With both of the sixth-floor bosses being shape gers, he core, airely o their capabilities, Mordecai invited both of them to join the family in the war room. her erfe taking their human forms; Jasi had a hint of the serpeill, with traces of scales and slitted eyes, while Kulle’s hair was rather mane-like and carried a hint of dampness, but they were still mastering their new abilities, and more fully developed minds. Not that Mordecai could talk: his tendency to keep purplish hair was a vanity to the color of his core, while his golden eyes were a vanity to his affinity fons.

  As the froups settled onto their respective couches, he noticed an iing thing about the way Kazue had arrahings. The new couch that Jasi and Kulle were sharing was a loveseat the same size as the one her parents shared. He gave Kazue a narrow-eyed look, and she beamed ily at him. Mordecai snorted with amusement; it seemed he wasn’t the only one willing to py matchmaker.

  While they were too being people for Mordecai to worry about a romance blooming anytime soon, the idea did have him p what the offspring would be like, and the best he could e up with was the most terrifying version of a hippocamp he’d ever heard of. Hmm. It might be best to make a routine so that any offspring of bosses were sidered guests until they were older. As long as they were kept in the ever-growing warrens when they had visitors, there shouldn’t be any issues, but he didn’t want any problems with a powerful offspring not being fortable on the same floor their parents were on. It was uhey’d be that strong before adulthood, but better safe than sorry.

  With that done, he turned his focus on the delving party. They were ging up their formation after discussing the information on the sign, hat there are warring ‘fas’ on this level. In addition to this, while Brongrim and Nainvil were capable as vanguards, her of them articurly adept as a scout.

  So the two of them joihe three caravan guards in f a protective ring around the kitsune. With potential social situations at hand, no one was to attaless something else attacked first, aakehiko speak first. Shizoku was still their leader, but Takehiko was the more practiced, smoother talker. The thirteen-year-old was going to do her best to dimple at ahat they were iating with. The three-tail admitted that this was the best course, but she didn’t care much for pying the part of ‘cute kid’.

  By the time the party entered one of the fas, they’d already had to deal with fungal spores and poisoned darts, as well as attacks from feathered serpents. The small troop they entered was the light cavalry mounted on polecats, and the kitsuurned on the charm. The bunkin instantly folded when Shizoku did her best to beam at them, and Mordecai groaned as he realized what happened. “Kazue, this is your fault.”

  “What?” His wife blinked, and everyone in the war room turheir attention to him.

  “Our more social inhabitants are all used to practically worshiping the one adorable, small, kitsune woman they know. Their ability to say ‘no’ to Shizoku is only slightly greater than their ability to say no to you, at least so long as she keeps the charm on. And a number approag that close to zero might as well be zero.”

  “Oh,” Kazue said while Moriko started ughing. “Um, well,” the little redhead kitsune suddenly smiled at him. “At least I know you think I’m adorable.”

  “You already khat.” He replied dryly. “Now, let me mitigate this.” Mordecai turned his attention to the various bunkin on the fifth floor. “Alright, I know Shizoku is cute in almost the same way Kazue is, but shore up your emotions at least a little. I’m not going to interfere with curreiations beyond this: you only escort them as far as your o, you may duct trade so long as you keep it fair for yourselves, and you ot offer bat support beyond that initial escort.” Mordecai hadn’t inteo interve all, but he was worried that they’d get carried away and evehem in the boss room.

  The aowledgments he got back were a little sheepish, and he just shook his head in amusement. They’d have to fix that minor fw ter. If Aia found out, she’d be ruthless in sending teams with cute shrine maidens every time.

  Akahana pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I wonder if I could have gotten away with that.” Ricardo naturally assured her that she’d have done eveer. Mordecai thought that despite looking like Kazue’s slightly older sister, she had a different sort of attractiveness. But he hadn’t survived over a thousand years by expressing such thoughts.

  This extremely successful iation tactic got the party to the light cavalry fa’s camp, the opportunity to safely rest while they ducted some trades, and guaranteed safe passage if they entered any more light cavalry. It was a tactic that he’d made specifically viable, it just wasn’t supposed to be quite this easy.

  Well, there was a reason it was good to have a trusted group run your setup. It was the best way to find fws. At least the path forward had them cross a bridge over the river, where the water drakes got a shot at them, and further on one of the giant spiders ambushed them just as they were finishing off one of the mushroom trees with strangling vihat little surprise left them looking a bit ragged and forced Takehiko to use a mid-tier (for him) spell. pared to someone like Aia or Traxalim, Takehiko’s top-tier spells were mid-tier.

  Mordecai intervened for the sed time when the party reached the boss room. He had Kstoria stay out of the fight and prompted three of the feathered serpents to harass Takehiko ohe fight started, with some more on standby if needed. His decision here was based oing what would ihe aura to boost their bosses, and it would fade if he had both of them ready to fight. Having some weaker creatures around to harass Takehiko seemed fine by whatever standards were used.

  In his inal dungeon, he’d not stumbled across this ability until much ter and had just assumed that it was an instinct or reflex of some sort. It also hadn’t mattered much by then, as he had a lot more floors and very few people got he end. It just wasn’t important to him, just something nice. After his dream visitation with Ozuran, Mordecai had a different point of view and assumed that some way of pariive strength had been deliberately built in and automated.

  The party was fused by the three red crystals glowing at the top of the cavern and paused to discuss what it meant, but were uo e to a clusion as to what they meant. So they slowly began expl the floor, trying to figure out where the boss was. They came to a stop once more when they found the giant mushroom tree, and after some more versation, split the party bato its inal figuration before closing in on what they could only assume was the boss fight.

  Saraag was much more awake than he’d been in his first few days, even if his thoughts still felt a little different than most creatures did. So he was keeping track when the party grew close, and waited until Brongrim and Nainvil cross into the range of the stiets before showing his hand, so to speak. As the fungal s u the leading pair, poisoned darts uhemselves at the rest of the group, initiating the battle.

  The sudden assault caught them off guard, but they rallied quickly. It was clear that the dwarf and half-orc were going to need close in support, as they were already being slowed by having to fight their way out of the s, so Shizoku made the decision t them all in close while Takehiko’s faerie started w her magic to seal the small wounds the guards had picked up defending the kitsune and easing the symptoms of the toxin the darts had carried.

  It was the right move to make, given the circumstances, but there still rice to pay. It quickly became difficult to maintain formation as the group cut and burheir ast the assault of sticky traps, which was when the feathered drakes swooped in to attack Takehiko.

  The five-tail swore in annoyance, reizing the dungeon was deliberately hampering his ability to support his teammates, and turned his attention to his attackers while waving the others off. If the three fliers simply attacked aggressively, then Takehiko would have been able to take care of them with a si. But they were cirg at a distand taking turns casting darkness spells while another one dived bombed him.

  His defenses and bat experience were enough that they were not terribly dangerous, but it did force him to either move or keep tering the darkness, and Saraag was not hampered by a ck of light as he unched his ratacks. His faerie of course stayed near him, which would make Shizoku the healer for the rest of the team until Takehiko could deal with his attackers.

  When the rest of the party got close enough that the s could no loarget them, they now had to deal with the shing tendrils and the terrifying maws that opened up around the trunk. Shizoku’s opening attace she was in range was to test a variety of alchemical mixtures, which helped her quickly identify that the giant mushroom tree was vulnerable to fire and ice.

  Unfortunately, she only had time for one more offensive spell before she had to turn to keeping everyone else healthy, so she jured a simple ball of fme that rolled up to the base of the tree and stayed there, slowly burning while she moved onto to applying antitoxins to a couple of the guards who were still showing signs of the poisoned darts and handing out healing elixirs. While they were able to cut tendrils fast enough to keep each other from being dragged into the maws, they still hit hard enough to bruise and batter on their own.

  Takehiko maneuvered outside the range of the darts so that he could find a moment to cast a longer spell, and three rays of fire leapt from his hands simultaneously. The scorg beams found their marks, searing holes into the feathered serpents, and the kitsune was finally free to help his rades again. Once he made his ast the darts as.

  With a touch he called forth an aura of fire around Nainvil, allowing the half-orc’s greatsword to cut searing gashes into the trunk of the tree, and Takehiko then took over healing duties while Shizoku jured a sed ball of fire. Keeping both active took up most of her tration, but as the tree couldn’t move it was a rather effective attack for the level of the spell.

  The mushroom tree didn’t st for much longer uhat assault and soon stopped moving, silently burning.

  One of the three red gems in the ceiling started glowing blue.

  Takehiko swore angrily.

  The sed tree burst out of the ground nearby.

  This o down faster, with the five-tail juring aorm that covered the backside of the tree and Nainvil’s greatsword still coating in an aura of fire, and the third one had both kitsune hurling bolts of fire as fast as they could.

  Ohe third one was down, the battered group was visibly relieved whehird gem turned blue and the boss door opened. After the group had salvaged what materials they could y cim to, they started toward the sixth floor and Brongrim started asking Shizoku about what else she had, as he wao see about making himself some indiary rounds.

  Mordecai decided it was a det fight, all things sidered. The group wasn’t out of resources, but they’d definitely spent themselves a little thin and they were going to want to prepare better ime. This meant the floor was going to be signifitly tougher for them, and if the dungeon had a seventh floor, that would probably be too dangerous to tackle just yet.

  Zagaroth