I paused and tilted my head to the side as I held my new combination spear made from the floor's new monsters. I could hear people loudly talking down another hallway and looking down at Tina I raised an eyebrow in a silent question as to whether we should go check it out.
And in response, she shrugged giving a silent of answer, that she didn't care. So I brought her down the hallways with echoing loud voices. Now normally people minded their own business within the dungeon and especially on these floors people minded their own business.
These floors had the Loud Bats that would impersonate people's voices to make cries of terror, or even finding loot like special dungeon ore veins or the like that would draw other Adventurer's into a trap as the Seventh Floor was the first floor that had its own Pantry. A Pantry is a large wide open cave room with a large pool of sap-like stuff that the dungeon monsters would for whatever reason eat even though they had no need for sustenance. With them having a monster stone that allowed them to be fueled by the dungeon.
The Seventh Floor and deeper were floor's in which the dungeons difficulty and danger heavily spiked as no longer was it just monsters directly attacking as they had a lot more avenues of attack and things like poison and large-scale horde tactics as the dungeon used its greatest weapons against the mortals in just wearing people down with overwhelming numbers and debilitating effects.
"It's not a Loud Bat making the noise." I whispered to Tina who nodded in agreement as the Loud Bat's voice impersonation for whatever reason fell apart at a distance and would expose its inhuman nature. So we walked over and I blinked in a bit of surprise as I saw a small encampment of adventure's holding up at one of the ends of the dungeons tunnels on this floor their scout saw us as well as we came down the way with them whistling to get their attention.
"Thats far enough stranger, what do you want?" The scout said holding a bow knocked with an arrow at the ready but not aimed at me so I just held up my hands in surrender.
"Sorry, just your voices were echoing down several hallways and it sounded like a monster party or something." I said evenly and the scout looked to their party leader and I realized they must have been from a 'Far East' or Asian god Familia as they wore Asian-style armor and clothes with very obviously Japanese weapons like the leader wielding an outlandishly long and thicker katana that I doubted her could swing properly in the hallways of the dungeon on these floors. "Excuse us then," I said nodding my head as I realized there was nothing good that could come from forcing our presence here any longer and even as the scout called out something.
Tina and I just jogged down to the end of the hallway ignoring them as we turned down one of the hallways that would lead deeper into the floor's labyrinthian structure. Finally, after a couple of minutes of putting distance between us and that team, we had disturbed, we had to stop our joging as the monster's stopped our free roaming.
I was getting much better with a spear even without a dedicated teacher, as the saying went. You can spend six months to be passable with a sword and a decade mastering it, but you can become passable with a spear within a week and spend a lifetime mastering it. And that adage was very correct.
I wasn't Scathach or Cu who could spin their spears around like a toy or kick their spear to impale someone, or do any of their other fancy tricks really. But knowing how to use the handle of the spear to block and knowing how to angle the spear to shove the nice and pointy blade on the end into enemies weak point wasn't difficult, despite how much more effective it was than trying to dance around while using a sword.
Tina especially was proof of the power of a spear as her skill made her eyes glow with a baleful red light she was a small whirlwind of violent slashes of her spear that had a large blade on the end that would slash at her foes from a good distance to make up for her short height and normally weak reach as a Pallum.
But when things like Purple Moth's or Blue Paplilio became an issue, I would switch from my spear and use a crossbow to shoot down the annoying ass insects that would try to poison us or heal the monsters.
"Jake, how about you try to tame a Blue Paplilo, having on-demand weak healing in the dungeon without needing to use a potion would be good... Plus we can accumulate its healing dust and either sell it or you could fuse it, into something better?" Tina advised and honestly... I was thinking about taming a purple moth and seeing it I could I could fuse it with something else as I knew monsters would form a connection with their tamer which was how people could get the taming ability in their Falna that would boost their tamed monsters and make them more powerful.
Despite how in canon Danmachi had sidelined beast tamers with only Ganesha's Familia being vaguely mentioned as being allowed or even having tamed monsters. At least here at this point of Orario, it was much more common. As having a well-tamed Silverback was an amazing menial worker with raw strength equal to a level three adventurer despite only being as dangerous as a peak level one at best with how slow and large they were.
Not to mention having a tamed Blue Papilio, could act as a bit of a scout with how the tamed monster could share their senses a bit with their master. And a flying monster would be the best scout obviously.
"Alright lets go to the Pantry and go capture as many Blue Papililo for me to try to tame." I said after a moment of consideration. It seemed worth it, and I was curious with how monsters weren't technically living sentient being I wanted to try to see if I could fuse them into one another to see if that would auto-tame them or even make them stronger.
Like imagine if I fused the more humanoid monster's with their more powerful bestial monster brethren. Like fusing the female dragon monster humanoid Vouivre with an actual Wyrvren or Infant Dragon to give it more draconic abilities... Or fusing a Sword Stag with something to make it a bigger and better mount.
The possibilities were endless so Tina and I quickly made our way to the Pantry... And I realized this was going to be a pain in the ass as even as the many hallways converged towards the large open cave that was the Pantry, it was clear that it was both feeding time for the monsters in a large horde were eating the sap within the larger pool in the center of the massive room. But also there were other Adventurer parties carefully peeling off small groups of monsters and pulling them into the tight hallways they came from to deal with them.