As Logan and Storm stepped out of the training room after their 1 month of training he felt confidence in his own power. Not only his power but Storm’s power had greatly increased as a result of their magical knowledge.

After they started fighting one another, they would spend half their time just in meditative studying and their fights were almost purely to test their ideas.

Among the things Logan trained was actually what he learned from the creation process of the spirit animal that had progressed to four main mana channels.

Taking the concept, he activated the innate skill forming the spinning vortexes on his back and literally compressing mana outside his body within the flow of mana, he actually started to form four more main channels of mana that would withdraw into his mana pool and blend with his mana but would instantly reform as soon as the spell was activated.

He had researched the channel format of humanoid winged monsters and had begun to build the channels like their own. It gave him a great exercise in mana channel creation and this was still the first channel for going out and returning. When his body was ready for the second cycle, they would further expand, strengthening the structure.

It wasn’t an evolution of his body but it felt like he was forcing his body to evolve into a winged human due to this but it was just an illusion. The mana would still return to his body after the wings were recalled.

At this point he had only the base of the wing and part along the back which is where the ‘bones’ of the wing would be and the bulk of the thickest veins would form. When he does the secondary channels, it would spread down and strengthen the structure of the wind into a full wing. The smallest would achieve the finest details last.

He hoped that this would upgrade the skill to gold rank and he was very expectant since he saw the structure strengthening.

His agility in the air wasn’t any good though, he was still limited to basic maniviours but at the very least he could reach things out of reach before and access areas as well as move faster casually.

Having spent enough time he headed to the adventurers guild and together with Storm they examined the missions.

There were lots of gold rewards including dungeon rewards and special items produced by the dungeon for the missions.

Many were for specific drops.

“What do you think?” Logan asked.

“Hmm… we should test the water. There are now E rank creatures and our mana is still only F rank despite all the training and our body strength being E.” Storm said while on his shoulder.

“True, that said it seems there are some troubles with territory expansion and even monster wars that have blocked a lot of paths and there are a number of missions wanting us to clear monsters from both sides, especially pack leaders.” Logan said, pulling up a number of requests for killing hundreds of monsters on certain floors in certain areas. The missions were from the adventurers guild.

“This mission seems like a good test, master.” Storm said and touched one and expanded it.

Mission:

Ogre clan expansion

A clan of ogres on the 23rd floor saw the birth of a unique variant of ogres known as Oni. They are single horned but the horn is larger and their size is bigger and are much more dangerous due to their higher intelligence. This variant is a Red Oni meaning it has a very high endurance and is difficult to injure. They have expanded and blocked two main paths to the next floor and are in constant war, absorbing other ogre clans to expand and forming a clear zone of other monsters and a dangerous number of ogres. If left alone, they are likely to eventually go up the floors of the dungeon like a storm causing the danger of the dungeon to rise explosively until they find a new niche in the higher floors.

Objective:

Kill the Red Oni

Reward:

70 gold plates

5 rusty iron chest keys

Looking at the reward, he was shocked that they would go that far but he remembered the price was just 1 gold bar and realized that he could get a normal iron key with the reward instead.

Still, rusty iron is a true lottery of the dungeon so it makes sense if others would do these missions for the thrill of the gamble.

“That is good and all but that seems rather extreme for a first mission and the reward is low.” He said.

“Yes master but common ogres aren’t like the floor boss, they should be just at the high end of F rank. Only the leader is truly difficult and we can accept the accompanying mission.” he said and pushed another mission out but this one from the dungeon mission side.

Mission:

Ogre clan expansion

A clan of ogres on the 23rd floor has begun unrestrained expansion throwing the balance of the floor off. Instead of moving up the ogres have begun to unite and break the ecosystem to feed so many. Kill at least half the ogres

Objective:

Kill the Ogre clan 0/300

Reward:

1 iron chest keys

1 iron chest key (armor/weapon item chest)

This time the mission was a lot more tantalizing. Killing the entire clan would reward a specialized chest that produced only armor or weapons meaning it was much more focused. He searched information on it and found that it can also give very unique materials that could have countless unique effects including possibly push it to have the qualities required to become a legend sword.

He opened the dungeon mission and grinned as he saw dozens of the same mission with a combination of rewards that were more solid. The same mission could give him a powerful magic weapon spear, bow, sword, staff and any weapon depending on the quest he picked.

There was also the copy for special drops. For instance, one of them guaranteed 50 ogre bones, another would give 1 ogre horn every 30 kills meaning 10 ogre horns for the 300 kills.

He wanted clear information on Ogre horns so he searched for it.

Item

Description

Ogre horn

A horn from an ogre, it concentrates one third of it’s mana within the horns. One third in the mana pool and one third in the body itself. This is only achieved when a hobgoblin overloads his body and the evolution is spontaneous. Monsters of weaker rank eat it, it can achieve the same effect and give birth to horns and muscle storage causing evolution. For creatures stronger than the rank, they will simply be able to absorb the abundant mana and use it to rapidly increase the amount of mana. Even if humans eat the horn of an ogre a rank higher, they do not form horns and their bodies cannot support the mana filling it. Not without special training techniques to do this exact thing. Monsters can grow quickly by eating ogre horns but overeating can cause death if not properly digested until the entire horn is converted into mana.

He finished reading and shook his head, “You want to use that to quickly increase your mana but that won’t do because you still need to develop your mana channels.” He said.

“Yes but having it doesn’t hurt.” Storm said but he looked away like a child caught doing something bad.

Logan laughed at that but agreed that it was a very good item but it wasn’t useful at this moment. He continued looking through the missions. He wasn’t an ogre hunter or anything so he focused on other creatures.

There were next to no goblin tribes left because most were already hobgoblins or higher breeds.

As he looked, he came upon an interesting mission.

Mission:

Lesser Troll Blood Needed

A shortage of low quality healing elixirs for dealing with serious injuries to E and D rank adventures has plagued the 20th floor city. Troll blood is required from at least the Lesser trolls on the 23rd floor.

Note: Every troll is at least E rank and evolved just like Ogres but they have 66% of their mana in their bodies allowing them to have very powerful regeneration abilities. Aiming for the monster core is the best bet but their ribs are the only reinforced part. They also boast very high strength and carry with them very hard wood clubs the length of their bodies, 3 meters of height.

Objective:

At least 20 barrels of blood 0/20

Reward:

50 gold plates

2 rusty keys

The prize wasn’t much different from the oni one and was far less impressive because normal people wouldn’t have an efficient bleeding method. Also, there is a problem because dungeon monsters vanish when they die so they need special barrels which preserve the solid state of mana until it can be stabilized.

Trolls were easier to get this though because of how much mana fills their body compared to concentrated in their monster core. If anything, they were monsters with a high chance of forming a true solid body.

“Well… it is an interesting quest. Trolls are good punching bags to see how far our strength has grown though lesser trolls don’t have as powerful of an endurance as full trolls.” he said.

Storm nodded and they agreed to that mission and quickly checked if there were other missions. There were a few missions but they were far lower prizes. One asked for a drop item called a troll heart and needed 10 of them and the prize was only 20 gold plates.

After learning the conversion rate, he would think that was cheap but he had to remember that he was in the dungeon and there were few missions that rewarded in tips.

He didn’t care about these rewards so with Storm, they finally took their first steps into the 21st floor after updating the maps of the next 20 floors.

The floor is very different.

The first twenty floors could be called labyrinth caves mixed with a rare large room generally near all the stairways. In the later floors, there were also wide rooms allowing for small settlements of monsters to form.

That changed now, the dungeon was far more simplified, the path giving three passages at the back but there were close to 10 rooms you had to pass to reach any of them but these rooms weren’t random massive caves. They were self-contained worlds with enough size to have at least a few mountains and nearly a thousand meters of height allowing flying creatures.

Each room could also have it’s own unique environment but from records, this isn’t affected as greatly in the early floors of the 20s. That said, each room had weather patterns and in the case that there is a storm outside, Helix will have every room display that inside. He also follows seasonal patterns starting in the 21st floor and in later floors in higher ranked levels, it can be amplified to the extremes.

Walking into the first room, Storm jumped down and appeared in his monster form. He stood nearly as tall as Logan and had a strong body for running.

He turned to him and spoke in this form, something he learned to do after obtaining human form, “Master, sit on my back, we can move much quicker.” He said.

Logan shook his head, “No, that is just extra taxing on you. We can talk about this when you reach E rank and your size increases more. Then your strength and size won’t be bothered by the extra weight.” He said.

Storm nodded.

Arashi suddenly hummed and Logan took the shrunken blade out. He could tell the shine of the blade was a bit dull. This was a result of the energy in the sword being low. It has been nearly four months since they recharged and he has trained and constantly used her lighting and wind causing a constant strain on her.

"I think the first important thing is trying to restore Arashi before even getting to the trolls.” Logan said.

“Does master wish for me to call a storm?” Storm asked.

“Not here, it won’t spread well.” He said and pulled out his device with the map and began to examine the environments for a while.

“Three rooms from here is a rocky slightly mountainous area with a good flow of water, the air is pretty humid in these areas so it should provide a good environment that will spread the storm quite well.” he said.

With that intent, they turned to the location of the exit and headed into the dungeon room.

It took no time at all for monsters to appear. Bursting from the ground were giant moles and worms.

He extended Arashi while Storm roared and rushed at the worms that jumped out and swung his front paw ripping into the soft flesh and pulling them out before biting down.

Maybe out of some instinct, he dropped his body and suddenly rolled and twisted like a death roll ripping a massive piece of flesh that burst into mana.

His crystals suddenly glowed and a compressed orb of lightning that was perfectly contained appeared and he shoved it into the wound before it suddenly blew up.

It had no affect on him but it seared through the worm’s body even underground and the worm burst after dying.

He growled in satisfaction and turned to the mole.

Logan was far more efficient and not wanting to stress Arashi, he just channeled mana and used basic sword forms.

Still, Arashi rippled through them leaving behind claws and hide along with coins littered all around.

After a bit they all died and Storm was unsatisfied. Logan used a bit of wind manipulation and picked up all the coins and items and put the coins in the magic bag designated for money before storing the rest in a separate bag.

This occurred almost a dozen times before they reached the door and it only got worse as some doors were far away and they even had to fight in the tunnels, which were pretty big to allow migration. Still, it wasn’t any more pressure than the climb from the lower floors. Floor 21 to 40 have primarily F rank mobs with not many fully E rank races while most have leaders and elites. It makes sense that not every creature is E rank, it is a progressive system going up.

It took an hour and a half to reach the room and it was a large rocky area. Looking around, they explored around until they found a suitable area where some rivers joined into a bigger river going down.

Logan nodded to Storm.

He closed his eyes and slowly the crystals all began to glow. After a moment, clouds began to form and very low rumbles started to gather but the next moment, a strong wind coming from the low river valley rose rapidly and hit the growing cloud suddenly extending the cloud upwards where lightning began to spark but it wasn’t a lot but that slowly changed as the clouds started to spread while Storm was making sure it didn’t start to rain or fall.

“Storm that is enough.” Logan said.

“But the size master.” he said

“It is fine, it is already out of your control.” He said.

The lizard opened his eyes and looked and understood what he meant, visible lightning was already pulsing and the clouds were spreading while they could feel heavy force winds rising and falling from the sky like a rainstorm was brewing as all the conditions were hitting properly.

Logan watched until he finally found it was good, “You can move back so you won’t get injured.” He said.

“No need master, I am an E rank and even by human theory, one such as myself can eat bolts of lightning alone. Also…” he said and licked his lips. “It has been a long time since I ate properly.” he said.

Probably because of the months of training, he had forgotten that Storm was a breed who’s main food is lightning.

“Fine, if you can’t handle it, jump back.” he said and Arashi slowly extended.

She hummed like a hungry animal seeing it’s prey and her energy began to gather and the storm suddenly began to move as if it found an outlet.

When the storm peaked, Arashi attacked. A powerful updraft and a bolt of lightning shot up and connected their position to the cloud.

Instantly like a barrier breaking, the clouds loaded with lightning dropped down like a tornado and like the first time, the pressure crushed down but Arashi wasn’t the same and neither were any of them.

Instantly the lightning and wind concentrated on the starved sword but as always, she could never eat everything and instantly a second wave crashed down surpassing her eating pace and beat down on both of them.

Logan had his armor coated and it instantly channeled everything into the ground but Storm wasn’t having any of that and instead his crystal was glowing brightly and cracks could be heard as all the crystals started to glow and a new layer of scales began to crystalize and form a new layer.

Maybe because of the powerful mana in the environment, the storm had become quite strong when natural conditions was forced into making the storm like a natural storm and the only vent is the three of them and it continued for nearly 5 minutes until the lightning ended and Arashi finally cut the connection as it swallowed the last bit to full capacity.

When that happened, the sky returned to releasing shocks.

The entire area was active with lightning but nothing fell down. Instead, the storm turned into a natural storm and they felt a drop on their heads and they looked.

“Quickly, let’s find some cover!” he said and together they quickly left while he feds healing pills to Storm and himself to deal with any damage.

Rain fell harshly all of a sudden and they continued until they found the door to the next room.

Logan sighed and smiled, “That was great, even after filling up, the storm was still raging. It is the first time Arashi has been so full.” He smiled and looked at the sword that had a healthy shine as if recently polished.

“Alright, we should take a small rest and then get to the 23rd floor to quickly do the mission.” He said.

“Yes master!” Storm said excited after having his own fill and feeling at his peak.

The first group of monsters they met were unfortunate as Storm was particularly excited from the feeding and fell on them like a hammer.

What neither of them knew was that a pair of eyes looked at them with some minor interest.

“Yet another example of natural conditions making spells so powerful it transcends a spell and becomes the natural phenomenon.” he said looking at the room.

The storm had thrown many monsters off their natural habits and he left it to rain but a touch over that room and a small glow, the tempest quickly started to weaken and the clouds began to thin. It was only after ten minutes the sky in the room returned to normal.

He had only turned to look because the nature of his dungeon had changed momentarily. Indeed this one who looked was Helix and was a dungeon core that had long assumed human form.

He just smiled as he watched Logan who caught his attention for a moment.

His eyes glowed faintly as he looked beyond the walls of his dungeon into the vast skies at the top. In his eyes, the network of mana in the atmosphere was clear to his ancient eyes and used them to guess some form of divination but there was no clear answer and this is what cautioned the dungeon into releasing the ancient golden lion development to one of the remnants. He was as clear as Maxwell about the talent he had before his eyes but he did not once think to count on Logan to deal with the immediate problem.

It was an investment that in the future, if the worst case happened, there would eventually be someone to gather power and repel this uncertainty. For something to make a powerful being like himself uneasy, it was not something that could be taken lightly.

He looked through the dungeon and continued to look for people that could be invested into. He still had several rare items that could be of use but only in the right hands and the uncertain movements made it hard to guess this. He couldn’t go by talent either so he had to watch people first and gather information for a clearer picture.

As he was looking, he raised a brow to a dirty figure in the 20th floor city. She had a purple gas around her but the most curious thing about her is that she was a goblin, indeed a sentient female goblin. It was rare among rarities because even the female looking dungeon creatures actually only had the shape of females but not the biological functions of one. That said, this ragged goblin was clearly a female.

He could feel a cut red string of fate looking for a connection. He did not understand but this purple gas he knew was the rising king’s gas that Legend sword’s absorbed to advance. It was strange for a goblin to gather it but the strangest part is the red string.

She didn’t move much and had little in terms of property.

The appearance of the goblin was strange compared to normal goblins even the rare sentient goblin had an ugly hook nose.

On the other hand, she had almost elven-like features he had never seen in goblins and he called upon her biology. He eventually found the cause of such a humanoid form. She had somehow obtained a vial of holy water lost by a wandering priest and drank it. This had caused her monstrous form to purify into something that could even be called pretty.

It was a curious evolution and not one that could be easily copied. Even Helix had trouble getting in contact with true celestial angels to produce Holy artifacts.

Considering the red string being similar to the string of marriage he assumed that this strange goblin might be someone important for the future.

He looked around and felt through the entire dungeon, in the 20th floor city, there was only one person who could directly make use of the purple gas and it just so happens that this person had one vacancy for a battle beast.

Sentient dungeon monsters had 2 methods to leave. The first is making their own solid bodies and converting the monster core into a mana pool, the other is becoming the battle beast of a human. The connection will help them stabilize and their master supplies mana to sustain this stability until they can achieve it.

Development techniques would quickly accelerate this.

Thinking this, he examined the mind of the goblin and frowned when he found that it was like a dead creature. Accessing the memories he came to understand that it had been captured and savagely raped because it looked pretty and didn’t have much will to live. It had little difference from a beaten slave with no prospect of life.

He grinned when he saw this and took control and spawned some food for her to eat and sustain her.

He needed to get the plan perfect or it would be harder to pass her along.

He focused on Logan more to watch his movements but didn’t ignore the rest because a lot of monsters were unruly and even a pain for him. Many floor bosses were such that he wanted to kill because they broke the overall balance of the floors. He could trap their souls if they were to be killed making it easy to control them after that. Sadly, there were few who could properly use her and Logan was the only one that could give her the possibility of S rank growth.

That said, the low power of the goblin was also strange how she got up to the city. She was barely any better than wild unranked goblins. Developing her would start by unblocking and would be a long process to make her useful at all.