Compared to the Black Rhinos, the Deformis Spiders were another type of monster entirely.
The Black Rhino's defining trait was how hard it was, its tough hide difficult for even an ordinary first-class adventurer to cut open.
Seeing Ais, Tiona and Bete dispose of Black Rhinos as easily as if they were trash mobs might give the impression the things weren't much, but these few were among the very top of Lv.5, and every one of them had a Skill or some other ability backing them up, which was what let them slice through that hard hide so easily.
Ais went without saying. Even before her level up she had been the city's strongest female swordsman, and the weapon in her hand was First Class equipment with the Unbreakable attribute. With her hunting swordplay specialized against monsters, one swing down and the sharpness bursting out in that instant alone was enough to cut steel; a Black Rhino's hide couldn't stop that slash at all.
The great double-blade Urga in Tiona's hands was a murder weapon through and through, and calling it a meat grinder wouldn't be an exaggeration. Few monsters could block that weapon with their bodies alone, and on top of that her own abilities had all reached A or close to it, so hide that ordinary first-class adventurers couldn't easily break through was, in front of her, just so much cowhide.
As for Bete, he was even more of a special case.
Ais could cut down Black Rhinos like trash mobs because of sword technique honed to its peak.
Tiona could cut down Black Rhinos like trash mobs because of extraordinary stats and her weapon.
And the reason Bete could kick Black Rhinos around like balls was two Skills: Fenris Wolf and Solmani.
Fenris Wolf's effect strengthened his running speed.
Solmani's effect strengthened his Strength and Agility parameters while accelerating.
Add to that Bete's Agility being at the highest rank, S, and his kicks carried crushing weight; any large monster would go flying like a ball under one of his kicks, or simply get blown apart.
Putting all that together, those three could handle Black Rhinos, hard enough to make your scalp crawl, with ease. An ordinary Lv.5 in their place absolutely couldn't have.
Take Raul, for instance. He had no Magic and no Skills, and even his Development Abilities were Hunter, Abnormal Resistance and Escape, which gave almost no boost to combat power, and his basic abilities were all only C at best. Even if he reached Lv.5 and became a first-class adventurer, dealing with a single Black Rhino would probably mean tangling with it for ages, never mind treating that many of them as trash mobs.
From that alone it was clear that Black Rhinos really weren't trash mobs; it was just that these first-class adventurers of Loki Familia were absurdly overpowered.
As for the Deformis Spiders, they weren't as hard as the Black Rhinos, but they were killers in the dark, assassins famous throughout the region of Floor 51 and below.
They could approach a target soundlessly in the darkness, either suddenly spitting out webbing to bind an enemy and drag it into the dark to be devoured, or pouncing on an enemy like a god of death, running its body through with knife-sharp spider legs or fangs before it could react, and always going for the weak points: if not fangs into the head, then legs into the heart or throat.
The monster was especially terrifying in a chaotic fight, because it would strike while you were busy battling other monsters or lost in confusion, and drag you off so that you died without ever knowing what happened, without even seeing its face.
Now, as the expedition party sprinted through the rock passage, breaking through the Black Rhinos' assault, a group of these Deformis Spiders came pouncing at their flank with no warning at all, red light glinting viciously in their compound eyes as they closed in on the group without a sound.
Unfortunately for them, they didn't know that this party had a female swordsman abnormally sensitive to the presence of monsters.
At Ais's warning, Finn issued instructions immediately.
"Ais, Tione, you two take them. Don't let them slow us down."
The golden-haired, golden-eyed swordsman and the Amazoness warrior with her kukri turned to meet the group of Deformis Spiders.
"Don't get in our way!"
The kukri in Tione's hands spun nimbly, drawing a wide sweep of cold light as she cut into the Deformis Spiders.
Ais said nothing at all, just flicked the silver saber in her hand, and then loosed a sky-covering flurry of blade light, close to a hundred strokes in an instant, cutting into the monsters.
Under that vicious storm of blade light, these gods of death hiding in the darkness had their chests, skulls and backs opened one after another, each of them sliced in half with a single easy stroke.
Quite a few Deformis Spiders still lurking in the dark spat webbing at Ais and Tione, but the two of them moved like they had night vision in that darkness, dodging every strand with a single sidestep before charging in and slaughtering the Deformis Spiders in a whirl of blades until nothing was left.
"Beautiful!"
Tsubaki, keeping pace beside Finn, watched the performance of the Familia executives and couldn't help letting out a cheer.
She was a first-class adventurer herself, but in the end she was a smith, unlike these Loki Familia executives who had each trained and specialized toward combat, so even to her eye Ais and the others' performance counted as stunning.
At least where fighting strength was concerned, Tsubaki admitted she fell short.
She had been about to draw the tachi at her waist and join in, but before she could even get it out, both the herd of Black Rhinos ahead and the swarm of Deformis Spiders at their side had already been cut down like weeds by Ais, Bete, Tiona and Tione, leaving nothing behind but magic stones and drop items all over the ground.
Looking at those dropped materials, Tsubaki's eyes lit up and she badly wanted to bend down and gather them, only for Finn to pull her back.
"At this depth of the Dungeon there won't be a second expedition team besides us, so even if we leave this stuff lying here nobody's going to pick it up. We can collect it on the way back."
That also saved pack capacity, kept their baggage from growing, and sped up their advance without wasting extra time on the work of picking things up. Two birds with one stone.
But...
"That's assuming things go normally, isn't it?"
Leo, who had been running along at the rear with his head down, spoke out of nowhere.
"What do you mean?"
Lefiya, out of breath from running, asked in confusion.
"Don't forget what we ran into here last time," Leo said calmly. "With magic stones all over the ground, it'd be strange if that lot didn't get drawn over."
The moment Leo finished speaking, a rumbling came from the branching passage ahead, growing more urgent by the second.
A huge mass of revolting, unpleasant-looking worms came shoving their way out of that junction, jostling each other forward like insects squirming and squeezing in a crowded passage mouth, forcing the purple-black corrosive fluid to spray out and land on the walls and floor with a sizzle.
The yellow-green mass swallowed the entire wide passage, its gaudy-colored hide, its wide flat arms that called to mind a manta ray, and its clusters of parapodia all pressing forward, and just the sight of it made you want to vomit.
"Th, those things again!"
Raul's shout came out almost as a scream.
"So those are the monsters that made your last expedition fail, the ones you had to join hands with us over this time?"
Tsubaki's brow furrowed at the sight too. She had been wondering whether these monsters might drop some rare material and was intensely curious about them, but now that she saw that stomach-turning yellow-green shape, all such thoughts were gone.
As for the others, their eyes sharpened.
"All hands, switch to Unbreakable attribute weapons!"
Finn gave the order without hesitation.
"Change formation! Tiona, fall back! Ais, take her place!"
Everyone displayed outstanding professionalism, obeying instantly, changing positions without the slightest hitch.
Ais, holding her Unbreakable attribute weapon, passed by Tiona as they swapped places, chanting under her breath.
"Awaken."
Currents of air drifted in from all around and wound about her slender body.
"Ais! Give it to me!"
Bete, still running forward, shouted straight out, and Ais reached out a hand and passed the wind wrapped around her to the werewolf youth's legs.
The silver metal boots wound themselves in the airflow, the yellow gems set into them absorbing the wind's power and making it their own.
"Die!!!"
Bete, both legs sheathed in whirlwind, drew the Dual Rolan at his waist and charged forward alongside Ais with a roar.
"Hoooooooooooooooo...!!!"
That familiar broken-gong screeching finally rang out, and the worm-type monsters either rammed forward like war chariots or reared their upper bodies, opened their mouths, and fired jets of purple-black liquid that stank of rot.
Seeing that dissolving fluid, which had once terrified all of them, Lefiya swallowed hard, Alicia gripped the longbow at her waist tighter, and Raul shook all over and nearly turned and fled on instinct.
There was no helping it. He was the one who had been drenched head to foot in the worm monsters' dissolving fluid right here last time, soaked through, his whole body corroded, nearly dead.
Remembering the agony of that moment, remembering the feeling of his whole body burning as if it were about to rot away, Raul went pale.
Ais and Bete, by contrast, only grew more fired up.
The corrosive fluid coming at them was deflected by the wind wrapped around the two of them, splashing off to the sides.
Pushing through it, the two shielded the whole party and drove straight into the swarm of worms.
Bete kicked first, like a missile, blowing apart the giant worm at the very front so that yellow-green chunks of flesh flew everywhere, and the dissolving fluid stored in its body was blasted outward by the shockwave, never touching him.
Ais loosed a keen, sweeping slash across a whole row of worm monsters, just as she had once taken the head off a Giant Flower in the Pantry on Floor 24 with a single stroke, the slash carrying a huge cutting sound over a dozen meters and severing the parapodia of every worm monster in its path.
"Hoooooooooooo...!"
Quite a few of the worm monsters let out their broken-gong screams, but Ais and Bete didn't stop; they sped up their strokes instead.
Bete used hands and feet both, the silver-white dual blades flashing wildly while the metal boots on his legs spun like blades of their own, either cutting worm bodies apart or blowing their hides open, brutally.
Ais became a storm of sword edges, cutting wherever she went, so that she was already sprinting off to the next spot while behind her a mass of severed limbs and blood was still spraying through the air, slow to fall.
The wind on the two of them blocked every bit of the dissolving fluid, so that the rest of the party following behind was never touched by it.
"Leo!"
Finn, holding the Spear Rolan he had pulled from the pack on Alicia's back, ran a small worm that had slipped through clean through and shouted at the same time.
Leo had long since been ready.
"Light of heaven, sword of stars."
A brilliant magic circle spread out beneath his feet, starlight spilling out of it, his vast Mind refined into magic power and bursting outward in a surge that drew the attention of every worm monster.
But by the time they reacted, Leo's barrage was already prepared.
"Meteor Dance!"
As the ultra-short chant completed, countless points of starlight became meteors and flew out to blanket everything.
The meteors fell like rain, tearing across the space, lighting up the darkness, and as if they had wills of their own they curved around Tiona and Tione dealing with the Deformis Spiders up ahead, curved around Ais and Bete tangled in among the worm monsters, and under the watching eyes of Finn, Riveria, Gareth and the Supporters, they slammed into worm after worm.
A grand series of explosions filled the wide rock passage, sending an enormous tremor through it.
Countless meteors pierced, blasted or shattered the worms as they struck, vaporizing them one after another amid the roar of detonations.
The worm monsters didn't even have time to scream before a huge swath of them was wiped out, the dissolving fluid vaporized along with them.
When Leo's magic came out, it came out to effect: the result was even greater than what Ais and Bete had achieved.
"Th, that's an ultra-short chant? You've got to be kidding me!?"
Tsubaki, seeing something this outrageous for the first time, gaped and nearly lost her composure.
Leo had used this magic before during the expedition, but compared with what it looked like now, those times were far weaker.
"S, such firepower..."
Lefiya felt a sense of defeat rise up out of nowhere, feeling that the magical firepower she took pride in had been utterly beaten by this magic of Leo's that he could finish chanting in a single offhand line.
"His command of magic has gotten stronger too."
What Riveria saw more of was Leo's control over the magic.
A firepower bombardment over that wide an area, and he could still split his attention to steer it, not harming Ais and Bete caught in the middle of the monster swarm, going around his companions and striking precisely only the targets that needed hitting. That degree of magic control already far exceeded Lefiya's and wasn't much below her own, and in flexibility it even surpassed hers.
"Now! Break through!"
Finn spoke up calmly, his expression unchanged, and it brought everyone back to themselves.
So the group swiftly moved past that area, crossing a battlefield scattered with stardust.
The entrance to Floor 52 was nearly in reach.
[Read 40+ chapters ahead on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]