After everything that had happened to me and the awful feelings from dissecting the wolf, Eve and I continued on our way through the dungeons. After all, life wasn't going to stop and wait for my trauma to pass.

I wished I had my mask to hide my face, but since we were going to be spending so much time in the dungeon, I hadn't brought it, thinking it was unnecessary.

A bad call on my part. I could be hiding my face right now if I had it. Normally, I only wanted to wear it when going to the guild, so it never even crossed my mind to bring it just for hiding my expression.

It had been five days since that incident. We'd made it down to the 14th floor, and every time Eve killed something, I'd watch with disgust until the feeling finally faded.

She forced this change on me, so I at least want to see it through to the end. In five days, I'd managed to clean five wolves and open up two goblins to retrieve their cores. I hated every single second of it.

And my conversations with Eve were all very "clinical" and cold, just her telling me what I should do and how to do it, nothing more. She seemed sad about my coldness, but I just couldn't bring myself to treat her kindly after what she made me do.

On top of that, I felt an overwhelming temptation to create a mage puppet whose race was a wolf or cat beastman. This choice was probably born from the trauma. When a person suffers trauma, there are two common reactions.

The first is to pull away and refuse to have anything to do with whatever traumatized you. The second is to be "attracted" to the source of the trauma, whether out of curiosity, a desire to understand it, or just to figure out the reason why.

That's why this idea kept popping into my head. I used what I learned from dissecting the wolves to understand animal anatomy from the inside out. The wolves we encountered along the way were just weak, generic wolf monsters, nothing special.

However, by touching, cutting, and seeing their bodies up close, I understood so many things. I think being smart has never been as inconvenient as it is now.

Thanks to the original Evelyn's genius mind, I understood everything I was doing and memorized it all like a sponge soaking up water. Now I have an incredibly high level of biological knowledge about wolves.

And I'll probably use it to create a beastgirl mage. Though, the idea of her being a cat also interested me, since it's the opposite of the trauma, and maybe that would help me deal with it.

But I'm still thinking it over, and I'm still short on materials. I already have the core to create a mage, but I lack the rest of the materials to form a body. Besides, even on the 14th floor, Eve kills every monster with a single strike.

Only the electric wolf put up a considerably extended fight against Eve. The rest just serve to make Eve a little more skilled naturally, which forces us to keep descending.

I guess in the end, it's only from around the 20th floor that the enemies will actually become problematic. Of course, that's not counting the ones that come down from higher floors running from something.

"It looks like this is the entrance to the 15th floor, Eve," I tell her, looking at the staircase down. I guess we reached this floor pretty quickly in just a few days, even though the paths were quite long.

"Mhmm... Evelyn-sama, the monsters will probably change. Goblins and wolves are weak, but starting from the next floor, the monsters should be much more powerful," she says, and I nod.

"Yeah..." I reply with a simple yes as we start descending. I'm more focused on thinking about what I'll do with the mage. I need to carefully consider its appearance.

If the beastman is going to be a mage, then it should have enhanced senses focused on detecting magic and using it efficiently, which is pretty controversial since beastmen usually focus on being warriors.

But since it's my puppet, its race doesn't matter. What matters is what I want it to do, so even if magic is difficult for the beastman race, for my puppet, magic will be easy.

"This is..." The sensation I feel as we arrive on the 15th floor gives me the chills. I look at Eve and notice she's got goosebumps too.

"...Seems... like we found the culprit that made the electric wolf flee to the lower floors..." I murmur, able to sense the magic even from a great distance. I don't know what floor this thing is on, but judging by the low level of magical emission I can sense, it's very far away.

'How the hell can something emit magic from so far away? What kind of freak was born in this dungeon?' I'm not keen on fighting it.

"Evelyn-sama, what do you wish to do?"

"Let's... keep going. It's very far away. And since it's releasing so much magic, we can easily flee the floor if we end up on the same one as it," I say, observing that the 15th floor isn't a forest like the floors above.

It's actually a plain that diverges into various hills, ridges, and even some mountains in the distance. Of course, there's also a sky again, completely ignoring the fact that we just descended a flight of about 50 stairs, making the fact that there's a ceiling seem absurd.

Fortunately, finding the entrance and exit is easy. All normal dungeons always "guide" people to the entrances and exits, so it's not hard to find the way to the next floor.

Just like going back to the 1st floor isn't difficult; you just need to find a spot in the dungeon that "ejects" intruders to the 1st floor. It's not really an exit; it's more like touching a place you shouldn't and having the dungeon expel you to floor 1.

Of course, this usually doesn't work when the dungeon has a labyrinth system that prevents it from guiding you to the entrance, exit, or the ejection point, and also other special dungeons.

"Understood, Evelyn-sama. I will stay alert... but... what do you think it is? And why doesn't it try to hide?" she asks, uncertain. I didn't really want to talk right now, since keeping silent helps me think and not remember the wolves, but it's better for her to know for our safety.

"There are four reasons, and three of them are bad, while one is just sort of bad depending on who's doing it," I say, holding up four fingers as I recall the game's lore about sensing a monster's magic from different floors.

"The first reason is that the monster is a 'mutant'—an abnormal monster that, for some reason, underwent an anomalous evolution and became more dangerous than it should be." They are truly troublesome and powerful beings, and very difficult to kill.

Most of them appear during evolution. Their core has some kind of error or flaw, and their evolution happens abnormally. Often they die, but if they're lucky, they evolve successfully with more power than a normal evolution.

"The second reason is a monster that just evolved. It might just be so strong that its evolution released a lot of magic into the environment that happened to spread. In that case, what we're feeling would just be a magical remnant, not an active release of magic." I don't think it's this one.

It can happen, but the magic usually disperses into the air. So if that were the case, this creepy wave of magic we're feeling shouldn't even be here, since it's been days since the wolf fled the upper floors. The magic would only linger if the monster's level was, like, equivalent to a great dragon.

Which is impossible, because this dungeon is still on the early floors, and a monster of that level wouldn't be around here.

"The third reason is that it's a newborn. But this reason is terrifying, because a newborn so powerful we can sense it from afar means a possible Class A or even Class S monster, which would definitely kill us." If this is the case, the current monster is probably Class B.

And depending on its race, it might be Class A, though I strongly believe that if this is the option, it's currently Class B and will have to grow to rise to a higher class.

"And the fourth reason is that it's fighting something equally strong. This reason can be good because it might be some group of adventurers, or it can be bad because it might be another equally powerful monster fighting over territory," I list the options.

"Okay, I'll remember that and keep an eye out for any threats," she says as we start following a path. The monsters in this area are probably golems, given we have plains, ridges, and mountains.

"Evelyn-sama... I'm sorry for my mistake... I... really wish we could talk normally again..." Eve murmurs as we walk, but I ignore her weak plea.

"Eve, pay attention to the path. I don't want to die because you were incapable of staying focused," I say sharply, adjusting my bag containing the core, a spare dress—since I'm back in my clean one—a few other little things, and some pieces of wolf meat that Eve fried and dried.

There's also wolf skin and goblin fangs that I decided to bring because they might be useful for making improvised clothes for the other puppet I plan to make, since they usually appear completely naked.

"I'm sorry, you're absolutely right, Evelyn-sama. We can have that conversation at a more opportune time... I will focus on what matters," she says seriously, returning her focus to the path ahead.

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