Chapter 51 - 99th Floor?
With the clues from Revis about Enyo's activities, a trip was planned to investigate what remained on the 99th floor. This would be an extremely hazardous trip. The only members that could handle such a trip were Bell, Ais, Asterius and Wiene, whereas Welf, Mikoto and Ray could serve in a support role. However, someone had to provide city security and to prevent monsters from escaping into the surface world. Thus, Welf and Mikoto continue to provide city security, while Ray would shift from watching the dungeon entrance to replacing Wiene on city security. That left Asterius to watch the entrance by himself, which was reasonable because the presence of Ais/Bell/Wiene would greatly reduce probability that any significant monster would be coming up.
Before Bell left for the moon, Finn suggested getting Revis' confirmation on the merchants' vertical holes map as well as additional vertical holes in the deeper levels. Since Bell/Ais can use Ariel and Wiene can fly, all 3 would be able to move very quickly through the floors utilizing vertical holes.
The next day, Bell visited Hestia, Lili and Haruhime on the moon. With Hestia's interrogation, Revis confirmed the accuracy of the merchant's vertical hole map for the dungeon. Furthermore, she provided vertical hole locations for vertical holes for floors 52 to 70 that she was familiar with. After the interrogation, Hestia gave Bell more maternal nurturing while Lili got jealous... Hestia also gave Bell enough elixir and healing potions for the trip since healing potions were in high demand with the gods missing and the Dian Cecht familia without magic... Finally, Haruhime and 2 of her boosting group activated Uchide no Kozuchi to boost Bell by 2 levels, Ais by 1 level, Wiene by 1 level and Mikoto by 1 level.
After returning from the moon, the vertical location information was shared with the other familias, and Bell, Ais and Wiene prepared for the next trip. That night, Welf and Mikoto played their prank on Bell and Ais. They changed Ais' room plate plate to Mr. and Mrs. Bell Cranel while changing Bell's door plate to Wiene the Brave. This act did officially transferred Bell's room to Wiene and breaking Hestia's heart in heaven. After the huge embarrassment, Bell and Ais chased down Welf and Mikoto and demonstrated the difference between first-class adventurers and second-class adventurers...
The next morning, Bell, Ais and Wiene headed off to the dungeon. They wanted to reduce the population of monsters in the dungeon, but did want to minimize time spent on the early floors. So they did not utilize the vertical holes, though to speed up their travel, Ais/Bell used Aerial while Wiene flew along side. To reduce the number of monsters in the dungeon, they did blast away at larger groups of monster along the way with Ariel and firebolt. On the 17th floor, they met the goliath. Wiene was not wearing armor or her lightning charged sharp edges, but defeated the goliath in hand-to-hand combat after a couple minutes. As a level 8-9, her strength and agility have gotten much more powerful compared to only a couple weeks ago. After Wiene's victory and consuming the magic stone, the 3 headed to Riviria to meet with the Xenos stationed there.
The Xenos confirmed the monster population was up, so they had been busy dealing with that on their patrols from the 19th to the 25th floors. Fortunately, they have not seen any virgas, violas, unusual monsters or anyone resembling the high level fighters from the Enyo/Revis army. The Xenos also would be making a trip to the upper floors to collect magic stones from Ariel/firebolt victims.
As they continued down the dungeon, they did not bother to thin out the monster population on the way down to save their magic energy. They hoped that could be done on the way back to the surface. Aerial/firebolt was used several times to destroy swarms of attacking hornets. Udaeus also did respawn, and the 3 worked together to collect its magic stone. Argonaut was not necessary as firebolt was very powerful at level 9, particularly combined with Ariel at level 7. Wiene also got a few good hacks in and did consume the magic stone that gave a detectable amount of ability increase. For the colosseum floors, they simply flew right through the colosseum and only used Ariel and firebolt to take down the monsters in the way.
By the end of their high-speed day, they reached the goal that was the 50th floor where monsters do not spawn. While the balor had not yet respawned, they will likely run into valang dragons tomorrow. There was always the uncertainty regarding when they would need to handle hundreds or thousands of virgas and violas without help from powerful magic from Riveria or Lefiya. They needed a good night of rest and Wiene would need her armor tomorrow. While enjoying lap pillowing, Ais asked the question that Bell still had not answered the bees and birds...
Wiene sulked a little during the lap pillowing and wondered what happened inside their tent...