The Summoner's Rebirth: Awaken, Milady

Chapter 112: Speeding Through the Floors

Heaving a long breath, she began to focus, preparing to try and take down this last monster in just one strike and proceed. She brandished [Halvargg] and charged with her highest speed. Her first strike didn't hit the core because she did not know where it was, but slimes like this had a trait that made them become very easy to find out about.

The fact that they were attacked would cause their body to move in either one of two ways. First, if the hit was near to the core, then its body would shift to the other side. If the hit was relatively far from the core, then the goo would spread towards the attacker's direction instead.

And when she attacked the slime and [Halvargg] cut through the goo, the slime headed to the opposite side of Aria. This made her certain that she only needed to push through with this one strike and connect it with a powerful slash to finish it all.

She side stepped to the slime's dodging direction, and hacked her sword down to where the slime was trying to protect the most. She made one big slash that ultimately ended up coming in contact with a hard surface, which she applied a lot of energy to. From then on, there was multiple accounts of cracking sounds.

Aria felt the goo that stuck to her sword began to melt down, and the slime's shape distorting in all directions. Within seconds, it collapsed down to the floor and ended up in a puddle, revealing only its cracked core rolling on the ground.

"There you go, I guess?" Aria wiped the excess goo that fell on her body when she attacked and pursed her lips as she waited for the boss' corpse to disappear into fragments. Unexpectedly, even after she waited for more than fifteen seconds, nothing happened. Before, the disappearance happened instantly with all the monsters she faced.

This led Aria to believe that there was something more with the corpse. There was no way that this wasn't purposely done, she did not believe that the System would have an error in such an elaborate feature like the Tower, especially on the first floor. What could it possibly be? A hidden feature of the slime? Another life hidden within the monster? High resilience against death? Those were all traits that a slime possessed, but they all would die after their cores were slain, which Aria did to this boss. The cracked core rolling down was the sole proof of the slime's death according to normal laws. Then, what was it?

Aria approached the slime carcass and crouched down, spotting the broken and cracked core laying inside the goo. However, upon closer inspection, she was able to find something else hidden inside the core. It was a key. A golden key that looked similar to the one she received before she entered this place. She took out the very key that she used and looked at it.

Aria's eyes flickered with interest as she hummed and picked up the key, inspecting it with great attention to the details. The design was exactly the same, but Aria managed to discover one detail that made her sure about the key's identity. There was a Roman number etched on the key's tip, spelling the numbers one and two, matching the floor she was in and the one she was about to go to.

"I see.. So this is how it is? The key to the next stage... Is hidden within the last monster?" Aria concluded. "Then, the System won't say anything except for giving me this key. That's.. Hm, a little bit disappointing,"

She had expected to find a reward for every stage, but it seemed like that wasn't the case. However, one thing that she failed to notice was how her body reacted to her victory. She would later realize a slight change in her body when she had already progressed far enough.

Aria had roughly counted the time she spent inside the dungeon and thought that she could afford breaking into the next stage. She spent a total of twenty minutes in this stage, which was also largely occupied by her need to explore the surroundings' detail because of the new experience's effects. If the first stage is this easy, and considering that there were a total of one hundred stages, then the next stage should also be doable, not too different from the one she faced just now. She planned to clear through over the first ten floors before deciding her next options.

She suspected that there would be something in the tenth floor, because that was when she had her first stage advancement. Every ten levels, she would advance. Then, wouldn't it work the same way with her own Tower, if it is supposed to share similarities with herself?

Aria knew that she was relatively strong, but in such a foreign land where she could only fight alone or alongside with her summons, which were essentially a part of her- it was quite dangerous. She did not want to risk anything as the System would always surprise her with unexpected incidents that she wished to avoid with all her might.

She continued on forth. The first floor was slimes, the second floor was filled by wolves and similar canine monsters, the third floors was a goblin's lair, and the fourth floor, which she was at right now, it was riddled with steel ants.

Steel ants were troublesome because of their high speed and the carapace that protected them. Normal swords would have a hard time cutting through them. However, Aria's sword was [Halvargg], the sword the System gave to her as a reward and had strange special characteristics. The sword sliced through her enemies as if they were butter

The first thing she noticed right off the bat was that the monsters were similar in strength. Only a little shift happened with each floor's advancement. Upon beating the fourth floor's boss,

"I think.. these levels are probably aligned with my own level," Aria deduced. She had observed the monsters and formed a hypothesis that with each stage, it would be matched with the power level that she had in the level of the stage number.

For example, Floor 1 would be her maximum capability and resilience she had in Level 1, Floor 2 with with Level 2, and so on.

Considering that she was Level 30 right now, she wondered if the floors worked in such a way that it wouldn't allow her to go past her level. If so, then she would be in a huge disadvantage as she wouldn't level up as fast as the rest of her peers.

However, this would hence also explain why Alena said that her Tower was going to be the hardest. Scaling with her natural talent and also her level growth, then her Tower would certainly be the most taxing one to handle.

Compared to hers, someone like Yoo Jin, who had a speedy growth would have an easier time advancing through the stages if things were really true to her assumptions.

"Then, there should really be a surprise for me in the tenth floor," Aria sighed as she looked at the next stage's key, which she had already retrieved from the biggest steel ant's body.

She headed towards the next floor, where she was faced against poisonous, monstrous snakes that were obviously way larger than normal. She avoided all of their bites and successfully slain all of them down, leaving one largest snake which was the boss.

It sprayed poisonous liquid all over the area, but Aria's brain and body acted quick as she got behind the snake, ran up its body, and stabbed her sword down the snake's head with a high jump as a damage multiplier factor.

[Halvargg] was firmly stabbed into its head, and the snake rampaged without restraint as it felt an enormous amount of pain spreading through its body. However, no matter how much it tried to survive, the damage Aria did was fatal. Not to mention, in the short time where the snake was flustered, Aria had enclosed herself within a thin membrane of defense that caused her to be temporarily immune to poison, and thus allowing her to launch another attack at the angered snake.

The snake's rampage finally ended when its life force dissipated, and as usual, its corpse didn't disappear. Aria searched the carcass with caution and quickly found the next key.

It was then that an idea came to her mind. Because the boss' carcass hadn't disappeared, then technically it was possible for her to store the remains into her storage, because she was able to do the same with the keys and her own sword. She tested this theory by cutting off the snake's fangs and putting it inside her space, which succeeded and proved her assumption.

She thought about the previous floors' enemies and found nothing of interest that she would want to collect, and thus she only scavenged the snake's carcass and took the potentially useful materials before proceeding to the next floor.