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Chapter 159: Floor 4 of Phantom Castle

——BOOM!!

As soon as I teleported into the 4th floor of the Phantom Castle, a sudden explosive sound and a tremendous blast occurred. I couldn’t help but squint my eyes.

「What the!?」

The scenery before me was an arena like the one in Alraine, where the ranking battle was held. It’s just that the size was much, much more huge. In addition, there were collapsed parts in several places, giving the appearance of ruins.

At the center of it was Quereble, in his shining silver dragon form, firing a powerful Breath, which Yaou, who had evolved into Bushiki, caught it head on with his magic barrier and deflected it away.

Unlike the mock battle between Cherry and Mare, it was a clash of overwhelming power…

「A…quarrel?」

But none of them seem agitated. Rather, from looking at them facing each other, I feel more of an atmosphere of cats playing with each other. What is happening right now…?

「Oh! If it isn’t the master!」

「Or rather, what’s going on here?」

「Nu? The two of us were just testing our strength…」Quereble.

「But the floor is crumbling, though? I mean, why are you in this situation, Quereble?」

「Fo fo fo… This is a dungeon, so even if the walls and ground are broken, they’ll be repaired right away, right?」

「I mean, yeah, that’s true, but… Just explain what’s going on.」

「The truth is, my mana has been slowly returning lately.」

「Are you serious!?」

「Umu. So while testing how much mana had returned, I am also doing special training on Yaou’s magic barrier.」

「Great to hear that! By the way, how much has it recovered so far?」

「About 70% of the power before giving away the Ice magic core. About half of the power in my prime days.」

「Hmmm, I see…」

Let’s organize the information for a bit.

Quereble, who gave his Ice Magic Core to Drake, had a drastic reduction in the amount of mana he originally possessed. What’s more, Quereble has originally lived for more than 2000 years and had become a kind of spirit beast, and he was in a situation where he couldn’t live past several more years unless he was in a place with abundant magic essence. However, by making a subordinate contract with me and living in a dungeon filled with magic essence, his strength is gradually returning…

「How much more do you think you can recover? You don’t have the Ice magic core anymore, right?」

「You seem to have misunderstood something, Aun. The Ice magic core was originally created by me inside my own body. And being in a place with this much dense magic essence, I might even be able to regain the power I had in my prime.」

「A-Are you serious? That’s a happy miscalculation.」

「I will do my best to live up to Aun’s expectations.」

「Alright! Ah, come to think of it, the floor is still under construction, right? What do you plan to do?」

「Master, it’s already done.」

「Huh? You haven’t even summoned any monsters yet… Ah!」

「Fo fo fo… The bosses of the 4th floor are me and Yaou.」

「Wow…」

Which means that this is a huge arena floor!

Even though his strength had not fully recovered, Quereble, the silver dragon, was originally one of the strongest in this world. In his heyday, it is conceivable that he may have been an SS or higher rank in terms of the rank of monsters.

And if the SS-rank Yaou also fights together with him, I can’t see a future where this floor would ever fall. But we can’t let our guard down. From the 1st floor to the 3rd floor so far, the capture difficulty is ridiculously high. If there are men who can break through it, or perhaps even…

Well, in preparation for the worst case scenario, Kinu’s floor and the highest floor under my supervision must be even tougher than this!

「That being said, I still have most of the dungeon points I received from Aun. I shall return it for now.」

「Okay, let me know if you need it again. What are you two going to do after this?」

「I’ve finally found a place where I can go all out to my heart’s content and an opponent I can direct that power towards. I’m going to continue coaching Yaou and the others while restoring my mana.」

「What about you, Yaou?」

「My actions are as you command, master.」

「I see. Well, I’ll call you if something happens, so you can take it easy for a while.」

「Understood.」

My work here is done, then. Next is Kinu and Urs’ floor, but let’s organize the hierarchy so far.

First, Drake and Irs’ 1st Floor. The floor environment is Floating Islands. In addition to simultaneous attacks from the ground and air, there are monsters that have long-distance attacks and monsters that inflict status ailments wandering about. If you want to break through this floor, you must have a clear understanding of the party’s clearing proficiency, defeat the monster by priority, and most importantly, adapt yourself to the requirements of the moment.

Nelfie and Barbaru’s 2nd Floor is a trap zone. Excellent scouting will be the key to the strategy here. Furthermore, on the boss floor, you have to be careful of the traps created by the spider-type monsters, but also have to defeat the S-rank Arachne. On this floor, just like the 1st floor, even a small mistake can be fatal, and it’s a floor that puts a strain not only on your body but also on your mind.

Shinku, Mare, and Cherry’s 3rd Floor is, in a word, “violence in numbers”. A well-coordinated, high-ranked monster unit crushes the invaders with overwhelming physicality. Regarding this floor, I honestly can’t see a future where normal adventurers can break through.

If they aim for a chance, everyone in the party will have to act covertly and avoid battle until they reach the boss… but this too will end up being crushed to death in the boss area. In the first place, the intruders will feel hopelessness at the gaping difference in strength of the dungeon which has no intention of being captured. If it is possible to break through, it is essential to have an existence like Kinu who can wipe out a wide range at once with high firepower, but there is no way such a person exists.

And lastly, the 4th floor. The floor where the silver dragon Quereble and the SS-rank Bushiki fight together. This is a floor where the requirements are simple combat skills.

Each of the two bosses is the type to overwhelm their opponents with high-power attacks, but they have different methods of attack, and they are good at close, medium, and long range. Come to think of it, these two are pretty good friends.

And so far, the concept of the floors has been more disparate than I expected, and it looks like the dungeon will be much more difficult than I originally expected.

The only problem is that there aren’t enough dungeon points. I also got carried away and ended up using dungeon points to make the Phantom Castle stupidly huge. But I need to almost double the dungeon points I gave to complete everything except the 4th floor. Moreover, if the priority is to add 20 more floors to the Plainevelt dungeon, it may be more than a year before the Phantom Castle dungeon is completed… Well, I don’t think there are people who can come this far so quickly, so why don’t we just take it slow!

The next is Kinu and Urs’ 5th floor. I can’t wait to see what kind of floor Kinu will create!