I began to use the Bounding Yokai as my prey. It felt strange deliberately hunting a monster, but it was also exhilarating. He usually attacked me, so all I needed to do was look distracted and wait for my traps to trigger. Once I had him confined in a Holy Circle, he was actually quite easy to deal with. His mobility was his strength. The Bounding Yokai was a ghost-like monster that focused on physical attacks. That sounded dangerous, but ghosts were naturally weak when it came to physical attacks anyway, so I never felt too disadvantaged.
Every time I defeated him, I received an item called the Soul Stone. If I had Cook equipped, I would also receive a golden apple. The golden apples weren't something mythical. They simply healed you if you ate them. Still, not a bad item to have when I was sick of water. In fact, once I got enough apples, I tried to squeeze some and make some juice. When I eventually Identified the object…
{Golden Apple Juice – Nutritious with some healing properties.}
I really wanted to identify better than Basic Item Identify. Although I was sure I'd get it with True Dungeon Diver eventually, I had a feeling that the quickest way to get it would be with Merchant. Unfortunately, I couldn't trap the Bounding Yokai without the White Mage's Holy Circle, and I couldn't fight the Bounding Yokai without the Hero job. As a result, I couldn't level up my other jobs very easily. Thus, I decided to focus on my two highest skills. In general, if I wanted to be stronger, these were the skills that affected everything the most anyway.
I reset my dungeon skills and gave myself 2X experience again, giving up Exorcism for the time being. I still felt Ghostbane was a necessity. Once I rejoined with the girls, I could get rid of it too, but there weren't any other tier 1 abilities that really excited me all that much. There were a handful of other cool spells, but nothing that I felt would make the difference in this dungeon. What I really felt like I needed was a third job. That way, I could truly start leveling some of my side stuff without feeling like I was opening myself to weakness.
I hunted down the more normal mobs on this floor, the Skeletal Ghost and the Chained Spirit. Now that I could see the official names of monsters, I was seeing a pattern in names. These guys went down pretty easily with Ghostbane and a quick attack. After an hour was up, the hunt for the Bounding Yokai returned. In this method, my levels started to increase and I grew increasingly familiar with the 15th floor. I had also raided all of the treasure on the floor, which came to a bunch of random ingredients for alchemy, some cloth that I didn't recognize, and about 15 gold coins. No awesome magic items or treasure chests. Most treasures were usually just shoved in a corner or hidden behind a wall. It also didn't spawn in an hour like the boss.
{White Mage has increased to Level 22.}
{Hero has increased to Level 18.}
I managed to gain two levels in White Mage and 3 levels in Hero over the course of 2 days of leveling. I considered this to be pretty awesome. My White Mage abilities were Orb and Light Repair. When I cast Orb, a ball of light appeared in my hand. The normal light spell just caused a light that emanated around our person. It stretched out a distance and then stopped. Interestingly enough, this light was one-directional, and could not be seen from someone at a distance. It was exactly like one of those RPG dungeon crawlers. Orb, on the other hand, was more like a torch. It could be stuck to things and left until the magic ran out.
As for Light Repair, it repaired items you cast it on. It couldn't go so far as to fix something that was broken, but when I cast it on my shoes, they did look a little less worn out. By the sixth casting, they looked almost new, although they still had that worn-in feel.
When it came to Hero, the skills were all invaluable. Defense Up, Offense Up, and Party Status. Greater Defense and Offense was much appreciated, and both really helped me massively. When it came to Party Status, this ability allowed me to see the normal information of people in my party. I could already do this because of my support skill, so it wasn't that beneficial in that respect. However, it did offer something that my support skill did not. It included a description of their health too. This way, I knew that Lydia and Miki were in good health. It was the first time I could keep track of them. Unfortunately, Celeste was no longer in my party, so I had no clue what condition she is in.
Besides leveling, every night I did my swap with Miki. When I arrived, Lydia was locked up in chains. I don't know where Miki got the chains, but Lydia said while crying that only Miki had the key. Well played… well played. We kept the conversation light. I told them about what happened to my friend and how I was leveling on the 15th floor. After two days, they'd finally break through to the 15th floor. It was finally time to continue on as a party. We had 15 levels to go.