Chương 172: Back To The Labyrinth

Midterm break finally arrived and Damion felt his preparations for his next excursion into the labyrinth were complete. Despite Mage Teft and his other teachers wanting him to form another team, Damion had less than stellar luck doing so. All the students at the school were too much weaker than he was, and were unable to keep up with him, and Damion wondered if he would have the same trouble with the adventurers who accepted his mission from the Association.

Elicia had elected to remain behind, and Damion did not specifically contact Arica, so it was no surprise to him that she was not on the list of applicants he reviewed for his team. Of all the people that Damion reviewed for his team, he only knew one name, Joseph Blythe. The D Rank Light mage he had been in the desert dungeon a few months back with. The other members of Damion's team ended up being a C Rank knight, Peter Macmillan. Two C Rank mages, Dustin Grier a Wind mage and Kevin Sooter a Fire mage.

With the last member of the team being the only Spatial affinity mage to apply George Kripke at E Rank. After arriving at the labyrinth entrance in Argentum and everyone had gone through a round of introductions, Damion led the team into the shimmering portal of the labyrinth's entrance. Since all their combat members were at C Rank, none of the team wanted to bother with the low Rank floors and they quickly speed through the floors, pausing only so Mage Blythe and Mage Kripke could catch their breath.

The journey to the tenth floor had only minimal interruptions from the few D Rank beasts the group encountered on floors eight and nine. Once they arrived on the tenth floor Damion was surprised to find most of the Ash Eagles had already been killed, including the floor guardian. His group did not see another team in the area, which meant the other party had likely moved on to the eleventh floor.

"Should we move on to the eleventh floor?" Knight Macmillan asked as he fiddled with his longsword while looking to Damion for confirmation.

"Only makes sense. There's no telling how long we'll have to wait for the beasts here to repopulate," Mage Sooter offered.

"True, we don't know how long we'll have to wait here," Damion said, looking up to the sky he only spotted three Ash Eagles.

"But if we rush ahead, we'll either be in the same situation or have to compete with the team that cleared out this floor."

"We could rush ahead of them. Try to beat them to twelve or thirteen. The C Rank floors go until fifteen, plenty of chances to find ourselves a patch to farm." Mage Sooter argued.

"Hard to know how that will playout when we don't know how far ahead of us they are. Let's clear out these last few beasts and then rest by the passageway to the eleventh floor. Maybe we can hope they are far enough ahead that once we move on, the eleventh floor will have more for us to kill."

"Sounds good to me," Mage Grier said stepping forward into the burnt field to lure the Ash Eagles to attack him. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. All three remaining Demonic Beasts turned from their slow loops high in the sky to dive towards Mage Grier as soon as he moved far enough from the passageway. Damion's Ice Sword sprang to life in his right hand while he cast Ice Shard with his left at the approaching Ash Eagles.

Knight Macmillan strolled out in front of Mage Sooter, sword and shield in hand, to intercept the Ash Eagles as they swooped down to attack. Damion's Ice Shards managed to hit one of the Ash Eagles, causing it to fall out of the sky. The other two were cut to shreds by attacks from Mage Sooter. The Wind spells he unleased surprised Damion. Never before had he seen such powerful Wind magic in action. Elicia's spells were easily overcome by his, just as her cousin's spell had been during their brief duel.

He was not sure what spell Mage Grier used, but it was not a spell he had seen before. The three Ash Eagles had only been E Rank, but Damion was still impressed with how his team had performed for their first bit of combat on a C Rank floor. On his first trip to the labyrinth, Damion had struggled to fight just one C Rank Demonic Beast, but with this team he felt confident they could handle anything the C Rank floors could throw at them.

The passageway to the eleventh floor was not far from the entrance and they found it easily. As they moved through the burnt field, Damion noticed very few fires burning, he also noticed odd puddles of water in the area as if perhaps the team that came before them had a Water mage in their group. Damion's team rested but after an hour, Mages Grier and Sooter were both anxious to move on to the next floor. Since there was no real point to waiting on ten, Damion agreed and the group proceeded to the eleventh floor.

When Damion emerged from the passageway and saw what awaited him on the eleventh floor he was a bit in awe. He had expected an environment similar to the tenth floor. A burnt field or forest perhaps. What Damion found was a burnt forest that had been turned into an ice field. His previous guess that a Water mage was with the team ahead of them was wrong, it was an Ice mage, and one that had quite the impressive spell, to turn the whole area into land of winter.

"Can you do this?" Knight Macmillan asked Damion as he looked over the frozen wasteland.

"Don't know the spell," Damion answered. If he knew the magic seal he was confident in his mana capacity to be able to freeze over an area like this with it. But the closest Damion had ever seen to a spell like this was when Mage Glint had lifted the Aerico dungeon from the underground of Benault Forest.

"Shame," Knight Macmillan muttered.

"Yeah, would be super useful on these fire floors. Put out the whole place with a single spell," Mage Grier said with a laugh.

"Looks like this floor was cleared more recently than the last. I say we move on right away. We've got to get ahead of this other group or get to fifteen. Its big enough for several teams to move around without tripping over each other." Mage Sooter chimed in.

"Why would a mage strong enough to do this hang around in the C Rank floors?" Mage Blythe asked as the group walked across the frozen ground towards the passage to the next floor.

"Probably a B Rank flexing for his weaker team on their way to fifteen," Mage Grier offered.

"If they did this on the next few floors we'll be severely screwed over on loot. There is nothing left to kill. I say we move fast and try to get ahead of them."

"Seems like we don't have much of a choice. No point in taking our time when there is nothing to do," Damion told his team.

"Let's keep moving. Maybe we can get ahead of them, or maybe they'll clear everything to the B Rank floors and we can explore there and see what we can find." No one objected to Damion's plan. They all wanted to make money and finding the floors most likely to give them the most valuable materials for their Ranks empty was frustrating. Even if they had to risk running into a B Rank Demonic Beast on sixteen, it was better than turning around and returning to the D Rank floors.