"I'll come with you."
When Ais said this, everyone present turned to look at her.
"Ais?"
Riveria frowned and called out to her.
But Ais only looked at Finn and repeated herself.
"I'll go with Leo."
This wasn't to protect Leo, or at least not entirely.
Ais wanted to explore the Dungeon too, to keep getting stronger.
Her own strength was struggling to improve while Leo kept gaining at an astonishing pace, and that left Ais feeling both relieved and, for once, anxious.
Over this stretch of time, Ais, like the others, had been spurred by Leo into throwing herself into hard work, yet her progress remained negligible.
This made Ais realize that as long as she had to come and go in a single day, she simply couldn't reach the deeper floors, couldn't fight monsters strong enough, and couldn't gather any truly useful excelia.
To make any progress, she'd have to dive into deeper floors.
And it just so happened that Leo was also preparing to leave the Familia for a while, to stay in the Dungeon for an extended period, using a safe floor as a base and diving as deep as he could, even already preparing to head into the Deep Floor region past Floor 37. So naturally, Ais wanted to go along too.
She could protect Leo and team up with him to explore the Deep Floors, fighting powerful monsters. By any measure, she ought to go with him.
So Ais stepped forward without a second thought.
Standing beside her, Lefiya lifted her head, but instead of stopping Ais, she chimed in too.
"I, I want to go too!"
Of course Lefiya didn't want to go because of Leo.
Her goal was Ais. It was to go with Ais that she said it.
And besides, she didn't want Leo pulling further ahead of her either. Now that there was a chance to explore the Deep Floor region, she had to seize it.
I've been practicing Concurrent Chanting for a while now, and against weaker monsters I can already move and chant smoothly. So the next step is to train against stronger monsters.
That was what Lefiya was thinking.
She had to admit, that "carrot fantasy method" Leo had taught her earlier really worked. Now, when swarmed by weaker monsters, Lefiya could move and chant her Magic at the same time.
Before, even when she wasn't nervous or flustered against weaker monsters, Lefiya still couldn't calmly move and chant her Magic at once.
The composed heart Riveria spoke of, she'd already achieved part of it through Leo's "carrot fantasy method."
Next, of course, she had to keep pushing forward and take on higher-difficulty training.
That was why Lefiya didn't think to stop Ais, but offered to come along instead.
Seeing this, Tiona, who'd been bouncing around nearby, got anxious.
"Me, me, me! I'm coming too!" Tiona hollered. "I still haven't paid off my debt!"
Tiona's second-generation Urga, the huge double-bladed weapon, had been successfully completed and brought back home.
But this First Class equipment, forged entirely from Hardsteel, still cost a staggering amount, the same as the first one, a full 120 million.
Tiona had run up a huge debt for it, and lately she'd been agonizing over how to make money as fast as possible to pay it back.
So diving into the Deep Floors to kill monsters and earn money was a good opportunity for her too.
That made Gareth laugh.
"If the lot of you go together, then that'd set our minds at ease."
Finn and Riveria relaxed too.
Ais was Lv.5, Tiona was Lv.5, and Lefiya on top of that; if these three teamed up with Leo to tackle the Dungeon, that was far more reliable than the two same-Level teammates for Leo that Finn had been thinking of at the start.
"What about Tione? Want to come along?"
The little angel hadn't forgotten to bring her own sister along, but unfortunately her sister wasn't grateful for it.
"No way, a whole week without seeing the captain, I'd die!"
Tione said this with such righteous conviction that even Finn fell silent.
Right then, Finn spoke to Tione without a second thought.
"You go along with them, Tione." Finn said it smoothly. "Only with you going along can I feel at ease."
This was a lie.
Finn just didn't want Tione clinging to him, so he seized the chance to suggest it.
To teach Leo, Finn had built up some work lately, and he happened to want to deal with it properly. He didn't want a passionate, free-spirited Amazoness clinging to him every day, wasting his time and, on top of that, wearing him out terribly.
So he simply sent her off.
"Captain~~~"
Hearing Finn's words full of trust, Tione was instantly moved.
"So easy to fool..."
It was Tiona, usually so innocent and carefree, who saw that Finn was pushing her sister out the door, and she cast a pitying look at her own sister.
In any case, Tione had been fooled, and it seemed she'd be joining this raiding party too.
With Tione added in, it was even more foolproof.
Seeing the matter settled, Riveria could only say this.
"All of you, remember to work within your limits at all times, and absolutely no reckless behavior."
Riveria gave them a warning.
"Just going to around Floor 37 should be no problem with your strength, but whatever you do, don't keep diving deeper, understand?"
Gareth turned serious too and warned them.
"I'll allow you to dive down to the area as far as Floor 40, but no further than that. Even with the lot of you teamed up, going there isn't entirely without risk." Finn's gaze swept over the group. "It'd be best not to head to the floors past Floor 37. After all, before long, the Floor Boss is going to respawn."
At these words, Leo and the others were startled for a moment, then it came back to them.
"Oh, right." Tiona clapped her hands. "Now that I count it, Udaeus really is about due to respawn."
Udaeus's respawn interval was three months, and Loki Familia had struck it down with their own hands on the expedition before last, putting it into its respawn cooldown.
And Loki Familia's expedition before last dated back to before Leo received the Falna, more than two months ago now.
Counting the time, in about another week, it would finish its cooldown and be reborn.
And this Floor Boss, classified at Lv.6, was located on Floor 37.
If Leo and the others went to the floors past Floor 37, then whether going or coming back, they'd inevitably run into this powerful Floor Boss.
By then, even with three Lv.5 first-class adventurers and two second-class adventurers with Lv.5-level output, facing a Floor Boss classified all the way up at Lv.6, they might still be done for.
After all, it was a Floor Boss, a super-large-class monster. Even a team of same-Level adventurers would have a hard time defeating it, let alone Leo and the others, whose Levels were each below its own.
Goliath, with just its Endurance specialized to Lv.5, already made it hard for a Lv.5 first-class adventurer to take it down single-handedly. Udaeus, compared to Goliath, was only more unusual, more special. Even Loki Familia's expedition force had to send in all their elites to safely subjugate it. For just Leo and the others to want to bring it down, you couldn't say it was impossible, but it was extremely difficult.
And that was only because Ais and Leo were present.
These two both had the ability to challenge above their Level, which was why there'd be some chance of winning against Udaeus. If it were just a few ordinary Lv.5s, there was absolutely no way to defeat Udaeus.
"In a week, you all come back."
Finn made his ruling.
"Coming back before Udaeus respawns, that's the safest course."
That Floor Boss could be left for the next expedition to deal with.
To wipe away the earlier disgrace, Finn wasn't planning to wait a long stretch of time. Once all the cleanup matters from the last expedition were fully resolved, he'd set about preparing for the next expedition.
By then, the expedition force should be the ones facing that Floor 37 Floor Boss.
"Whatever you do, don't push yourselves, understand?"
When he said this, Finn shot a glance at Ais.
Ais almost instinctively avoided Finn's gaze.
As for Leo, he watched from the sidelines the whole time as his adventuring party was settled in just a few words, and he nearly hadn't even processed it.
How had things suddenly turned out like this?
He hadn't planned on teaming up with anyone!
In his original plan, he'd been preparing to take on this adventure alone.
But seeing that it was all settled, he opened his mouth, then in the end decided to say nothing.
Because even if he said it, it most likely wouldn't help.
It went without thinking that Finn, Riveria, even Gareth, none of them would agree to him running off to the Deep Floor region to adventure alone, even though Leo's safety had improved enormously after gaining Comet Chase.
"Fine."
Leo's gaze passed over Ais, Tiona, Tione, and Lefiya in turn, and finally he spread his hands.
"This familiar lineup... I just hope we don't run into those disgusting worm monsters again this time."
You had to know, last time it was this very lineup that ran into those disgusting worm monsters down on Floor 51.
"How could we possibly run into them again?" Tione crossed her arms and curled her lip. "If those things made it up to the higher floors, the Dungeon would've been thrown into chaos long ago."
"Y-yeah." Lefiya muttered sheepishly too. "From Floor 51 to Floor 50 is still kind of normal, but from Floor 50 to somewhere like Floor 37, that'd be no joke."
Unlike the area below Floor 50, which only one or two Familias could reach at all, Floor 37, though already part of the Deep Floor region, could be reached by a fair number of Familias in Orario, if not many.
Loki Familia and Freya Familia, the two strongest Familias in the city, went without saying, and Familias like Ganesha Familia and Ishtar Familia, second only to the city's strongest Familias, had likewise pushed their reached floor down to the area below Floor 37.
If the worm monsters made it into a place like that, it could very likely cause massive casualties.
Those Familias that could only barely manage to explore down that far, once they ran into these monsters that even Loki Familia had to take a heavy loss and retreat from, would absolutely not meet a pretty end.
Even Tiona said as much.
"I don't want to run into those worms again! What if my second-generation Urga gets dissolved too?!"
Remembering her first-generation Urga, the huge double-bladed weapon, Tiona had tears welling in her eyes again.
It broke her heart!
120 million valis, dissolved just like that, just thinking about it broke her heart enough that she couldn't breathe!
"If we run into those monsters again this time, I'm turning around and leaving on the spot!"
For a fierce Amazoness to make such a retreat-without-fighting declaration showed just how big a psychological scar those worm monsters had left on Tiona.
But unfortunately...
I just don't know whether we'll actually run into them.
Leo mused inwardly.
He vaguely remembered that entering the Dungeon during this period, it was possible to run into the ones behind those worm monsters.
That was how it went in the original work. Whether things would change now, Leo didn't know either.
Because of his existence, the way things had developed before had already shifted somewhat. There'd been no incidents on the way back from the expedition, and no danger had come out of nowhere during Monsterphilia, which proved that some things really were changing.
Leo wasn't sure either whether more changes might happen later on, so he could only take it one step at a time.
He was actually still pretty passive about it. Although he knew some of the future developments from the original work, problems like the dubious source of his information meant he couldn't lay it all out. On top of that, his own existence had already triggered some changes to the plot, so Leo really did worry a little that even if he laid out everything he knew about the future, those things might no longer happen.
If it really came to that, the one in trouble would be himself instead.
Foreknowledge, in this world full of all kinds of gods and beings of unknown origin, was truly of not much use. At most it let him prepare a little in advance for certain things.
Once I have the strength, I'll strike straight at the heart of it all in one go and settle everything. That's the approach that suits me best.
Leo knew better than anyone that he still needed time to grow.
Before he had enough strength, it was wisest not to think about changing the future, but to salvage as best he could some of the regrets from the original work that couldn't be salvaged, and change the endings of certain things.
Otherwise, delving too deep into that bottomless darkness would in the end harm not only himself, but the people around him.
Take it slow, no need to rush.
Leo told himself this more than once.
Time was on his side. The longer it dragged on, the stronger he'd get, and the more confidence he'd have to face those things.
So what Leo needed to consider most now was nothing else but to make his greatest effort to grow, to work hard, to get stronger, all while keeping the Familia safe and sound.
"Udaeus..."
Recalling the Floor Boss everyone had just mentioned, Leo's eyes flickered faintly.
No one knew what he was thinking. The group only discussed things on the spot for a while, then dispersed right there, each going to prepare for departure.
Leo returned to his room, put on the Giant's Battle Garb, took the Dragon Fang Sword and the Emerald Staff, packed all his potions into his waist pouch and strapped it to the small of his back, and then set off.
Everyone gathered at the front gate, then went into the city to buy some adventuring necessities, and at last headed off together toward Babel...
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