We were technically done.

  Technically, because four of us were level four. Fray was level three, and Rix was level seven. To fight the floor four boss, you were really supposed to be level five, which we were supposed to wait before we leveled. I looked at Fray’s statbox. She could level, and I had a feeling that Miel had... Yep. Only Fray’s experience had gone up, and she was getting all of ours. But even doing that, it was going to take ten more runs of doing this boss to get her to level four.

  I looked at the time. We’d only been in the Dungeon for two hours. With how much mana I needed to regenerate, it was going to take me about ten minutes to get full. That meant if we farmed this boss, it’d take us five hours to get her to level four. Though it was lunchtime, and I doubted that anyone wanted to spend our day off grinding that hard.

  “Really, the only thing we can do is grind, but I don’t think we should push ourselves too hard.” I thought about the seal I was going to have to work on tomorrow. “But what does everyone else want to do?”

  “Food!” Aelin looked at Miel. “Where’s good to eat?!”

  The ivory woman pulled a handful of ration bars out of CB. “I have plenty…”

  Aelin’s shoulders sagged. “That’s not food.”

  Miel laughed as she put the ration bars back. “There’s a diner I know of that makes the best baked gnaruck I’ve ever had.” She twirled her finger in the air. “Let’s go.”

  “Do we want to try to push Fray to level four afterwards? It’ll probably take us four hours if we farm this boss.” I looked at the group while we walked to the exit.

  There was hesitation on most of their faces. Though Rix looked bored, and I could tell that Ether was doing math in her head.

  “It’ll only be four and a half hours if we farm on the fourth floor.” Ether grinned. “Half that if we can split…” She glanced at Rix. “Make that closer to a third of the time, if we can split Into three groups.”

  I don’t know why I hadn’t thought about that. There was a reason why most farmers didn’t do bosses. Mainly because event floor spawns were just better and safer. And the last time that we had farmed slimes, we’d found that they spawned close enough together that we could all solo them, and we leveled up super fast. Though we’d also gotten in trouble a couple of times. First by Trent for ignoring his orders not to farm so much that we leveled up. Second from Trent again when some students had tried to replicate what we’d done and the slimes had been too much for them.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  One-on-one, the slimes shouldn’t have been that dangerous, but they wound up pulling multiple spawns in a single area. The blobs of gelatin had overwhelmed them, and… yeah, we were told not to farm like that anymore.

  “That seems a little more…”

  “If we go slow, then we can still level her up in three hours.” Ether cut me off.

  “If everyone else is okay with it?” I looked around, and everyone was nodding. “Then I guess that’s what we’re doing.”

  Miel had something to say as soon as we were out of the boss room and on the fourth floor.

  “Do you know what the spawns are like here?” Ether’s mother eyed us as she jabbed her hand towards the forest. ”It’s not a pair of monsters like most common Dungeons. It’s a trio. One of each of the slimes from the first, second, and third floors.”

  “So we can do it faster.” I grinned, trying to make where she was going with her logic not seem so dire.

  “That’s three slimes for two people.” The short woman shook her head. “I know you’re strong, but that’s too dangerous.”

  Aelin took out her bow as she started walking into the woods.

  “Aelin! Where are you going?” Miel cupped her hands to make her voice louder.

  “To show you that we’re not that weak.” The blonde didn’t even bother to turn around.

  Justia looked at me, and I nodded. The green Healer headed into the woods after Aelin.

  “What are you doing?” Miel realized that Justia wasn’t going to answer her, so she turned to me. “I can bring them back by force.”

  I chuckled. “But you’re not going to do that. I’m guessing part of Klix’s orders were to observe our strength. This is a great way of doing that, though I will say that I’m touched that you would try to scrap an exercise that would give you information that your mother wants because you think it’s too dangerous.”

  Miel looked like I had just slapped her. “Are you suggesting that I’m spying...?”

  “Of course you are!” I shook my head. “Even if this is all good faith and simple observation, there is still going to be a report at the end of the day to give Klix information about us that she didn’t have before.” I nodded at Rix, who vanished, then turned to Ether and Fray. “I guess we’re together?”

  “This isn’t…”

  “ONE HOUR!” I cut her off. She’d challenged Aelin, and I had a feeling that she and Rix were going to be comparing how many crystals each of them collected. I looked at Miel. “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”

  “You realize that if I step in to bail one of you out, everything starts spawning as elites for a while, and if I try to help you fight those, they’ll start scaling to my level?”

  I did not know that last part.

  “Isn’t that a good way to earn...?”

  “They still count as level fours, just with Tier Seven stats.” Miel glared at me.

  “Translation: You can help us once, then we have to run.” I nodded and tried not to look intimidated. “We’ll be fine. They’re just slimes.”

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