I quickly logged out and called Pauli.

..

She wasn't answering.

(Crap.)

I relocated Shirley but didn't take Pauli with me. Now whenever she'll dive in, she'd be on the eleventh floor.

As she wasn't picking up her phone, I dived in again to make my way to the eleventh floor. Even if she wasn't logged in right now, I'd have to make my way there whenever she did. So I guess it'd be better to go there now so as to save time later.

I dived in again and Shirley wasn't here this time either. Without minding, I entered the boss room and finished the fight in less than 3 seconds. I got another [Spike Shield]. It was probably already the next day in this world.

Anyway, I equipped the newly obtained [Spike Shield] and blasted away any enemy that came in front of me with ease. In about 40 minutes, I was back in the eleventh floor's safe room and found Pauli sitting with her back against one of the walls.

"Late again." (Pauli)

She said calmly.

"So thats why you weren't picking up your phone." (Me)

I went closer to her and sat down beside her.

"You were trying to call me?" (Pauli)

Then I told her what happened.

.

.

.

"So what now?" (Pauli)

She asked for our next coarse of action.

"We can either go to the 1st floor too or continue on in whatever little time we have." (Me)

"What about food?" (Pauli)

Hmm. Good question. Shirley wasn't here and we needed food to survive.

"I can handle that." (Me)

I had some of Shirley's cooking equipment with me as well as practically all the food we owned was stored in either my or Pauli's inventory. We couldn't give it to Shirley since she couldn't use inventory and it'd rot otherwise.

"You can cook?" (Pauli)

If I could cook, then our food problem would be solved.

"A bit." (Me)

And cook, I indeed could.

I never told Pauli that sometimes the lunches that she praised were actually made by me.

"Its decided then?" (Pauli)

She was probably referring to moving onwards.

I got up and extended my hand out her.

"Shall we?" (Me)

She gave a faint smile and took my hand.

"Lets go." (Pauli)

I pulled her up and we walked over to the boss room.

Pauli breathed in heavily as if to get ready. I gave her the new [Spike Shield] and myself remained bare-handed. As the door opened, we walked in to face the boss.

Clown of Ponte Brisko LVL 150

(We meet once again, Mr Clown.)

"That one's an illusion. The real body is up there." (Me)

I told Pauli while looking at its real body. Pauli looked at me first and then followed my gaze. While still looking at the real enemy on the ceiling, she spoke.

"You've fought it before." (Pauli)

It wasn't a question but I still answered.

"Yeah." (Me)

"How're we supposed to bring him down?" (Pauli)

This time she looked at me when she said that.

"Leave that part to me. Do you think you can handle 3 [Grey Skeleton]s alone?" (Me)

The [Grey Skeleton]s hadn't appeared yet, but it was only a matter of time.

"I doubt it." (Pauli)

She was LVL 84. Handling 3 [Grey Skeleton]s was probably too much to ask for.

"Lesser summon undead soldier.

Lesser summon undead soldier.

Lesser summon undead soldier.

Lesser summon undead soldier.

Lesser summon undead soldier." (Me)

I summoned 5 [Lesser White Skeleton Soldier]s just like last time.

"How about now?" (Me)

"I think I can manage." (Pauli)

Pauli wouldn't just stand there and watch me fight and I wasn't going to let her battle the boss, so that only left the to-be-summoned [Grey Skeleton]s.

Having decided upon our respective battles, we got ready.

My summoned Skeletons had already perceived the illusion as my enemy and had automatically went to attack it, causing it to disappear and Pauli's enemies to be summoned. She took that as a cue and started running towards the enemies, ignoring the new illusion of the boss that had appeared a distance away.

As for me, I was thinking of fighting the boss on its home ground, so to speak the string that it was standing on... What? I just want to try it a bit.

I jumped upto the reach the ceiling. I didn't know how much strength to jump up with, so I just went with my instinct. The result was: both my hands were stuck in the ceiling and I was hanging from it.

The force had been a little too much and it caused my arms to be buried till half my elbow length. Thankfully, my head was out, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to see the boss attacking.

The boss pointed his stick at me and from its end came shooting some sort of energy bolt.

I swung my body forward and dodged as the energy bolt thingy passed below me. Since it was going behind me, I couldn't see but I felt the tremor as it made contact with the wall behind me. The sound of debris falling was also hard to miss.

(I should probably avoid getting hit by it.)

Right then I noticed the boss charging another shot. It took about 2 seconds of charging before it could shoot it. I quickly extracted my right hand with a jerk and swung about my left hand to thrust the right one again a bit forward. As I did, the energy bolt barely missed me again. I needed about 3 more swings like that to cover enough distance to land on the string. And I needed to do it quick as the boss didn't have any intention of stopping. I could already see it charge for another shot.

With the same movements, I made another hop forward but without stopping, went on to make two more this time. I was now right above the string. I pulled my arm out gently and carefully landed on the string. Right then another energy bolt came flying at me. I couldn't dodge to the sides so I jumped up in a hurry, just to have both my hands stuck in the ceiling again. So annoying.

But what happened next was much more annoying. As my enemy and I were both were on the string earlier, the energy shot went parallel to the length of the string and destroyed the part of the wall where it was connected to.

"Oh c'mon! I worked so hard to get here." (Me) I couldn't help but exclaim.

Now the stupid boss who broke his own footing was falling and I was stuck in the ceiling. Our positions were completely reversed from what it was in the beggining.

I looked over to Pauli's fight.

"Good." (Me)

She had managed to destroy all the [Grey Skeleton]s and was looking over from a corner at my fight with the boss... except that the boss and I weren't exactly fighting.

I swung again, bringing my feet upto the ceiling and using it as a foothold to free as well as launch myself at the boss at the same time. Midair, I took out a [Spike Shield] and covered my front with it as I was falling headfirst.

"Spike out." (Me)

I spoke out the name of the skill of the shield causing sharp needle like protrusions to come out of its front.

As I had used extra force to jump off, I reached the boss at the same time it hit the ground with its balloon.

*BOOOOOOOM*

A loud noise reverberated as I made impact with the boss.

..

I have no idea what happened after the impact as when I got up and out of the dust cloud that had formed, the boss wasn't there. I remembered hearing a *ding* so I checked my status.

NAME: Rota

RACE: Human

TITLE: Champion, Strongest, Fastest, Smartest, Luckiest

LVL: 348

HP: 36578/38000

SP: 12761/42000

MP: 19180/20000

STR: 1900

AGI: 2100

INT: 1000

LUC: 1000

Points remaining: 80

I barely lost any HP due to my skill:

Soft Landing LVL 10

Decreased damage by 100% when falling from a height less than max jumping height.

This skill had MAX'ed out long ago.

I had 80 points remaining but I was was waiting for another level so I could add it all at the same time to even out the strength stat.

My SP was so low because I was making my way here fast though numerous floors.

..

I walked over to Pauli and waited for the dust cloud to settle down so we could find any drops the Boss left behind.

Pauli just gave me a sigh when I came to her to show her incomprehensiblity at my method of fighting. Hey! I battled normally the last time I was here!

She told me she was getting hungry, so I took out some food and started cooking in the boss room itself. The dust cloud was a distance away so it wasn't a problem. Also, I hadn't witnessed the boss spawning again once defeated while the players were still inside, so I guess this was also sort of a safe room. Unless, if the boss does respawn, I will be more than happy to kill it again.

While I managed to conjure up something good enough to eat, the dust clowd had already settled down and Pauli brought over the Boss item drop.

ClownStick

Effects:

STR+10

INT+10

Even though it said 'ClownStick', it wasn't the same as the one the Boss was using. I probably won't be using this one so it went right into the inventory.

As the food was finally done, we sat down to eat. Pauli looked satisfied with the food so I was satisfied too.

Afterwards, we decided to move on to the 12th floor

safe room before logging out instead of going back to the eleventh floor's safe room

On the way, we fought

against [Lesser White Skeleton Soldier]s, [Lesser White Skeleton Archer]s, [Lesser White Skeleton Mage]s and the normal [Grey Skeleton]s.

The [Mage]s weren't so much of a pain in the ass for me as their only attacks were [Fireball], [Waterball], [Windball] and the rare [Darkball]. They are only tentative names used by our party to refer to the attacks. The first 3 should be pretty obvious as to what they do from their name. The [Darkball] is like a [Fireball], just that its made of darkness. And when I say its made of darkness, believe me that there aren't any better words to describe it. It is similar to the dark fog that we witnessed at the entrance of the dungeon. The [Darkball] makes no impact on landing unlike the other balls but in fact, does more damage.

Actually, I rather enjoy being hit by the balls as they do really insignificant damage to my HP and are in fact, refreshing, especially the wind and water ones(Though Pauli looked at me with a weird look when I told her that).

Anyways, the main problem is the archers. They are similar to mages as they attack from the back, but their attacks hurt if they land, so its unpleasent. Also, the arrows they fire disappear once they get defeated, so I can't even have Pauli use them.

So now, whenever I face a fight where the enemies contain an archer, I destroy it first, which isn't much trouble with my speed.

The rest is all well. I let Pauli take on the weaker opponent while I finish off the stronger ones. Sometimes when there is less danger, she requests to fight alone so I just support from the back.

The fights have become considerably easy and it took us about 2 hours to reach the next safe room, where we said our goodbyes.