They all left...
Looking at the last few cloud nest birds disappearing behind a cloud far away from the towering spiral staircase, Scaly could not help relaxing her tensed body as she felt an all too familiar wave of exhaustion washing over her.
No! I can’t faint here! What if those birds return!?
Knowing just how dangerous it would be for her to faint on the spiral staircase where she was defenseless, Scaly fought back the overwhelming exhaustion as she began to drag her exhausted body down the spiral staircase. Ignoring the sharp pain spreading throughout her body from the bloody claw marks that had been left behind by the large cloud nest bird claws grabbing her earlier.
On a positive note, she had managed to cover more than half of the way down the spiral staircase during her rapid escape from the cloud nest birds earlier. Meaning that she now only had a little over a thousand meters to go down before she reached the bottom and officially entered the third floor of the dungeon.
Although it would be difficult to accomplish something like this under normal circumstances, Scaly was far from ordinary. Using her resolve of not ending up at the cloud nest birds dinner plates to keep herself conscious for the next four hours as the base of the spiral staircase finally became visible.
Finally!
Feeling a wave of relief wash over her as she saw this, Scaly didn’t bother checking her surroundings as she rushed down the last bit of the spiral staircase and touched ground-
Huh?
However, upon stepping onto the ground, she felt herself slightly sinking into the ground, something she had never experienced before.
Ah! It’s sand!
Realizing the reason why she had sunk into the ground, Scaly finally began to look at her surroundings-
Water?
And it was only at this point in time that she discovered that she was on a beach with water covering everything within her vision. The sea of blue was only broken up by a few islands that seemed to have been randomly scattered around to break up the monotonous sea of blue.
On some of the island’s in the distance, similar spiral staircases stretching far into the sky were also scattered around like giant pillars supporting the heavens above, but... More importantly than all of this, Scaly noticed something she hadn’t seen outside of the first floor of the dungeon-
Humans!
Yes... Compared to the second floor of the dungeon where she had only managed to encounter humans once, there were humans everywhere on the different island and on small wooden objects floating in the water.
All of them were hunting monsters like the humans on the first floor of the dungeon, but! A clear difference compared to the humans on the first floor of the dungeons and the humans on the third floor of the dungeon, was the fact that the humans on the third floor of the dungeon were far stronger than those on the first floor!
Among the humans she saw fighting in the distance, Scaly even saw a large man covered in muscle wrestling with a sea monster close to a dozen times larger than the cave alligator she had killed back on the second floor of the dungeon!
Indeed... Humans are far scarier than monsters!
Nodding her head as she thought about this, Scaly began looking around the island she had found herself on for a place to hide. Not just from the monsters, but also the terrifying humans who seemed to dominate the third floor of the dungeon.
Luckily for her, she had ended up at the beach of a rather mountainous island that seemed to be made up of a single large mountain range with only a few trees scattered around the place and no sign of any monsters or humans nearby.
Considering that most of the other islands she could see in the distance were either covered in humans or monsters, she considered herself rather lucky to have ended up on an island seemingly devoid of life and filled with places for her to hide away and recover her strength.
Of course, there was the problem of her finding food, but that could wait for the future. For now, the most important thing for her was to find a good hiding spot and begin the process of recovering.
Rustle~
With this in mind, Scaly used the last bit of strength left in her body to drag herself towards the closest mountain before settling down inside a perfectly sized hole on the side of the mountain and sealing the entrance with a bunch of small stones.
Thump~
In the end, she lost all of her strength after the last stone was placed. Collapsing from exhaustion inside the small hole in the mountain.
...
"It’s the cloud nest birds! They are back again!"
"Hah? Those damned birds are really looking for trouble!"
"Hmph! Last time around, they wanted to steal some of the aquatic monster I caught. If they dare have thoughts about them again, I won’t hesitate to blast a few of them down with a fireball or two!"
"Indeed! I also lost my prey last time they showed up! If they dare make a move again, count me in on getting rid of these annoying thieves."
At the same time Scaly was forced to embrace the darkness following her body being too exhausted to continue, the humans who were hunting for different aquatic monsters close to the mountainous island Scaly was on all looked up in annoyance at the flock of cloud nest birds that had begun to hover in the air above them.
Of course, the cloud nest birds were not there to try and steal from the humans but were instead there looking for Scaly. The reason for their renewed confidence in fighting her was because a more powerful cloud nest bird had decided to show up-
Screeech-!
[Cloud Nest Bird King, lvl 7]
And this was not just any cloud nest bird, it was a king! A powerful cloud nest bird that was easily double the size of the large cloud nest bird Scaly had killed a few hours earlier and more than four times the size of a normal cloud nest bird!