Dungeon Prowler : One Man Army

Chapter 216: The 41st floor

After leaving a slump caused by a sense of worth loss, Yunan was ready to continue the exploration of Tartarus, however, this time his end goal was to simply reach the 100th floor and meet the heart of Tartarus, something that only one other mortal could do since Tartarus was built and its exploration began after the catastrophe.

First order of business was as always going to the guild branch to look for messages or quests that he could do while he was exploring the floors to come. As soon as he entered the guild reception room Yunan was greeted enthusiastically by the staff members, he was now some kind of heroic celebrity, as the guy who brought an arrogant dynasty to its knees and turned those who treated them like dirt before, into a position that even the slaves of the guild were able to order them around. It was some kind of poetic justice for these ordinary employees who had nothing but their dignity and hard work to earn a living.

The hero was almost immediately taken to meet the guild delegate as a VIP who was better served by the delegate personally, even if Yunan himself thought that dealing with the employees was far more enjoyable than dealing with the delegate. In the office of the delegate, Yunan was being treated better than the delegate himself, refreshments and sweets were brought almost as soon as Yunan sat down, his mail and the relevant quests that were issued for him were brought moments later, there was even an employee who ignored the presence of the delegate so she could massage Yunan's feet.

It was too much of a preferential treatment but neither Yunan nor the delegate cared much about saving face, since they both knew that Yunan was not the type to be swayed by such things, thus after taking a look at his messages and quests, Yunan returned all those related to the silver mouse and recommended they would be sent to the gentle lady and her daughter to help them create contacts in the future and fully escape from the shadow of the hanging palace. As for the quests he took; one was issued to him by the guild, a private quest that was only issued to Yunan and it was about finding the source and cure of such foul and troublesome poison, Yunan gave them some of the cure Ophelia and Anne made for him, told them that it was weak to the isolation spell and promised he would investigate the origin of the poison. The other quests were about finding something or the other on the next floors.

Next came the second order of business, buying or renting workers from the guild to help around the house. The delegate immediately told Yunan that it was best to buy slaves from the guild directly since it was far safer especially since Yunan had his own private residence, and in the end, they agreed on three points: first, the slaves needed were gardeners, cleaners and chefs. Second they would be chosen from those who are willing to live in a private house and only are allowed to leave it when the master allows it, and third they have to be from the younger generation, since most of the residents and the guests of the houses are in their early years, it was a must that the slaves would understand the masters and the guests.

With his business in the guild over and done with Yunan took his leave and made his way to the 41st floor and he was stunned by the empty feeling of the place, it was a literal desert with nothing but dunes and sand as far as the eye could see, the noon sun was scorching hot, the air felt dry, the sand felt like smouldering coals under his feet and the lack of life was devastating to look upon, nothing can feel as empty as a desert, not even the void.

Yunan scanned his surroundings, the floor was nice and big, with monsters of various sizes and shapes, and all of them were deadly enough, and all of them were underground, Yunan could not understand how the monsters could stand to be in the scorching sands while waiting for prey to stumble upon them. The most prominent monsters were scorpions and manticores.

These scorpions evolved two additional pincers for greater capture and restraint ability as for the manticores, they were half man half scorpions with two tails that end in venomous glands and a stinger to deliver the poison to its victim, both were specialist in to styles of hunting, other than ambush, the scorpions would look to restrain then sting the pray before devouring it, with the manticores were armed with other weapons and could cast spells, mostly things like sandstorm, sand shift and wind coating, they focused on beating the living daylight out of their prey while only using the stinger Defensively if need be.

Yunan was kind of happy because he could try to find the source of the poison while playing around with these scorpions and getting used to his new found power, after all, he had only used his strength only once in combat and that was far from being what he needed to completely make this power his own and understand it perfectly.

First was testing how would his body fare against the scorpions and manticores in unarmed and unarmoured combat, and the results were significantly higher than he expected. Once Yunan manifested his Dragonborn form he could punch holes in the exoskeleton of the scorpions like it was paper, as for his own body, it could withstand the full force of the pincer but not the stab from the stingers, next was making up a strategy to defeat the scorpions and manticores as fast as possible and with least effort, and what he came up with was in addition to mana syphon Yunan would use his tail to stab the scorpions in the head the moment it emerged from hiding.

As for the manticores, it was much easier to fight them, Yunan simply had to flap his wing and literally rip its head apart from its torso achieving insta-kill on the monsters