Chapter 62 (1/2)

Ch. 62: Continuing After Pa.s.sing

“This means we pa.s.sed the exam, right?”

Feim said while peeking down the stairs leading down to the next floor.

“Yeah, but we’re going to go for the deepest floor.”

As Ain nodded and declared so, Cloud nodded as well.

Al had a satisfied smile on his face, and Feim looked back towards Loren and Lapis with a slightly worried face.

“No reason to look over here. We’ve got nothing to say.”

“We’re only proctors, after all.”

Loren answered with dissatisfaction on his face, while Lapis answered with a smile on her face, but with her voice filled with sarcasm.

After glancing at the two of them with hostility in his eyes, Ain looked back towards his party members and said to them with fresh resolve.

“Okay, we’re going to reach the bottom floor and take Volf’s fortune and show the whole school that we’re this capable.”

“Yeah then all those n.o.ble brats will be so frustrated.”

“We can do it. Even if we can’t do it alone, if we work together, we definitely can.”

As they huddled and got ready, Loren watched them in silence, dissatisfaction still covering his face.

He really wanted to tell them to head back, but when he calmed down and thought about it, Loren and Lapis had business on the bottom floor as well, and in order to get into the tenth floor, they needed the permit that was given to the students.

Putting that into consideration, although telling the students to go back was appropriate suggestion, having them go on was better for their own business.

“Can I ask you something?”

Lapis interrupted Ain and his party’s conversation.

Since Lapis was the one that called him, not Loren, Ain gave her a questioning look, but Lapis didn’t take any notice and asked what she wanted to.

“About the permit to the bottom floor. May I ask what it is and who has it?”

“Why do you want to know?”

As expected, the one who started was Cloud.

But he was a lot quieter than when he lashed out as Loren.

Lapis was a neat and clean priestess when she didn’t say anything, and even when she did, as long as she didn’t expose her wickedness, so to say, she was affable, and on top of that, she was quite beautiful.

It seemed that Cloud couldn’t lash out at her in the same manner as he did to Loren.

“I’ve heard that it will become more dangerous from here on, so I want to gather as much information that could be useful in the case of an emergency.”

“In that case, I have it.”

Ain answered Lapis’ question.

Ain took out a silver necklace from underneath his breastplate, and on the chain was a silver ring.

“May I take a look?”

“Y-yeah, I don’t mind.”

After asking for permission, Lapis defenselessly walked up to Ain, took the chain around his neck, and took a careful look at the ring on her palm.

The chain was still around Ain’s neck, so Lapis’ body was very close to his, and as Loren saw Ain’s face get flushed, he couldn’t help but get a bored feeling.

“I see, this is the key. Thank you.”

After examining the ring for a while, Lapis pressed the ring and the chain onto Ain’s chest and thanked him with bow and a smile on her face.

This made Ain’s face even redder, but Lapis immediately walked back to Loren without taking any notice.

“T-that was good enough? Then let’s go down to the sixth floor now.”

Ain managed to declare so, with his face still flushed and voice slightly fl.u.s.tered.

No one disagreed, and the group, led by Ain and Cloud, were met by a totally different sight than what they had seen in the previous floors.

“What…is this?”

No one in Feim’s party could answer her question, while Loren and Lapis were speechless at what they were seeing.

At the bottom of the stairs was a stone corridor, like the previous floors.

But the difference was that there were transparent, but at the same time clouded, mucus scattered everywhere.

On top of that, the mucus was squirming its body and slowly moving along the floor and walls of the corridor.

“This is pretty disgusting.

Behind Ain and the others, who were standing there speechless, Loren couldn’t hide his disgust as he looked around at what the light from the lantern was shining on.

Lapis, who was looking around curiously at the sight, squatted down beside the nearest blob of mucus and stared at it for a while, then stood up and told them the ident.i.ty of the mucus.

“These are slimes.”

“Slimes? You mean slimes as in those kinds of slimes?”

Even Loren, who had grown up on the battlefield, heard about slimes before.

Of course, he had seen some, since they sometimes popped up after battles had ended.

They were indefinite blobs of liquid and were categorized as simple and inferior monsters with no will or emotion at all.

They possessed different elements sometimes, based on the environment they live in, but they were slow with low defenses, and could be easily killed by destroying their cores with something as simple as a stick.

“I think these are probably slimes.”

“Oh man…we’ve come to a bad place.”

The students’ gazes focused on Loren when he muttered that.

Feim gave him a puzzled look, while the other three looked at him as if he was stupid.

“It’s only a bunch of slimes. What are you so scared for?”

Cloud crushed one under his boots as he said that.

It was easily crushed since it was mostly liquid, and it spread across the floor weakly as its core was destroyed.

“What I’m scared of is none of your business.”

‘Ha! If you’re scared of monsters like these, you must not be much in the first place.”

Cloud continued to make fun of him, but Loren ignored him.

“Lapis, do you have a torch?”