The walk towards the guild branch, located beside the dungeon portal, was a short one, but because of how talkative Roki was, a lot of information about Anton was shared with him by the young Thief.

Anton wondered how people from a fantasy world differentiate the word “Thief”. How do they know that another person was referring to the class or if they were referring to actual thieves? Was it only by context on how it was used?

This kind of meandering thought bubbled to the surface of Anton’s mind while listening to Roki telling him about Flint’s group's climbing reputation and that the dwarf kept telling everyone that the warrior healer “Andrew” was the one who helped them “power up”.

Before they entered the guild branch, Anton invited them to talk a bit. He wanted to know how Roki, Linda, and Montu fought the monsters on the first floor.

“We’re not doing anything special. We take our time because the veterans kept insisting that the most important part of adventuring was making sure that we don’t get hurt. After all, if we do, all our earnings would only go to healing ourselves. They kept telling us that if we died there, no one would know, and we’d just become part of the statistics that everyone had already accepted as part of the adventuring life. We don’t want that happening to us, so we’re moving extra carefully,” Roki, the group’s unspoken leader, told him.

“Now we're breaking it because of you,” Linda mumbled.

Roki and Montu glared at their mage.

“You don’t need to worry too much, Linda. I’m truly a powerful healer and buffer. Did Flint tell you that we delved the seventh floor?” Anton said.

“Yes! They said that when one of them got careless and got his arm chopped off, you grew it back in just a few seconds! Regarding your question on how we fight the monsters, Montu will engage the monsters head-on while I try to kill as many as I can as fast as I can, while Linda does the same thing with her spells. But because Linda had a limited number of spellcasting, we need to stop around every four or five battles, since if we continue with Linda not contributing, the fight becomes exceedingly hard. Because of that, we usually only earn around five or six gold coins. Taking away the coins that we pay to enter the dungeon, we haven’t been able to earn enough to upgrade our gear,” Roki continued.

“Okay. Now, I’ll tell you my powers. You already know how powerful my heal is. My buffing spell will increase your damage, your accuracy, and your attack speed greatly. I also have a buffing spell that will remove tiredness from our bodies, but normally, I will only activate that after every battle. Another thing, I have a very powerful raven summon that can kill monsters below the tenth floor with almost one hit, so Linda and I will be protected behind you guys.”

At first, Anton thought of using the Meditation Aura to assist Linda in her spell memorization, but he remembered the trouble the aura brought him, so he decided not to share that aura outside of the family anymore.

“Why are you doing this? With your powers, any experienced and powerful group would gladly accept you as one of them. Probably even those gold rank adventurers would do so,” Montu asked.

“I don’t know exactly what Flint had told you, but because of the tragedy that happened to me during my travel to this continent, I’m still quite averse to joining a group permanently. I still need to earn coins, though, so I thought that maybe joining beginner groups will allow me to earn coins and at the same time, allow those groups to establish themselves,” Anton answered.

After that conversation, the group paid the gold coins needed to enter the dungeon and, without further ado, entered the fifth floor.

The group arrived at a dim, grim place.

“This is bad! We’re in an undead environment,” Roki said.

“Why is it bad? Is it just because the undead are smelly?” Anton asked.

“Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem because it's easy enough to kill zombies and ghouls if we plan it carefully. Linda is here, so we can handle ghost-like enemies like wraiths. She has a spell that will enchant our weapons with elements. The problem is, there are records that the undead environment will sometimes generate a powerful undead regardless of the floor, like a vampire or an undead mage,” Roki said worriedly.

“As you already know, I’m a warrior healer, and to be honest with you, killing undead is my specialty. Even if a powerful undead, like a vampire, appears, I can easily kill it.”

Anton added the three to his party system, summoned a raven, and activated his maximum level Fanaticism with the increased level brought by the items that he was wearing in-game.

“Go ahead and do some warm-up exercises so you’ll be familiar with your body’s movement with my buffing spell,” Anton told.

Anton and Linda sat on the ground while they watched Roki and Montin do some weapon attack exercises. The two mages could see the delight in the combatants’ eyes when they felt and experienced the increase in power that Anton’s spell gave them.

After several minutes, the two excitedly told Anton that they felt so powerful. Anton then activated his Vigor aura, and after a few seconds switched back to the Fanaticism Aura. Roki and Montu felt the tiredness brought by their warm-up disappear from their limbs. Both men looked at Anton in awe, and he simply told everyone that they should start moving forward.

The first group of enemies that they stumbled into was the weakest of the undead. Five frail-looking skeletons. Montu ran ahead to engage the skeletons, holding his shield in front of him. Riko followed him while Anton and Linda stayed behind.

Surprisingly, it didn’t even take a couple of minutes before the two warriors disposed of the five skeletons. Linda gaped at her relatives' powerful attacks.

“Your buffing spell is godly!” Montu roared towards Anton.

Anton saw that the two did receive a few scratches from the skeleton’s attacks, and that brought down his opinion regarding the two’s combat expertise. They even received wounds from such frail enemies. He activated his Cleansing aura. Montu and Roki’s wounds healed extraordinarily fast.

He then switched his aura to the Vigor Aura to make sure that the warriors had full stamina.

“Oh my divines. I can fight another full battle again,” Montu roared again, which caused Anton to roll his eyes at the warrior.

Unfortunately, the skeletons did not have the parts that they could take to exchange for coins, and Anton saw that the three didn’t expect to get anything from their first battle of the day, but after the corpses disappeared, a single low-level mana stone appeared.

“Oh my divines! A mana stone! We’re rich!” Montu excitedly and exaggeratedly shouted, but this time, Roki and Linda celebrated with him.

After a while, Anton asked the question that was bothering him.

“We’re on the fifth floor, right? Why is that group of monsters so weak?”

“That’s one of the weird things about the undead environment. Adventurers can encounter the very weak and the very strong,” Roki said, but probably because of the power they felt while they were supported by Anton’s aura, the fear that he was exhibiting earlier wasn’t present.

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