Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of the Other World (LN)

So far, according to my personal knowledge the merchants that can use Calculate include: Slave Merchants, Weapon Merchants, Armor Merchants, Clothes Merchants and Innkeepers, although I dont know if the Innkeepers Job allows him to use it or perhaps he also has the Merchant Job. As far as I know, if people dont have any of the aforementioned Jobs, they wont be able to use Calculate, meaning that my 30% discount will become effectively useless when doing business with them.

If the merchant possesses the Calculate Skill, my discounts will work without any problems, and the Skill itself is a passive one that triggers whenever a calculation has to be performed in ones mind, presenting you with the right answer straight away, factoring in the percentages from any increases or decreases the Skill in your possession might be giving you. Moreover, even though it is always active it doesnt use any MP. There is no need to use Calculate when you buy and sell things separately, because the numbers and their value wont change. 1 Nar is still 1 Nar, 100 Nars is still 100 Nars. That must be why my 30% discount didnt work, because when you buy and sell multiple things and the clerks Calculate activates, the Prize Discounts Skills activate as well. Well, it is nothing more but a hypothesis, but knowing that might actually come in handy in the future.

Once our buying business was completed, we were ready to go back to the Labyrinths second floor, this time for real.

Stay vigilant, master. The enemy is really close by.

We went forward with Roxannes guidance, and soon we saw it, our first monster encounter on the second floor. Appraisal!

Needlewood Lv.2

Bah, what a killjoy. The first enemy we have run into on the new floor was the same Needlewood that was prowling on the first floor, except this one had a higher level. I wonder it is going to become a pattern where the enemies stay the same but their levels will progressively go up with each floor? But I must admit, a part of me was genuinely happy that the level of that monster is only Lv.2. That means we should expect Lv.3 monsters on the third floor and Lv.4 monsters on the fourth floor, right?

But the most important question for now is: how much stronger did it get now that it is Lv.2? To test it out I attacked it with Durandal, and it died after a single blow, just like its brethren the floor below. It might have became stronger when its level went up, but in the end, when faced with the might of my Durandal it was still not enough to save it from being one-shotted. Also, I think the fact that I am much stronger and my levels are much higher in comparison to when I first entered the Labyrinths first floor might have something to do with that as well. Or at least I want to think that it does. Then, I noticed something.

Roxanne, look. Isnt that another monster, right there in the shadows?

Its a Green Caterpillar. It is a monster native to this particular floor. It is a rule that aside from the new ones, the monsters from the lower floors may also be present on the higher ones.

Roxanne imparted another piece of knowledge to me. I see. So the first floor only had Needlwoods because it was the very first floor. But here on the second floor, which is a native habitat of the Green Caterpillars (which are totally gross by the way), there is also a possibility of Needlewoods showing up, even though they are not this floors main monster. So when we will go up t the third floor, we will encounter both Needlewoods and Green Caterpillars in addition to the third floors main monster type, huh? I see, I see.

Okay, lets take this guy down as well!

On it!

Our next target was the Green Caterpillar Lv.2 in front of us. It was a caterpillar in every sense of the word, meaning that is was all bouncy and slimy, and had those big, creepy segmented eyes, and to add fuel to the fire this monstrosity was the size of a medium dog. I cant say that I am afraid of bugs, but I am also not particularily fond of them either, so every time I saw it crawling forward by constricting the muscles of its entire body I couldnt stop myself from shivering. Thankfully a short mid-battle observation showed that it only possessed a few slow, telegraphed attacks, so avoiding it was much easier than with the Udowood in the Boss Chamber. Now if my guess is correct it shouldnt be all that mobile with a body like that, so it wont be able to dodge me when I will flank it from the side and swing Durandal down at it!

Yes, this one was also downed in a single blow! When the green smoke disappeared, the Revealed Drop Item was a bundle of threads. Im guessing its the thread that these guys would eventually use to encase themselves in it to wait until they could morph into butterflies yeah, right, as if something so ordinarily cute was to happen in a deadly dungeon filled with bloodthirsty monsters.

As we made our way forward and fought more monsters, I started to notice a pattern of sorts. We are at the Labyrinths second level, the enemies are all Lv.2, and so far all of them came in groups of two: either two Needlewoods Lv.2, two Green Caterpillars Lv.2 or a mixture of a Needlewood Lv.2 and a Green Caterpillar Lv.2.

Two monsters ahead of us: one Needlewood and one Green Caterpillar. Shall we proceed that way, master?

By the way, is it just me, or is Roxanne able not only to smell the presence of monsters, but also differentiate between their types as well? Depending on how I choose to use it, it might become a very powerful ability recoinassance-wise.

As expected of my ever so reliable Roxanne. I am still not used to fighting two of them at the same time, but they die in one hit so I guess theres nothing to be afraid of. Lead the way then.

Right. Leave it all to me, master!

Roxanne then guided me to the location of the two Green Caterpillars. They had their backs against us, so by the time they realized we were approaching them we were able to dispatch them in a swift and sure manner.

I wonder if we will always fight pairs of enemies here.

I said after the finished battle.

Most likely. But we might as well happen upon just one enemy.

Huh. So, do you think that when we will go up to the third floor, we will fight a maximum of three enemies at once?

No. Based on what I heard, groups of three enemies start appearing from the 4thfloor onward, and from 8t floor onward there will be groups of up to four enemies at a time.

Thats a relief to hear.

So going with that tendency, there would be five enemies starting from the 16thfloor, am I correct?

Yes, you understood it perfectly. That is exactly right. You are such a swift learner.

That is nice to hear, but it doesnt change the fact that the further up we will go, things are only going to get scarier and more difficult. Even if the enemy numbers wont be increasing by one per each floor, we will have to face groups of three on the floors 4 through 7, and groups of 4 from 8thfloor upwards. And if the Labyrinth will be big enough, we will probably have to face groups of 5 different monsters from the 16thfloor onward, and six from the 32ndone. And that one makes me more than a little worried. Hopefully this Labyrinth wont be this big.

Well, there is no point worrying our asses off with such a distant future. For now we only have to deal with a maximum of two monsters at once, so when the time comes for us to finally take on larger groups, hopefully we are going to be richer and stronger, and capable of taking on any number of adversaries without breaking a sweat.