The 37th floor, also known as the white castle, filled with tons, and tons of monsters, and in one particular location, there was a significantly different place. This was known as the Colosseum. Four long, and narrow path ways were the only way to the center, beneath these paths were a ton of spikes. If you fell, even luck would have a hard time saving you. It was a place that even made people like Maxim a bit scared.
Here, monsters respawned instantly, and would continuously swarm adventurers until they perished. They had so many methods of attack, filling the air with poison darts was one of them. And sure enough. That's what is happening right now.
The small team of Maxim, serving as the frontliner. Lyca, serving as the rear protector. Alfia, as a single control unit keeping a general area around them, free from harm. Meteria, as a bombarding mage. Shurry, as the hyper fast monster slayer, and healer. Caotan had been removed from the group when it was confirmed Lyca would have to come with them.
Not only were they able to push all the way across the path with this formation, but as they pushed forward, it seemingly got easier to make it all work. Sort of like a clunky machine finally getting spung up to put in the work.
"Wow, this is actually working quite well."
"It'll be difficult for other groups. But Empress, you, myself, and Zald could make this work. With the other members providing the support needed, and if we change Shurry's role into a runner across the whole colosseum… He can easily handle all the healing anyone would ever need to do."
"I don't need to do that. But it would be fun."
"What do you mean you don't need to? Show me."
"Okay! Outer Moon!"
Once more, the image of a brilliant, and serene moon filled the depths of the dungeon, casting its weakening light on the monsters, and healing light on allies.
"What the…"
Maxim relaxed, now able to simply walk right through the monsters as if they were nothing more than fodder. Lyca had a similar, albeit to a lesser extent. Alfia's jaw dropped, and Meteria felt like she could keep going forever.
"This is amazing, little brother! I love it!"
"Maxim… This ability… Something like this, is it even possible by mortals? It even feels outside the realm of spirits."
"No, it must be well within the realm of possibility. After all, we're seeing it first hand. And it doesn't feel different from normal magic, in fact, it feels… like pure magic power."
A loud sound could be heard from afar. It was the Monster Rex Udaeus respawning.
"Did he cause that?"
"No, it's timer just ran out. Nothing to worry about. Though, I think we should go and test that out. What do you think, Shurry? Do you want to go kill Udaeus?"
"But there's still lots of prey here?"
"Don't worry about that too much. We'll bring you back down later, you can hunt as much as you want with no limits. Not like you'd be able to kill enough to keep us from improving some."
"YAY! Then Lemme hunt the big guy! I wanna beat him! Beat him good!"
Making a purposeful retreat from the colosseum, a horde of monsters followed them, but eventually they gave up, and returned to their battle grounds to begin their dance of death once more.
Arriving at the boss room, Shurry skipped forward towards the boss. Shurry, though he was nearing 6 years old, was still 5. He was still rather tiny, and against the Monster Rex, he looked like an ant to a human, not those Killer ants, but the regular ones that can be found basically everywhere.
"He really is big. That's the hard part about this fight. Oh well. YOU'RE MY PREY!"
Udeaus, now recognizing it was being challenged, summoned a horde of Spartoi, it was clear they were no match for what about to a wrecking ball running right through them. Though they did do one thing for the boss, Shurry loved to hunt… Like, really loved to hunt. So the sight of more prey, only led him to focus on slaying the prey first.
This didn't take him long, only about 30 seconds. But in that time, Udaeus had plenty of time to make a few attacks of his own, all dodged of course. Next up, came a unique moment for every boss, their special condition phase… He summoned a massive sword, raising his overall rating to the high 6 range.
"He might need help now." Meteria suggested, being the weakest one there.
"No, just watch. If he really needed help, he'd have already used everything he's got. And that outer moon of his hasn't even shown itself yet."
"Little brother isn't so weak to die here. If I can beat it, so can he." Alfia reassured.
Even so, Maxim was ready to jump in at a moment's notice. Shurry was afterall, the key to keeping the twins alive, and the key to opening up a new training field.
Udaeus swung his sword around, missing Shurry completely… He switched into a giant downward swing, causing a massive quake and hundreds of earth spikes to rise up, some shot out of the walls at Shurry, but, using his reflexes, even in mid air, he narrowly dodged the attacks.
Shurry spent a few more minutes analyzing the monster rex, its attack patterns, timing, when it does something, the effects of that thing, and basically every single motion of the boss had been memorized. His counter attack began.
Bounding through the spiky landscape, Shurry closed the distance between the two of them. And then with a single bound, he leapt into the air, and gave Udaeus the worst, kick, started headache of its short unlive. Causing it to tumble straight to the ground, on its back, the ground spikes piercing its bones, and even shaking loose one half of the side where the magic crystal was held in place.
Shurry cut the second part holding the crystal in place, killing Udaeus, and freeing the crystal for his own purposes in the process.
"Yay! I did it! Luna, Luna! I got the level 6 crystal!"
"Really!? That's amazing! I knew you could do it!"
Luna proceeded to absorb the magic from the crystal. It was a lot… A ton of food.
"I'm going to take a nap while this digests."
"Okay! I'll wake you up if I get another one somehow."
Luna disappeared, and the others came up, Meteria, acting like a big sister, checked Shurry all over for any injuries.
"Big sister, I'm fine! Not hurt at all. I actually wanna try fighting it again. I think I can do it faster."
"Ahahaha! How about you leave the next several of them to us. We still need some of our members to level up."
"Okay!"
"But let's try one more thing first. Then we can return to the surface."
The group tried it, and it didn't seem to work. So they returned to the surface.