Well, calling floor 21 a complete unknown was a bit misleading. I may not be willing to power God Eye willy-nilly, but with Map, Detect Trap, and Detect Treasure… I was able to quickly gain a picture of this floor. After that, it was just a matter of fighting mobs and clearing out the level. I wanted to check everywhere because Celeste could be anywhere. That means every level would be searched and stripped to completion.
My storage ring was quite large, but it was starting to get full. Since we kept everything mobile and didn't really settle down since we moved out of the alchemy house, I was carrying almost everything on me. Weeks of food, clothing, and heapings of alchemy ingredients had made the ring stuffed. I had acquired 200 gold coins so far as well. To think I could buy Lydia twice over. Dungeon Diving was truly a profitable venture. Of course, when I thought about how many times, I had almost died in the beginning there, I could see why it wasn't more popular.
It took only a full day to finish the 21st floor. Still we were stronger than ever, and I was comfortable moving on. In truth, I was eager to get us down to the 25th floor. Once we found the library there, we might spend a bit more time grinding. Depending on the quality of the mid-floor boss, hunting him for a while would be advantageous for all of us. We could use more practice fighting a big boss together. Right now, we could handle little mobs pretty easily. We had been able to control groups as large as 5 monsters without difficulty.
So far, we hadn't experienced anything like the ambushes from the previous dungeon. I didn't know if that was because the previous dungeon was young or if it was because this dungeon didn't feel sufficiently threatened. I could say that the traps were growing increasingly insidious. If I hadn't started being very careful with Detect Trap since landing back at level 10, our party might have been in major trouble. Out of curiosity, I used the Duplicate Slave Skill to copy Danger Sense at the same time as Detect Trap and Map. This was easier said than done since it essentially involved casting four spells simultaneously. However, the result was that the points displayed on my map were color-coded. I could tell how dangerous the traps were, from red death traps to green traps that didn't technically hurt you, like teleport traps.
"So many ways to use magic, I'll have a lot of reading to do when I get out of here."
If I copied the Learning Up skill, I could probably learn to read faster than Miki. I was interested in seeing what this world had written down about jobs. Everything I knew was even tested out with trial and error or hints I got from old Adventurers providing their advice in exchange for a glass of drink. I was still taking these kinds of notes in my booklet too. Perhaps, I'd create my own jobs and skills guide eventually. I could be the Memoir hero or something like that. Actually, I wouldn't mind being remembered for that. It was better than being remembered for having slaves or a harem or being good at killing things.
We were on the 23rd floor. It had been three days since we had finished off Karr. Progress was going well. It was only then that I saw a sparkly wing disappear just as we rounded a corner.
"It's her!" I exclaimed in excitement.
I barely saw her, but it definitely had to be Celeste.