Two weeks after the meeting with Hephaestus, Aidan and Ais, who had gone into the dungeon once every two days, received their newly made equipment.

The equipment included a pair of boots, shin guards, light armour for the torso, bracers and gauntlets to protect their forearm and hands. Finally, Ais received an additional sword along with a newly built sheat.

The day Aidan left the meeting with Hephaestus, he had found Ais, who was pouting while turning his back on him. Finally, after a bit of food and talking, she went back to her usual self, which was pretty much not showing emotions on her face.

As such, during the two weeks that followed, they continued to train in the dungeon and the other day, they trained with Finn and Riveria, increasing their fighting experience not only against monsters but against non-monster enemies.

Now was finally the time to fight and increase their stats explosively. For the next few months, they would spend all their time in the dungeon, even going as far as living in it with the help of the cards to save time.

"Alright, we're leaving. When we see you, we'll be at the top of level one." Said Aidan as he waved at Finn, who he still had never worked as a porter, not that it was essential anymore with the storage cards.

"Be careful and remember to always put an alarm around your dome card to alert you when you sleep. Also, we're expecting a call with your card at least once every week." Said Riveria as she looked at the two of them in concern. After all, it wasn't every day that two children would go and live in the dungeon for an extended amount of time.

"Mmm." Nodded Ais as she turned around and walked beside Aidan, who was making his way straight to the dungeon.

"Alright. Check over your supplies to be sure that you have everything. We'll be fighting on the tenth to the twelfth floor for a long time, and we can't be missing anything." Said the boy as he looked over the items in his card.

'Alright. I have 100 potions, 200 magic potions, 100 high potions, 50 dual potions, 500 morbul which can keep the monsters away, 200 flashbangs and smoke balls respectively, 100 high magic potions, a tent and a spare one just in case, enough food and drinking water for two years, multiple changes of clothes and living necessities such as toothpaste, toothbrush, tables, chairs and beds. Finally, I have a bath and enough water to take a bath every day for six months. With this, I should have everything.'

'I don't have to worry about my equipment. My sword can't be broken or even chipped against such opponents, the same for my equipment which can supposedly block a strike from the Goliath, although the pushing force would kill me instead.' He thought as he verified every item he had with him.

"I'm good." Said Ais as she looked at Aidan, who also nodded his head.

"Alright, well then, let's head into the dungeon, a place where we will be living for a long while." He answered as a grin appeared on his face. This time, his goal in this trip was to full his stats to 999 before going back to the surface for Finn to accompany him to kill level two monsters until he reached 1500 in each parameter and could level up.

"Yes, let's." Nodded Ais as she focused her eyes in front of her with a thought constantly resurfacing in her mind. 'Can I also breakthrough 999 and get more parameters in each level? If I don't, wouldn't I be the one holding him back in the future?'

With a determined sparkle in her eyes, she walked next to Aidan, ready to give it her all to become stronger than everyone.

———

Three months later, the twelfth floor of the dungeon.

"Ais! It's time to go back." Said Aidan as he expertly collected their remaining items in their camp. Their previous stock of potions and consumable items was more than 80% spent, and they had almost nothing remaining. It was easy to see that in those three months, they had countless fights and countless injuries that went along with it.

"Right, it's been a while since we've been out of the dungeon. I can't wait to see our updated status." She said as she gave a grin at Aidan, who looked at her and sighed.

"Where did my cute and quiet Ais go during these three months?" He asked playfully as he pulled her cheeks while staring into her eyes.

With a pout on her face, Aidan smirked before turning back to collect all of their equipment.

After three months of living together in the dungeon, it was easy to see that the two children had become great friends and knew each other exceptionally well.

"Alright, the old hag has been nagging us to come back for almost a month now. I'm afraid that if we don't leave now, she'll come and get us." Said the golden-haired girl as she shook her head.

"You know, one day, Riveria will hear you call her that, and you will suffer." Said Aidan as he looked at her nonchalant expression.

"As long as she doesn't hear, it's fine." Answered the girl as she finished collecting the items. "Alright, we're leaving." She added as she gave a cursory glance to be sure they didn't forget anything.

With a nod of his head, Aidan took out the map card, which was now wholly mapped from the first floor to the eighteenth floor since some familia had worked to have all those floors mapped completely for their members.

With a quick look to the map, the two golden-eyed youngsters sprinted towards the stairs leading up from the dungeon, expertly avoiding the monsters. After three months of fighting and living amongst the monsters and with the help of the scanning card, they could easily evade the enemies to make their way back up without any delay due to fighting.

"Do you think this will be enough to raise our parameters to the maximum? It normally takes years for adventurers to level up, but they don't spend all their time in the dungeon as we did." Asked Ais as they ran up the stairs towards the eleventh floor.

"Well, considering we fought monsters on the twelfth floor while having most of our stats in the D category, relying on our equipment and swordsmanship, we should be getting quite a lot of excelia. After all, every time we kill a monster on that floor, we surpass our level greatly, which should give us more excelia. Well, I don't know how exactly it works, but we should have maxed our parameters. In my case, due to the infant dragon, we killed two days ago, maybe I already have parameters surpassing 999." Answered Aidan with a curious look on his face.

The fight against the infant dragon had taken the two of them more than ten minutes of constant fighting while also killing the nearby monsters who heard of the battle. With their teamwork, their equipment and the card magic, they barely managed to win the fight and go back to the camp that the cards protected. It was indeed an arduous and dangerous fight since even top level one adventurers didn't want to fight this monster due to its strength.

He knew that by killing monsters and gaining excelia, one's status would increase invisibly. It meant that his status would upgrade without showing on his back, and there wouldn't be any improvement until Loki did her weird ceremony to make his invisible status become his actual status. However, it also meant that if his 'invisible' status had already reached 999, then killing the infant dragon would make his parameters surpass the maximum when they updated their status.

"Well, we'll see." Nodded Ais as she was both happy and jealous of Aidan, who could surpass the known maximum. Happy since he could become a lot stronger, jealous because she couldn't do the same.

"Let's speed up." Said the boy as he noticed the expression on Ais's face and knew what she thought. Unfortunately, no matter how much he wanted to help her, there wasn't anything he could do to have her surpass the maximum.

"Yeah." Answered the girl as she took the lead and started killing every monsters they encountered.