Wearing the outfit commissioned by Elli, I posed in front of the mirror before letting out a massive sigh.
No matter how much I liked it, there was no way I could wear such a thing in public. The same went for the underclothes that Anathousai made for me.
But the difference was that the dokkaflar traditional clothes were much bulkier and couldn't be concealed underneath my robes, so the privacy of my own room was the only place where I could wear it.
And due to that, eventually I returned to wash my clothes then switched outfits, back to what I was wearing the last day.
"C'mon Claret, we've got work to do."
"Yes Master!"
With those words, I touched the fountain and teleported to the floor I had business at.
I stared down at the first monster to appear on the floor.
Its large stature, round joints and bulky limbs surrounding a spherical body, and a small squash head laying on top. The black sheen which proudly declared its unyielding spirit which encompassed its entire body. The monster, or rather, monstrous creation stood before me like an undeterred palisade.
The adamantium golem stood there before me, unmoving as it looked upon me with disinterest.
For me, on the other hand, I licked my lips, imagining the sweetness of its essence as I sucked it out of its core. But first, I had to get crack the tough outer shell so I could suck up the delicious syrup within.
Lowering my hips, I rushed the construct, leaving Claret behind to watch.
The golem raised its giant arm in an attempt to crush me, but it was far, far too slow and predictable.
Just like all the times before since I had returned home, I simply weaved to the side, bypassing the massive hand plant and jumped up through the gap under its armpit. I stuck a hand onto its ponderous body and used the friction between its smooth body and the natural grooves on my palm to swing my body around onto its vulnerable back.
Here, I placed my other palm onto the hard surface and forcibly discharged my mana into the black metal that comprised its defences.
As if my mana was some sort of powerful acid, the metallic body of the golem warped and cracked before growing so brittle that the weight of my body was enough to cause it to crumble, exposing the delicious looking core inside.
As a finale, despite the golem's attempt to reach for my body in its blind spot, I thrust my head in through the gap and bit into the incorporeal energies which swirled in and around the shining stone housed inside of the golem's spherical body.
And with the taste of a rich chocolate ice cream, I enjoyed the construct's mana to my heart's content.
Soon, as if its strings were cut, the adamantium golem lost all strength in its body and toppled over before it disappeared in a shower of light particles.
The only hint that there was anything there before being a single black adamantium ingot and a fist sized crystal glowing with mana.
I threw the crystal and ingot into my bag before continuing.
"That's one down."
All my stock of mythical metals had already been spent for the sake of the settlements, but even then there were requests for more coming to the Hunter's Guild. While there were a few hunters who wished for equipment made from such metals, most of the requests came from craftsmen who needed them to make new tools to up their game as the hunters raised their levels and delved deeper into the dungeon.
The problem was that there weren't any hunters who had reached far enough in the dungeon to gather these materials in the first place. If I wasn't the one to do it, these requests wouldn't be filled for at least a few more months. Most requests were for things from much shallower floors, so there wasn't too much incentive to push so close to floor one hundred.
There were some who liked to concentrate more on making progress, but due to the variance of monster types that show up, continuously pushing through the floors wasn't possible without spending time to gather essential resources in previous floors or spending time to fulfill requests to buy those needed supplies. The people from the settlements couldn't just feed directly off of the monsters endlessly, and they didn't have a wide enough variety of built in weapons without need of any maintenance.
Even the more magically inclined hunters suffered from the need to replenish their MP, not to mention the seriousness of the setbacks injuries would have. There were people making health and mana potions, but the need to rely on those rather than having extremely fast ways to replenish their HP and MP in the dungeon like I did meant that they had to spend that much more time on the lower floors just to gather resources to continue pushing through the floors.
It was a vicious cycle which seriously slowed their progress when compared to a vampire such as myself. The only other one who could accomplish what I was doing was perhaps Claret. Though that did depend on how effective it was for her to feed off of the mana inside of the dungeon itself. We hadn't really experimented on such a thing. She really didn't like to eat anything but the mana treats I made for her after all.
But still, it was pretty incredible how much of a difference a little bit of knowledge made.
These adamantium golems used to take up a significant portion of my MP and quite a decent amount of time to defeat. While my level has risen to 281 since then, and my skills have ranked up, that alone didn't answer why such a fight had grown so easy for me.
The information which Peitho had given me back in the Labyrinth City Knossos after my work for her there included details regarding the properties of the three major mythical metals I had asked about.
Adamantium was the hardest and heaviest of the special metals, but its main weakness was that it was a poor conductor of mana. Mana had trouble flowing through it, making enchanting adamantium quite difficult and limited. But when it came to beating adamantium, the same property became its weakness. Adamantium, once it was saturated with mana to its limit, destabilized its crystalline structure and grew extremely brittle, to the point where in extreme circumstances, the structure of the metal could fail from its own weight.
Of course, the microscopic mechanisms was purely speculation on my part, but the overall effect was exactly as stated on the sheets I had received.
Along with that, I had learned quite a bit regarding the other two metals I had asked about: mythril and orihalcum.
Mythril was the lightest of the metals, but was quite average when it came to its other properties when compared to the other mythical metals. It was known as the universal metal, as it had few weaknesses. On the other hand, aside from its mass, it had no real strengths either. If one had to destroy something made from mythril, the best way was to reduce its temperature to the point that it grew brittle, then break it with blunt force trauma.
Using that strategy, facing the first mythril golem of the floor, I condensed and chilled the air around until I had a globe of liquid air floating above my palm. Together with my hastily made weapon, I rushed up close to the mythril golem and ducked under its sweeping arm before throwing the chilled liquid into its chest. The sound of high pitched pinging and fizzing as the super cooled liquid interacted with the room temperature metal. As my magically produced weapon wasn't enough on its own, I discharged my mana as a frozen mist into the centre of the golem's chest, further cooling the mythril armour protecting its core. Once I judged that I had done enough, I slammed my foot into the ground, twisted my body starting with my hips, and lunged my fist at the coldest point of the construct's armour, easily breaking through. At this point, I merely leapt into the hollow cavity of its chest and enjoyed my second dessert of the night, a soothing vanilla ice cream.
Orihalcum on the other hand was the magical metal. Mana passed through it like electricity through gold in addition to just plain being an excellent conductor of heat and electricity. This made its compatibility with magical enchantments as well as being used as magical equipment superior to any other metal. Orihalcum was even decent at protecting against magical attacks, as its structure could sap active spells of its mana, though often that alone wouldn't neutralize most spells. Due to it being a metal with properties primarily connected to mana, while it was stronger than steel, it wasn't even close to being as strong as mythril against physical attacks.
My claws couldn't do much against it, as the extended parts were made from my aura, but punching worked wonders, amongst other forms of physical manipulations.
When I finally found an orihalcum golem, I simply rushed it without any particular preparations. Even before, the orihalcum golems were the easiest for me to deal with. Like with the adamantium golem, I slipped under its first attack with its heavy fist, then sliding between its legs I spun around and leapt onto its back. From there, I held a hand out like a knife and thrust the bare claws of both hands against its shimmering metallic surface. While softer than the other metals, orihalcum was still a particularly strong material, and so while my claws were able to dig in successfully, the tips of my fingers couldn't make any progress on their own. But that was still within my calculations.
The golem retaliated against my presence and bent an arm around its back in ways which would have dislocated a living being's shoulder. But that was exactly what I was waiting for. I wrapped my legs around the construct's upper arm then bent my back as I pulled my legs towards my anchored hands. With a loud creak, the golem's shoulder separated from its body, exposing its internal workings. Pushing off of its back as the other arm tried to grasp at me, I swiftly landed then kicked back off the ground and dove head first through the large opening I had created to enjoy the rich strawberry ice cream of its internal mana.
Now that I knew how to fight these things properly, even without the added levels I had, I was able to make swift progress through the floor. Even when I had to take them on two or three at a time, their large bodies interfered with each other, rendering their numbers advantage moot against my small size and high speed. And as I already knew the way after clearing the floor once before, it was only a few hours and a nice supply of mythical metals safely secured in my bag before I was standing in front of majestic double doors.
I casually pushed the large doors aside and walked in as if I owned the place.
In a sense I did, so it wasn't exactly wrong, at least.
What stood before me was a large golem, much larger than the thee varieties on the floor. It stood about five meters high, its pearl white body with technicoloured inlays decorating its surface. In one hand it had a polished black tower shield suitable for its size, and the other a six meter long double headed spear held right in the middle.
The first time I had fought it, it was a serious pain in the ass. That shield was made entirely of adamantium, and its thickness meant that saturating it with mana took longer than any one opening I could get. Its body was primarily composed of mythril, allowing it to move quite fast despite its size and had good durability due to its increased thickness compared to the normal golems outside. Those seemingly decorative inlays were in fact made of orihalcum, absorbing any magical attack designed to weaken or break through the mythril which composed most of its body. Then finally there was that spear. Comprised of adamantium blades, a mythril shaft, and orihalcum inlays to protect and enhance the entire structure. Combined with the inhuman joints of the golem allowed it to always attack while minimizing its openings and blind spots.
At first glance, this thing had no weaknesses at all, as any possible one was covered by the other metals.
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