Chapter 70 - Dragon City
After an one-day break, the next floors to cleanup were the labyrinth floors. It would be a big problem if thousands of dragons were spawned... Thus, the plan was to look into those levels from the central cavern and only attack if the number of dragons was not ridiculous. To increase the level of stealth, they would use their Hades Hats when dealing with the dragons.
The air assault team of Ais, Bell, Wiene, Riveria, Lefiya, Bete and Ottar started down the dungeon. The trip to the 18th floor was trouble-free, and they quickly met with Asterius, who confirmed things were 'back to normal'. Afterwards. they continued to fly threw vertical holes down to the 33rd floor to check on the number of flying monsters in the central cavern. While the number of flying insects were substantially reduced, it was still in the hundreds (instead of thousands). Thus, Riveria and Lefiya initiated the attack with Wynn Fimbulvetr and Fusillade Fallarica. After the central cavern was cleaned out, they waited for 30 minutes before a stealthy reconnaissance mission was launched.
To scout out the labyrinth floors, Ais and Bell would view those floors from the cavern while protected by the invisibility conferred by the Hades Hats. Just in case, Bell already activated hati in case of a magic breathe attack. Meanwhile, Wiene, Lefiya, Ottar, Bete Riveria landed on the 50th floor as Wiene could not use the Hades Hat in her Wyvern form. As Bell and Ais flew down from the 48th floor towards the labyrinth levels, Riveria and Lefiya started chanting their attack spells just in case.
Cloaked by the Hades Hat, Bell and Ais were able to quickly fly through the cavern to view the 51st to 57th labyrinth floors. There were a lot of dragons, but fortunately, there were not thousands of them. In their estimate, there were at least 20 dragons per floor. Thus, this would be a death trap for a ground assault. They also noticed that the labyrinth levels was not jammed packed with other monsters. Perhaps it was double or triple the normal levels, but much less than the other floors. Perhaps the other spawned monsters already became dragon food? To test out the power level of the dragons, Bell charged argonaut for 1 minute and they launched a sneak Ariel/crystal attack at a dragon on the 56th floor near the central cavern. The attack badly wounded the dragon, and they finished it off with one more Ariel/crystal attack. With the explosions, the monsters in those levels started moving, so they quickly flew back to the 50th floor.
The team then discussed the situation with their colleagues and also with Hermes, Freya, Loki and Hestia on a call. The agreement that it was not all bad because the huge dragon presence would be a significant deterrent for deep level monsters from passing through. Furthermore, as their food supply dwindles, the number of dragons would probably slowly come down naturally. However, 20+ dragons per level would be a problem for the planned trip to the deep levels. While they could fly a small number around the labyrinth levels, a retreat would only be possible by flying back around these levels. That would be an unacceptable operational risk. Ideally each labyrinth level would have less than 5 dragons. Thus, they agreed to a hit and run tactic that heavily relied on magic attacks from Bell, Ais, Lefiya and Riveria. This would require Bell and Ais to scope out their targets before the team would fly in to launch the magic attacks, after which they would quickly retreat to the 50th floor. Ottar and Bete would stay on the 50th floor just to make sure they could return to a safe location. Using this tactic, they would perform reconnaissance for targeting, fly in together and launch simultaneous attacks with 1 minute charge Ariel/crystal, Wynn Fimbulvetr and Fusillade Fallarica. The joint attack, along with some follow-up attacks, defeated 5 dragons before the group returned to the 50th floor. They then waited for 1 hour to allow the labyrinth to 'calm down', while the spell casters rested and drank potions. Thus, they then repeated this two more times. At that point, Bell was really tired from argonaut use, and they retreated to the 18th floor to spend the night. On the way back, they removed the seals on the vertical holes on the remaining floors to increase the options they had for air travel. However, noticing there were more flying insects on the 32nd and 33rd floor, they decided an insect barrier was needed between the central cavern and the upper floors. So, they resealed the vertical holes between the 33rd and 34th floors and also between the 32nd and 33rd floors, as well as the 10 feet wide central cavern on the 33rd floor.
The second day, they repeated their hit and run attacks but on the 52nd floor. After 4 rounds of magic attacks, the number of dragons remaining on the floor was about 5. This was at least 2-3 times the 'normal' amount but they considered it to be a good number. Five more days of hit and run attacks were performed to clean up the 53-57 floors. After the week of attacks, the labyrinth floors were considered acceptable.
After the week of dungeon work, the team returned back to the surface to rest and plan on the next steps. In a meeting with the familia leaders, Freya, Hermes, Takemikazuchi, Ganesha, as well as Loki and Hestia by call, the decision was made to leave the dragon floors the way they were, and skip over them to the deeper floors. Over months, the dragon population would probably dwindle down by itself and those floors would currently serve as a good deterrent for unexpected monsters from the deep levels. Thus, the deep floors 58-85 would be next. The call also discussed the rebuilding effort, and the local economy that was booming from the massive infusion of magic stones and reconstruction.
With the cleanup of the labyrinth floors, all the dungeon restrictions were lifted except for the labyrinth floors. With that announcement, there was a huge rush by adventurers to collect the magic stones of the fallen monsters. Lili and Welf joined in on the fun along with the Takemikazuchi familia and the Miach familia.
After 2 days of rest, the air team and the ground team were ready for the deep floors. Furthermore, the gods went back to the secret headquarters to command and control the entire operation. After another round of Wynn Fimbulvetr and Fusillade Fallarica for the central cavern, the air team would quickly reach the 50th floor first, and wait for the ground team, which would require more than 1 day to reach there. While on the 50th floor, Bell and Ais conducted additional reconnaissance using their Hades Hat. They confirmed that the number of dragons was stable with a total of ~20 for all the labyrinth floors. They also confirmed that the deeper floors were still completely packed with monsters...