Truth be told, although Aether (Renjiro) could currently rely on the bug-like spell Starlight Fireflies to achieve a kind of pseudo over-level monster slaying, his actual Dungeon progress was… a bit behind.
After all, the 11th and 12th Floors are designed for Level 1 adventurers whose Basic Abilities range from B up to S. And among ordinary adventurers, anyone reaching even A-rank stats is already exceptional.
So in practice: once a Level 1 adventurer hits around 700+ in any stat, they rarely linger on the Upper Floors. Even the laziest ones eventually descend to the 10th Floor if they're serious about leveling.
By comparison, Aether and Lumine… well, both had reached Level 2 with all stats at SSS. On paper, they could already handle the Middle Floors (13th Floor and below) with ease.
But they knew the truth of their own condition.
For one, Aether's current raw stats were still below standard. His highest, Magic, was only around 600.
For another, their Genshin System leveling efficiency was questionable.
Would farming hordes of small monsters yield more progress than struggling against a few large ones? If big monsters took forever to kill and gave little EXP, better to stick with exterminating killer ants.
And as for pushing into the Middle Floors…
"Right now, aside from my lack of experience, we don't even have the proper party size," Aether admitted.
According to Guild guidelines, any team attempting the Middle Floors should ideally have a seasoned Level 2 leader, with at least three members.
For example: in the original timeline, the protagonist Bell Cranel had just barely reached that minimum requirement for his first Middle Floor dive, and nearly got his entire party wiped out thanks to a trap laid by the Takemikazuchi Familia.
Aether shook his head. No need to go down that road yet.
"For now, my mana pool allows me to sustain Elemental Descent for thirty minutes." He frowned, calculating. "If I summon both Xiao and Fischl together, the duration is cut in half. So it's basically thirty minutes total, divided among whoever's out."
But the Middle Floors were far too unpredictable for such limited time. To maintain leveling efficiency, he'd need his summons active constantly.
Give me a few more days to raise my Magic. Maybe I can exploit the trait of Starry Abyss to make Elemental Descent permanent, or at least keep one character always out.
His thoughts were interrupted when,
Whoosh
Steel sang as he and Lumine reached the staircase leading from the 9th to the 10th Floor.
Adventurer's Note – The passages between floors are usually stairways or slopes. From the Middle Floors onward, they become vertical shafts and cavern tunnels, much easier for monsters to "wander" into floors they don't belong on.
Such as… the famous case of Bell Cranel's encounter with a Minotaur on the wrong floor.
And today,
Boom!
Barely two minutes into the 10th Floor, Aether's Enemy Sense flared. A hostile presence rushed at them fast.
It looked like an armadillo, if armadillos were the size of mastiffs.
The Guild called it: Hard Armored Rat. Its scale plating was several times tougher than the killer ants' chitin, considered the strongest defense of the Upper Floors.
For most Level 1 adventurers, breaking its armor was impossible. Their blades would just bounce off until they collapsed from exhaustion.
It was a monster native to the 11th Floor, clearly, this one had wandered up.
And its attack pattern?
"...This is literally a Geo Vishap Hatchling, isn't it?" Aether muttered as the beast tucked itself into a ball and rolled straight at them, red hostility marker zipping across his vision.
Wind-element Traveler skills weren't ideal against something so fast and so heavily armored.
Still, sometimes brute force beats finesse.
"Slash!"
Timing perfectly, Aether swung his Traveler's Sword head-on.
Crack!
One blow. Armor split. The beast's body was cleaved clean in two.
Thunk
Its magic stone clattered free as its form dissolved into black mist, vanishing into the white fog that cloaked the dead-tree grassland of the 10th Floor.
The terrain here offered poor visibility. But thanks to Enemy Sense, Aether and Lumine had little fear of ambush. The red arrows in their vision marked every threat.
"One Hard Armored Rat: 56 EXP total." Lumine approached and reported calmly. "Divided between the four of us, us twins, Xiao, and Fischl, that's 14 each. Pretty efficient so far."
Aether nodded. "We can kill them easily now. But since Hard Armored Rats only start spawning from the 11th Floor, there won't be many here. The 10th Floor's native spawns are Imps and Orcs. They tend to group up, which works to our advantage."
With that, he summoned Paimon via Godly Manifestation.
The tiny mascot floated into the air, pinching her nose in disgust as she held up a small cloth pouch. A foul, rotting stench wafted out, like meat left to rot for weeks, crawling with maggots.
This was a taunt trap item, bought from a shop that morning. Veteran adventurers used it to lure monsters into smaller, controlled "feasts," speeding up hunting.
Aether, of course, had bought not one but hundreds, stuffed neatly into Paimon's dimensional bag.
"Let's head further in, away from the main route. We don't want to interfere with other adventurers." Aether's eyes gleamed.
The grind began anew.
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