As I pulled my blade back out, I glanced across as a gleeful chuckle rang out, to see Luxuria leaping over the Scythe Mantis she was fighting and whipping her Negative Energy Blades across, the Monster narrowly blocking her slashes with its arms, before she landed behind it and fired out a blast of Negative Energy from her mouth, sending it stumbling forward as she hit its back.

It spun around and began to lunge at her, before coming to an abrupt halt as she suddenly flung her blades straight towards with sharp flicks of her wrists, launching them ahead with rapid spins.

As her dark blades pinged off the Scythe Mantis's exoskeleton, inflicting a couple of cracks, she swiftly raised her hand and fired out a piercing burst of Negative Energy, which burst straight through the top of the Monster's head, killing it.

Dark green liquid pouring out of its head as it collapsed onto its knees, its arms slumping to its sides, before it fell over and hit the ground.

A thud echoed out a short distance away as Aria finished off the one she was fighting, the middle of its chest caved in as it went limp and collapsed onto the ground, before she shook her arm to get the green sludge off her fist.

"These things are so gross, I'm going to need to get new gauntlets after this," She groaned, as I cut out the Core of the one I killed, before using Devour and Drain on it.

"<Here you go, Master>," Remarked Luxuria, as she handed me the Core of the one she'd killed, setting its corpse down before me.

"Cool, thanks. I appreciate it," I replied with a smile, before consuming the corpse.

"<These ones aren't fully mature, so it was pretty easy>," She responded, as I headed over towards the third Scythe Mantis, as Aria pried its Core out.

"Are the full-grown ones significantly stronger?" I asked her.

"<Hm, yes, but not by a huge amount. I'd say these ones were about seventy to seventy-five percent as strong as they could get>," She mused thoughtfully, as I swallowed up the final corpse on this floor with Devour.

"Yeah, I'd say that's accurate," Chimed in the Saber, as she approached us, before adding, "I've been in a Giant Mantis and Scythe Mantis Dungeon before, though only the Dungeon Boss was a Scythe Mantis that time, the rest were all Giant Mantises. Anyway, these three did seem a bit slower and weaker than that Dungeon Boss, but not by a drastic level."

"I see, that's good. We can definitely handle something that's around twenty to thirty percent faster and stronger than these things were," I nodded in response.

"<If I may, Master...these creatures often spar against each other, so generally, the longer they live, the more skilled they become.

These ones were pretty unimpressive on that front, their attacks were super straightforward and easy to read.

But one of their kind that's lived longer and had more time to hone its skills, would definitely pose much more of a challenge>," Luxuria informed me, as the others walked over.

"Does that mean they're more intelligent than they seem? It's assumed that insect-type Monsters are lower in intelligence, but is that not the case with Scythe Mantises?" Inquired Aria curiously.

"<Not exactly. They aren't very intelligent, but they have a natural affinity for combat, they possess an instinctive battle sense.

That's why they spar against each other regularly, they enjoy fighting, and they use each other to sharpen their skills.

They're impressively fast at learning and improving, so they are a rather dangerous species>," Explained Luxuria, as Aria nodded in fascination.

"Right, we'll have to keep that in mind. But, for now, let's just focus on getting to the next floor. We still have two more floors to get through before we reach the Boss Room, after all," I reasoned, as I laced my fingers and cracked my knuckles, before adding as I glanced around at the others, "Everyone good to keep going? We can take a break if anyone needs some rest."

"Nah, I can keep going."

"Yeah, same here. Let's push through these next two floors and rest up before the Boss Room."

"Sounds good to me, I've got plenty of energy to spare."

"Looks like we're all good to go," Smiled Aria, as she met my gaze.

"Cool, then let's press on," I nodded, before we headed forward.

Just three floors to go and we'll be done.

It's been smooth progress so far, setting aside the fact of how boring it's been, besides this last floor.

But, well, boring definitely isn't a bad thing, and so far, I haven't seen any signs of deviation from the standard patterns.

While this has been a really easy raid for a High Level one, it's nothing out of the ordinary for the particular species of this Dungeon.

This is how it goes with Monsters that can only evolve once, especially when the evolved form is ranked at more than one Threat Level above the base form.

Most Monsters have at least three different stages in their evolutionary cycles, like how Goblins evolve into Hobgoblins, who subsequently evolve into Ogres.

Some even have four evolutionary stages, and some have more complex evolutionary cycles, with multiple different possible paths to evolve through, Harpies are an example of that.

But there are also a number of species with only two stages in their evolutionary cycle, and a lot of those species evolve from Mid Level forms into Critical Level, and the Monsters in this Dungeon are an example of that.

There's even a Monster that evolves from a form that's ranked at Low Level to a High Level species.

Anyway, we soon reached the tunnel leading up to the next floor, heading up through it.

As we stepped into the next floor, we made our way forward, steadily continuing our progress.

And it wasn't long before the Detector picked up on the presences of the next round of our opponents...

"Hm? Hey, I'm sensing Monsters, just two of them this time!"

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