The party couldn’t decide. Vinny, Yvonne and Toxic Donkey thought that it was best to use the exit but they were sill curious about the rest.

  Io, Giana and Noelle wanted to finish the dungeon. Toxic Donkey was fighting against his pride. He wanted to continue but he didn’t want to die. He knew one thing for sure. If that stupid fox said that what will come is ‘brutal’ then they could die to a simple mistake.

  “So still no consensus, eh?” Vinny sighed.

  “Does anyone know what the next floor could be about?” Everyone shook their head to Giana’s question.

  “Well, we left off at where he assassinated Taylor. So, it could be about when he met me but nothing there was brutal besides the fight with the demi god. So that might be up next. He was supposed to do blacksmithing after his assassin career but I can’t imagine that being brutal maybe the incident that caused him to drop multiple [Meteors]?”

  “Can you tell us about that fight with the demigod?” Noelle inquired.

  “Uhh, Thalia was about to get S-rank. She needed 1 more quest and that’s where she dragged me and Agnis with her. We needed to investigate a cave near Gittrian. We ended up in an underwater cave with strange and strong piranhas and sharks. It was… easy but mainly because that stupid fox is uselessly good at fighting underwater.” Toxic Donkey reminisced.

  “It’s probably when he started to really call me Toxic Donkey as he and Thalia took a supporting role. He flung the piranhas and sharks into a large air bubble he made and I killed them with poison. He provoked a very strong shark that busted a hole into the floor and we fell into a magma pit full of cultists. We found Agnis and Io’s friend, Esher, down there.” He looked at Io. She seemed a bit downcast as Io had seen how Esher died.

  “The place was a mess and the cultist were unsealing an ancient building, the building was holding a demi-god, which escaped. It was the first and only time I saw Agnis going 9t mode… It was… I don’t know… I don’t have the vocabulary to describe it but Thalia was starstruck. It was also the first and only time I saw him using [Silver Torrent]. He turned the demigod and its 1000 clones into his plaything with lightning that acted as if it was water and vaporized them. he got the name Silver Torrent shortly after as I got the name Toxic Donkey.”

  ?

  “Oh, I saw him use [Silver Torrent]. It is one of the prettiest attacks I’ve ever seen. It competes with his fishbowl attack, but he flooded a whole city with it and it one-shot everything it touched. Not sure how anyone can beat that. My [Polygonic Armament] got an extreme boost from that. It even scared me how powerful my attacks became with that.”

  “I wish I could’ve seen that.” Giana pouted.

  “Anyways if the next floor is that demi god we might be screwed. At least me as a human won’t be able to do anything.”

  Vinny felt uncomfortable after hearing he might have to fight a demigod. “What was its specialty?”

  “Light and uhh hmm that’s it. It did make a lot of clones but thinking about it, he was quite bad at it. It also seemed that provoking him made his attacks weaker. Can you use 9t mode Giana?”

  “I’m sorry I can’t yet. I don’t even know how to activate it. I thought it might be similar to how Noelle does it but I still couldn’t get it…”

  “That’s fine. Maybe we should make a plan first and then go to the next floor.” Toxic Donkey said, unsure if continuing was a good idea. The more he thought about it the more afraid he became of what could be next.

  The party had hour long discussions and decided to press on as the strongest arguments to continue were not related to the dungeon or Agnis. They all realized that this dungeon had somehow improved them as individuals as it had pushed them to improve on some aspects or abilities. It had also opened their eyes on parts of the world none of them were familiar with.

  The party took resting seriously and rested for 3 days.

  Day 8 after they first entered and they went through the staircase.

  Giana instantly reacted as they found themselves underwater and Yvonne made a large [Airball].

  “Ah right, I would ask you guys to delete the parts that have me fight underwater. I don’t want anyone to know about this yet.” Giana said, who had gone to her mermaid mode and was moving the bubble.

  “Whoa a mermaid.”

  Io punched Toxic Donkey.“Kyle stop staring! You have me!”

  “Ow! I’m sorry! What is this place? And why does this guy get stuck underwater so often?!”

  The party crushed their recording crystals to respect Giana’s wishes.

  “Oh this is a problem. It’s a labyrinth. However…” Giana used her echolocation. “It doesn’t seem too hard for a mermaid to solve this.”

  “Hmm I more or less get the structure of this place. Labyrinth is a bit inaccurate. It’s a 3x3x3 cube with labyrinths on the side. Quite a nasty puzzle. I can see how team Hourai would have issues with this. Had they a mermaid or a 7t in their team, it would have been way easier. Can you get me to the floor Giana?”

  “Oh is it time for you guys to be overpowered again? And what about you dragons?” Toxic Donkey smirked at Io and Vinny who seemed as useless as him in this situation.

  Vinny ignored Toxic Donkey's remark. “I will leave it to the tailed beasts. I suppose I should also focus on some underwater adventures.”

  Giana pulled the bubble to the labyrinth floor. Noelle stomped and got a better idea of how the structure worked but they got interrupted by a large white sea snake.

  “Yv, can you move the bubble into the labyrinth? I will take care of this sea snake.” Yvonne nodded as Giana started to tail slam the sea snake.

  The sea snake returned the favor but none of them took any damage. Giana’s echolocation told her that the party had safely arrived at the labyrinth and the stomps suggested that Noelle was busy solving the puzzle. The labyrinth moved like those puzzle cubes she had seen some years ago.

  Giana tried to come up with how a party was supposed to solve this without a mermaid or a 7t but she couldn’t come up with anything. She would ask Agnis on how they solved this. Giana had a bigger problem. This snake was as tough as she was.

  She was unsure if she could beat it by having it get exhausted. She tried charm magic which was partly effective. She took out sapphire scales that turned into daggers. Any attempt to cut the snake ended up in failure. The daggers got knocked out of her hands many times as the snakes scales were hard. The snake’s scales had some scratch marks but Giana didn’t have the physical strength to cut through them.

  “What to do…” She stopped paying attention as the snake had the same problem as her. It couldn’t damage her.

  “Magic? My magic is too weak. Agnis’ frost magic?” She blasted the snake with frost magic but she only got a bit mana from it and the snake was relatively unharmed.

  “Stupid snake! What is you weakness!” She countered a tail slam with her own.

  “Wait maybe this snake has the same weakness as me! What is my weakness actually?” Giana thought about it. Besides not being able to do damage, she couldn’t find a realistic weakness.

  The snake was throwing attacks around and although she didn’t take damage from them, she could tell how much damage it would do to any of her party members. It would give Yvonne and Toxic Donkey problems and they could die if they were careless but it was clear that this snake had better offensive capabilities than she had.

  Giana got snapped back to reality as her environment turned dark. “Huh what? Hey! I’m not a snack! Don’t eat me!”

  The snake was doing its best to swallow Giana who tried to break free. “Unacceptable!”

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  Giana took out another set of sapphire daggers and started to cut into the inside of the snake. Yet again did she get covered by blood. She realized that this must be the snake’s weakness. It had no scales inside it’s body! Did this mean this was her weakness too? Giana kept swinging her daggers and wildly moving her sapphire-scaled tail around and ripping into the snake’s inside. She could tell that the snake was thrashing around but that was to be expected.

  She discovered another thing; the scales on her tail could stand up and stick out, making it a more effective weapon. She was supposed to be a healer but the only way she could deal damage was in the most gruesome way.

  “Don’t eat me!” Giana said as she kept cutting and flailing her tail.

  The snake stopped moving after 10 minutes of Giana’s rampage. The bloodied flesh was pressing down on her as she tried to swim through the blood toward the snake's mouth. She used water magic to not choke in the pool of snake blood as she was worming her way out of the snake.

  After an exhausting 10-minute struggle she saw the light and was freed from the snake.

  “Ugh, my fighting style is unbefitting of an idol…” Giana had gotten accustomed to cleaning herself from blood and gore and she wasn’t happy about this. “Why am I such a shit healer…”

  She joined her allies who were waiting for her.

  “I stabilized this place! It’s well-built! I’m happy! But… it’s a pain in the ass. I think this place is brutal indeed. Too bad I’m here haha! We need your echolocation to find the exit. The stage is yours Giana!”

  Giana started to sing to improve her echolocation while dragging the bubble effortlessly through the labyrinth. Her song attracted monsters so she used [Ice Walls] to keep monsters from reaching them. Toxic Donkey had used some poisons that could work underwater. Vinny could use vines to bind and smack monsters and Io was pouting as she was useless in this environment.

  Just as water magic was difficult to use in arid areas, fire magic, or more accurately, temperature magic was harder to use with a lot of water around as water has a high heat capacity and the energy needed to create a notable fire attack increased drastically.

  Fighting underwater was extremely uncommon so this is not a problem most fire users would ever encounter. There were some exceptions in the branch of fire magic but Io couldn’t use any of those.

  The bubble got pulled down into the middle layer of the puzzle and they stood face to face with an enormous creature.

  “W…what in Hourai is that?!”

  They stood face to face with a large creature that had strange tentacles.

  “Giana over t…there! A signpost.”

  Giana blocked a strange laser with an [Ice wall] and pulled the bubble to the signpost. “Enjoy getting ganked by the Breathless.”

  Foam gathered around the party and smaller Breathless appeared and started shooting lasers. Giana froze the outside of the bubble and body-blocked some. One of the scales on her tail caught a laser at the perfect angle and reflected it at a Breathless. The reflected laser was deep blue and one shot the Breathless.

  “Wow Nice job Giana!” Io said while giving her a thumbs up.

  “That was unintentional!” She tried to replicate it but with low success. The Breathless disengaged by turning into foam, making most of Giana’s attacks miss.

  A stomp shook the hall and all the foam reformed into Breathless. “Nice try assholes! No losing your form with me around!”

  The number of Breathless decreased as they couldn’t disengage by turning into foam again. Giana blocked the laser from the big Breathless with her tail and It seemed as if the scales on her tail were brightening in color as they were getting charged by the energy hitting them.

  “I have no clue on what this means but this is a good thing right?”

  “Whoa!”

  Io punched Toxic Donkey again.“Kyle stop staring!”

  “Go get them Giana!” Noelle stomped and impaled some Breathless with [Crystal Spikes].

  “With what? I don’t know what this means!” Giana said, trying to figure out what to do with her glowing scales.

  “I…I want to fight too!” Yvonne hopped on Giana’s back and had made an [Air ball] around her head.

  “Are you sure Yv?”

  Yvonne’s aura changed. “Yes!”

  “Wow I already knew this but humans are useless.” Toxic Donkey said and looked dejectedly at his own hands.

  A mana wave went out as Yvonne went 4t mode. Her tails turned long and fluffy and didn’t look like rabbit tails anymore. A lot of air pockets formed and flowers started to grow all over in the large underwater hall. Yvonne pushed off and jumped from air pocket to air pocket.

  Giana swam at the big Breathless while avoiding lasers and made sure to catch some with her tail.

  Petals gathered around Yvonne’s hand and created a large flower. Yvonne used [Flower Cannon] and shot a beam of nature energy at the large Breathless. It got canceled by a Breathless laser and Yvonne continued hopping from air pocket to air pocket and shooting her [Flower Cannon]. She used [Forest Rabbit] and clones made out of wind and petals assaulted the Breathless with jumps and kicks.

  The petals of the destroyed [Forest Rabbits] gathered around the flower hand cannon on Yvonne’s right arm which made it bloom.

  The Breathless raised its arm to slam down on Giana and it sent tentacles to Yvonne. Yvonne shot the tentacles down and Giana managed to evade. She expected a [Water Blade] to fly out but a dark blue wave shot out of her tail and cut through one of the Breathless’ fingers, the cut kept flying and created a large gash in the wall.

  “Yes! I can finally attack!” She kept sending out [Sapphire Blades] which cut anything in its path until the glow in her tail disappeared and they went back to being [Water Blades].

  “Oh… so that’s how it works. Yv! Let’s hit him with a big attack after I charge up my tail!”

  Giana kept catching lasers with her tail to charge it up. Yvonne kept hopping between air pockets. The large flowers in the room sent petals and nature [Energy balls] and nature [Energy Beams] at the big Breathless.

  Yvonne’s hand cannon was enormous and Giana’s tail was fully charged as the rest of her body slowly started to grow glowing sapphire scales.

  Giana was like a bright blue glowing beacon and it attracted the attention of all the Breathless in the room.

  “Let’s get him Yv!” Giana made a large backflip and released all the energy of her tail into an enormous [Sapphire Blade]. All the petals gathered around Yvonne and she used [Flower Petal Cannon].

  The attacks tore through all the large Breathless’ defenses and it exploded into blue blood. Yvonne was protected by an air pocket but Giana was covered in blood again.

  “Ugh! I hate this!” She got rid of the smaller Breathless that were still left, cleaned herself and brought Yvonne to the bubble that held the rest of the party.

  “Hey, I was thinking maybe we can beat this after all.” Vinny said happily, admiring his overpowered friends.

  “I can’t get this smell off me, some help Yv?” Yvonne helped Giana get rid of the bad smell and made her smell floral. “Thanks.”

  “No problem! Fighting underwater is harder than I thought… oh right I need to cancel my Rabbit Mode.” Yvonne canceled her Rabbit Mode, which was obviously her 4t mode.

  “This floor tried to drain but I counteracted that. Maybe it’s needed to solve this puzzle but we have a mermaid with us. The stage is still yours Giana.” Giana nodded at Noelle and she continued locating the exit of the labyrinth.

  Noelle had to stomp several times to keep the labyrinth the same. Io, Toxic Donkey and Vinny took a nap because they realized that there was nothing that they could do in this situation.

  The puzzle was already solved but it still took the party 3 hours to complete it as the appearance of more and more Breathless were slowing them down. The party reached the end with half of the team exhausted and the other half refreshed.

  “We might have trivialized this but this still was exhausting…” Noelle said as she stomped which stopped restricting the level of the water levels so it turned to the state it wanted to go to, draining the floor they were on. Noelle stomped again and made a watertight and waterproof crystal house over the staircase leading down. “I need some sleep.”

  Giana returned to her 9t self and the idols rested for the night and were ready to tackle the next floor. The outside had flooded and there was only water around the crystal house but Noelle took construction seriously so no drop made it inside.

  The party descended after the rest and ended up in a large empty room.