Chapter 34: Seventeenth Floor

On the way to the fifteenth floor, Akira donned a cloak made of salamander wool to prevent his clothes from being scorched by the Hellhounds' flames, as had happened before. With the wind wrapping around his body, he slashed through the group of Needle Rabbits at blinding speed. He cleaved a charging Hellhound in half, then kicked another just as it began to gather flames in its mouth. Its jaw snapped shut, causing the fireball to detonate prematurely. In the same motion, Akira spun and sliced cleanly through its neck. His goal today was to fight the Minotaurs and Ligers that roamed the fifteenth floor. Although some monsters occasionally wandered up to the fourteenth floor, it was far more efficient to confront them at their source than to search endlessly through the sprawling maze. After much effort, Akira finally arrived on the fifteenth floor. He stepped down the stairs into a vast cavern. The ceiling loomed nearly twenty meters above the ground, surrounded by towering stacks of stone and treacherous pits scattered across the terrain. These vertical shafts connected directly to the floors below—dangerous chasms that could drop an uncareful adventurer straight from the thirteenth to the seventeenth floor in an instant. "ROAR—" As Akira moved deeper into the cave, several large cracks split open in the cavern walls. Thick, gray-brown hands emerged, pressing against the stone. Five Minotaurs, each towering over two meters tall, stepped forward. These monsters, with bull heads and humanoid bodies, were slow and simple-minded—but they were one of the deadliest monsters of the middle floors. Their roars alone could strike fear into the hearts of most Level 1 adventurers. The ground trembled as they charged, their massive arms extended to grab and crush him. Akira ducked low, avoiding the first Minotaur's grasp, and slashed its thigh with his green-glowing sword. With fluid motion, he surged forward to face the others. A flash of his blade severed an oncoming fist. Kicking off the wall, he flipped midair, evading a second Minotaur's punch. With a spinning motion, Akira's blade sliced through the necks of three approaching Minotaurs like a hot knife through butter. The remaining two, wounded and frightened, tried to flee. But Akira silently chased them down, dispatching them in quick, merciless cuts. Just as he finished extracting the Minotaurs' magic stones and horns, the ground trembled. From beneath, eyeless worms with gnashing teeth burst out of the earth. Before Akira could react, a loud cracking sound came from above. Four Ligers leapt from the ceiling to ambush him. "Seriously? Am I being targeted by the dungeon? Why are there so many monsters all of a sudden?!" Akira growled. He leapt backward to avoid the worms' bite, then twirled his blade and severed their writhing forms. At that moment, a Liger lunged. Akira raised his left hand—an ice shield materialized just in time to block the beast's claws. Then with his right hand, he slashed. Blood sprayed from the Liger's mutilated face, bone exposed as half its head peeled away. Akira raised his shield to intercept more attacks. His sword began glowing red, flames spiraling around the blade. The searing heat forced the other Ligers to hesitate. Akira hurled the shield aside and stomped hard, the ground cracking under the force. In a burst of wind, he teleported into the middle of the triangle formation, his flaming sword cleaving through the rightmost Liger. Then, his blade reversed and cleaved the central beast from groin to skull before pivoting again. The inferno around his blade expanded into a massive, flaming greatsword. With one final swing, he brought it crashing down on the last Liger. The firestorm faded. Only scorched corpses remained, and a deep, black four-meter gash marked the earth. He cooled his blade with a stream of water, then drew a knife and extracted the monsters' magic stones and fangs. Then he carefully placed them into a cloth bag and tucked into [Backpack]. Just as Akira moved to rest on a rock, the ground began to quake once more. The walls around him seemed to shift and retreat. He tensed, a trace of panic creeping in. With a thought, he switched to his Swift Master, invoking powerful wind currents to flee. Cracks spiderwebbed across the ground. A deafening boom echoed as the terrain within ten meters collapsed, transforming into a vertical pit. During the fall, Akira prepared to summon a cushion of wind to escape—only for his vision to go dark. A massive conical boulder plummeted directly toward the pit. "What the hell! Are you kidding me?!" Akira swore. He twisted mid-air, wind blasting beneath him. The currents slowed the boulder and flung him away. "What the HELL!!!" He hit the bottom hard and scrambled toward a nearby cave. "BOOM—" The boulder crashed down at the entrance, sealing it shut with rubble and dust. Breathless, Akira collapsed on the ground. He wasn't dead, but he certainly felt like it. After several minutes of lying there, he rose and began walking deeper into the cavern. Winding through the tunnels, he eventually emerged into a massive chamber. Shimmering rock lined the walls, stacked in perfect symmetry like crystal bricks. The structure, known as the Wall of Sighs, formed the arena-like expanse of this colossal cavern. Akira realized where he had landed, the Seventeenth Floor. No random monsters were born here—only one, the infamous Floor Boss: Goliath. The setup resembled a coliseum. One entrance, one exit—no ambiguity. Fight or die. Beyond the arena, the hole in the wall led to the Eighteenth Floor—a safe zone rumored to be breathtakingly beautiful. An underground paradise of nature and crystal, nearly the size of Orario itself. At night, its ceiling turned into a radiant starry sky. The entire forest shimmered with ethereal crystals, irregularly shaped but dazzling in their glow. Their reflections painted the woodland in a soft, glowing blue.