The Decoy Traps.

Deep in the gloom illuminated by the crimson fireballs, a colossal rat face with wildly rolling eyeballs suddenly surfaced from the dark.

Emitting a brief, grating shriek, the sinister monster—a bizarre combination of a human body topped with a beast’s head—crouched low to dodge the flying spheres of flame.

Thump, thump. Two arrows pierced clean into its chest cavity.

The rat face snapped its jaws wide open in pure surprise. Right into that exposed maw, another flying mass of searing thermal energy connected with flawless precision. Within a single dynamic fraction of a second, the Wererat’s entire upper torso was thoroughly engulfed in flames.

Yet, it appeared the operational cycle of this threat was far from finished.

Frantically swinging its blazing arms, the monster desperately clawed its way forward, struggling to close the distance. But the exact fraction of a second its front leg extended, a sharply driven whip struck its knee with immense kinetic force.

Its footing completely swept out from under it, the Wererat collapsed heavily onto the earth, its limbs twitching clumsily against the soil for roughly ten seconds before flatlining into absolute silence.

“Flawless. Our frontline coordination is officially locked in.”

“Heh-heh~! See that? Pretty magnificent, right?”

“You mustn’t allow yourself to harbor complacency, Mia,” Paula chided gently.

“Okay~!”

Faced with a warning far too mild-mannered to carry actual bite, the young girl offered a bright smile and lunged forward to wrap her arms affectionately around Paula. A moment later, she leaned in to whisper a cryptic question directly to me.

“…Sensei, what exactly does ‘complacency’ mean?”

“It means you’re letting yourself ride the high wave and getting a bit too cocky.”

“Ah~! Yeah, that’s completely relatable. That is textbook Mia behavior, for sure. Mhm, mhm, I totally ride the wave~”

“Good grief… you are a handful, Mia,” Paula sighed softly.

Warmed by Paula’s continued gentle handling, Mia let a blissful grin spread across her face and snuggled even closer to her side. At this point, the boundary separating their dynamic had entirely dissolved; they looked exactly like a pair of biological sisters.

Then again, harboring a tiny trace of carelessness was completely understandable given the circumstances. Once you successfully calculated their behavioral loops, the Wererats simply didn’t possess a formidable threat threshold at all.

Mia’s <Fire Bullet> masterfully drew their absolute focus, allowing Ethan-san to rapidly map out his archery vectors and pin them down from afar. If an entity somehow survived the opening barrage and breached our perimeter, Paula’s whip provided immediate tactical deterrence to throw its balance, setting up a succession of lethal strikes to finish it off.

By executing this exact strategic loop, we could achieve an absolute perfect victory every single time.

Because this cramped mine shaft severely restricted lateral movement, preventing any sweeping evasive maneuvers, the terrain yielded a massive structural advantage to a party like ours, heavily stacked with high-caliber long-range artillery options.

However, running this exact combat paradigm invited a single major administrative complication: the total operational contribution of certain party members dropped straight to absolute zero.

Granted, since close-quarters engagement risked a high-grade viral infection from their caked claws, maintaining a rigid tactical distance was a mandatory safety directive. Even so…

“Mnmh… context non-serving…” Yoru mumbled in her sleep.

“Kyuu, kyuu…”

Deprived of any meaningful duties, Yoru and Kuu had completely logged out of reality, making themselves thoroughly comfortable atop the Blue Slime mattress. They were currently sprawled out flat on their backs, shamelessly flaunting their soft bellies to the world. Well, looking at the chronological layout of the day, evening was rapidly approaching anyway.

“Oh! I’ve successfully intercepted something, Nino-sama! Over here!”

Ethan-san, who had been meticulously scanning the environmental coordinates, had masterfully uncovered another Wererat treasure alcove. He flashed an adorable wave to signal his coordinates to me.

By the way, I had previously attempted to adjust our social loops, requesting that he drop the highly formal “-sama” title since it felt a bit bizarre receiving that level of deference from an adult male. However, he had flatly refused, stating, “It is completely outside my moral parameters to address the magnificent benefactor who mended my shattered frame with such casual phrasing,” so the title arrangement remained permanently locked in.

Approaching the random heap of discarded junk, I ran a sweeping harvesting cycle, but the raw yield turned out to be strictly limited to standard mineral deposits once again. Discovering that silver accessory during our very first loop had been a pure anomaly; this marked our eighth consecutive empty run as far as high-tier gear was concerned. I mean, we did salvage a few heavily fractured, rusted pickaxes, but nothing of note.

The moment I offered a disappointed shake of my head, Ethan-san’s shoulders visibly slumped.

“A high-value accessory continues to elude our parameters, it seems…”

Under normal demographic rules, seeing a fully grown adult male so deeply preoccupied with securing feminine ornaments would be a highly cryptic sight, but inside Ethan-san’s specific cultural loop, the behavior was a textbook mandatory requirement.

The Treant race anchored to the Dragon Arm Forest possessed an immense natural affinity with the earth’s blessing, making them master cultivators of flora who could seamlessly merge their presence with the surrounding trees to achieve absolute stealth. Up to that specific boundary, their performance data was an exact match for standard long-eared forest archetypes. However, Treant society operated on a strict matrix of polyandry backed by an absolute matriarchal hierarchy.

Female Treants represented the absolute largest physical builds among all six races blessed by the dragons. Conversely, the males possessed the absolute smallest, most delicate physical frames. Furthermore, because the male demographic occupied the structural position of needing to be actively chosen by a mate, they possessed an ingrained evolutionary instinct to heavily adorn themselves, strongly favoring the acquisition of highly cute accessories.

A sudden realization flashing through my mind, I resolved to probe his personal data loops.

“Come to think of it, Ethan-san… do you happen to have a special someone back home? You know, a potential candidate we could theoretically summon to join our roster here?”

Faced with a question so thoroughly driven by my blatant ulterior motives to secure high-tier reinforcements, the young Treant’s features frozen for a split second before a brilliant blush crept across his face, forcing him to cast his gaze downward.

“W-Well… if we are auditing my personal metrics, a specific individual does exist. However… she possesses a terrible resistance threshold against leaving the forest perimeter, you see.”

Ah, right. Now that he mentioned it, that specific environmental setting was indeed locked into the lore. To safeguard the sacred groves, female Treants strictly restricted themselves from ever stepping outside the borders of their native woodlands. On the flip side, the males were culturally dictated to hone their capabilities and maximize their personal appeal by embarking on extensive journeys across the realm—operating not as a standard bride-in-training, but rather as a groom-in-training to expand their horizons.

“Though… if I were to explicitly present data regarding how comprehensively magnificent and fascinating this facility is, she might actually agree to execute a migration cycle. She holds an exceptionally high curiosity parameter for rare anomalies, after all… Ah! But wait, these coordinates represent an absolute top-secret asset, don’t they?”

“Please, don’t worry about that boundary. As long as her behavioral programming dictates absolute confidentiality, you are completely cleared to share the data with her.”

“Is that genuinely permitted? Excellent! Honestly, she is so comprehensively tight-lipped that she practically refrains from vocalizing entirely, so I can guarantee her security parameters are flawless!”

Given that the Treant race historically possessed absolutely zero interest in any geopolitical structures outside their native forests, expanding his recruitment loops wasn’t bound to trigger a single administrative complication. Besides, they weren’t a species driven by toxic avarice to begin with.

Highly eager to integrate a powerful new asset into our vanguard lines, I pressed forward along the mine shaft, and within a few minutes of steady marching, our party arrived smoothly at the main staircase.

We had initiated our wolf-culling operations back on the eighth floor just after midday, and our exploratory sweep of the ninth stratum had already clocked roughly an hour and a half of continuous runtime. Calculating the external time parameters, the surface world was undoubtedly right on the verge of dipping into twilight.

Let’s simply run a quick diagnostic check on the tenth floor to lock in the waypoint, and wrap up our operations for the day, I calculated.

Anchoring that objective in mind, our party shifted its collective gaze toward the designated coordinates of the area boss—

“Huh?”

“Wait, what~?”

“My?…”

A chorus of synchronized, thoroughly confused murmurs escaped our lips simultaneously.

Spreading out across the wider structural chamber guarding the staircase was a cluster of highly familiar Wererats. A total of seven identical hostile entities were actively scurrying back and forth across the floor.

And that was literally it.

“Where on earth is the actual Boss unit?…”

“Yes… my scanning arrays are strictly registering low-tier mob signatures,” Paula noted, her brow furrowing.

Vetting the movement patterns of the active Wererats, every single specimen possessed an identical physical mass and scale; zero anomalies indicating a high-tier alpha variant registered within the quadrant. Their visual layouts were a flawless match for the basic trash mobs we had been systematically dismantling throughout the floor.

“Ah~! Maybe the true boss is running an active stealth matrix, waiting for us to clear the field so it can execute a dramatic, cinematic entrance!” Mia suggested.

“Ah, that sounds like a textbook dungeon trope, honestly. Alright, let’s execute the cleanup on these trash mobs first.”

Granted, while our standard tactical loops yielded maximum efficiency inside the narrow corridors since the walls prevented the hostiles from executing evasive shifts against our arrows and <Fire Bullet>, a wide, open chamber like this meant they would guaranteed deploy random, chaotic movement vectors to throw off our targeting.

Evaluating these parameters, I had zero choices left but to field our absolute ace unit.

Reaching into my inventory, I retrieved a single, pristine Blue Currant berry—a high-value treat I had meticulously stockpiled for emergencies—and held it directly beneath Kuu’s twitching beak.

In a single heartbeat, the little avian’s eyelids fluttered rapidly, and her beak snapped wide open as a steady stream of drool escaped her lips. Simultaneously, the fairy unit anchored to Paula’s shoulder unleashed an ecstatic, high-pitched giggle and launched an airborne dive to hijack the treat.

Furthermore, Yoru—who had been deeply asleep on the adjacent slime cushion—suddenly bolted upright despite her eyelids remaining completely glued shut, her frame navigating along a straight vector toward my hand.

Anticipating that her prize was right on the verge of being comprehensively plundered by her sister and the fairy, Kuu’s eyes snapped wide open. Flapping her wings with exceptional velocity at the absolute last second, the little bird successfully vacuumed up the Blue Currant and soared high into the air.

Having completely lost track of the berry, the sleepwalking Yoru unthinkingly latched onto my index finger and began blankly licking it with absolute devotion. Meanwhile, the fairy dove straight inside the collar of my tunic, running a frantic, high-intensity searching loop to verify if any remaining payload was hidden within my clothes.

“Good grief… their consumption metrics are truly terrifying. Or rather, their psychological obsession with sweets defies all calculation.”

Thoroughly charmed by the sheer cuteness of the gluttonous little entities, I fished out two additional berries from my inventory, distributing the payload to secure Yoru and the fairy’s absolute satisfaction. Gently patting the heads of the munching beast-girls, I directed my voice upward toward the hovering avian.

“Alright, Kuu. Go execute a rapid cleanup sequence for us. Deploy <Flap-Volt>!”

“Kyuuu-uuu!”

Despite the heavily compressed phrasing, my tactical intent was flawlessly communicated to her systems. Whipping the air into a frenzy with her wings, Kuu rocketed directly into the airspace commanding the seven Wererats. Spreading her gale-infused wings to their absolute limit, a massive concentration of violet lightning crystallized around her frame in a single split second.

— Combo Array: & !

A ruthless, blinding blizzard of electrified feathers rained down upon the floor below. The rat-faced hostiles unleashed a brief, collective shriek as the high-voltage payload completely overwhelmed their systems, leaving them charred crisp as they collapsed heavily onto the stone floor one after another.

Cradling the little avian back in my arms the exact fraction of a second she executed her return sweep, our party maintained a rigid defensive stance, keeping our eyes anchored on the staircase plaza to intercept any secondary phase of the encounter.

Yet, absolutely zero hostile responses manifested.

However, a highly unexpected environmental mechanical transition did trigger.

Rumble… The heavy iron portcullis blocking the path began slowly and silently grinding upward into the ceiling.

“Wait… that’s it? The fight is officially over?” Mia gasped.

“Ehh~? That basic loop was the entire boss encounter?!”

Running a quick harvesting sweep across the charred remains, my interface managed to process and recover a single, consolidated mass of Red Magic Stone. It appeared that a cluster of perfectly ordinary, unbuffed Wererats had genuinely represented the area boss of this stratum. I couldn’t quite calculate the structural logic behind such a layout, but the encounter was verified complete.

Feeling thoroughly unfulfilled by the anti-climactic resolution, our party descended the final steps to cross the threshold into the tenth floor.

The exact fraction of a second we stepped off the landing, an entirely unexpected geographical layout spread out before our eyes, causing our jaws to drop in absolute astonishment.

“Wait a second… did we just accidentally exit the dungeon entirely?!”