Arctur didn’t bother to hold his breath, even though the poison was eating away at his vitality; it wasn’t doing much. The poison would have to be at a higher rank or in a much potent form to truly do him any damage. And that was as he currently was.

  Having hesitated a second to make sure the poison was not a threat, had let the centipede recover, and it was now standing. Half of its body was suspended in the air, its lower portion allowing it to stabilize.

  Without hesitation, Arctur threw a punch, aiming for the centipedes inside, hoping to do more damage. The monster blocked his first punch by crossing some of its bulbous and thick legs. Meanwhile, his second punch never landed; instead, Arctur’s body was struck by multiple legs, and he was sent flying to the side, coming to a stop when he hit a tree.

  Groaning at his painful stop, Arctur looked up from where he had fallen to see the centipede rolling towards him.

  Running straight at the stag, Alexion dodged erupting spikes of earth. Clearly, the stag was growing more impatient with every spike Alexion dodged. On the other hand, the doe didn’t seem worried, and instead, it launched a few more beams of golden energy past him, which only gave Alexion more reason to hurry.

  The second jaguar her boyfriend had hit was healed by the doe’s golden beams and was currently running towards Adriana. Thankfully, the one she had impaled did not receive healing in time and was still motionless, the golden beams doing nothing upon arrival. Ignoring two more and much weaker blades of wind, Adriana focused on the incoming cat. She dumped more mana than she had used last time on another mental attack. The attack struck, and the jaguar did stop mid-run, but after shaking its head, it managed to shrug off the mental hold Adriana had tried to use on it. This baffled Adriana; it was much weaker than she was. Why was it able to fight off the effects so easily?

  Although Arctur enjoyed pain, it was only when he was in control of the situation, which he currently was not. That’s not to say the centipede was that strong, since Arthur was not really trying that hard and had only been using his physical prowess so far.

  Channeling mana, Arctur called for the roots to weave into a wall in front of him. The centipede arrived as Arctur was getting up, the monster slamming into the thick wall, getting about halfway through before it was stopped. Then Arctur decided to finish the fight, and all the roots swiftly enveloped the monster, stopping its movements completely. The creature was in a cocoon of roots, which pierced its weak underbelly with a command from Arctur.

  Alexion unleashed two bolts of lightning, one at the stag, the other at the doe. The beast, in turn, summoned a large wall of stone to block the attack, but, in doing so, lost sight of Alexion. The elf had been a few seconds from arriving at the stag's location and, with a powerful jump and a boost of wind, found himself above the monster.

  A monster that had slightly shifted to look around the stone wall, only to find Alexion had disappeared. The doe spotted him first, but it didn’t get a chance to warn her mate as multiple winds of blades sliced the creature into three. Accelerating his downfall with wind, Alexion arrived at the stag right as it noticed its dead partner. Of course, by then, it was too late, and the elf slammed feet-first into the stag, pummeling its midsection and killing it.

  Annoyed that her attempts at taking over the jaguar didn’t work, Adriana chose to make its head explode. Just then, the dungeon's magic activated, and the cat's body turned to light, reshaping in the process and appearing as a nice silverish jaguar pelt. Additionally, it was apparently called a Slashing Jaguar. Its name popped up above it after she killed the first one. It was like one of the screens everyone gets, but it only held the creature's name.

  After killing most of the monsters, the two birds that had been part of the fight did not bother the party anymore, and everyone reconvened.

  “Guys, it looks like we can see the names of creatures after we have killed at least one. The jaguar was called a Slashing Jaguar,” Adriana told her two teammates.

  “That’s nice, I guess, though I do wonder how it works for the stealthy types,” Alexion responded, making a good point.

  “You know, I know we were told creatures drop items, but it’s a whole other thing, to actually experiencing it,” Arctur said while inspecting the perfectly good jaguar pelt.

  “Uh, maybe the names are hidden if they are in stealth,” Adriana answered her elf before moving to pet the jaguar pelt, “I think it's neat. Should we take it? I know we aren’t exactly in need of money, but it wouldn’t feel right leaving our first piece of loot behind,” Adriana added. And seeing the other two nod, she quickly stored it in her ring, and they all got a notification.

  ?? Crystal Notice ??

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Achievement Acquired: Let the Hoarding Begin.

  Description: Claim your first piece of loot.

  ??

  Leaving the rest of the corpses to slowly disintegrate into mana, the trio resumed their journey to the lake. It didn’t take them long to arrive at the frog lake, and they all took a second to admire the giant body of water that extended out as far as they could see. Then Adriana couldn’t wait any longer and sprinted into the water, laughing as she did so. Seeing her so happy, Alexion wasn’t far behind, and it wasn’t long before they were happily splashing water at each other, unconcerned with anything that might be lurking nearby.

  Meanwhile, Arctur found a nice dry spot and sat down to meditate as he connected with the nearby plants. He wasn’t a big fan of water outside of its normal uses, though he did enjoy the rain. It was also more like he didn’t like to be in water deeper than a very shallow pond unless he needed to.

  The trio spent about an hour relaxing on the lakeshore, with Arctur eventually taking out some cooking materials and making a light snack for the team to enjoy. Although he was part nature spirit, that didn’t mean he only ate plants or that he could live off sunlight, and he still had to eat like everyone else. Finally, after they, well, mainly Alexion, had had enough of splashing and relaxing by the water, the party decided it was time to get back to the task at hand. Honestly, if it had been for Adriana and Arctur, they would have stayed there the whole day enjoying nature and the water.

  On the search for the ribbit mushrooms, the party quickly found that most animals and monsters around the immediate area of the lake shore were fairly neutral. They had wondered why they weren’t bothered during their resting time, and that was the answer. So far, during their lake walk, they had gone near various D Rank presences, but none had moved to attack. There had been a few birds that flew past them, a large heron, and even a couple of flamingos, but nothing had even tried to chase them. The only time a monster had even feigned an attack was when they got too close to the nest of a duck couple.

  Of course, it was due to this odd behavior that they were caught off guard when a gaggle of geese rushed at them with clear intent to fight.

  The trio had found a couple of the ribbit mushrooms and were knee-deep in water, attempting to locate a few more of the relatively rare green and blue mushrooms, when they heard a lot of honking and splashing from deeper in the lake. At that point, they were surrounded by numerous lengthy lake weeds, which made it difficult to see anything.

  Not long after they heard the sound, a wave of air bent all the thin plants back, allowing the trio to see the incoming eight geese. By that point, they were all enhanced, and after a quick look at each other, they smiled evilly. Out of all the places monsters could attack them, near water was not the best for the monsters.

  The geese followed their wave of wind with a proper and huge blade of wind and feathers that rushed ahead of them with speed. The blade easily cut through the grass as a wave of water built along its path. In response to the attack, Alexion’s hands glowed a soft but intense green color, and he unleashed a blade of wind as large as the ones the geese had thrown, his blade also creating a countering wave of water. And with that out of the way, Alexion looked over at Adri just in time.

  Beautiful, glimmering, small blue and pink scales began to appear all around her body. However, Alexion knew that they started around her currently hidden thighs, albeit in the outer areas. From there, they curved downwards to her knees before spiraling down the back of her calf and wrapping back to her ankle before dispersing down her foot, leaving her cute toes untouched. At the same time, the scales fluttered up the sides of her hips and stomach. Then, they would meld together under and partially cover her breasts before continuing under her arms.

  From under her arms, the spread would split, and some would cover her shoulder blades as the scales continued up her neck and slowly faded at the tip of her ears. The second split would continue spiraling down her arms until it reached the top of her hands and finally faded at the tip of her fingers.

  The transformation ended in a few seconds, and right when Alexion’s blade struck the geese’s own blade. Both wind blades canceled each other out in a whirlwind; the same thing happened to the two waves of water, causing even more commotion on the lake's surface. Of course, the geese were still flapping their way towards the trio, their feet just barely touching the water. Not that flying over the water, at least not unless they were several dozen feet up, would help them.

  The water under the geese erupted upwards in a grand splash, and when things calmed down, all that was left were feathers. Adri had grabbed the eight low-ranked geese with tentacles and hands of water, bringing them under the surface, and promptly started strangling and ripping them apart.

  Dan had decided to keep tabs on the trio after the girl had reprimanded his baboon. He found the action rather funny and was interested in the party. From his records, they had just entered his dungeon for the first time, and he was curious about them.

  Dan quickly felt like the party was cheating. He hadn’t given much thought to them dismantling the low-rank encounter with baboons the previous day, after all, the monsters in Typic Town were meant to be easy to handle. Things changed when he saw them easily dismantle another of his teams without even breaking a sweat. Granted, it hadn’t been a particularly strong team, but the trio had been outnumbered, which should have made them at least struggle a bit. Instead, the blue-haired lady had chosen to test his monster's mental resistance, which was ridiculous!

  Then there was the incident at the lake he had just witnessed. Dan had seen plenty of strong adventurers in the last two months, but seeing one take out eight Low D Rank beasts in one swoop without even struggling was a whole different thing.

  Honestly, Dan felt like the trio was going to be a balancing problem. In fact, he was half-tempted to ban the girl, but chose not to, since he had no real reason to. Plus, she seemed to really enjoy his dungeon, which was nice.