Starting to feel somewhat doubtful about the current state of the ninth floor of the dungeon and if it would even be possible for her to find a large enough number of monsters to successfully increase her level by even a single bit, Scaly couldn’t help taking out the growing sense of despair at the change in the situation at a nearby oak tree.
Bang!
Ouch! That hurt!
[Weeping Oak Tree, lvl 148]
Unfortunately, as luck would have it, the tree she slammed her hand into happened to be a real weeping oak tree and not some cheap imitation. Meaning her claws did little to no damage and instead ended up doing more damage to herself in the process, as it was like slamming her hand directly into a rock. Not exactly something painless even with her high strength.
As for Verdell...
"Look at the road, we should be able to find something of interest by following it."
He decided to pretend he didn’t see anything and instead pointed down towards the dirt road that they had landed on.
And even if she wanted to complain about the situation, Scaly could only lower her arm still throbbing in pain as she followed Verdell’s arm and looked down towards the dirt road as well, though different from him, she didn’t find anything odd about this dirt road. Having already seen countless such roads before during her exploration of the Howling Caverns Dungeon in the past.
Not to mention, these kinds of dirt roads were the most common kind of road she had seen after she had left the Howling Caverns Dungeon and ended up escaping from the powerful lightning wielding adventurer before ultimately ending up inside the dreamscape following a brief encounter with yet another powerful adventurer following the death of the gluttonous giant ant queen.
Still, though she didn’t understand why Verdell was so interested in this dirt road, she still decided to follow along. After all, following this dirt road also meant they would now be walking on foot instead of flying. Meaning she didn’t have to carry him on her back any longer, something she was more than happy with, as even if she didn’t have anything against carrying him on her back any longer, she still preferred not to have some little dwarf on her back all the time. Having become rather exhausted over the past few hours where she had essentially had a certain dwarf climbing around on her without break.
Unaware of these internal complaints from Scaly, Verdell happily led the way along the dirt path.
Growl-!
Along the way, a few undead and skeletons that seemed to have survived the fall to the ninth floor emerged to attack them-
Whoosh-!
Ptsh!
[Gained 5482 Exp]
Something Scaly was more than happy about, as she took care of these troublemakers before they even had the chance to get anywhere close to Verdell. Not fearing they would harm him but instead fearing that he might act and kill these undead. Preventing her from harvesting the easy experience that she had been severely lacking ever since her now obviously stupid decision to descend to the eighth floor of the dungeon in the past.
Thinking about, even accounting for the large army of undead that had been cut down by the two of them along with the spider swarm that had followed a similar fate, Scaly had a feeling that it might have been more beneficial for her to have remained on what she now knew was the seventh floor of the dungeon.
At the very least, she would have avoided being dragged down into the ninth floor of the dungeon where she couldn’t find any valuable monsters to hunt down.
Part of her wanted to blame Verdell for the situation, but she also understood that there wasn’t much he could do about this unfortunate change of events. After all, from how things had gone initially with the undead army and spider swarm falling to the two of them, Scaly felt that the decision to descend to the eighth floor of the dungeon was a good one. Understanding that there wouldn’t be an endless number of monsters waiting for her to kill them back on the seventh floor of the dungeon even if she had remained behind.
Speaking of which, as her thoughts began to wander while the two of them continued following the dirt road through the wheat field and killed the few undead and skeletons they ran into along the way, Scaly found herself realizing that there was a very real chance that remaining on the seventh floor of the dungeon might have also resulted in the adventurer group targeting the two of them.
Not just that, but the seventh floor of the dungeon wouldn’t remain safe for long according to what little information she had picked up from the conversations between the now dead necromancers.
The reason had nothing to do with the dungeon itself or even the adventurer group or necromancers from the Eternal Life Sanctum.
Instead, it had to do with the simple fact that the disturbance this time around was far too large and was bound to draw the attention of the more powerful figures within the Adventurers Guild.
At which point, the seventh floor of the dungeon was going to become unsafe far faster than the ninth floor of the dungeon that according to the necromancers from the Eternal Life Sanctum still held some hope given how the final floor of a dungeon wasn’t just the place where the dungeon core resided, but also the place where a special one way exit leading straight out of the dungeon was located.
Finding this exit would allow one to easily bypass any danger that might be waiting on the floors above, while at the same time also avoiding the main entrance of the dungeon itself, as a one-way exit from a dungeon generally ended up leading to somewhere different from the original entrance of the dungeon.
In fact, according to those necromancers, this had been the original escape route for them after seizing the dungeon core, but now that the dungeon had grown by another floor, the original one way exit they had wanted to rely on to safely escape from the dungeon without having to clash with the true experts from the Adventurers Guild head on, was gone.
Instead, a new one had emerged on the ninth floor of the dungeon still under development, a path that in the words of the necromancers from the Eternal Life Sanctum was close to impossible to find without spending months to slowly explore every inch of the ninth floor of the dungeon.
Something they had already done for the eighth floor of the dungeon before making their attempt to conquer the final floor of the dungeon and take on the dungeon core. Having apparently found out that they could use their undead creations and skeletons to explore the final floor of the dungeon without causing the dungeon core to seal off the original passages down through the dungeon, something that would undoubtedly alert the Adventurers Guild.
Lost in her own thoughts thinking about this potential path out she and Verdell might need to take to get out safely from the dungeon in the future while the rest of her attention was on cutting down any monsters or undead that emerged to attack the two of them along the way without giving Verdell a chance to steal experience from her, the two of them officially reached the end of the dirt path and instead found themselves on a cobblestone road. A road that was far wider compared to the small dirt road they had been traversing so far.
But the thing that stood out the most about this cobblestone road compared to the dirt road was the fact that carriages and wagons could be seen travelling along the road moving into the distance.
[Undead Wheat Merchant, lvl 78]
[Undead Wheat Farmer, lvl 42]
[Undead Wheat Farmer, lvl 45]
[Undead Child, lvl 4]
Problem was, the people travelling along this cobblestone road weren’t living people, but instead undead.
[Undead Horse, lvl 31]
[Undead Horse, lvl 32]
Even the horses dragging the carriages and wagons along were undead.
Still, even though every single one of them was undead, they didn’t seem to notice this and just went about their day normally. Moving along the cobblestone road before being swallowed up by the black miasma where they disappeared. Paying no attention to Scally or Verdell, these two oddballs who didn’t fit into the scene.
Of course, the main thing Scaly paid attention to was without a doubt the level of these undead. Feeling immensely disappointed upon realizing that the undead merchant that had already disappeared within the black miasma was the strongest of the bunch, with most of the other undead being the farmer kind that barely reached level 49 with most of them lingering somewhere between 40 and 45. Nowhere near strong enough to provide her with any meaningful increase in experience...