Chapitre 40: Pain And Comfort
For these past two hours, Isaac had been everything but slacking. In fact, he had met ten different monster species already, while he managed to fully research seven of them. This was mostly thanks to the high number of monsters on this floor, which made it easier to encounter whole groups of whatever he wanted to research, helping him to reduce the time he needed overall by battling multiple of them at once.
The easiest new species to deal with, and also the most numerous one, was the Raider Fish, whose highest stat could reach up to C-600 / 2550. They reminded Isaac of the piranhas he had seen before on Earth, the only difference was that they were a lot larger. Still, even though he had to fight them while knee-deep in the water, they were simply too weak to be of any threat. If they didn't turn into ashes when their magic stones were retrieved, they might have even made a delicious meal.
The second most numerous species was the Devil Mosquito, whose highest stat could reach up to C-650 / 2650. They were extremely annoying to deal with for regular adventurers, because they behaved exactly like normal mosquitoes, while barely being any larger. Sure, they were five times the size, but with their fast speed, it was extremely difficult to actually hit them while in midair. One's weapon mastery had to have reached a moderate level to be able to dispatch them. The only thing Isaac was worried about, while taking care of the mosquitoes with absolute ease, was the possibility of the dungeon releasing a whole swarm of them as a Monster Party. One would need area of effect attacks to be able to deal with such a situation and he had none of those. With how small the Devil Mosquitoes were, he wouldn't easily be able to find a way out of a swarm of them once he was surrounded. Luckily, though, swarms of thousands of the darn things had never appeared before, at least according to his Amazoness companions.
With the next three species, there actually was a rather huge spike in difficulty - all of them could have their highest stats reach up to B-750 / 2850, which made them prime targets for regular adventurers to overcome in their attempt to reach Level 3.
As he had taken them to be part of the floor's lighting, Isaac was genuinely surprised when the quartzes that he hadn't paid much attention to shot magical light beam attacks at him. Thankfully, they weren't nearly as fast as the speed of light, as no adventurer out there would be able to deal with them if that was the case. Because he had noticed the attack early, Isaac was able to dodge and research the peculiar Light Quartzes. Their entire bodies were made up of a yellow-ish quartz material and seemed to be capable of movement solely thanks to the influence of some kind of magic. Whether that magic came from the dungeon or from the quartzes themselves, Isaac didn't know, as he wasn't even close to being proficient in the usage of mana. Still, although they looked like their bodies would be quite hard, they were actually extremely brittle. If one managed to dodge their surprise attacks and hit them, any person who had reached Level 2 would be able to deal with them in one or two attacks. Thanks to the Light Quartzes, Isaac now viewed even the light sources of the dungeon with heavy suspicion.
As for the next two species, they had one thing in common: their upper bodies mostly looked just like beautiful, human women. Their lower bodies, however, were where the most differences lay.
The Harpies' lower halves resembled huge vultures or eagles with extremely sharp claws, while they had wings the size of tower shields instead of arms. Their attacks were quite simple to deal with, though, as they behaved just like birds and swooped down from the skies. So after Isaac had finished his research, which, due to their human-like appearance, seemed even more cruel than usual, he could easily pick them out of the sky with his bow.
While they were quite similar to the Harpies, the Sirens were a much bigger threat to deal with. There were no major physical differences between the two, aside from the colour of their feathers and the fact that the Sirens' lower bodies looked just a tiny bit more humanoid than those of the Harpies. The aforementioned danger came from their sound wave attacks, which were the most potent ones that any adventurer would be able to come across up to this point. Besides disorienting their prey, they could even injure its ears if it was exposed to them for a prolonged period of time. Still, just like the Bad Bats from before, they didn't pose too much of a threat to Isaac.
Admittedly, if anyone besides some bloodthirsty Amazonesses had borne witness to Isaac researching these two kinds of creatures, they would have probably attacked him - it was simply too gruesome a sight. Of course, as there was nobody here that had wanted to complain, Isaac had no chance to lecture anyone about their hypocrisy at all. If one only cared about beings because of their appearance, they were undoubtedly either a horrible or a severely misled person. Back in his original world, he had seen vast majorities of all societies behave in such a manner, which truly disgusted him. A huge number of people even spouted nonsense about equality, while still being just as or even more superficial than most others. Admittedly, there had been some true paragons of virtue, but they were so few and far between that they never really had a chance to change their society for the better. If one was able to see past the camouflage made up of lies, one could see that their great causes were turned into exactly what they had tried to fight against in the first place.
The last two new monster species that he had finished researching were even a little bit stronger than the previous ones, as their highest stats could reach up to B-775 / 2900.
Crystaroth Urchins were blue, ball-shaped creatures with lots of sharp, long and crystalline needles growing from their bodies. As they were only about one meter in height, they didn't seem too dangerous at first glance, but once they started moving, most adventurers would begin to panic. With an incredibly high speed, they spun towards their targets and destroyed their surroundings by ejecting their needles. Once they closed in on their potential prey, they stopped their ranged attacks and simply ripped them apart while spinning, using the rest of their rapidly regrowing needles. Because they had such a huge number of projectiles, even Isaac would have been hard pressed to defend against them, had he not expected them to be capable of shooting their needles in the first place. After all, if he hadn't even been prepared for such a possibility when glancing at this monster species for the first time, he would have been ashamed of himself. Once he had assumed that all of the urchins' needles were projectiles and predicted their flight paths, it was relatively easy to deal with them. Admittedly, any slight slip ups would have led to an injury, so once he was done researching them, Isaac ambushed them whenever he saw them, not giving them a chance to attack first. Any time he did so, he felt a lot better because he had spared himself quite a hassle.
Although their stats had the same maximum as the Crystaroth Urchins, the Mermen were a lot easier to deal with. Contrary to what one might expect from this name, they didn't possess beautiful, humanoid bodies at all. While their overall shapes were still vaguely humanoid, they were entirely covered in blue scales and their faces had a lot more beastial features than would have been considered beautiful. Using their webbed hands, they wielded weapons made from the dungeon floor's surroundings, fashioning the underwater plants and other materials into spears, shields, swords, etcetera. Their teamwork was the best Isaac had come across so far, so they would have at least been able to delay him for a while, if they didn't have a fatal weakness. One of the members of their squads, who usually had slightly differently coloured scales, was the Mermen Leader, who had some kind of telepathic connection with the rest, his subordinates. Needless to say, when this individual was dealt with, the entire group began to panic and became disoriented. It felt like Isaac was picking on newborns… Yes, it was disappointingly easy. Still, if one didn't manage to take out the leader, one would have a horrible time and could possibly even be toyed to death.
By now, Isaac's excelia gain had also heavily slowed down. He could either decide to face Level 3 monsters from now on, which might be a little more than he was able to handle, or he could update his Status. Seeing how he wasn't entirely suicidal if he could help it, he decided to do the latter sometime before the upcoming expedition set off.
In any case, right after Isaac had dealt with another group of Raider Fish and wanted to leave the shallow edge of the large lake he had fought them in, Tione's panicked shout made him redouble his efforts.
"Watch out!!"
At the same time, he finally noticed an enormous shadow approaching from the bottom of the lake. Its speed was so incredibly fast, however, that he hadn't even been able to move more than a few centimeters away when it finally broke through the surface of the water less than five meters away from him. As this enemy was clearly aiming at him and wouldn't be something he could deal with, no matter what, Isaac had already prepared to teleport away when he had heard Tione's warning. But before he initiated the teleportation, something happened that changed his mind.
Far faster than he could fully perceive, Tiona had appeared in front of him, hugged him and intended to shield him from the enemy's ramming attack before escaping. The most reasonable response would have been to teleport away with her, but Tiona acting as a shield enabled Isaac to research something new: whether his Divine Blood had any influence on the recovery abilities of his body. It most likely did, but how could he be sure without giving it a try? So although anyone else would call him insane, Isaac decided to take the hit. With his Amazoness shield, the vast majority of the impact should be absorbed, right? He wouldn't die… probably.
Yup, it was worth the risk. For science!
Less than a tenth of a second later, a monstrous impact flung Tiona and Isaac hundreds of meters away. Even though she had been hit by a Level 5 monster and absorbed almost all of the impact, the Amazoness was perfectly fine and agilely landed on her feet, carrying Isaac with her carefully.
But although there were a lot of loud noises around him and the scenery was changing far faster than his currently available processing power could handle, Isaac didn't pay any attention to it at all. Or rather, he really couldn't pay any attention to it. Right after the remnants of the attack's impact had reached his body, the most severe physical pain Isaac had ever been exposed to assaulted his senses. He almost passed out while his bones were creaking dangerously, but they were still somehow able to deal with this amount of force. Still, his innards weren't. Almost all of Isaac's organs were injured heavily from the shockwaves they had to absorb, some of them had even completely turned into mush.
Contrary to what might have been expected, Isaac didn't spit out any mouthfuls of blood or innards, rather, he tried really hard to keep them all down. If he lost this mass of cells, it would be harder for him to recover, after all. Although the pain had been excruciating and still hadn't reduced in the least, Isaac was still somehow able to keep conscious. Nevertheless, he felt weaker than he had ever felt before and most of his senses were entirely unavailable to him, thanks to his current injuries.
Even if he had wanted to, he wouldn't have been able to hear what Tione and Tiona were shouting about while frantically dodging attacks that were far faster than his cloudy but still opened eyes could catch up to. If there was one thing he would want to speak up about, it was that he wished they didn't move around this abruptly, as that made it really hard to not throw up his innards…
While the Monster Rex, who Isaac never got a good look at, was chasing after the trio, attacking from any lakes and water sources they passed on their escape, they slowly but surely managed to widen the distance. The reason for this was that sometimes, Amphisbaena simply didn't correctly predict the direction the three would be escaping towards, wasting valuable time while trying to catch up. At some point in time, Tione, who had tried to distract the Monster Rex by herself, rejoined Tiona and Isaac, as Amphisbaena just didn't pay any attention to her whatsoever. It seemed solely focused on Isaac after having determined that he was the only one it would be able to kill.
In any case, Isaac didn't pay attention to all of this. Rather, he was fully focusing on his recovery. With the increase in his Endurance stat, his cells had become progressively more resilient and efficient overall, which already helped a lot with his natural regeneration. At the very least, even without taking his ichor into account, Isaac wouldn't immediately die from wounds like this, which was what had given him the confidence to try this in the first place. Thankfully, as he had expected, the Divine Blood coursing through his veins, which was currently mixed with a whole lot of his innards, also gave every single cell of his a seemingly magical 'buff'. Their efficiency, no matter what kind of work they were assigned, had been increased by 25 percent. While that might not seem like a lot, it was far more than what Isaac needed to swiftly make a full recovery from the state he was currently in.
Very carefully, he maneuvered all the pieces of his body back to their original place, as if he was trying to solve a puzzle. Sadly, not all of Isaac's cells had survived the shockwave baptism intact, so many of them had to be broken down and replaced with new ones. Still, compared to growing all of his destroyed organs anew, only stitching up the numerous cell-sized holes was a lot easier.
When Isaac had finished applying some first aid and was confident in being somewhat stable again, he started paying attention to his surroundings again. After he checked the system map, he realized they had run extremely far from any place they had explored before they stumbled across the Monster Rex. Currently, Tiona and Tione were resting in one of the very few entirely dry passages of this floor. This was one of the scarce places they would be completely safe from the Monster Rex. Additionally, monsters only very rarely wandered here, as most of them were reliant on their water sources and didn't like to or couldn't leave them for prolonged periods of time. The most peculiar thing Isaac's mind had come back to, however, were the soft, warm and fleshy pillows under his head and the hand gently stroking his hair.
After they had finally gotten to safety, Tiona had started to give Isaac a lap pillow and carefully let him rest. As more and more of his colour was returning to his face over time, it seemed like it would be for the best to just let him recover for now and waited for him to tell them about his current condition. If she moved him any more than necessary, it could have a negative impact, after all.
Contrary to what might have been expected, although Tiona's body was extremely muscular, when she didn't tense up those muscles, her lap was incredibly comfortable. Comfortable enough that Isaac truly didn't mind the sensation. It was a rather soothing feeling to return to and made the mental strain from the agonizing pain he had been and was still partially in somewhat more bearable.
"Are you okay?!"
As they had taken note of the focus returning to his eyes and their curious glint as he glanced around, the Amazoness twins had immediately noticed and asked him with worried looks on their faces.
Very slightly, Isaac shook his head and coughed quite heavily, before forcing out a few words to assuage their worries.
"Give me twenty minutes… and I'll be okay."
Once he had said this, Isaac tried his best to only focus on his recovery and to ignore the somewhat awkward situation he found himself in. After all, even if he wanted to, he wouldn't be able to move too much right now… he couldn't escape Tiona's clutches no matter what. But to be honest, those thighs were… very snugly…
With a wry smile on her face, Tione glanced at her sister, who was just blatantly taking advantage of Isaac's current predicament. But besides that, there was something even more important on her mind right now, which caused her feelings of responsibility to well up again.
"I'm sorry for jinxing us."
Hearing her the pain and guilt in her sister's voice, sadness flashed across Tiona's face for a moment, before it was lit up by an apologetic smile. Trying to move as little as possible, so as to not disturb Isaac, she bowed towards Tione slightly.
"Sorry for shouting at you before. I know it wasn't your fault, it was just bad luck. Seeing Isaac get hurt made me a little… irrational."
About fifteen minutes after the twins had made up, right as they were getting a little bored, footsteps could be heard in the distance, slowly drawing closer. This prompted Tione to get up with a jump and raise her fists a little, ready to strike down anyone with bad intentions the moment they showed their face. Tiona somewhat shielded Isaac with her body as well, just to make doubly sure. It was highly unlikely for them to meet anyone who was able to threaten her sister down here, but nonetheless, it was still possible.
"Ah, it's Jormungand and Amazon! Relax, we come in peace."
The ones approaching were two young women the Amazoness sisters only had vague impressions of. It felt like they had seen them somewhere before, but they couldn't be sure. As the one who had talked just now used their Aliases, which were common knowledge, that truly didn't help their case too much either. Anyone in the city got to know about them, because the gods decided on them during the Denatus, which was held every two months. An Alias described an adventurer's past journey and the hopes the gods had for their future. Well, at least that was what they were supposed to be - oftentimes, the gods were just messing around.
Seeing how her greeting didn't make the Amazoness twins relax in the slightest, an awkward smile flashed across the face of one of the women momentarily. She had shoulder-length black hair with jackal ears of the same colour and her dark-brown eyes usually had a bit of mischief sparkling within them. Under her long, yellow skirt, she wore caligae-style sandal boots, while her long-sleeved black top covered the entirety of her arms. Her hands were clad in metallic gauntlets, while a bloody whip was fastened to her belt. It had obviously been used in combat just minutes prior. The only unusual part about her was that her aforementioned top barely even covered the top half of her breasts and exposed the entirety of her upper body below that point. Although Amazonesses often wore similarly extremely revealing clothing as well, this Chienthrope girl couldn't use her race's culture as an excuse. She, most likely, simply had exhibitionistic tendencies.
The woman's name was Tabitha, and she and her companion, Suicia, had been on this floor for a mission. Coincidentally, they had been relatively close when they had heard the commotion caused by the Monster Rex, so, as they were already here, they thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to check out who was currently facing Amphisbaena. As long as they kept enough of a distance, they would be able to escape relatively easily. So, simply out of curiosity, they followed the noise until it finally disappeared. After that, they randomly ran across the resting group of three, because they had been aware of this dry spot themselves and wanted to relax for a short while - chasing after the Monster Rex had been quite exhausting and they had to kill a lot of monsters on the way.
Speaking about Suicia, she was almost the polar opposite to Tabitha. Not only was she dead silent, her body was nigh completely covered by a huge grey coat, under which she wore a green full body military outfit that covered almost the entirety of her skin. Even her nose and mouth were obscured by a grey mask - she really didn't want to expose more skin than absolutely necessary, it seemed. As she was an elf, she also had the trademark of the race: long and elegant elf ears. Her long, dark-blonde hair was braided in the back and reached all the way beyond her shoulder blades. Additionally, it covered her left eye, so only the right one of her emerald green eyes was visible at all times. Strapped to the belt beneath her cloak were two longswords.
Trying again to calm down the tension in the air a little, Tabitha spoke with an apologetic smile on her face.
"We're part of the Hermes Familia, so we can somewhat be considered allies, right? We don't want any trouble, we only want to take a little break."
These words finally made the Amazoness sisters mostly put down their guard, Tione even sat down next to her sister again. This wasn't only because of the somewhat friendly relations between the two familias, however. After all, even though Hermes and Loki had always been on good terms, the peculiar god wasn't someone one should put their trust in. Rather, they had only relaxed because they had somewhat figured out the strength of their opponents… and they wouldn't be of any danger whatsoever. They also seemed to be about as strong as they had expected the stronger Hermes Familia members to be, so their story seemed to fit.
After Tabitha and Suicia had taken a seat in the passage as well, the exhibitionist's eyes fell upon the fellow she had somewhat ignored before - Isaac. She sent an appreciative glance at his body but when she saw his face, her eyes widened slightly in surprise. While trying to be as quiet and unassuming as possible, she whispered in Suicia's direction.
"Isn't that the one Hermes asked us to keep an eye out for?"
Sadly, compared to Tabitha, Suicia was a lot worse at behaving in a restrained manner. When she recognized Isaac by comparing him to the drawing Hermes had shown them, her eyes widened in surprise as well and she nodded at Tabitha in a way too exaggerated manner. Well, to be honest, she just nodded normally. But when trying to not get noticed, that was a lot more movement than necessary.
The moment the Amazoness sisters had noticed how the two Hermes Familia members were eyeing Isaac and whispering suspiciously, their lowered guard was raised yet again. Of course, Tabitha picked up on this and cursed her incompetent companion in her mind. But before she could explain herself, Isaac, who had been recovering until now, suddenly opened his eyes and sat up, looked straight at the newcomers for a moment and then got up completely.
To be honest, Isaac had been fully healed for a minute or two already but when the two unknown women had made their appearance, he thought it would be better to keep a low profile and observe for the time being. It hadn't been an excuse to enjoy the lap pillow for a little longer. Nope. Not at all. Anyway, seeing how now was an opportune time to bring this awkward atmosphere to an end, he decided to chime in.
"Alright, let's go."
Once the Amazonesses had gotten up as well, Isaac flashed a bright smile at the two women from the Hermes Familia.
"Sorry about this, but we're in a hurry. We don't even have time for introductions right now. Anyway, please tell Hermes to be at the Bard's Respite at 7 p.m. tomorrow, we've got a lot to discuss. Until next time, ladies."
With these words, Isaac left the stunned Tabitha and Suicia behind and soon, he and the Amazonesses had disappeared from their range of perception completely.
After a few more seconds of feeling baffled at the situation, the two looked at each other and nodded, quickly departing from this place as well. Now wasn't the time to rest.
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Compared to yesterday's descent into the dungeon, Isaac's students came across an annoying obstacle today. Before, they had been able to deal with the Killer Ants that began to spawn on the fifth floor easily, as they had been lucky enough so as to not encounter too many of them at once. But this time, although their enemies were a lot weaker than them and therefore quite easy to kill, they came across a huge swarm of them, almost at a Monster Party size. Still, Kalin and Mina somehow managed to deal with all of them, even without the help of Jakk.
Nonetheless, their progress today had been impeded by this event, so they only managed to get to the seventh floor. The Needle Rabbits there weren't much of a threat, as they weren't fast enough to be able to harm Kalin and Mina if they paid attention to their surroundings. The Blue Papilios, who healed the surrounding monsters with the spores scattered from their wings, weren't a problem either, as only rarely a monster didn't die in one hit when faced with Isaac's students.
On the other hand, the Purple Moths were the most frustrating new monster species to deal with on this floor. Kalin and Mina weren't yet like Isaac who was able to simply dodge the moths' poisonous spores, so immediately after meeting their first one, they got poisoned. If their teacher had checked their Status at that moment, he would have noticed that they were now able to choose 'Abnormal Resistance' as a Development Ability once they ranked up. Still, the poison wasn't too huge a deal, as the group had packed a lot of antidotes in anticipation of this happening. The Purple Moths and other annoying monsters were some of the worst money sinks for rookie adventurers, as much of their daily income had to be spent on items to protect themselves from their peculiar attacks.
After burning through tens of antidotes, at around 12:35 p.m., the three students finally reached the staircase leading down to the eighth floor, where they found Isaac, Tiona and Tione... relaxedly playing cards.
L’AVIS DES CRÉATEURS 
Shiro_the_Hero
Shiro_the_Hero I can already see Ais pouting when she hears about this. But in all seriousness... head pats and a lap pillow... we've reached unprecedented levels of degeneracy here!
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État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone