“That ridiculous!” Bete exclaimed in outrage.

I shrugged “The terms were quite clear and you all agreed to them. As I said though I’m not stopping you from mining metal so you have no real reason to complain.” I said unbothered.

“But you are mining everything nearby already!” The werewolf yelled angrily.

“I do have a range limit you know. All you have to do is mine outside that range, simple as that. Not like i’m going to move anytime soon.” I said uncaring how inconvenient that was for them.

Even if they wanted to complain Finn stopped them since I had been following the letter of the agreement. Ottar and Shakti had no problems with it to begin with as they had obviously already understood the terms. They saw me mining this wide area and just moved further away without a fuss. This was temporary anyways as the moment I roughly calculated that there was enough metal to coat the wall around the city I’d move on to the next floor since this was a growth dive after all. At best this metal stop was a side quest that popped up by coincidence.-

At the rate I was going it wouldn’t be long at all, maybe a day or so. Something Ottar also understood as he worked at a relentless pace with the mining gauntlets I’d whiped up for him on the spot at his request. It was a fun distraction anyways so I didn’t mind. The gauntlets themselves weren’t anything all that special but were inspired by the claws of a mole with long sharp fingers. They had a cursed technique on them to allow them to dig through stone and metal as though it were water.-

It wasn’t effortless but it let Ottar excavate ore at a massively elevated rate as he straight up gouged it out and tossed it behind him. The Loki familia people saw this but couldn’t bring themselves to lower their heads enough to ask for something similar. It was a stupid choice on their part but it was theirs to make. Shakti had no such qualms and got a spade shovel instead of gauntlets to shovel the ore aside. She even explained that she chose this shape because of how similar to a spear it was which was also her weapon of choice.-

Still even with the delay on the topside from needing to move the ore out of the chest I roughly calculated that I had enough to work with during the middle of the second day. As for the impact on the floor a whole two miles in every direction had been wiped clean of ore leaving the dark stone of the dungeons stone behind and nothing else. The others gathered up their hauls and it was funny to see the constipated looks on the Loki familia groups faces at the small mountain Ottar gathered and the other small mountain Shakti gathered compared to their own large hill of ore.-

“Alright! I’ll send it through to be divvied up appropriately and we can set off for floor sixty six. Once again fair warning that I have no clue what we’ll find so don’t complain to me about it.” I said before moving the ore with a call to Hestia about who got what.

Finally with that done we took off through the vast and most importantly sharp metal ores covering the floor in search of the way down. The placement of the stairs were not an exact straight line as sometimes they were more left or right along to walls of the floor.-

It was also not always obvious either and even sometimes looked like a crack in the wall no different from any other. This time though the stairs were easy to find as the opening was the only part of the wall NOT covered in metal ore but brown stone instead. As we walked down the stairs the air turned warm, damp and stifling. I held out my arm to stop everyone midway down however as I felt something touch my skin and try to attach itself.-

To the horror of my companions a large blue and green mushroom rapidly sprouted out of that spot on my arm as I let it.

“Parasitic fungus spores huh? Interesting.” I muttered as I pulled off the shroom flesh and all before bottling it.

“Are you alright?” Shakti asked worriedly as I regrew that patch of flesh.

“Not to worry I hard counter these things but wanted to see what it was about first. Since I can just regrow my flesh it was an easy sacrifice to accept. We need to head back up though because the rest of you are VERY vulnerable to this stuff. I’ll need to make a counter for each of you.” I said casually.

“Do you always take risks like that when you delve?” Riveria asked curiously.

“Depends on whether or not I feel like I need to. In this case we have no idea at all what’s waiting for us so I’m trading a bit of my safety to scout out the dangers. I did the same with the cold floors before I figured them out.” I said with a shrug.

“What happens when you can’t handle something then?” she asked with a frown.

“I turn back and make a counter for it before returning. My mask for example was made so I could breath underwater when I first headed for the water palace floors.” I said tapping the implement in question on my belt.

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