Dungeon of Pride, Laplace

The floors that should have taken the expedition force a day, ended up taking more than two days.

A temporary camp was set up near the entrance to the 45th floor. After diving for more than two days continuously, it was decided that the expedition force would take a couple of hours of break before moving forward.

Inside one of the tents that was occupied by the Sea god's trident guild. The high ranking members of the guild participating in this expedition were currently gathered inside one and were intently discussing something on a table, when the tent was opened and a person stepped in.

"Sir Dalton" the adventurers greeted.

The person that walked in, was none other than the former vice guild master of the Sea god's trident guild, Dalton Lance. Currently, he just came back after attending the leader's meeting.

"Sir Dalton, what decisions were taken during the meeting?" one of the adventurers who was a senior ranking member of the guild, asked.

"It looks like we will proceed as it is. There was a motion to have some of the members of the secondary team to join us. However, it was rejected since they would just be slowing us down instead of helping" Dalton replied finding himself a seat to sit.

"I see then when will we move?" another adventurer asked.

"The craft smiths with the secondary unit, are currently tending to our weapons. We will move as soon as they repair our weapons"..

Fighting hordes of monsters had abused their weapons quite a bit. No matter what their rank or whatever materials they were made of, they needed to be restored a bit by the blacksmiths to work like usual.

"Understood… but sir Dalton, we have already dived more than 44 floors. How deep do you think this dungeon is?"…

"Wasn't it supposed to be a newly emerged one? But the more we dive deeper, the bigger the floors becomes"…

"Also, have you noticed the concentration of mana here? It is so dense that it has far outclassed the level of the capital which is sitting on top of a large mystical vein"…

"Right, I feel like all my pores have opened and I have levelled up by three levels since descending the 40th floor. If I stay here a little longer, I think that I will level up once again"…

The adventurers inside the tent were discussing how amazing the dungeon was and how many levels each of them had gained. Perhaps only Dalton and a few others had realised how unique the dungeon was.

According to the information he has gathered, it hasn't even been two years since the dungeon emerged. Yet in that time frame it had not only ranked up to [D] tier, but was fast approaching the level of a [C] rank.

'Has it already become a [C] rank? No, it can't be, when the rank of a dungeon increases, it causes a unique phenomenon in the outside world. According to the words of the adventurers living in the tower town, no such phenomenon was spotted.

Which means that this dungeon is still a [D] rank' Dalton wondered. His line of thought made him further believe that all of the usualness of the dungeon was related to the item that the Demon had gotten from the forbidden grounds.

"I think that we are not far… the density of mana here is proof that we are closer to the dungeon. Maybe a couple more floors before we find that demon. I hope that everybody knows what we are here for?"

"Our goal is not the forest spring spirits living here but the item that the demon possesses. While everybody is blinded by the treasure in front of them, we will swiftly hunt the demon and take that item from him. Well once we have the item in our hands, I will not stop you guys from hunting them after all, it was our guild that have discovered this news first and our guild master was the one who informed that guy about it. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if we hoarded a couple of spirit orbs" Dalton ordered.

The allure of the spirit orbs was so incredible that forget about them, even the mainland would be shaken if this news was brought to light.

How could their Sea God's trident not take a share of this big delicious pie? From the information their guild master got from the man who had discovered this secret first, there were more than a hundred spirit orbs to be harvested.

Just a single spirit orb was like an ultimate treasure that could refine and purify one's bloodline allowing them to reach heights that they could have never believed was possible in their life. Imagine hundreds of them just lying in wait inside this dungeon.

Truly, this dungeon had far more secrets than what could be seen from the surface.

On another camp, Brutus Sarge, the guild leader of the savannah beast guild flumped to his seat exhausted after coming back from the meeting.

"How was the meeting guild master?" inside, a couple of high ranking guild members were waiting for him.

"Yeah, it looks like we still have to descend a few more floors before we can conquer this dungeon. It was decided we will continue on with our current numbers, covering our ranks with members of the secondary team will only just slow us down. Everyone was on the same page when it came to finishing this expedition as fast as possible".

Brutus told them about the various decisions that were taken in that meeting in an exhausted manner. The reason for his exhaustion was none other than the meeting and the people who attended it.

All that constant argument and accusation was starting to become a huge pain to deal with. Ever since what happened on the 34th and 40th floor, the meeting was becoming more and more stifling to attend.

As the expedition leader, this annoying thing fell on his shoulders to deal with.

"Haa…" Brutus gave another sigh and downed a bottle of liquor that was set on the table. Everybody could see how exasperated he was, so they left him alone to give him some moment of silence.

As Brutus was left alone in the tent, he fell flat on his back and stared at the ceiling of the tent blankly.

"That fool… he really went and did it" it was obvious who he was calling a fool. He knew the man had something planned the moment he came to ask his son about the affairs of the mysterious ruins.

However, even he didn't think that Manuel would just straight up start a war with the phantom light guild. Because of him, the expedition force was the way it was, his words had made everyone paranoid.

"Sigh, the best thing to do in this situation would be to clear the dungeon as soon as possible".

The grey haired man had estimated that the dungeon has 50 floors or more. That is to say, they still have a lot more ways to go.

Seeing the current condition of the expedition force, Brutus was more concerned if the group would last that long. The tension among the guilds was building and after what Manuel did, it had deeply ingrained itself into everyone's mind.

Every guild was cautious against the others while they marched and did not leave their backs to the team next to them. It was as if saying they cannot trust anyone. Because of this their match had been slow and injuries and deaths appeared on every floor they descended.

If this went on for long, it wouldn't take time for that spark to develop into a wildfire that consumed all of them.

SIGH… Brutus sighed and played with the drink in his hand "Was the relationship between our top guilds really this fragile?" he questioned to seemingly no one.

He was wondering how the situation came to this; however, even he couldn't have imagined that it was all incited by the demon of this dungeon. The demon that they had underestimated, knew their guilds very well and was precisely taking advantage of that delicate balance that was holding them together.

"That aside, this dungeon is really a handful. I thought bringing the top twenty guilds to join an expedition to a low ranking dungeon was an overkill. But who would have thought even after ten days since entering the dungeon, we would still be unable to conquer it?" Brutus mused to himself.

"I guess Xandros really was right, this dungeon is really very unusual".

He recalled the words that Xandros, the vice guild leader of the tyrant mountain guild told them on the 20th floor. However, at that time all of them took his words very lightly as a result of which, the tertiary teams of all their guilds suffered a disastrous defeat, the guilds started fighting one another and the distrust between them grew.

Even the primary unit comprised of the primary teams of all the guilds was starting to incur losses the further they went. Nevertheless, the most surprising thing about this dungeon of all was the monsters that spawned here.

Unlike the other low ranking dungeons, the monsters that could be found here are unique so much so that they could even be branded as new species. It was not just one or two, but many new species popped up the deeper the floors they went.

These unique monsters were far stronger than what could be found in any other low ranking dungeons. Brutus could proudly say that he had dived inside a lot of low ranking dungeons; however, none of the dungeons was as big, mysterious and dangerous as this one.

This dungeon was not conforming to any of the common sense and knowledge they had about the low ranking dungeons.