Crossing the second floor took the group ten hours while following a direct path. At that point in time, they were forced to stop to rest for a short while. They were hungry and thirsty as well. Billy had some rations and the others had some made using the tyrants' hearts as well, but it looked like soon they will have to eat the meat of the drakes, even if their flesh looked pretty tough. That was already within their expectations, but it still was disheartening. Besides, cooking fire monsters probably would be a pain in the ass.
"How many types of dragons are out there again?" Icarus asked.
"You asked if they weren't fictional creatures in the first place… When it comes to Earth knowledge at least," Billy said. "Aside from the tyrants and drakes, there the eastern ones, wyvern, wyrm, Quezatcoalt, hydras… These are the most known ones."
"Hydras, huh… This can't be good," Icarus said. "I always thought that they were snakes."
"Me too," Lucyna said.
"There are also the elemental variations, and types that only exist in only a few cultures," Billy added. "Like yamato no orochi. Albion… According to the legends, they could destroy entire worlds given the chance."
"You are well informed," Meryl said. "It is surprising that you didn't try to summon one of those."
"Dragons are scary, but they are cool as well… still, the cost to keep one well fed would be astronomical," Billy explained. "Besides, while the potential of dragons are massive, my other summoned monsters can reach incredible levels as well and they won't become stupidly large."
"So you summoned others than Golems and spiders you never showed them, though," Meryl said.
"I summoned some to protect my kids and the daughter of my best friends," Billy said. "My guess is that at some point, the titans were summoned creatures that became that powerful after absorbing mana for five hundred years."
It felt like Billy was creating a new generation of world-destroying monsters, but in the end, that kind of power probably had some similar ones in the past and yet, those creatures didn't last until now, so it was hard to imagine that he was being that reckless. What they didn't understand was that Billy would go to crazy lengths to keep his family safe. even if his actions might cause problems in the future, they couldn't be helped. He would just shrug it off while saying that he did everything to protect the present.
"Hey, do you think that the maker can create things like the food of our world?" Icarus asked. "I think it would be awesome to have the power to create the beer from Earth."
"There is beer here," Billy said.
"Yeah, but it tastes like they used products that had passed their expiration date and they used dirty tools while they were at it," Icarus said.
"You are just a lightweight when it comes to drinking," Billy said.
"Oh? Is this a challenge?" Icarus asked.
"No, I don't drink," Billy said. "At least not enough to get drunk, I want to keep myself focused all the time."
"Well… you are crazy cautious if anything," Icarus said.
The group stopped talking for a while and then they began to move again. Billy rested quite a bit since he forced himself to sleep deeply with Mind Control while the effect of his amulet was active. Recently, he had been sleeping less and less, but since he didn't notice his condition worsening, he thought that it was fine as long as his sleep is deep and peaceful.
As expected, on the third floor, they found three drakes spawning at the same time and Billy couldn't help but sigh… things finally reached the point where they couldn't save much energy while fighting, and they couldn't recover much between battles either. At least that was what everyone thought until Meryl summoned some zombies using the corpses of the fire drakes.
"I thought you disliked summoning them in confining spaces," Lucyna said.
"At this point in time, we don't have much of a choice," Meryl explained. "Besides, the heat is way worse than any smell the zombies could spread around. Besides, if despite that their smell starts to become dangerous, I can force them to burn each other with Fire Breath."
That was certainly an option, even if it was a dreadful one. Putting that aside, using the bodies of the previous fights, Meryl summoned zombies and used them to stop the next group of enemies that spawned. The others used that chance to attack from a distance, but Lucyna and Icarus didn't have long-ranged weapons. They had enough dexterity to cause good amounts of damage with bows, but none of them had the experience in using such a weapon, so it wouldn't help them make that kind of weapon for them. Crossbows would do, but in the end, they decided to keep using their current fighting style.
In any case, things stayed like that for the next two days… On the level, one extra drake got on their path on the fifth floor as well… Eventually, they found the entrance to the next level, but they knew that they were about to enter another sector and things would get complicated because they could sense a strong smell coming from it and the atmosphere down below was vibrating.
"Why we can't take a break…" Icarus said. "At this point in time, resting here won't help even a bit…"
At this point in time, Billy was forced to agree. He trained himself to sleep even with the weights on his body, even inside toxic dungeons, but that heat was probably made people get sick or worse if they try to sleep while enduring it. Without any other choice, he sealed the entrance and the exit of both paths with some massively thick ice walls. Unfortunately, even the walls and the ground were emitting a lot of heat there as well, so he covered everything with his ice magic.