My first impression of the middle floors was that it sucked ass. It was humid and the monsters were annoying to deal with. See i ehe thirteenth floor expeg a grand challenge only to be met with mohat were overall weaker than the infant dragon but much more numerous. The drops though were so worth it. Crystal mantis carapaces and wings, Wyvern hides, fangs and bones, Lamia cws and scales, Hellhound hides and fangs, Almiraj fur and horns and Dungeon worm slime could be easily obtained by me as I sughtered my way across the floor.-

  I was effectively a mid to te level two in terms of stats so naturally these high level one and low level two monsters were no mate. My first monster enter was with a pack of Dungeon worms that burst from the ground to attack me. I ducked uhem and got them with the sharp side of my on that cleaved their soft bodies in two halves that writhed in pain on the ground but were helpless to stop me from refining them with my teique for those sweet guaranteed drops.-

  Dungeon worm slime was an alchemical ingredient that served some purpose or another but I really didn't want to know what for my own peaind. I imagihat drinking potions bees rather hard when you kly what sort of disgusting stuff went into making them. I am perfectly tent in my ignorance for this matter thank you very muext up on the chopping block were a group(flock? herd? swarm?) of wyverns with those pretty pink scaled hides. I say with absolute certainty that flying monsters are officially my most hated kind of monster. -

  These pink fuckers kept diving at me from different angles before flying away while I dodged turning the entire fight into a big game of cat and mouse. Then to add insult to injury more monsters , Almiraj and Hellhounds this time, spawned in waves that i had to deal with at the same fug time as the cowardly pink flying lizards. By the time I was finally able to kill the st wyvern I was surrounded by hay monster corpses that I o refine and harvest. THAT took me a good hour to finish because , guess what, more fug monsters spawned.-

  I 't say it was a waste of time though as I now had WAY more of that smoke liquid that ever before. Like three gallons of the stuff roughly by my estimation and then all these lovely new drops that I got to experiment with. All in all I'd say my first foray into the middle floors was well worth it as after getting by rose for my reckless delving I cashed out for the day at a whopping twenty six thousand valis. The value of the stones and drops grew expoially the further down you went after all so this number would only increase as I went further and further into the dungeon.-

  "I swear to heaven that if anything weird shows up during this update I'm going to tell Hephaestus that you want to go on a date!" Hestia threatened when I asked for an update after returning home.

  "You wouldn't!?" I said with a look of horror.

  "You deserve it for causing me so much stress!" she said with a huff.

  Name: Alexander Drake

  Race: Cursed Human

  Level:2

  Strength:209(G)

  Endurance:225(G)

  Agility:208(G)

  Dexterity:209(G)

  Magic:562(D)

  Spells: Hell's fe(Ieique): use anything from a living being and reshape or refi per ones will.(Intation: Hell's fe)(Extensions: Hell fire, cursed tool creation)

  Skills: Heavenly restri: In exge for the ability to wield mana and magie gains access to cursed energy and cursed teiques.

  Blessing of bck: Permaly increases cursed energy efficy, amount and trol. Magic will always start at G rank after leveling up.

  Vessel of Sin: Hells femaster carries the burden of all mortal sin and is tasked to purify it from the souls of the dead. Strengthens soul over time. Perma increase to crafting with cursed energy. Perma decrease to all stats for ea soul killed and increase for each sinful soul killed. Grants skill: Soul gaze.

  Soul gaze: See the souls of all things and their sins.

  Developmental Skills: Curse-smith(I)

  "It's a lot less than before?" I muttered in fusion as I looked at my stat gain.

  "Obviously, you're level two now so of course you aren't growing at the same pace as before." Hestia said mater of factly.

  In theory what she said made perfect se the numbers weren't adding up here as before I leveled up a mere cup of the smoky liquid was enough to give me thousands of stats points. Yet now almost three gallons of the stuff only gave me about thirteen huat points, this made no sense. I looked over all of the ges I got from leveling up and started trying to figure out what was stealing so much of this smoky liquid as that was the only thing that made sense. I almost missed it but there was a small addendum to the [vessel of sin] skill in the form of four words, Strengthens soul over time.-

  'That wasn't there when I initially leveled up, a hidden attribute or did it show up because of some sort of external force?' I thought with a frown.

  It was only after Syr asked why my soul looked slightly rger the day that I realized that SHE was the external factor. Apparently my hyper awareness of my soul that detected her gaze on my soul had triggered a self defensive adaptation to form in my [vessel of sin] skill. In other words her innate ability caused my falna to nerf my smoky liquid growth, well that's not actually true as I still grew the same amount just in a different way from my stats.-

  I will be ho here, I don't have a fug clue what my soul growing stronger will do for me. Like obviously a stronger soul is just better than a weaker o whats the difference? Will I gaier trol of my cursed energy, will I be able to make better shit earlier? Shit like this that I really really wao know but could only wait to discover. I felt like a kid who got an brand new video game on christmas only to get grounded for the month and have to stare at the thing in longing, the worst form of blue balls am I right?-

  Hypothetical asm denial aside It kinda sucked that my stat growth got nerfed like this and the worst part is I genuinely 't eve mad a Syr for it as she o more trol her ability than I could mi was stantly active ah just had to live with that and move on with our lives. I pouted over the wo days as I buried my head in experimenting with my new drop items with mixed results.