or some large crew ship that was filled with trainees. They were probably being trained to handle swarm attacks like with bullet fish while making a profit to pay for gear and tools used.

It would be a real pain for sure in this dungeon. First we need to pay for the bullet fish storage units, potions, repairs we will need soon, for me I need more mana batteries for my rifle. I’m sure we will fail quite a lot the first few days we are collecting the fish and other creatures. We need to learn about all the local dungeon specialties. We also need to look for new members to the crew. We can't stay with only two people, it's both inconvenient and stupid of us. I heard fishermen are also fighters so maybe one would like to join if we are lucky. Some use harpoons like a spear to fight and it’s supposed to be really strong if trained properly.

Anyway once we finally land in a somewhat clear area, which still has far too many ships, we start getting ready to leave.

We tell Tony to do what is needed with the Imp’s and scan them to find which has a longer lifespan and try growing them as fast as possible.

I then call Queror and us three leave the ship.

The entrance pass was strangely quick. Probably because Queror was already enslaved there was no danger but I did have to give him the order of not attacking unless our lives were in mortal danger or when I ordered it.

We head directly to the adventurers association. Like every city you need to make sure your record crystal is linked to the city so you won’t die but I had a second objective to do as well.

We enter the five story building that was the adventurers guild and head to the reception in the back. Like every other adventures guild building, the first floor looks like a restaurant and they are selling the local speciality. Sahuagin Fin soup with spaghetti with ground fish bits, most likely bullet fish, and some squid ink making a black spaghetti plate.

It looked rather appetizing but we move on and drag Queror who was looking at it with rather hungry eyes. It was rather clear that the food I was giving him wasn’t enough. I don’t know how to make much and being a carnivore doesn’t help much. I probably should think of getting a cook soon.

We reach the reception and sitting at the desk was a mature and beautiful mermaid girl that looks to be in her early twenties, though could be more, with blue green hair, small fin like ears, webbed hands and her lower half a fish tail with brilliant blue green scales. The desk was actually a countertop while inside was a pool for her to sit in. I couldn’t see the end which meant it went down deeper for an entrance for those who can’t walk on land.

“Greetings, how may I help you two?” She asked with a gentle smile.

“We would like to register the record crystals for the dungeon, also do you have a list of drops as well as market prices that monster bodies are sold including the price for each specific part?” I asked.

Her brow twitches as I say what I want. I’m betting not everyone would go so in depth to the price range but since we will be selling them I want to know the proper price and exactly what is purchased before processing and being sold.

“I can register your crystals but may I know why you wish to see the price range?” She asked.

“Obviously because I won’t sell stuff we catch blindly.” I said.

The mermaid could only smile wryly as I said that. I really don’t know if it's uncommon or not but from the looks of it, it’s not.

“Okay, I guess I can do it since there is no rule against it…” She said with a sigh. “Please hand over the crystals as well.”

We remove the necklace and hand it over and that is when I also asked my second request.

“Oh right, I just remembered, this is an enslaved monster belonging to me. Because it's a variant and really useful I was wondering if you I could get a revive crystal for him?” I asked.

“Oh if he is a registered monster then there is no problem a crystal cost 500 credits and there is the expense for the others stuff you asked.” She replied.

We payed and moments later she linked out crystals and brought out a new one for Queror. I put it on and ordered him to not take it off.

After a moment she appeared from below the pool and pulled out a small box, a data cube.

Data cubes look just like holocubes but they lack the function to project the information. These normally are inserted into the ship or some machine of the ship and downloaded.

"This has most of the current market prices, just know that the prices fluctuate depending on how each month is as well as how the stocks are." The mermaid said.

"It's no problem, knowing the current price is enough, we can adapt better if there is too big a change." I replied.

"Is that all we need here?" Mirella asked me.

I start thinking a bit when suddenly a loud slam came from the wall behind the reception on the right side.

"Oh dear! Again!" The mermaid receptionist said.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

"Unfortunately, the head chef is head..." she said but was cut off when the wall suddenly broke and a girl flew through it.

"DO YOU REALLY THINK YOUR BETTER THEN ME YOU LITTLE WEED!" A rough deep voice yelled.

The girl that flew soared through the building and crashed into two tables before stopping on the floor panting.

"You are so USELESS you can't even evade a customers table and wasted the food I MADE!!" He shouted.

Suddenly walking out was a large 196 cm tall Argonian. He had dark green spiky scales which were painful to touch and even worse when being hit by them. He wore a chef's outfit, white baggy pants and shirt with an apron with some marks of food splattered here and there from the day's work.

Argonian are very strong physically so punching someone through a wooden wall is possible though what worried me was the girl.

She was coughing like mad on the floor while holding her stomach which meant the blow went straight to the gut.

Slowly the chief walked over with disgust in his eyes and tone.

"You think your really funny huh?! You think that just because you're from some spirit race like the Naiads you have a better understanding of cooking spices then me? The head cook who has worked over 12 years here and 8 years in space providing food for millions over the years? Huh?!!!" He reached her and kicks her in the stomach.

"You’re really cocky brat, to think a rookie fresh out of the Academy that has barely flexed her skills into intermediate rank is trying to teach a master like me." He says and spits on her.

As soon as the spit hit her back, she yelled. The reason is that argonians have a strong acid in their spit which is one of their natural weapons.

Before anyone could do a thing the water from the reception desk burst out and covered the girl completely washing away the acid and healing all the injures and also gathering around the Argonian and freezing him leaving only his head exposed.

"That's enough, Krominax, like I have told you time and again, open your ears to the suggestion of a newbie especially those who are from spirit races like the Naiads." Said the receptionist but in a tone colder than a tundra. She was expelling a deadly dense Aura we could only compare to Mirella's mother.

Forming a bubble of water under herself the mermaid lifted out of the water and floated over to the Argonian.

"Do you have anything to say? I'm sure the child needs an apology." She said calmly.

"Yeah, I got something to say. Yo brat...YOU'RE FIRED!!" He shouted for everyone to hear. "I'll make sure no one ever hires you, anyway who try to help her or hires her will never so much as see my food ever again." He shouted looking towards everyone.

Everyone in the room frowned clearly showing he had skill enough to tempt them. That said, since I never tasted the food I could calmly do what I am doing.

"Are you ok?" I said after walking around both the frozen and furious Argonian and the gently smiling Mermaid.

"Why?" The Naiad asked. "Why are… you helping… me?"

"Do I need a reason?" I asked.

She just looked at me strangely.

"I just arrived at this town so I haven't eaten his food but seeing him like this just makes me want to avoid his food." I said.

I took a peek back through the corner of my eyes and saw the green scales turn almost red in his rage.

"Little brat! Don't expect to ever get a plate of my food in your life, even if you come back begging you will never touch a gram of the food from here." He shouted.

I looked at the mermaid who still had a poker face. Her eyes looked at me then with a small discreet gesture she directed me to the Naiad.

I smiled understanding quickly. "Hey, my name is Leah Binoli, I'm making a new crew and was in need of a cook. Want to join, I bet it's much better than working for this second-grade lizard behind us." I said and instantly there was a roar from behind us.

The Argonian cook was shaking in rage and the ice shell began to crack.

"GRAHHHH I'LL SHOW YOU TWO, YOU LITTLE BITCH!!" He shouted and constricts his body even more but suddenly I hear a clear finger snap and his entire body was frozen layer upon layer of ice.

"I think this should be enough to cool that heated up blood of yours." The Mermaid said.

She looked satisfied at the call of ice that had formed around the Argonian who was breathing heavily and slowly losing focus. Finally, to finish him off, she did a simply jab to the side of his exposed neck knocking him out.

She shattered the ice and called a few people to take him away.

"From… the looks of it… this is common, right?" I asked.

"Unfortunately, Krominax is an excellent cook, even as a pure carnivore which causes his sense of taste to be weaker than a humans he is an amazing chef. But he is too prideful. He can't drop his pride low enough to listen to possible improvements to a recipe. He also fears losing his place so when someone starts to show promise he begins to ridicule them in hopes of making the mess up so he can ridicule them more. If his food wasn't so good he wouldn't even be here." She said. "Anyway, you should take the girl out of here to talk with her. Once Krominax warms up he will go on the offensive if he sees you so soon." She says.

I nod and look towards the others before looking at the Naiad.

"Want to talk about the invitation, it was a genuine one." I said with a smile.

The girl blushed and nodded weakly before taking my outstretched hand to help get up.

We leave the Adventures association while the employees were already in the process of repairs showing how common the occurrence was.

It was only outside that I could finally get a really good look at the Naiad.

She had bright green hair and slightly green skin but much less than Mirella. Hers was a mix regular human peach colored skin mixed with a pale green. She wore a baggy pants for cooking but had taken the apron off and returned it to the mermaid.

She was really cute which is expected since she is from a spirit race. Oh right, a spirit race is a race that lives in certain locations and helps the place grow with her influence. A Nymph is a forest spirit and a Naiad is a mix between forest and freshwater spirit. Kind of like a forest river spirit. They are at their best when they are near their favorite location which happens to be a place they themselves create. Outside of it or to far from it they are timid.

Right now we were seeing to what degree that actually went. To me it felt like a little mouse bordering on running away as she slowly shrank back.

We could only smile wryly at the scared girl.

After a bit of talk and looking at a map of the port town we head to a nearby park on the edge of town. It was a natural park and this was mostly so she would calm down instead of fear us.

We walked silent half of the way before she finally talked.

"Um… where… are you taking… me?" She asked in a quiet voice.

"There is a park nearby so we are going there to talk away from the noise." I said. At once she smiled.

Guess she liked the idea. She seems to gain a skip in her step because with each moment we got closer to the destination she grew more excited.

After five minutes of walking, 15 total from the adventurers association, we arrived at the edge.

The park was made with native trees and vegetation but there were many paths through. Tall trees easily 20 meters tall and four wide were spread around with lots of underbrush.

We take one of the paths at random and advance in until we reach a stream which had a clear area to relax in.

"Ah~~! I love places like this~~!" The Naiad said and twirling around while taking deep breaths of the fresh natural air.

She lays down on the grass that was planted in the clearing and seems content in this area.

"Okay introduction time. I'm Mirella Cannes, I'm currently a hobgoblin but I want to aim big as a Brown Oni with heavy earth affinity." She says openly.

This was the first time I heard her say that. Yellow oni's are part of a subcategory called lords. They are specialized in a certain type of activity and the color represents the magic affinity they have. The red oni is the most basic type below the oni are the ogres. In Mirella's case the Brown Oni is a heavy tank type warrior that uses earth magic with body strengthening.

"I'm Nerim Joplin, I'm a Naiad and graduated from the academy this year. I want to become a top cook and applied for a job but I never knew it would end so badly." She said as tears well up.

"It doesn't matter, let that stupid lizard be as prideful as he wants. You are looking to be employed right? Like I said before, I am the captain of a newly formed crew and it's currently just us two and a few monsters we have begun breeding." I said.

"You said you just arrived in the city right? Why are you here in the first place?" She asked.

"We are currently building our Airship into a space ship. We need resources so we came here to catch some monsters to feed him or buy material in their place that can be turned into MP." I replied.

"Is there a garden or breeding zone yet?" She asked.

"No, haven't gotten around to building much." I replied.

"Hey Nerim can you breed monsters like a tamer?" Mirella suddenly asked.

"Um… to be a cook I learned how to take care of animals and breed those and as a freshwater forest spirit I can grow plants. Monsters I never got into that but if they are weak monsters nearly on par with animals then maybe." She says wryly.

"Can you breed wingless imps?" I asked.

"Ah! Those little devil things that appear in dungeons of goblin kin? I can, they are dumber than animals but have a good learning capacity I can take them up to winged imp rank but after that it's my limit." She replies.

"Not training, we are making clones since cores in a ship can't summon organic monsters. We need someone to correctly take their lifespan to the natural size then work on strengthening their stats." Mirella says.

"I can do that, I will have to do the same with the fish and animals I will raise in the ship so I can taken a bit of time off to do that." She replies.

"From the way you are speaking, it's almost as if you accepted our offer." Mirella says with a grin.

Nerim blushes hearing her say that and nods.

"If you will have me, I will join your crew as your cook. Please take care of me." She says and bows.

""Please take care of us!"" We both reply back.