Chapter 276

Dungeon Third Floor: Exploration of the Forest Level Begins
After two days on the Grassland Floor, we decided to move on to the next level.
From the second floor onward, we have to defeat a powerful monster known as the floor boss to progress. For us, though, such monsters are hardly an obstacle.
In fact, since there's only one of them, they’re even easier to deal with.
Talat immobilized it with his threads, froze it solid, and shattered it—it was over in moments.

Descending the staircase from the second floor, we arrived at the third floor: the Forest Floor.
While the second floor consisted mostly of open grasslands with occasional clusters of trees, this floor is dominated by dense forest, with only sparse patches of open ground.
It looks like moving around here will be a hassle.

“Lily, I’ve heard that treasure chests on this floor are often found in tree hollows or at the base of trees. Sometimes, they’re even hidden in bird nests high up in the trees.”

“So, should we just ignore the treasure chests up in the trees?”

“Not necessarily. Talat and the Kiblinki Saltas could easily search the treetops, couldn’t they?”

Oh, right.
I had one of the Kiblinki Saltas climb a tree and keep an eye out from above.
In less than ten minutes, we’d already collected three treasure chests.
According to Melanie, treetop chests are harder to find and are often left untouched because of the time it takes to climb.
The ones we found were iron chests, which could mean better loot.

We kept walking while searching for more treasure chests, and about three hours passed.
We managed to gather around 20 chests in total.
However, the frequent battles made progress slow.
The forest is crawling with wolf-type monsters, boars, bears, and other creatures you’d expect to find in a woodland environment—not to mention insects.

“As expected of the third floor, it’s hard to make any headway.”

Melanie said with a weary expression.
From this floor onward, monster loot started to improve.
However, rare items are still uncommon, and according to the Adventurers' Guild, the loot here isn’t particularly noteworthy.

“Melanie, isn’t there some kind of monster-repelling tool we could use?”

“If only! Unfortunately, dungeon monsters are immune to such tools.”

So that’s out of the question, too.
Looks like we’ll just have to push forward.

By the end of the day, we’d collected 52 treasure chests.
The contents were decent.
Getting 10 summoning cards was a highlight, especially since some of them can summon quite powerful monsters. That’s promising.
The rest of the loot? Well… let’s just say we’ll bring it to the Adventurers' Guild or the Trade Guild when we get back.

What do you think about this chapter?