“Slimes are slimes. Monsters are monsters. Beings that are evil and therefore, no need for compassion for them.”

  I understand her, I comprehend her, I agree with her and yet, I also disagree with her. There are always exceptions to the rules and the simple fact that we consider spirits as monsters, it makes her reason flawed. Spirits are intelligent creatures, ones that even help and guide us and yes, there are ones that are straight monsters ready to devour anything that comes across their rage. Enough of this rumbling of a fool, with a quick but much more powerful swing, the blade of Kiana scissors easily slices through the Elemental Slime, cutting him in half in the process and of course, defeating him. It was in a time span of two minutes, not less nor more, that she defeated all of them and yet, a good part she was playing around, carefully watching the abnormal behaviour of the slimes. All the slimes have been defeated and the floor cleared and with it, the steam cloud disappears a few seconds later revealing Kiana, her elegant body and posture and the pleased look on her face. It really was effortless for her.

  Mere moments later a treasure chest spawns in front of the colossal door. Of course, this quickly brightens her mood beyond anything and at the same time, she walks up towards it. But! Before all of that, she first picked up all the magic stones in the ground. Once this was done and she was close enough to the treasure, she gently opens it, it was not locked or anything like that so in a sense, it was a little anticlimactic. No, “Congrats!” or “The Boss has Fallen!” or anything like that. Buuut! This is rather boring and to make everything worse, Kiana does have a rather annoyed look on her case. I didn’t say but the chest looks rather simple and low level, nothing about it screams “I have good loot!” or anything like that. Welp, it can easily explain Kiana's mood as inside of it, there is a small amulet.

  This amulet is exactly the size of an average hand, or in other words, slightly bigger than Kiana silklike hands. It’s round, with a round gem in the middle though, this gem does occupy the majority of the amulet, and with a stone frame around it that seems to support everything together. What makes this amulet somewhat interesting is the fact that, in the gem a number is written on it, that in this case is the number 10. If we look carefully at the colossal door, we will immediately see a number written on it, right in the middle even and with a gem very similar to the amulet, although several times bigger. The number there is in fact the same as the amulet.

  “I see, if I want to progress further down the dungeon, this amulet needs to have the same or higher number as the door.”

  Good way of seeing it Kiana, that seems to be the most probable answer and the one that makes the most sense. If this is the case then, anyone with the amulet, it does not seem to be connected to the person who first acquired it, can theoretically run past the previous 9 floors without any worries at all, reach this floor and just go to the 11th floor. Since the boss only spawns if you want it to, as Kiana was not forced to choose an option at all, this more than seems doable. But, imagine this scenario, let’s say that Kiana is at 60th and for some reason she has to leave the dungeon, first of all, in the boss floor there is no teleport in sight, this means that she would need to go up all those floors to reach the lobby. Then, the next day for example, she brings with her a party, they all would need to go down those 60 floors so that they can keep going from the same point. This can easily explain why the expedition that Katarina once referred to took so many days to conquer the dungeon and yet, not only the dungeon has a system like this to prevent those who haven’t conquered the dungeon from going deeper, it does not have a teleport in sight. It’s hard to believe a dungeon that seems this advanced does not have any checkpoints at all, it could make sense if it was like 20 floors, but 100? That’s why it's too much to not have it.

  Or in other words, we are missing something.

  With her magic sense skill up and with her Magical Eyes skill activated, she looks for something that can prevent this annoying fact from happening. This time around, the goddess of luck does not seem to be in her favour as she’s unable to find anything at all. Either it’s hiding in such a way that even Kiana is unable to see it or, there isn’t anything at all for her to discover. At least, by using magic that is. Maybe it’s more in the open per say and with this in mind, she changes her ways and instead she’s simply using her normal sight so see if there is anything that might stand out.

  Step!

  But, as her slow footsteps echo inside the floor, ones that thanks to the silence, they are loud and easily noticeable.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  Step!

  She gets more and more annoyed as there might really be nothing in here that prevents her from running like a maniac to the lower of the lower floors.

  Step!

  Second after a second of walking and carefully inspecting the floor, minute after minute of doing the same thing, she still is unable to find anything, that is, until the goddess of luck decides to wake up. In the wall next to the colossal door, in this case to the left of said door, a gem is also present there but with the number 9 on it. To make things difficult to anyone that is not carefully looking around, the gem is literally the same size as the amulet or in other words, for the small side. With this small inconvenience, from far away no one would be able to notice this and even with all the magic in the world, the same would happen as this gem has no magic on it whatsoever. Either way, with her face more relaxed and with a number lower than the amulet it does raise the question, can she use the amulet for whatever this might do?

  “Enough of this, I want to go home.”

  Well, it seems someone is impatient and I do understand her, just for how long has she been here? Was it three or four hours? Basically, the entire afternoon. Moving on, without wasting any time at all, Kiana extends her amulet towards the gem and a second or so later it simply disappears into nothing, legit its opacity went from 100 to 0 or something like that in a second but with it, a “way” in also appears, or in this case, in a shape of a normal door, that part of the wall disappears, allowing anyone that is here to get inside of this not so big room.

  “No wonder they didn’t find any checkpoints at all, this is way too hidden! To be honest, if Katarina didn’t say anything about checkpoints, I wouldn’t bother to look at all.”

  She’s somewhat loud and still with that annoyed tone of voice as she says this. This really “pissed” her off but, that matters not for now, at least you found said checkpoint, be happy about it. This room is made of the same materials as the 10th floor itself, the wall, the ground, the ceiling and so on. The room is roughly 50 square meters, not big at all but enough to fit a party inside of it; however, the most important thing inside of here is right at the middle, a teleport magic circle. Of course, this thing is not activated and from the looks of it, it was never activated. Without any worry but quickly at the same time, Kiana enters the room and walks up to the middle of the circle who lights up the moment she does so. Before doing anything else, she quickly inspects the magic circle to see if it connects with the one at the lobby. Thankfully this does not take more than a few seconds to confirm it. With everything that she has found, she decides to tell it to Katarina once she’s back, since everything seems to be working now. I wonder the look that she will give Kiana once she hears this. Will she believe it?

  Magic noises!

  Getting brighter and brighter by the second, the magic circle emits a strong bright light that mere moments later, it eats Kiana away and at the same time, it teleports her to the lobby.

  ……..

  ……

  …..

  At the lobby.

  It was rather anticlimactic but she got safely teleported to the lobby. The magic circle here is also emitting a bright light but this only lasts for a few seconds.

  “Welp, as expected, everything went without any trouble, not only that, I can now teleport back again if I want to. However, it does make me wonder, did I permanently activate that checkpoint? I know that I need the amulet to keep going past the 10th floor but, is that the same for the checkpoint? I will have to check that later.”

  Good observation and she has a good point, after all, on the gem that was on the wall the number 9 was written on it and of course unless you brute forced through it, only those with an amulet with the same number or higher can access said room. However, at the same time, she could only access the checkpoint once the boss was defeated as the reward for such a thing was and might always be the amulet. Something that Kiana might want to check in the future as for right now, she has lost any interest in the dungeon, yep, it was far too boring for her. With this she leaves the dungeon and I do have to apologise for her.

  “Humph! I know my time!”

  Yep, it’s close to 18 pm, sorry about that Kiana, now I understand why you were so impatient. After saying this to god knows who, she goes on her merry way, arriving at the guild close to 19 pm, 18:55 pm to be extremely precise for no apparent reason whatsoever. The trip to the guild was supposed to be the same as before and in a sense, it was, however the sight of the busy city once again brings excitement to her. People are getting home from their works, some of them have their homes outside of the city so you can easily guess that the bridge was rather “populated”. Restaurants are starting to open up as it gets closer to 20 pm, some coffees-restaurants shop do the same as they switch their work mode per say, some stores are being closed as they no longer do business for the day and so on, a different type of busy from before but one that easily catches her attention. Not only that, the lights on the streets, ones that are dozens, hundreds if not even thousands of them, they all lit up in symphony and at the same time. A beautiful sight for those that have never seen it. But enough of this, once she arrived at the guild, she quickly greets Katarina but this time, she has a normal tone of voice rather than that way too excited one from earlier.