Chapter 416: Painfully Easy

"Yeah. This is painfully easy," I remarked with a sigh, as I swung Desecrator across to get the blood off the blade."Mhm, it’s hard to stay motivated when we’re one-shotting damn near everything in here," Nodded Aria in agreement, a bored look on her face.

Today’s the 5th of December, 2170, and things have been pretty uneventful lately. The hype I’d stirred up with my return from the Monster world has more or less died down, I do still get a fair bit of attention, but I can at least walk around in public without too many people approaching me.

I was currently in a Critical Level Dungeon that had appeared a couple of days ago, one with a hundred floors, and we’d just cleared the seventieth floor.

It was a Taratect Dungeon, the first sixty floors had been nothing but a steadily increasing number of Taratects, which are Mid Level Monsters. It’s been Giant Taratects since then, the High Level evolved form of Taratects.

But at my and Aria’s current levels, they’re absolutely no threat to us. Well, at least we’re getting to collect a good number of Cores to help aid and fast track Cleo’s progress, like we discussed.

I already informed Lachlan about her, and after confirming that her Assimilation Skill doesn’t make the Cores useless as material for weapons and gear, he agreed to let us help her and keep her powers under wraps.

Whatever energy she absorbs from the Cores seems to have no bearing on the Hunters Armory’s use of Monster Cores as material for weapons and gear, so there’s no harm in letting her absorb that energy.

It was different for me, particularly with Devour.

When it came to Monsters with body parts that are used as material in crafting gear, like Monsters with durable scales or tough hides, I had to hold back on consuming their entire bodies.

But she only needs their Cores to use her Assimilation Skill, she doesn’t need the rest of their bodies. And since the energy she absorbs from the Cores doesn’t affect their value as crafting materials, there’s literally no reason not to.

Aria and I have gone on a couple of raids every month, we gather up all the Cores in Treasury, meet up with Cleo to let her absorb them, and then turn the Cores over to the Guild.

So, she’s currently progressing on easy mode, gaining a number of new abilities and increasing her stats at a pretty rapid rate, without doing much raiding herself.

Until today, Aria and I have been going on separate raids, so that we can gather effectively double the number of Cores and face a wider variety of Monsters.

As a result, I’d say there’s a good chance that she’ll cross the threshold into Ace territory with the Cores we gather from this raid.

This is the first Critical Level Dungeon that has appeared in a few months, so Aria and I decided to both tackle it, just to be safe.

But now that we’re more than two-thirds of the way through the Dungeon, both of us being here is starting to feel like it’s way overkill.

Well, I suppose it’s fine. Too easy is better than too difficult, after all.

Things really have been going smoothly lately, unsettlingly so.

The number of Dungeons appearing is more than manageable, and the difficultly level has been the lowest it’s ever been.

I’ve hardly summoned any of the Apostles of Sin during raids over these last few months, I figured this lower difficulty level presented a great opportunity to have our less experienced Hunters take on a bit more responsibility and push themselves.

Outside of when we’re at home, I mostly just summon them when I want them to train the other members of the Guild, mainly Luxuria, Invidia and Superbia.

Acedia and Ira are too powerful to work as trainers too regularly, so they haven’t gotten much action.

I do summon the Apostles at home fairly often, Ira got pretty hooked on technology almost immediately after I introduced it to him, he’s definitely addicted.

Acedia’s gotten really into relaxing music himself, and he’s slowly but surely starting to take interest in other forms on digital entertainment.

Invidia’s been going out to have fun with his friends from when he was alive fairly often too, people have gotten pretty used to seeing him roaming about in public these days.

My only condition to let him go out was that he doesn’t act like a creep towards women like he did when he was alive...and as a result, he’s had more success with hook ups, just by being more genuine and respectful.

Superbia goes out every now and then too, just to take a stroll and wander around. She visits the Union sometimes, since she’s got a lot of friends there.

As for Luxuria, she takes turns with Ira on who gets to hang out in the rec room and browse the web or whatever other entertainment they feel like...as it turned out, Ira’s gotten pretty into porn too, including an Elf hentai he came across a few weeks ago.

It’s nice that I have the chance to let the Apostles chill and take it easy, Ira in particular after the hell he endured for over two hundred years in the Monster world.

I know these peaceful days aren’t going to last forever, it’s only a matter of time before the Demon Lord ramps things up again. But for now, I’ll savor and make the most of these peaceful days.

Aria’s twenty-second birthday was three days ago, I went all out and did my best to try and top everything she did for me, but I’d say I managed to pull off a tie at best, I had such a incredible time on my birthday.

Also, it seems like we’ve inadvertently set a tradition of celebrating each other’s birthdays at home.

We talked about it, and both of us find celebrating at home more appealing than going outside, so yeah.

We do go out on dates every now and then, for lunch or dinner, sometimes movies too, but at the end of the day, we’re both most comfortable just chilling with each other at home, going out once in a while for a change of pace is fine, but going out constantly just isn’t our vibe.

Anyway, I should get my focus back onto the raid. We were currently taking a break with the rest of the party, which consisted of Brid, Iqra, Damien, a Lightning Mage, an Ice Mage, and a Detector.

"You know, you guys could leave at least a few more for me, I’m experienced enough to take care of myself now," Huffed Brid, as he took a sip of water.

"U-Um, I don’t mind it...s-spiders creep me out, a-and these ones are s-so big," Shuddered Iqra in response.

"Well, that’s not good...it could end up being fatal. Maybe we should direct a few more your way to help you get used to it," Suggested Aria thoughtfully, Iqra’s face turning pale.

"You seemed fine in that ant Dungeon last year, so I’m guessing other bugs are fine?" I asked her.

"W-Well, I wouldn’t say fine, b-but I can at least tolerate them. S-Spiders just make my blood run cold," She shook her head.

Hm, arachnophobia, maybe? If so, then this Dungeon has probably been real rough on her.

I can’t handle frogs and toads myself, so I’m real glad there aren’t any Monster species resembling those things.

Alright, we should probably wrap the break up and get moving soon, wrap up the final stretch of this Dungeon...