As we go up the stairs things begin to look promising because the top few floors each have a fair number more doors than the lower floors do, so it looks like we made the right choice on going all the way to the top.

“Everyone listen up! We are going to be the ones that destroy that imitation crystal, and to do that you are going to have to toughen up, and toughen up fast. We are going to push through the rooms as fast as we can. As long as you are there you should acquire xp, so stay out of my way.”

Chase: “Bandy, we have to train our new members properly!”

“Katie is far from new, and the others can learn by watching to see how it is done, all the while they will be leveling up just by being in the group.”

Katie: “I just need to acquire more levels to increase my crafting abilities, but these others are just starting out, levels won’t do them any good if they have no actual combat experience.”

“They can train in their own time, but if they want to level up they better keep up!”

“We won’t let you down Mistress!” –Says Edmund the lizard beastkin as he attempts to suck up to me.-

Katie: “You shouldn’t call Miss Bandy your Mistress, Edmund… We already have a Master, and people will think you are her slave if you call her that.”

“She is right Ed. I wouldn’t want anyone to think you were something I chose.”

Katie: “That’s not what I meant.”

Ed: “It’s alright, I might not be much now, but I will prove to everyone I belong at Bandy’s side.” –He says while puffing out his chest, but seems to blush when he calls me by name.-

“Good luck with that...” –I say sarcastically, but Ed seems to take it as encouragement.-

Chase: “I am sure Ed will come to his senses after he gets a chance to see the real Bandy.”

“You had your chance to leave!”

Chase: “Someone has to keep you from disgracing Two-Twelve!”

“Looks like someone woke up and put his big boy pants on today. Let me guess, you are trying to impress Charlotte?”

This whole group was a mistake, if Ursus and Ed’s personalities were flipped it might not be too bad, but even Charlotte is making matters worse. Not only is she going to start stealing the gazes of the men when we stroll into a new village, but she is even causing Chase to grow a pair in hopes of impressing her.

Maybe if I level this group up quickly Two-Twelve will allow me to trade them off for another group more to my liking, I would have to start over again, but it beats this sack of disappointment.

Chase: “This has nothing to do with Charlotte! You have always been impetuous…”

Charlotte: “Forgive me if I am speaking out of turn, but we are not gaining any training or xp by standing here arguing, shouldn’t we begin?”

“Look, even Charlotte is tired of listening to you prattle on. Now, if you want to live stick close without getting in the way!” –I say while picking out the fanciest door on the 10th floor, readying my two weapons, and flinging open the door.-

The room appears to be as standard as they come. Even the size of the room is the default 20 feet by 20 feet the only change may be the fact the ceiling is a bit high for a default sized room, but overall it is boring.

There is another door on the other side of the room, but between us and the door is a small group of wolves standing their ground and growling at us. I wouldn’t exactly call them pups, but they are far from being full grown ones.

“Is this come kind of a joke?!”

Chase: “These rooms are for training new adventurers, so it makes sense that the first door has entry level monsters like this.”

“This is the 10th floor!”

Katie: “Ceres did say that every floor contained the same xp amount of monsters.”

“Fine, you can all do what you want, but I don’t have time for this!”

I launch myself through the room taking out two of the wolves as I pass heading for the next door. Meanwhile the others move into the room and begin fighting the wolves. Once I reach the door however I find it is locked, but has no key hole.

Even with Ed, Ursus, and Charlotte being level one, between them, Chase, and Katie, the remaining wolves fall before I have a chance to investigate the door any further, and once the final wolf falls, the lock on the door gives.

“Seriously!? We are going to have to kill all these puny wolves in every room before moving on to the next one?”

Chase: “Have some patience. The wolves are good training for the new members of our group.”

“It doesn’t look like we have any choice anyway, so you better keep up.” –I then fling the door open and head into the next room.-

The next room still contains only wolves, but at least this time they are at least fully grown ones, I wait only long enough for the others to enter the room, before moving forward to deal with the wolves, I stab the 'leader' up its chin and out the top of its skull as it lunged at me, then break the ribs of the one right behind it with a kick, throw the body of the first one at another, and lunge forth, re-impaling the first wolf, and giving it a mercy kill (it was somehow still alive) while taking out the one it got nailed to.

A fourth one tries jumping unto my back, but I move to the left and kick its butt while pulling my sword off (breaking some of the dead wolf’s bones in the process. I'm strong enough it doesn't really matter if the sword gets 'stuck' on these pups), then slicing its back legs right off. As I look back, I see the others are staring, and that includes the surviving wolves.

"Well, what are you waiting for? These guys aren't killing themselves you know!?"

Between the three of them they manage to take out the remaining wolves without any help, but we don’t know how far this path goes, and there are dozens of doors from the central room, so I don’t have time to be holding their hands.

“If you can’t pick up the pace, then stick to the sidelines. We have dozens of rooms to go through and we don’t have time for you to be patting each other on the back over a little wolf.”

Chase: “They are just starting out Bandy, it was good teamwork for them!”

“And I told them they can train their combat in their own time. Now, let’s go.”

The next room contains another set of wolves, and these ones are not only fully grown but much tougher looking as well. They are still just wolves though so I charge forth and leap up over their heads, twisting in mid-air to stab at their heads through their ears, quickly killing two of them, then grabbing the third one's hind legs as I land/slide on the floor and before it even gets to whine, pull it up, spin with it fast enough that its body makes a whizzing noise as it cuts the air, then slam it into the floor with a satisfyingly wet, yet crunchy, sound. With only two left alive I let Chase deal with one while Katie helps the new members slay the last one.

“That’s better. Let’s keep moving.”

In the next room the wolves actually start getting a bit of a bite, because instead of normal wolves they are dire wolves. Even six dire wolves are no problem for me, but they have the new members shaking in their boots.

One more room of even larger dire wolves brings us to a dead end, but I am hesitant in turning back right away…

Chase: “There is nothing here, we should go back.”

“Ceres said even if we were allowed to destroy the crystal, we wouldn’t find it, so I am sure she has hidden it somewhere, so damned if I am going to give up on this room just because it looks like a dead end.”

Chase: “We need to continue everyone’s training, Bandy. That’s why we are here.”

“I’m not leaving this room till I am sure the crystal isn’t here, if you want to train them, you take them to another room.”

Chase: “Fine! I will!”

Edmund: “You are just going to leave Bandy here alone?! What if something happens? If Bandy stays, then so will I!”

“What exactly do you expect to do, if I encounter anything that would be even remotely troublesome, you would make zero difference…”

Edmund: “I don’t have any delusions of being stronger then I actually am. I know the difference in our strengths, but if something does happen I can at least try to run and get help.”

“Fine, do whatever you want.”

Chase: “This is crazy! You need your training as well, you should come with us.”

Edmund: “If this is where Bandy is, this is where I want to be!”

Katie: “Maybe we should all stay behind. Splitting up is never a good idea if it is avoidable…”

Chase: “Ceres said that the rules were that we could destroy the crystal if we found it, only if we are training our new members correctly, so even if Bandy did find the crystal it isn’t like she would be allowed to destroy it, because she is ignoring the training of the rest of you.”

Charlotte: “He is right… Please Edmund, come back with us, so we can do our training right!”

Edmund: “I’ll catch up later.”

Chase: “Forget it! Let’s go. I can at least make sure two of you get proper training.”

Ed waves off the others while they leave while I continue looking for a hidden door, switch, or any kind of clue to the location of the crystal.

Edmund: “It’s just the two of us now…” –He says nervously.- “I-is there anything I can do to help?”

“Yea…”

Edmund: “What is it?!” –He quickly blurts out.-

“Keep quiet, and stay out of the way. Don’t even for a minute think you did me some kind of favor. I am still not sleeping with your horny ass.”

Edmund: “That isn’t what this is about!”

Ed just watches me while I continue to search the room, but after a while he either gets embarrassed from staring so long, or grows bored as he begins searching the room as well. As if he could find anything that I couldn’t…

“You know, it isn’t too late, they probably have only made it through a couple rooms, you could catch up to them and the amount of xp you missed out on would barely be noticeable after a couple of days.”

Edmund: “No, you are the leader of the strongest group in Master’s dungeon, and you didn’t get there without knowing what you are doing, so if this is where you say we should be, then this is the only place I want to be.”

“Well you may be wrong, because I don’t see anything here, but with an attitude like that, you just might have a place in my group after all. Never in my bed, mind you, but at least in my group.”

Edmund: “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t give for just that honor alone. And hearing you say that was well worth the xp.”

“I don’t have time for kiss asses either, if you want to be part of my group prove it with your strength. Now, we should catch up with the others before they reach the end of the next room, find the crystal, and get some kind of bright idea.”

We make our way back to the central room and enter the next room to find it much like the last one, only this time instead of young wolves, there is a half dozen young boars.

“None of the other monsters seemed to respawn, and if they did the others wouldn’t had time to go through them all and enter another room by now, so I think we went the wrong way.”

Edmund: “Should we go back?”

I think about it for a minute and cross my arms while smirking. “No, you want to be part of my group, and those dire wolves alone should have been enough to give you a few levels, so show me what you got!”

Edmund: “By myself, or are you going to help me?”

“If you can’t take out some piglets on your own, I can’t really say that shows me you have any hope of proving your strength to join my group permanently.”

Edmund: “Then do you mind if I get rid of this shield, and borrow another weapon from you? If I am going to do this alone, the shield is just going to get in my way.”

“There is no way I would even let you touch one of my swords, but I got an old stiletto in my boot for emergencies, if that works?”

Edmund: “That would be fine.” –He says while unbuckling the strap that keeps him from dropping his shield, and lets it fall to the floor.-

“You sure you can handle two weapons at once?” –I say pulling the stiletto from my boot and slapping it into the palm of his hand.-

Edmund: “Not as well as you. At least, not yet. But more than enough to deal with a few pigs.”

I still use the two Shima short swords that Two-Twelve gave me, but Ed had a full sized sword and a shield, so can he use the two vastly different sized weapons together effectively? I guess I am about to find out because he yells as he starts to run across the room.

Normal wild boars that are the age in which these ones are, would run away from an idiot screaming and flailing weapons about, but these are dungeon monsters, so they bow up and charge Ed.

He runs in and tries to do a poor man's me, by dodging to the side and sinking the stiletto through the 1st boar's ear, but as he tries to pull it out, he ends up trying to drag the entire animal as it sticks to the blade, so another boar bites at his overextended wrist, and he has to swing the sword to hit at its back, twice, in order to bring it down by breaking its spine.

Honestly, he probably got lucky, and as the third boar bites at his foot and starts pulling him away, it at least helps him get the stiletto free, so as soon as the fourth boar comes for him, he desperately stabs at its head and chest while sticking his right forearm into its mouth, wisely filling its muzzle to protect his face. I think he also stabbed his own arm a couple of times in the process, though.

He finally brings it down, and gets busy with the boar that dragged him. At this point, I think he's running on pain, though since he starts chopping and stabbing while letting out a long monosyllabic warcry that could make you think he was charging a dragon instead. By the time he calms down all of the boars are dead, one of which skewered by the spikes on Ed’s shoulder after he body slammed it…

“You call that showing me your strength?”

Edmund: “They may have been just been boars, but they were dungeon monsters! That is much different than if they were just normal boars…”

“Well I don’t know if that proves anything or not, but are you ready for the next room?”

Edmund: “By myself again, or with help this time?” –He says while getting back to his feet.-

“If these rooms are anything like the last, I would say there are quite a few fully grown boars in the next room. Do you think you can handle that on your own?”

Edmund: “I would like to show off and say yes, but realistically, not by myself…”

“What if I trimmed down their numbers for you a bit?”

Edmund: “We don’t have a healer, and weren’t you worried that Chase to find the crystal in the room they went into?”

“The odds of it being at the end of their door is just as likely as it being at the end of ours, or are you telling me you aren’t up to the task of being part of my group?”

Edmund: “Of course I am!” –He says quickly preparing himself to enter the next door.-

“What about that? You plan on bringing it along?” –I say pointing at the boar skewered to his shoulder.-

He quickly tries to pull the boar of the spikes sticking out of his shoulder, but they are pointing to his back, and are just far enough back that he can’t reach the boar with either hand. He then tries shaking it off, but hangs his head in defeat.

Edmund: “Could you please assist me…”

“I’ll pull it off this time, but you better figure out a better way to remove things from your spikes if you plan on charging things again!” –I say grabbing onto the mangled corpse stuck to his back and pulling it off. I then wipe my hands off on the front of his shirt before we move on to the next room.-

I leave Ed in the way for the couple of moments it takes me to deal with all but one of the larger boars, but I then kick the last one, pushing it in Ed’s direction. He is initially caught off guard as he was standing there practically drooling while watching me fight, but he charges in on the boar.

My kick alone was enough to cause some internal injury to the boar, but even still Ed takes just as long to drop the fully grown boar as I did for the other five.

Edmund: “I did it!”

“People in my group don’t get excited over a simple boar, now if you are done wasting our time, are you ready to continue?”

Edmund: “I don’t know if I can fight any stronger then this on my own…”

“If these rooms here are like the wolf ones than we have at least three more to go.”

Edmund: “You don’t expect me to fight in all of them do you…?”

“If you want to be part of my group, you will fight till you don’t think you can fight any more, but you will fight some more anyway, because it is what I told you to do, and then, If I am feeling generous you can have a break. But only if I like what I see.”

Ed seems to be wearing a difficult expression so I decide to add. “Whenever you decide that you don’t want to be part of my group, you can return to the others, and train with them.”

Edmund: “No, I understand… I can’t promise I will be much help, but if you tell me to give it a shot. I will!”

“Good, you enter the next room first.”

Edmund: “Wait… What?! They will be even stronger then these ones and you want me to face all six of them by myself?”

“Of course not, you would die, but I do want to see what your limits are, before I join in.”

Edmund: “What if they charge me and kill me before you have a chance to save me…?”

“I highly doubt they are faster than I am, and besides that Milo guy is supposed to be keeping an eye on you all, to make sure something like that doesn’t happen.”

Ed then nervously approaches the door and opens it, peering inside while saying. “Oh… They are huge.” He readies his weapons, and steps past the door. I didn’t know if he was brave enough to step into the room alone, but he was, so I quickly rush to the door to catch up with him.

The boars are now almost chest high now, with tusks that could do a lot of damage if they manage to gore you with them. Standing a few feet behind Ed, neither he nor the boars have made a move yet staring each other down from across the room.

I lean against the door frame to see what Ed does next. I half expected him to look back for me, but instead he tightens his grip on his weapons, takes a deep breath, and takes another step forward while yelling again.

If all six hit at the same time, I couldn’t stop all of them from hitting him, and I don’t know if Milo would be able to hold back all six at once, so as the boars start rushing across the room towards Ed I launch myself forward as well.

Ed stands between me and the boars, so I grab a few of the longer spikes on Ed’s body climbing him like a ladder. He is surprised at first by my weight on his body, but before he even has a chance to react, other than bracing himself against my weight, I’m already propelling myself off of his shoulders and into the group of boars.

My sudden action seems to bolster Ed with courage as he charges forward to catch up to me, but he only arrives in enough time to deal a fatal blow to the last of the boars. He seems relieved though as he lets out a deep sigh of relief.

“Showing up just in time to lay out the final blow doesn’t count. If you want to be a permanent member of my group you better get quicker.”

Edmund: “You startled the hell out of me when you grabbed me from behind. I thought I was getting attacked! It took me a second to realize what was going on, and by then you were already killing them left and right!”

“I don’t want excuses, you need to do better. The next two rooms, if they are like the ones with the wolves they will be filled with dire boars, and there is no way you can handle them, so stay out of the way.”

Edmund: “You said I need to get better, and in the same breath told me to back off! To get better I need to fight as well!”

“The xp you will get from both rooms of dire boars should be enough to give you a few more levels, and once we proceed to the next door you can have the first two rooms all to yourself then.”

Edmund: “What about the others? What if they find the crystal?”

“Chase is too chicken shit to even think about claiming the crystal himself, I don’t know about Katie, she wants power, but I don’t think she is the type to try to get it like that, and the others are not strong enough to try either. Besides I am sure the crystal is hidden and they aren’t even looking for it, so if they clear all the rooms past half the doors it gives us more time to look for the crystal instead of fighting worthless monsters.”

Edmund: “But couldn’t we work faster as well if we joined them again?”

“Chase wanted to give the others training, so I am sure he is pussyfooting around holding their hands while they slowly push from room to room, but we don’t have that problem.”

Edmund: “You are having to slow down because of me though…”

“Only when you stop to ask fifty questions, now are you ready, or do you want to go join them?”

Edmund: “I’m ready...!”

Ed waits nervously as I take out the dire boars in the next room, and again in the last room, but after spending another twenty or so minutes searching the room we still find no traces of the crystal here either, so we return to the central room.

“Alright, now it is up to you. Are you going to show me what you got, or is it time to rejoin the others?”

Ed looks to the door on the other side of the one we started on, but quickly turns around and choses the door next to us. Once we enter the next door, a quick scan of the room makes it seem empty, until we look up and a few bats hang down from the ceiling.

“Well this is going to be interesting, have at them.”

Just like the boars, wild bats like this would have just tried to run rather than attack, but as Ed steps forward they descend from the ceiling and quickly surround him. They scratch him up pretty good, but that seems like all they can do as they flutter around him. He has a little trouble swatting them out of the air with his weapons, but eventually manages to take them down without ending up much worse for wear.

“Those were already full grown bats, so I don’t know what is in the next room. Perhaps it is a more aggressive type of bat, or maybe the bloodsucking kind, either way are you ready?”

Edmund: “I guess I have to be, right?” –He says while checking over a few of the scrapes he received from the bats. He then makes his way for the next door.-

The bats in the next room are definitely more aggressive and seem to be doing actual damage to Ed, but he manage to take them out regardless, but if it wasn’t for the fact that he is a dungeon monster, some of his wounds would be bleeding pretty badly.

“You are still fighting without using any techniques. Did you get any interesting skills as you have been leveling up?”

Edmund: “I haven’t thought about it.” –He says calling forth a [Menu] to look at his status- “I ranked up on the few skills I started with, but they are all just small boosts to my abilities, at level five I got the [Dual Weapon Training] skill that lets me use techniques when fighting with two weapons, but until it ranks up, it won’t be much use.”

“That is kind of a shame, skills like that are better acquired through training then from leveling up. You said it needs to rank up, I guess that means you haven’t reached level 10 yet?”

Edmund: “Not yet, but I am getting close.”

“Well since the techniques aren’t much use to you right now, let’s find a better use for your magic.” –I say tossing him a small ruined magic stone.- “Just don’t over use it, since you don’t have a magic class I am sure you will run out of magic quickly if try to use it to much.”

Ed starts focusing his magic into the stone causing his wounds to disappear, but before they are all gone you can tell he is already struggling to continue to use the stone.

“Alright, that’s enough. I am not carrying your horny ass out of here. If you pass out on the floor.”

Edmund: “Thank you, I feel much better now…” –He says dropping the stone back into my hand.- “I feel like I can take on the next room with confidence now!”

“If you are feeling that good, then go right ahead.”

Edmund: “Well, you’re going to give me a hand, aren’t you?”

“I thought you said you were confident?”

Edmund: “Yes, with your help!”

“Fine, but you first.”

Edmund: “You’re not going to use me as a spring board again, are you?”

“Don’t lie. You know you enjoyed me climbing on top of you.”

Ed seems like he wants to say something else, but he begins to blush instead, he tries to hide it by turning around and marching through the next door. The next room has bats that are quite a bit larger than the last two rooms, but I don’t think they are quite large enough to be called dire bats yet.

In any case larger just means easier to hit, and even though I have to help Ed with these ones he seems to fare much better against them than the last two groups of bats. The next room possesses the first set of bats that I would actually consider dire bats, and even though Ed tries to help out a little bit he mostly sits out the battle, and even more so when we tackle the final room through this door as well.

Three doors off of the main room, and three dead ends with nothing to show for it, I don’t know how far the others have gone, but we still have plenty of daylight left, so Ed and I continue on. wolves, boars, bats, bears, snakes, lizards, three different types of cats, and even some monstrous spiders, are beyond the doors we go through, but spending the rest of the day we still don’t find a single hint to the location of the imitation crystal.

Edmund: “It is getting late, should we keep going?”

“I don’t know how far the others have gotten, but we should probably make sure the crystal is not in their rooms either, before calling it a night. That way we have less rooms we have to cover tomorrow.”

Edmund: “How far do you think they got?”

“I doubt they got nearly as far as you did, and it was all because they said I was impatient and not taking your training seriously.”

About that time, from the other side of the room the others step out from one of the doors, it looks like they made it through a door or two less than us, but seeing which door they came out of also means we know how many doors we got to search.

When they spot us, they quickly come around the room to meet up with us, and Chase says. “Let me guess no crystal?”

“We searched for the crystal and still did better than you did, Ed is already level twelve.”

Charlotte: “That’s great Edmund! We made it to level eight.”

“Only…? And you said I wasn’t taking the training seriously.”

Chase: “They might have only reached level eight, but they got actual combat experience!”

Edmund: “Bandy took it very seriously! I can even handle the third rooms completely by myself, and with her help the dire creatures aren’t that bad anymore either…”

Ursus: “You fought the dire animals? We turned back before fighting them to make sure everyone stayed safe…”

“Not only did you not go near as far as we did, but you even skipped rooms? We wanted to check for the crystal past the doors you went through, but I don’t feel like messing with that many more monsters tonight…”

Chase: “There are more important things than just finding the crystal… Did you even think of the possibility that once the imitation crystal is broken this dungeon will be gone, and the new members won’t be able to train any longer?”

“Ceres said this was her main dungeon, so that means the imitation crystal is just a backup and I seriously doubt she would have built a dungeon this size, only to give us permission to take it out.”

Chase: “Well either way, we have plenty of time, and we decided we are going to head back downstairs and rest for the evening.”

Charlotte: “You should come with us, I would like to hear the kinds of monsters you got to fight!”

“What do you say Ed? Are you ready to give it up for the evening?”

Edmund: “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t, what did you say? Fight till I don’t think I can go any more, and then fight some more, so what do you say?”

“That right! On the other hand, the others are only two-thirds of your level, so you don’t want to show them up by too much. As a reward for your hard work we will let you get some rest.”

Chase: “You already said you didn’t want to fight any more of those dire creatures…”

Edmund: “Thank you Bandy, and I promise to go twice as far tomorrow as I did today!”

We all start heading down the ten flights of stairs while Ursus and Charlotte ask Ed what kinds of creatures he fought. By the time we reach the base of the stairs it looks like we were left out, as we show up just in time for the ending of quite the celebration that even Ceres, Two-Twelve, and Two-Twelve’s wife and daughter attended…