44?
Jeanne, Rose, and Kureha all felt a jolt. That was a whole floor deeper than the Floor 41 to 43 progress Leon had predicted earlier!
And you couldn't dismiss that single floor as nothing, not down in the danger-soaked Deep Floors!
As Leon put it, the difficulty of clearing the Deep Floors climbed a full tier with every single floor. This was no joke.
Especially for a massive faction like the Loki Familia, which already stood at the very summit of Orario, every floor of progress meant a qualitative leap on every level imaginable.
Here's an analogy: dropping your hundred-meter time from twenty seconds to twelve might not be all that hard, and an ordinary person could manage it easily enough with proper training. But breaking past twelve to dip under ten seconds?
Exploring the Deep Floors was the same. From Floor 37 to Floor 48, every step forward saw the difficulty climb exponentially.
Without the Monster Hunter Specials to back them up, the Loki Familia's progress should have stalled around Floor 39 to 40. After all, the Big Three were top-tier Lv. 5s, and with those three working together plus their other Lv. 4 support, taking down Udaeus wouldn't have cost them much.
But the moment they stepped into the Deep Floors, the lesser monsters jumped to Lv. 4, and that was a different story entirely.
Aside from the Big Three and a few seasoned Lv. 4 commanders who might still grind their way forward through the ultra-high spawn rates and dense monster waves, the rest of the members below Lv. 4, including the Supporters responsible for hauling supplies and handling logistics, simply couldn't hold the line. At that point, any tiny slip would mean losing someone.
And once they lost their logistical backbone, the single most important thing in Dungeon exploration, their main force, the core fighting strength, naturally couldn't sustain the push either.
This was the fundamental reason the Loki Familia had been turned back at Floor 40 time and again.
But once Leon started providing the Monster Hunter Specials, the situation changed completely.
With the Monster Hunter Specials backing them, the entire Familia, from the Big Three at the top down to the logistics Supporters lugging bags and cooking meals, got a solid bump in overall strength across the board, which made a major leap in their progress perfectly reasonable.
Even though the Monster Hunter Special only granted a 5% boost to all abilities, once you factored in the stacking amplification from skills and magic, it was enough to raise a user's total combat strength by another 20% to 30% on top of that. And in coordinated teamwork, the overall benefit to the group could be even more staggering.
All of which went to show: the Loki Familia's wildly successful Expedition this time around called for putting on your formal best and saying a proper thank-you to Leon and the others!
...
Two and a half seconds later, Jeanne and the others came out of their surprise, and when they looked at Finn's group again, their eyes were completely different.
"Congratulations, Mr. Finn. I imagine an achievement like this is enough to send shockwaves through all of Orario. After all... this is the first time in nearly eight years that a Familia has successfully explored down to Floor 44. A Great Feat like that is worthy of being sung of by the gods themselves~~."
As Jeanne finished, Rose, standing beside her, picked up the thread with a smile.
"It won't be long before the whole world knows of the feat you've accomplished. Your own people, the pallum, are bound to celebrate this glory that belongs to the Braver."
Faced with the praise from the two of them, Finn didn't let the joy go to his head. He smiled and waved a hand, his tone steady.
"Don't flatter me to death. This Great Feat belongs to the entire Familia, not to me alone."
"This glory, I will never claim for myself."
He paused, then looked earnestly at Jeanne and Rose.
"Beyond that, I really do have to thank you for the Monster Hunter Specials. Without that miraculous dish, forget breaking past Floor 43 and reaching 44, we'd have started losing people back at the Sand Land stage."
Sand Land was an entirely new terrain that began appearing from Floor 32.
Unlike every floor before it, where monsters spawned in plain sight, the monster spawning here worked as pure ambush. The whole desert was like an invisible minefield, with monsters erupting all at once from beneath the sand. Impossible to predict, impossible to sense, and even harder to guard against.
The defining trait of this environment was just how easy it was to get blindsided, sometimes killed in a single hit.
That was what pushed Sand Land's difficulty far beyond what its floor depth should warrant, making it the last threshold before entering the Deep Floors proper.
If not for the all-around boost the Monster Hunter Specials provided, the party's less experienced, lower-level Supporters, along with the more fragile ranged classes, could easily have taken heavy hits from those ambushes, even casualties.
The thought left even battle-hardened Finn with lingering unease. To make sure this Expedition succeeded in one shot, he'd mobilized nearly all of the Familia's combat strength, plenty of them newcomers and Lv. 2 Supporters.
If all that fresh blood had suffered crippling losses, Finn truly wouldn't have known how to face Loki.
Thankfully, he'd bet right.
So Finn's gratitude for the help Leon and the others had given was heartfelt.
"Well, if you want to express your thanks, why not consider increasing your order for the Monster Hunter Specials, Captain Finn? You know how it is. That captain of ours is... always particularly fixated on gold."
Rose said it with a glance at the Supporters passing by with their bulging packs, then told Finn with a sweet smile:
"From the looks of it, this trip must have netted you quite a haul, hm?"
"..."
He'd only just made it back to the surface, hadn't even cashed in the loot yet, and already someone had their eye on it. Finn could only answer with a wry smile.
The rest of the Familia only had to keep their fighting spirit blazing and charge in howling their battle cries. As Familia captain, though, Finn had a lot more to weigh.
The Monster Hunter Specials worked wonders, sure, but the price was genuinely painful.
Even as a veteran First-Class Adventurer, he couldn't help feeling his heart bleed a little.
You never know the cost of rice and firewood until you're the one running the household. If it were just supplying their Lv. 4 and Lv. 5 core members, a price of a hundred thousand Valis might not be much...
But the Expedition party numbered a full hundred-plus people!
What kind of cosmic joke was that!
If he opened up the supply of Monster Hunter Specials across the board, the Loki Familia's finances would be bankrupt inside a few days!
"Ahem, about the order, how about we discuss it in more detail another day?"
Catching the flash of awkwardness in Finn's eyes, Jeanne and Rose exchanged a smiling look and nodded along easily.
"Of course."
Just then, Jeanne seemed to remember something. She changed the subject and asked Finn:
"Oh, right, we just came from Tsubaki's. If I remember correctly... your Expedition this time was a joint operation with the smiths of the Hephaestus Familia, wasn't it? But it looks like they came back a fair bit earlier than you?"
"Did something go wrong somewhere along the way?"
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