Liliei had already heard Nalaine talking about it, but seeing it by oneself clearly wasn’t the same. They were standing on top of a rather large hill in the middle of a huge meadow that extended in every direction, tall grass covering everything until the horizon. There were some trees and even small forests sprouting in some places. And the bright blue sky with the suns hanging in the air… Wait, why was there two suns in the sky? Probably just Dungeon things. Still it was strange to go from a cave to a meadow like this with just one step.

“Whoa, it’s quite nice there isn’t it.”

“Isn’t it? But we’re not here for the view, so let’s go.”

Nalaine had stayed just behind her as Liliei had done into the dungeon to let her appreciate the sight but now the Demon passed beside her walking down the slope in direction of a small patch of trees not too far in the distance. Liliei looked around again, noticing that there were no entrance behind her, but a small circle of red metal below. She then started following her friend, quickly catching up.

“So what are the dangers in here. It doesn’t seem that dangerous in all honesty.”

“You’re not wrong, it’s the first floor, so the monsters are quite easily killed and there are no traps worth mentioning, but still it’s good to stay careful, just a question of habit. Just for the record, I’ve hear that the tenth floor looks exactly like this one, with nearly identical monsters, but that once you start to fight you realize that the small slime you thought inoffensive is just wrecking you whole team. And that’s if you went through the traps.”

“Okay, so never trust the Dungeon, right?”

“Pretty much that, yes. But for now we’ll stay on the first floor, so there isn’t much risks.”

The two continued in silence, Liliei following Nalaine and thinking about how one could lay traps in a place like this. The walk was quite nice, a small breeze keeping the heat from the suns in check while they walked. There was no path and they just waded through the grass that went up to their waist. The patch of trees had seemed rather close to them from the hill, but they still had to walk for about ten minutes before getting in front of it. The explication for the discrepancy was simple: the trees were huge.

“Are trees supposed to be this large? I thought they were supposed to be something like ten meters tall, not sixty? Seventy?”

“Nope, it’s a peculiarity of this place, and there’s only one place on the floor where they’re this big. It’s kind of a landmark for this floor, and the place where we’re going is in the middle of this grove. Only two minutes more to there.”

As the two resumed walking into the trees Liliei continued asking questions.

“Right, I wanted to ask, how big is this floor? From the hill where we appeared I couldn’t see the end, and how do you do not to get lost, I mean, if there’s just one place to go to the next floor and you went in a bad direction, you could just wander in there for quite a long time, couldn’t you?”

“Honestly, no one knows how big is this floor. There are a few Parties that tried to see ho far they could go and walked straight for days without ever getting back to where they started. It even seems that if you go long enough, you can find some stronger monsters. What I think is that this place is as big as it need, so as long as you go to explore, you’ll always find something further.

For your second question the answer is that no matter where you are on this floor, you can attain the exit in maximum thirty minutes.” As Liliei shot her a confused glance, she explained “What I mean is that no matter the place, if you decide you want to go to the exit and start walking, you’ll get there if you walk for thirty minutes.”

“Oh, that’s convenient.”

Right, she reminded herself, this was constructed by the World so she shouldn’t be surprised that there was such a simple answer to the first floor. It was supposed to be easy.

“So where are we going?”

“The one place we’ll be able to get you some Levels without too much difficulty.” Announced Nalaine as she stopped, turning to Liliei while a large ruin appeared between the trees in front of them. “It’s the one place on this floor that is easily accessible and that has a large amount of monsters. Every open floor in a Dungeon has a few places like this and most of those places are extremely dangerous, but can yield great rewards.”

She turned back in direction of the ruins and continued walking.

“But since we’re on the first floor, neither the danger nor the rewards are that large, still it’s a good place to train.”

Liliei followed behind looking at the ruins. They looked like the remnants of a large building, maybe a temple or a crypt. Moss covered everything except for the central part where a large circular area remained untouched, leaving the white stone exposed. In the middle was a large stairway that went down into the darkness. The setup was intimidating, probably intentionally, now that Liliei thought about it.

Nalaine didn’t stop, going straight to the stairs and, as Liliei was about to ask how they were going to see down there, the Demon clapped her hands, a small ball of light appearing just behind and above her head. After turning to flash her a smile, Nalaine continued straight down. Shaking her head, Liliei followed just behind.

“So what’s living in there to make it a dangerous area?”

“Slimes. Loads of slimes. But they are the weak sort that need a core to support themselves, so even without using any spells, you can kill them by destroying the core. If anything happens, I am pretty much their worst enemy, so you really don’t risk much, but stay attentive, we never know.”

Slimes were easily some of the easiest and some of the hardest monsters to kill there were. The ‘weak sort’ needed a core to keep them whole, making it rather easy to kill them since you just had to break the core or push it outside their body. Except that even then, if the slime became big enough or if its liquid had special properties, it could become tricky to do. Then there was the ‘strong sort’ that could hold themselves without core.

Those were a true danger, since more often than not their bodies would have some effects – being acidic, poisonous, or paralyzing for example – and they were completely immune to any type of physical attack on them. Plus they sometimes were able to divide themselves, meaning that you had to care about a group of perfectly synchronized enemies, that could regenerate even if only one was left. The only way to destroy them was by shooting spells at them, since they still had the innate weakness of slime to magical attacks.

The two slowly descended the stairs until they got to a large room that was barely illuminated by Nalaine’s light. They could see three opening in the wall farther from them, and Nalaine went to the left one. The corridor was simple, no decorations anywhere, just bare stones, extending in the dark. Finaly after a few minutes walking, Nalaine turned and talked softly, keeping her voice down.

“Okay, we’re where I want. A bit further down there’s another room that will have some lights, and the first slimes. There usually are only two or three, so what we’ll do is that you’ll go first, staying in stealth, and try to kill them. I’ll be just a bit behind in case there’s a problem.”

“Okay, I’ll do my best.”

Liliei turned and activated her first Ability, tuning it to be strong enough that she could move without being noticeable too easily. Then she slowly walked to the room. It took her quite long considering that if she moved fast her concealment would be useless, and that same concealment demanded her that she sacrifice a part of her body density, which made moving more difficult. Still, she eventually got to the room. This time, there was more to see than bare walls. In the middle of the room was a large purple globe that shone softly. There were four entrance in the room, one on each wall. Each of them was framed by a sculpture of a large monster looking down at those that went through, giving off an imposing feeling.

The light also revealed three slimes moving slowly on the ground, blobs of purple liquid with a crystal floating in the middle. They were quite small, about thirty centimeters in diameter and twenty in height. Two of them were near one of the corner and the last was on the opposite side, so she went for the two. It took her a moment again to get to them, but the monsters fortunately moved quite slowly and Liliei soon was near them.

She was then faced with a problem: how to kill them. She would need to hit their core with enough force to push it out of them or smash it to pieces. Thus she would need a weapon, the problem being she hadn’t taken one with her. He solution came soon enough and she started creating a large mana construct in the shape of a mace, reducing her first Ability to keep her undetected without taking as much mana since she wasn’t moving. Creating the mace took her two minutes, but then she finally was ready. The slimes had moved a bit but were both still in range, so she prepared her strike, and using her second Level of the Ability to hide her movement, she hit the monster with all her strength.

The mace went down at a fast speed, helped by her Secondary Ability, and when her stealth broke the strike was already about to hit the first slime. It didn’t get any time to react, the blow exploding it and expelling the crystal across the room. The second had a little more time but was still way too slow and, if the force had been dampened by the first one, the second was still hit hard enough to get the crystal out, where it quickly dissipated in the air. The third slime started sliding in her direction before getting a frozen spike right on the crystal, shattering it.

“Good job, but hell that was slow. We’ll clearly need to work on that.”

Nalaine was standing in the entrance, her hand still pointed to the last slime. A slight look of annoyance on her face – which was completely understandable as it took nearly ten minutes to do what could have been done in one. She went into the room, coming closer to Liliei who was letting the mace dissipate as she turned to the Demon.”

“Well, I can’t argue about that, I’ll clearly need to work on my mana pool, since it would help me for everything else. I’ll also need to get faster at creating constructs, taking that long for a miserable mace was quite terrible.”

She wasn’t satisfied at all with her performance, it was too slow, too sloppy. She needed to be able to walk normally while hidden, and create constructs at a speed that was usable in a fight, or at least shortly before. At least the constructs didn’t put any strain on her Intent once created since she could sort of tie the end to prevent it from deconstructing. She just kept a sliver of control one the ‘knot’ to be able to dismiss them easily.

“Now I want to show you something. Come.”

With a devious smile, Nalaine went into the path in front of where they had come from, her small light still floating behind her. Liliei followed her carefully – she had the expression of when she was going to laugh at someone else’s expense. They walked only thirty meters before the Demon stopped her.

“Now, you know what I told you about the Dungeon. That you have to always stay attentive and that it was really dangerous. I’m guessing you thought that it wasn’t that important here on the first floor, right?”

Liliei didn’t outright say it, but she had thought it wasn’t really applicable here since the first floor wasn’t really dangerous. Nalaine probably saw it in her expression because she continued talking.

“Here’s something that I show to every group that I take through the first floors, sometimes by making them go into it for the most arrogant of them.”

As she spoke, she slowly created a ball of fire in her hand, before shooting it further into the corridor. The ball flew for five meters before suddenly the ground exploded underneath it, a huge mass of slime shooting from the floor, extinguishing the fire before falling back into a large pit. Liliei felt herself shudder at the sight. If someone was caught by that…

“And you let people go into that?”

“It’s impressive but it’s quite low leveled so it doesn’t do much damages at all, and I’m just behind to prevent it from doing any real harm. But if you’re caught by that alone, it could still mean death. As such it’s a pretty good way to impress on the new Adventurers that the Dungeons are dangerous, and should not be treated lightly. Plus it’s very cathartic when they are a bunch of stuck up asses that think they know better.”

The evil grin on the Demon’s face didn’t escape Liliei, who felt a slight shiver. Then she turned to Liliei, her face back to a gentle smile, but still with a bit of evilness in her gaze.

“Now, let’s work on improving your capacities, shall we?”

The shiver this time was accompanied by the urge to run.