The next day everyone gathered in a large ground of the institution. Here everyone could finally see how many students each organisation brought for the dungeon expedition. Myrilia Royal Academy had a total of 15 students and 5 teachers participating, creating a team of 20 members.

Sky Parade Academy brought 25 students and 15 teachers so creating a team of 40, the largest among all of them. The second largest team belonged to the host, Riplanica Higher Institution having 15 teachers and 15 students. And finally University of Sousion had 5 teachers and 20 students having a team consisting of 25 individuals. So, the expedition team had a total of 115 members.

...

Principal Astin took the lead and took all the gathered parties to the dungeon's location. It was located inside a cave on the mountain. The cave was hidden for many years inside the mountain. After a recent landslide this cave finally saw the face of the sun.

Some students who came to the back mountain after the landslide to search for dead beasts and monsters and found this cave first and went in to explore it. Inside the cave they didn't find anything but at the very end they found a portal. They were not brave enough to enter the portal and reported it to the higher ups of the institution.

The institution didn't waste any time and quickly secured the area and called several A rank teams in secret to do a recon and to try to clear the dungeon. Even tho the neighbouring Hosei kingdom had spies inside the institution it was not very hard for the institution to hide things from them. The institution had a very ancient history so hiding the core secrets was not hard for them at all.

So they cleared the dungeon and found the altar. Now they were going to clear it again for the second time. As Elena was chosen as the leader, after reaching the location of the cave, Astin handed over the role of leading to her. Elena had planned to demonstrate the power of a slightly stronger S rank throughout this expedition and not her overwhelming strength as the institution needed to have some assurance that they could defeat Elena if 5 S rankers attacked her together.

Elena led the group with perfect precision. She divided the personnel according to their role and about 70% of the warriors were sent in the frontline. Mages all stayed in the backline along with the students and the remaining 30% of the warriors also stayed in the back to protect the mages and the students. The allrounders, who were capable of fighting in both short and long range were given the role to manage the middle between the front and the backliners. They needed to change their position depending on the situation.

The students were kept in the middle and even tho the mages and warriors were there, Elena told them to focus mainly on the enemy and she would take care of the students. She was well known as an allrounder and she told the group that she would support the front line with spells and would also defend the backline when needed.

...

The first floor of the dungeon was just a cave. The first enemy that appeared was a regular rock golem. It was only level 180 so it was destroyed instantly. More and more rock golems appeared after that but none of them were able to put any pressure. After about an hour a steel golem appeared, leading more rock golems. This time the number of rock golems were very high, over 80 so it took some time to clear all of them. The steel golem was decently strong too, at level 225.

When they were getting close to the stairs to the second floor, they were attacked by 5 rock golems each leading a team of 70. A chaotic battle broke out against such a high number of enemies and after Elena intervened and used a water spell to destroy most of the rock golem only then the battle ended.

On the second floor, as soon as they entered three puppets ambushed them. But with high level scouts, the ambush failed and the puppets were destroyed soon after. From this floor onwards traps also started to appear frequently. The principal of Riplanica Higher Institution, Astin took care of them as promised.

But he sometimes failed to detect some of the traps and a few teachers got caught in it. But fortunately no one died as everyone was strong enough to face the traps head on. Actually Astin ignored some traps that he could find. The reason for that was because he wanted to find other A rankers and especially Elena's capability in detecting traps as it would be very helpful for him in eliminating others after they fulfilled their objective.

Elena obviously noticed this and acted accordingly. She was able to convince Astin that even tho she had superior trap detection skill than any normal A rankers she was still a bit behind if compared to a specialist A rank trap user. It was what Astin expected so he was very easily convinced.

Other than the traps and puppets there was nothing special on the second floor. Every time when the puppets attacked they were only in groups of three and fours. So the expedition team didn't have any problem destroying them. As it had not been long that they entered the dungeon, the students were still full of energy and excitement.

They soon reached the third floor and found that the natural cave-like floor changed into a man made cave or tunnel-like structure. More rock golems appeared on this floor but their color was different. The rock golems on the first floor were brown or yellowish but these rock golems were black in colour. Their level was also higher at level 195.

Even tho these golems were slightly stronger it was still not a problem for the group. But after they went a bit deeper they faced off against a still puppet leading about 100 black rock golems. This still puppet was the first A rank opponent. This battle again was a bit hard but nothing too serious.

But as if the appearance of the first A rank was kind of a trigger, 2 more A ranks attacked them on this same floor. One was a black Iron Golem and another one was a shadow spirit assassin. The shadow spirit assassin was actually successful in severely injuring a B rank teacher from the Sky Parade Academy. But Elena intervened once again at the right time and killed the level 270 shadow spirit assassin after just two spells to save the teachers life. This act gave Elena even more goodwill from the group of the Sky Parade Academy.

The casualty happened against the Black Steel Golem as it did an all out attack on a C rank magic using teacher from the Riplanica Higher Institution to kill him instantly. Elena could have saved him as she saved the teacher from the Sky Parade Academy but she didn't intervene this time. One of the reasons was because she wanted to keep her fighting capability limited to the degree she decided beforehand but the main reason was because she completely analysed this teacher and judged him to be bad enough to die but not bad enough to suffer while dying. So, she didn't keep him alive for the future torture.

That's how they also crossed the third floor and as soon as they entered the fourth floor they found themselves inside a tomb and several red and black coloured ferocious spirits attacked them.

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Dungeon Progression: 4th Floor

Time Spent Inside: Less Than One Day

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