After reading the description of Snowliy's new collar, Thomas smiled and carried it over to her, "This is just a little something for you to use until I can make proper equipment for you. I hope you like it."

Snowlily looked curiously at the collar being held in Thomas's hands. She didn't know a lot about magic items but just seeing the black leather studded with practically glowing 'gems' made her happy. It showed as her tail wagged excitedly. Thomas smiled gently as he kneeled down in front of her. He couldn't help laughing at the mental image of himself kneeling in front of Snowlily while offering her a present. She lifted her head and displayed her neck to him like the proud princess that she was.

Not one to disappoint, Thomas carefully fastened the collar around her neck. He made sure it was secure and not too tight. As it was not a soulbound item, it automatically adjusted its size to fit her perfectly. Once it was secure on her neck, Snowlily leaned in and gently licked Thomas's cheek. He smiled warmly at her, "I take it you like it?"

Snowlily let out a happy yip and then preened in front of him, displaying the collar for him to see. Her pure white fur set off the dark leather of the collar and made the Frozentite ore glitter even more. He laughed as he watched her practically bounce around the workshop. He stroked her head once again before he began to clean up the workshop. All of his work was now finished. He had a full suit of armor and two new weapons. Both would be put to full use to push deeper into the dungeon and gain experience. It was time for him to become stronger.

With everything cleaned up, the companions left the guild and made their way to the inn to join up with the rest of the group. when everyone had gathered, Thomas looked over the gathering of women and grinned, "I'm done with all of my preparations. Tomorrow morning we'll head into the dungeon and start killing our way into its depths. Make sure you have everything you need prepared. We won't be leaving the dungeon until nightfall."

Lexiana looked excited. It was finally time for her hard work to come in handy. Selena looked at Thomas and practically stared through him. She was more interested in seeing what crazy things he'd been making for the last few days. Her guards didn't seem all too interested in anything. They would just do their job and protect Selena, especially inside the dangerous depths of the dungeon. The whole group enjoyed their dinner together.

After it was over, all the women went to deal with their preparations for the dive into the dungeon. Since they knew it was coming they didn't need to get much. Just a bit of extra food and supplies. All their weapons, armor, and other things were all prepared already. While they did that, Thomas retired to his room with Snowlily. There were a few things he decided to do before getting some sleep. One was cycling through spending mana to expand his inventory and recovering it with Serenity. He still wanted to get his inventory to rank one hundred. The second was dumping mana into all the items he'd created that could store charges. He wanted them fully prepped and ready to go.

The next morning, everyone gathered in the dining room of the inn and enjoyed breakfast together. Everyone except Thomas was wearing their gear. They looked at Thomas questioningly but he just smiled in return. They would understand once they were a little deeper in the dungeon. Breakfast was quiet and cordial. Everyone was looking forward to getting a little exercise after spending so much time without much to do while they waited on Thomas to do his work.

When breakfast was finished, they all left the inn and went straight to the dungeon. Since Lexiana was the only one who had been there previously, they had to take the main entrance to the first floor. As they walked down the stairs, Lexiana took the lead, "Follow me, everyone."

With Lexiana leading them, they followed a specific path. With a busy city, there were plenty of people entering the dungeon daily. They went through five rooms before running into their first group of monsters, Goblins. No one in the group even paid all that much attention to them. A few slaps from the group killed them. The experience of every Goblin was split six ways making their meager experience even more worthless to the group. They didn't even pause as they steamrolled through the rooms containing the Goblins until they arrived at the stairs leading down to the second floor.

With Lexiana leading the group and everyone in the group having decent strength, they breezed through the floors all the way down to ten in just a couple of hours. The majority of that time was just spent walking and the experience gains were minimal. The tenth floor was the first boss of the dungeon and there were a couple of groups ahead of theirs waiting for their turn. Everyone got comfortable and began the wait. While they relaxed, Thomas looked through the items inside of his inventory while wondering when it would be worth putting on his new equipment. He wanted to wear it but it was a total waste at the moment and he wanted the surprise of it to be a big impact on the group. He didn't show off much but when he did he liked to do it in style.

The girls spent the wait time chatting with each other about mundane things. Snowlily spent the time resting her head on Thomas's thigh. Thomas spent his time stroking Snowlily's head. The wait wasn't too long, the tenth-floor boss wasn't all that strong so in less than half an hour it was their turn. As they walked up to the entrance, Lexiana turned to ask the group, "The boss is just a Kobold Chieftan with a couple of bodyguards. What should I set the difficulty at?"

Thomas spoke first, "No matter what you set it to it's not worth much. Just set it to normal so we can blow through it. We can worry about the difficulty of bosses actually worth fighting."

Lexiana looked at the others to see if they disagreed, seeing that no one did she just set the difficulty and they stepped inside. Within the room was a large Kobold with lion-like features surrounded by a group of Kobolds with feline-like features. Thomas glanced at them before yawning and lifting his right hand. Sparks of electricity danced on his fingers, "I got this."

Bolts of electricity flew from his fingers and drove into the entire group of Kobolds. Their bodies danced and jumped around as the electricity wreaked havoc with their muscles. After a few seconds he cut off his spell and their smoking bodies fell to the ground. He collected the mana crystal from the boss but ignored the rest. The mana crystals were so small already, purifying them would make them tiny and nearly useless. He'd have plenty of mana crystals to gather in the deeper floors.

With the boss defeated, the door leading down to the next floor opened. The group continued on, following Lexiana as she confidently led the way. The monsters progressively grew stronger as they went deeper but even on the fifteenth floor, they didn't provide a remote challenge. The only problem was that the deeper they traveled into the dungeon the bigger and more complex the layout of the dungeon floor became. To get through the sixteenth floor they had to pass through over thirty rooms. It was annoying but the experience gained for every monster they were killing was slowly starting to increase.

The boss on the twentieth floor was taken down with ease, the Lich hadn't even managed to summon a single skeleton before it was blasted to pieces by the magic users in the group. From there they dove deeper into the dungeon until they reached the twenty-fourth floor and called it a day. They used the teleportation circle to leave and return to their inn. The day hadn't been very stressful. In fact, it had been rather tedious as they pushed deeper. Tomorrow they would reach the deepest floor that Lexiana had mapped. Hopefully, after that, the monsters would provide a good amount of experience and maybe a bit of a challenge.

The group sat at a table and ordered their dinner. The experience gain for the day had been pretty good, but with it being split so many different ways it didn't add up to all that much. Thomas decided to spend the experience later. He wasn't in a rush and wanted to wait until he'd saved up a large amount before dumping all of it. It had become something of a habit for him to do things this way and he liked it. It honestly felt more fulfilling to him.

The following morning the group returned to the dungeon to push even deeper. Today they would get passed the floor that Lexiana had scouted down to. Once they defeated the boss on the thirtieth floor they would be entering unknown territory and their progress would slow drastically. Until then, Lexiana led the way and monsters fell in droves. The mana crystals were finally worth collecting, though they had to be split among Thomas, Lexiana, and Selena. Aria, Minerva, and Snowlily had no use for them. The two bodyguards were just doing their job and Thomas provided everything for Snowlily.

As the group moved through the dungeon, they chatted about various things. Selena kept trying to get information on the items Thomas had made while they were waiting. He gave nothing away and only displayed his older equipment. His Spell Cannon had been getting a good workout. The Flaming Greatsword he made while a prisoner of the pirates had drawn Minerva's attention so he let her use it for a while. With her strength, she could easily wield the greatsword with a single hand and use it to crush monsters. Unfortunately, her Magic attribute wasn't very high so she couldn't power the flames for very long.

Aria had taken a liking to his throwing knives. She was delighted by their wind enchantments and had a great time throwing them at monsters. After seeing Thomas use his Spell Cannon, she begged and pleaded to give it a try, she didn't give up until he set it on the ground so she could try to pick it up. She pouted for an hour after she failed. He couldn't help smiling as he thought about how she would react the first time she saw The Destroyer. He had to admit, part of him wished she could actually wield The Destroyer. There was something about a short lithe woman holding a massive rifle that was pretty attractive.

Thanks to how large the floors were becoming, it took them nearly half the day to arrive at the thirtieth floor where the boss room was located. According to the guidebook Thomas had purchased from the Adventurer's Guild the boss of this room was called a Lowland Giant. A smaller member of the Giant race. Even though it was a smaller member of the race, it was still between four to five meters tall and immensely strong. When they arrived at the doors to the dungeon there was no one else ahead of them.

Thomas held his hand up, "Alright. Time to have a little fun. Gimme a minute."

The others all turned to look at him, though the more prudish women immediately turned away. Thomas had started to strip off his old chest armor. Selena and Minerva were the only ones to look away while Lexiana and Aria kept a close eye on him. He tossed the old armor into his inventory and started to take out out each piece of his new armor. As he donned each piece his image slowly changed from a somewhat better than average looking man into an intimidating warrior. Hearing the sounds of surprise coming from Lexiana and Aria, Selena and Minerva eventually couldn't hold in their curiosity anymore.

As soon as they turned around their eyes widened. Thomas stood there in all of his new armor. Mithril with a quality to it that even Selena couldn't place, covered him from head to toe. Hanging from his left hip was a sword the likes of which she'd never seen. However, the thing that drew her full attention was the gauntlet on his left arm. Something about the black metal on it terrified her to her core. Thomas noted where she was looking and smirked to himself. Once she knew what it was and what it could do she would lose her mind!

With all of his armor donned for the first time, he felt powerful. He looked between the women while his left hand stroked the handle of his katana, "Alright, I'm ready now. Let's give this a try on the highest difficulty. If you guys don't mind, I'd like to try and kill this boss on my own."

Selena crossed her arms under her chest and eyed Thomas, "Are you sure you can handle it? That equipment does look pretty decent, but bosses on Ultimate difficulty are extremely dangerous at any level, let alone a thirtieth-floor monster."

Thomas lifted his right hand and looked at it while flexing his armored fingers, "I'm pretty sure I can handle it. Besides, I'm not asking for you to let me go in there alone. If I need help I'll ask for it immediately. But I want to test this armor and its enchantments out before we get too much deeper into the dungeon. At least here I'll have a monster to fight that won't die in a single blow!"

Selena nodded while Minerva actually looked pumped. As a warrior herself, Minerva understood the desire to test oneself against a strong opponent. She had an eye for armor and weapons, the equipment he had on was all top-notch in her opinion. Though she was curious about the sword hanging from his hip. She'd seen many kinds of weapons but never one like it. It looked similar to a longsword but the shape was all wrong. She couldn't wait to see it in action.

Now that he was prepped and ready, the group entered the boss room while Thomas set it to the highest difficulty. The group stepped into the room while the doors closed behind them. Thomas had a bright smile on his face as he prepared to test everything he could against the Giant.