“Wake up!”, Liliei heard a faint voice, but she was so tired.

“Hnnn, le’ ‘e slee’.”

She was pretty sure what she had said – mumbled, really – was completely unintelligible, but she considered the message passed and turned in her bed, trying to go back to sleep. She was just about to succeed when a large amount of cold water splashed onto her, waking her up properly and driving any remnant of sleep away.

She sat and turned to face the one disturbing her sleep, only to find Nalaine a huge smile on her face, one hand extended in front of her, pointing just above Liliei’s head. She slowly looked above her, a large ball of water floating there.

“An objection?” The Demon asked, the grin on her face only growing bigger.

“You…”, started Liliei before shaking her head. “Anyway, I could have used another hour of sleep, but… oh well, whatever. So what are we doing today?”

“What a question, more training obviously! We’ll go to the second floor of the Dungeon. The things there are a bit more dangerous than slimes, but it’s still completely manageable. I see you’ve trained your constructs,” she pointed to the small cube still on the floor where it had fallen, “but did you manage to do anything interesting?”

“Yes,”she announced proudly, pointing at the cube, “this cube is completely independent, it doesn’t take me anything to keep it there and it won’t dissipate after getting too far from me. But it’s just too tiring to make. I mean, this cube is the simplest thing I can make and I was barely able to make it stay. And I was too tired to try something else after that.”

“Well that’s still great, if you can make complicated construct to stay like this, it could allow you to keep them without them constantly draining you. Your goal is to improve as fast as possible, so anything is useful. I’ve also thought about one way to gain a quick boost in power. It’s a bit risky but if we could get to the fifth floor and beat a Boss, we would be able to obtain some items that could help.”

This sent Liliei into thinking. Bosses were reputed being hard to kill, but often being worth the pain, as the World would create an item designed for you specifically. From what she knew, Nalaine was Level 15 with her Ability Level 3 that was oriented mainly on offensive magic ability. She had already once went to the fifth floor, but stayed usually on the first three, which explained why she was only Level 15 despite often going to the Dungeon: the returns decreased quite fast past a certain point. If Liliei was able to get her Level higher and train her Ability, beating a Boss may be possible, but…

“Not for now at least, I’ll need to get quite a bit better at it before trying something this dangerous. However, it’s not a bad idea, once we’re able to do it.”

“Right? But for now, we’re going to the second floor.”, declared the Demon, turning to the exit.

The walk to the transport pads was fast and they were soon in the cave, where there now were quite a lot of Adventurers. Most were in group of three or four, but there were the odd ones that went alone and even one group of twelve. The huge majority were clearly still beginners, with their simple equipments that were clearly just normal clothes or simple armor. There was however one group of three that seemed more interesting.

One of them wore a full-plate armor made of red and black metal. He had a long sword strapped to his back and another at his waist.

The second was clearly a mage as he wore only very light armor and held a long metallic staff in his hand. It was made of gray metal with a tint of green, and had a small blue crystal at the top.

The last person of the group was also quite lightly armored but wore a strange cloak that seemed to take the appearance of what was behind, and had a hood that was currently down. She also wore a bow that appeared to be as simple as could be.

The group went to the large circle and disappeared a few second later. When Liliei turned to Nalaine, she was already starting talking.

“They’re one of the high Leveled group living here. I think they’re going to the fifteenth floor and up, but last I heard they had problems getting past a Boss. Well, then let’s go.”

They immediately went to the circle which brought them to the second floor. The moment they appeared, Liliei stayed speechless. They were in the middle of what could only be described as a tundra. Snow was covering everything except for the ice chunk on which they had appeared and everything that wasn’t snow seemed to be ice. They were in the middle of a valley between huge mountains made of ice that seemed to climb forever as their peaks were hidden in the clouds. The sky was dark-blue making it clear it was supposed to be night, but two huge moons were shining with a pale blue light giving the scene a ghastly feeling. Right between the two moons was a third, a lot smaller and with a more purple tint than the others.

In front of the two girls was a large swaying path that went between the mountains before disappearing from view after a turn.

Nalaine looked from the side, letting Liliei slowly take in the sight while she created a small cover of hot air around herself. Then she waited for the girl to get out of her astonishment and turn to her.

“Whoa, are all floors like this? I mean the incredible landscapes and all, not the frozen world.”

Nalaine chuckled at Liliei’s reaction, before answering.

“Not all, but most of them are quite impressive, from what I’ve heard. It seems that in the very high floors there are some landscapes that are quite interesting. But for now you may want me to place a heating charm on you, if you don’t want to freeze.”

This time it was the thief’s turn to smile, “No need, I don’t feel cold.”, and to laugh at the Demon’s astounded expression.

After a second, however, a worried look passed on her face.

“Isn’t it a problem if you don’t feel the temperature around you?”

“Nope, I feel everything, it just doesn’t affect me at all, I could probably jump in the snow and roll around without being cold at all. In fact the cold is pretty comfortable.”

Now Nalaine’s expression was nearly offended, and a bit envious.

“That’s cheating! I mean half the difficulty on the early Levels is getting used to the environment conditions and you just skipped straight past it.”

“Keep your cool Nalaine.”, said the girl in a calming voice with a large grin.

The Demon now had a clearly offended expression as she started “You...” before shaking her head and turning back to the tundra. She however hadn’t been able to suppress the smile on her face, removing a large part of the credibility in her being really upset.

“On this floor, the exit is still very easy to find,” she announced while turning and pointing behind Liliei, who followed the movement, only to find a pillar of light going into the sky, “you just have to follow that light and you’ll get there. In the later floors, the exit become harder to find, but there is always a circle where you appear in case you want to leave. It won’t make it possible to go to the next floor however.”

Liliei checked and there was a circle of red metal inside the ice chunk they were on. She then turned to Nalaine again.

“What happens if you try to go with someone that went to a higher floor than you?”

“The circle won’t activate as long as everyone on it hasn’t access to the floor you try to go. But usually if you know how it isn’t too long or difficult to go through the floor you already passed. Anyway, for now we aren’t going for the exit. There’s a great place in this direction for us.”

She pointed in the exact opposite of the light as she talked, and then began to walk, jumping into the snow. She went right through up until her waist, her heat charm melting the snow and warming the resulting water so she didn’t freeze, but still got quite wet. She then started walking, rising slowly to the surface of the snow, at which point Liliei saw that she had created small air cushions under her feet that prevented her from sinking in the snow.

The thief then quickly made two round constructs that she strapped to her feet before following Nalaine. The Demon had taken some advance but Liliei quickly caught up. She was a lot lighter and didn’t tire, which made walking in the snow quite easier for her. They were going down the slope and after a moment, they got to a large ice path that wasn’t covered in snow. From there, they followed it, their pace increasing quite a lot.

After walking for around twenty minutes, they got to what appeared to be a large frozen lake. There Nalaine stopped, looking around for a moment before, apparently satisfied, she turned to Liliei.

“Okay, we’ll do it like this. I’ll make the monsters come and you sneak behind them to kill them okay? You should construct a cutting weapon before we start.”

Liliei did as she was told, making a sword-like construct. It wasn’t the most sharp sword around, nor the most solid, but it would do. She then activated her Ability, becoming hard to notice. She didn’t stop looking around, trying to see monsters but couldn’t see anything. Then Nalaine started.

A fireball flew straight in the snow on the opposite shore of the frozen lake, and suddenly the monsters were there. Two strange things that looked like balls of white fur seemed to appear of nowhere as the ran out from the snow. A third monster was also present, a chunk of ice that suddenly unfolded to a sort of humanoid figure.

Liliei waited for the one of the furball to pass by before suddenly moving, stabbing her sword into the monster. Immediately the attention of the two remaining monsters turned to her. The furball was closest to her so she turned to it. It was already close to her and she tried to hit it with the sword but it just jumped aside before jumping to her face. It was about to get to her when a fireball caught it mid flight, quickly burning it into ashes. The last one was the ice golem, but it was quite slow and she easily killed it just by hitting repeatedly.

She was about to turn to Nalaine when another fireball shot into the snow. She immediately activated her Ability and turned to the monsters that were appearing, heaving a small sigh – she knew she was gone for a few hours of nonstop training.

They stayed there killing monsters for nearly five hour, only taking a few brief pauses. Then Nalaine declared a longer pause to for her to eat something – it was around noon and they had been fighting for nearly the whole time. Her sword had broken thrice and was about to break once again when they had stopped. When she had finished eating, Nalaine turned to Liliei with a serious expression.

“I’ve looked how you were fighting, and I’ve come to a conclusion.”

“Yes?”, Liliei wasn’t sure what to expect.

“Drop the sword and never take it again, you’re not going to do anything good with it. You should stick to a dagger and try to outmaneuver your opponent with your speed.”

She then stood up and after stretching a bit turned back to Liliei that had already went back on the lake’s surface – they had gone to the shore for the pause.

“Ready for part two?”

Liliei was turning to answer when she felt the ground shake a bit nearly making her fall. She was about to finish turning when a large ball of air hit her in the torso, propelling her back in the direction of the shore. Just in time as the ice where she had been standing shattered, as a large monster looking like a blue shark with legs got on the frozen surface. It turned to her, growling, and was going to charge her. She was still on the ground and wouldn’t have enough time to get up, but it wasn’t needed. Before the beast could move, Liliei heard a single word resonate in the air.

“LightningFlame”

A huge arc of flame-like lightning cut through the air traversing the monster before it could move and burning it in an instant, the rest of the lightning getting lost in the waters. Nalaine then rushed to Liliei, grabbed her hand and pulled her upright.

“We should go back, if things like this one are going to appear here it’s a bad sign. And sorry for the rough handling but it was the fastest way to put you out of the way.”

“Don’t worry, I’m pretty resilient.”

The two started walking in direction of the light pillar illuminating the sky, leaving behind the corpse of the monster still fuming from the discharge.