20 Held /Allein

Four days after Selena and co left floor fifty.

Back to our Classmates who were in the middle of making their way down to floor 65. While Kouki was leading the party going down the stairs to floor sixty-five Ryutarou Kaori Shizuku and Endo ended up forming their own small clique in the hero's party that was noticed by all but Kouki. 

As soon as they got to the middle of the bridge, the magic circle spawned just like the time when they got teleported to the floor due to the trap. Captain Meld was ready to lead the charge but Kouki stepped forwards. 

"Don't worry Meld-sama. We are not the same as we were back then so we can fight it this time." Front line will handle it while the second group takes out the Traum soldiers. "My will is blade light, heed my call and sunder my foe." Radiant slash was the first attack to hit the newly spawned behemoth.

"Raaa." The monster started charging at the party. 

"Grant unto your servant the strength to shake the earth— Herculean Might!" Ryutarou ran at the charging behemoth and threw a punch, recalling the last time when felt useless. The clash was even but he was satisfied with that so he called his new skill that he unlocked with a bit of help from a friend. "Let nothing stand in the way— Rage." Soon a red aura surrounded him but unlike the first few times when lost himself he learned that if doesn't lose himself to the boiling emotions he gets power but he better control. With another free hand he clenched into a fist and punched forward with new found strength with intention to break the deadlock. 

To everyone's surprise they saw Ryutarou push back the behemoth a few steps back. 

Shizuku sees the opening created by the clash and she runs up and jumps off Ryutarou's shoulder. "Peerless swordsmanship that rends even the heavens— Eternal Severance!" with her blade full of mana she slashed her katana vertical cut left eye and landed on its head causing the monster to shake its head. Unable to stay on its head Shizuku found herself falling back to the bridge but luckily Kaori was ready to catch her right behind her green platform and prevented her from hitting her back onto the ground. Seeing that Ryutarou needed a boost she also spawned a platform midair in front of Ryutarou.

Knowing that he can't maintain this power for long due to mana consumption, he jumps on the platform and once again moves towards the behemoth. Letting the rage take over for last bit of time skill would be active he got skill full power amp with both his hands drawn back he punched forward with left to its skull embedding his fist into its forehead and in rage state he punches into the slash eyeball and critical hit onto the monster brain due the shockwaves only need travel short distance to reach it brain destroy it in one go. 

As the second party notices the Traum soldiers fall apart, they all cheer at the win this time around instead of running with their tail tucked between their legs. Kouki just stood there dumb founded at his friends. He froze when he saw the familiar aura surrounding his friend's body and remembered the beat down he took for his cheek. 

Kaori walked up to the monster with a big smile on her face. But at the moment she reached it like the world around her went silent as she felt a disturbance on her Hajime radar. 

Slowly getting up Ryutarou noticed the air around Kaori feeling heavy and oppressive. "Um Kaori?"

Shizuku comes right next to Karori, shaking her shoulder making the air feel like the pressure had never existed. "Are you alright? You zoned out there."

"I'm Fine Shizu. I just felt like someone was trying to take something from me. And it isn't that witch."

"Do you know what she's talking about Shizuku?" Ryutarou asks, confused on what Kaori was talking about.

"This happened a lot when Selena first became Hajime's friend." All three of them froze with that statement with some excitement in their eyes. 

"This must be a sign that it all worked out for them." Ryutarou says as he gets behind the girls and wraps his arms around their necks.1

"Hey Shizu, Ryu, do you think we are strong enough now to protect them?"

"What are you talking about, we will definitely be fighting right beside them next time!" cheerfully expressing himself

"I don't know you two, maybe the two of them are even stronger. I mean they did take this on at a low level back then."

"Na, we got this Shizuku."

"I don't know but I hope we find them soon." In wistful tone 

At that moment Endo and Kouki came up and saw the scene of the group laughing and smiling like fools. 

"Glad to see you guys in high spirits we finally got revenge for Hajime and Selena" quickly changing the mood. 

"Are you alright Ryu I saw you use skill again?"

"Oh yeah that I can control it if I don't let the rage consume me, he he." Rubbing his nose 

"Speaking of which, I didn't know you had something so strong Ryutarou" smile Karori looking at him wanted to know more about it.

"Oh yeah, it happened while I was training with Kouki the other day. It looks like it's a weaker version of limit break and also, I go into a rage state. So, I need to make sure none of my allies are nearby so I don't hurt them since strength increases 1.5x my stats in that state. After the cast is over, I feel tired like a limit break."

"Oh I see that awesome man now you are stronger than before" Kouki smiles with a twitch recalling he was the leader and he was out shiny by his bud. 

— — — —

After a few seconds of feeling weightless in this dark space, the portal reopened. Spitting out from it, Selena flips in air to land on her feed and looks around to see where she ended up. Seeing slimes as big as a normal dog jump on to her. She uses an air step to jump over head and see a lot more kinds of slime come to her and she now knows that she ended up back on floor sixty. "Out of all the floors possible it had to be the one I hate the most." Some slimes on the ground started to cast air slash, fireball, water ball and earth needle to try to get her to fall into their loving embrace. After a while using the supersonic step in combination with air step, she made her way quickly though this floor, burning more mana since she did not want her cloth or anything she had on person to dissolve.

After a few hours of looking for an exit, she first found the upwards stair path much to her annoyance. Eventually finding the exit, she found that there were two king slimes at the stairs leading down. "You know I just can't with this floor! At least the bugs on some of the other floors don't have acid for blood." Quickly drawing her Abraxos, she takes three shots due to the king slimes devouring the first bullet on impact and the other bullets going for its core kill the pair instantly, so that she can move on to the next floor. After reaching their old base on floor 61 she got inside the base and casted ice wall to take a breath and rest up since now she had to go solo until she could catch up to her friends. 

Pull from her backpack the food she's been carrying from floor sixty-nine. She looked at the small pool of divinity water they left behind and saw it hadn't been drunk just yet. "Well look like that kick master isn't down here just yet. At least in practice, I got what I wanted at least." She sat down crisscross thinking what her plan should be for her training while making her way down. 

"Let's see, I don't have much ammo," pulling her bag closer to see what supplies she had on her. Unlike Hajime's pack that was a rectangle pack, they found a monster in forty that had a very elastic body that always retained its shape even when its insides were destroyed to make the perfect backpack. After he transmuted its shape, the bag could expand a lot, but what she loved the most was that no matter how much she put in it, it always went back to its regular shape. "Glad I had Hajime make a small case for my elixirs," seeing 20 vials and only about thirty-four bullets and her two spare outfits.

"Well, my gun is only for emergencies." Despite the fact that she has the knowledge for these ninjutsu, she doesn't know the basics on how to properly master them. Using a Ice Release: Breaking Fist to cover her fist in ice, she looked down at her hands and saw how her body released the ice chakra. This solidified her idea to make an ice sword instead since she must use it from now on and she didn't want to get blood on herself.

She dropped her ice fist, redoing the hand signs but stopped when she felt the chakra come out her hands and imagined a katana. Much to her dismay, it only looks like crudely made stalagmite. She tried a few more times with no success and still only made the stalagmite longer, but it was very fragile unlike her very strong Ice Release: Breaking Fist she based it on. She ran her very high chakra and mana capacity to also most mind down only managing to make stalagmite as long as her sword. 

The next day after she woke up, she packed up, dispelling what remained of her wall into Ice Release: Breaking Fist to save on her chakra. She headed down with intent to use close range combat only to polish it.

Selena went down and rushed past floor sixty-three as fast as possible to avoid the cockroaches on that level. Once she got to floor sixty-four, she started to train, using the monkey-like monsters on that floor. Getting a feeling for her mana/chakra levels, she had over 70% due to her mana recovery skill they got from one of the higher floors they already passed. Another night went by toiling away with her trying to create an ice sword. She managed to create the handle this time, since it was so close to her hand, where the chakra was being released, but the rest of the blade now looked like rapier but broke on first contact now.

As a side benefit of the training, her new ninjutsu made the hand sign for Ice Release: Breaking Fist drop to just ten hand signs, since she learned to mold the ice chakra by herself. This would make casting all her other ice related skills much faster too, but she still needs to use them in order to make them stronger since didn't know how her body guided it to make the desired effect. 

Since she knew the monkey-like monsters were aggressive on this floor she didn't get close to mind down that night, instead saving 20% of her reserves just in case. 

The following day, her ice wall was getting pelted with stones that eventually broke her wall. "Haha you fuckin prime apes come at me! I will use you as a whetstone." Already casting Ice Release: Breaking Fist, she decided to use martial skill on this floor, since blades make it too easy. She used supersonic step to rush at the monkeys. As she threw first for a clash, the enemy did not disappoint, seeming to use body strengthening on itself to meet the ice fist, only to be blown away given all momentum she threw in at that clash.

She soon learned how to start mixing kicks into her attack patterns and kicked off of her feet a few times. As she made her way slowly in one direction she remembered that on her last trip here, Hajime knocked down a lot of trees wanting a clear vision of the enemy to attack.

At one point in the battle, she used ice bombs to disorient the onslaught of enemies since she couldn't kill them fast enough. She also took on elixir when she ran out of stamina and didn't want to stop this fun training session she found herself in. The first time around she had her teammates, and it was too easy to blow everything away with unreasonable might.

As she made it to the end of this floor, she saw the king of the monkeys. It gave her a lewd look and Selena did not want to deal with this boss. She quickly drew Abraxos, shooting its head and heart to make sure it was dead.

"Pew, that was still scary the second time he he" she said as she walked joyfully down to the next floor since she got a lot of cool tips on how to approach fights. She realized that she has been too reliant on her chakra to deal with everything along with Hajime's and Yue's magic that it felt like it was just cheating at this point. Finding it ironic that looking at things now, Hajime will need close combat training when they finish the dungeon. Being low on stamina she went to sleep on floor sixty-five. 

The next day she woke up nice and rested and pulled out a katana, recalling that this floor had a lot of long ranged monsters so she ran and used supersonic step to cut a bloody path. While going through his floors she took splash damage due to the monsters using powerful AOE to try to kill her since she was too fast. She ended up using the wall quite a few times to save her stuff since she didn't want to get stuff destroyed by a random attack. 

"Aah, sometime I miss you Hajime" she says while looking at the burn marks on her outfit from a few fire attacks. Luckily her new undershirt was safe since Hajime made it out of tough snake skin. "I wonder how Hajime is doing with Yue. I hope she bridges the gap that I made with my existence." That night it was like any other night of her training. 

More of the same went on as she made her way to floor seventy, she ran through five of her elixir and only six bullets. Entering this floor she used hide presence and hoped she wouldn't run to any of the ghosts on her way to the boss, all the while trying to kill the boss from a distance. After making it half way through the floor, she got spotted by one of the ghosts and all hell broke loose. She had to dodge attacks from the ghosts once again. However, to her luck, she found her original path which allowed her to navigate the floor at a quicker pace with supersonic step; all the while having earth spears pierce her previous location.

After a while she finally met up with the monster that caused her to redo her dive solo. Running to the side, she tries to get closer to the monster knowing it will just shoot more projectiles at her if she just stood there. She started to form hand signs while running zig zag, forming one of her more destructive ninjutsu she had not been able to use previously due to having comrades around. From the opponent's point-of-view, the warper saw a chilling blue aura pulse around Selena which was powerful enough to be felt. Within a matter of seconds, the temperature drops to a point where it could see its breath due to the water vapor freezing. She was exhaling and it became colder, the water vapor in her breath lost its energy quickly. Rather than continuing to move freely, the molecules begin to pack themselves closely together. As they did so, they slowed down and began to change into either liquid or solid forms of water. Then within the next few seconds, the local temperature was around - 212.

The monster went on a crazy rampage throwing spectral claws at Selena not being able to survive in such cold temperature. Its movements slowed down rapidly and Selena looked truly ruthless as she just wanted to see it freeze to death. Soon after casting Ice Release: Avatar of Winter Desire it tried to escape as it once did the last time she fought it. Soon after it died, the portal it opened, falling apart before it got sucked in. She finally released the ninjutsu, and she could sense that her body felt off. She opened and closed her hands, noticing that her movements were a bit sluggish. Seeing this as a problem, she opened another vial of healing water and downed it, quickly recovering from that sluggishness.

"That's better. I'll have to be careful till we get restoration magic. Once I use Avatar of Winter Desire it will leave me in a weakened state. I'll need to cast it a few more times, I was barely able to feel what was going on. My chakra mixed too fast to see what it did to create that frozen hell." Not putting much thought into it, she ran down to see if Hajime left camp close to the entrance of the next floor. 

As soon as she got floor seventy-one, what she saw was a makeshift camp. When she walked into it, she saw on one of the walls a small letter carved into the wall of stone.

[Hey stupid. Hurry up, if it had teleported you to the upper floors. Going to rush the next ten floors since we are not sure and we'll slow down in the late seventies and go one floor after eighty if we can't find you. Ps this why guns are better ;p. Weeb] 

[Ps Yue said she got me covered.]

"Haha, I guess I should try to hurry up but the training I have been getting mmm." As she said that she was still trying to practice making a sword, at this point she gave up on making a katana since she couldn't control her chakra to make such a small blade. Now she recalls the bastard sword she used for a bit and thought it would be easier to mold a guard with a triangle shape blade. After changing the design of her blade, she took a few steps back to make a much bigger guard for the blade to be formed.

For the next few floors, she decided to use water release since, up to this point, she has been using it just to make drinkable water. And she has wind and water release ninjutsu in her head. Looking through her mind she thought of water bullet but she didn't know if it can be empowered after release so passed on trying to master it knowing she has about ten more floors to polish some skills and she need master any more of monster skills she knows she is sure to be getting, still recall how she still hasn't used steel leg skill that much. In the end she picked Wild Water Wave basically its power is equal to as much chakra you put into it. For the missing AOE, she picked Water Release: Stormy Blockade which crashes a body of water from around the caster onto the enemies around her. 

The next day she heads on an unknown path to her since she has only known stuff till this floor. She made sure that, when she killed different monsters from here on out, she picked parts of it up to make sure she improves her stats and maybe obtain a new skill or one she knew she was still missing. This floor was not as bad since it was open and saw mole-like monsters come out shooting their air spikes at Selena. Making quick work of them she floods the floor holes with a large body of water pushing them out their hidey holes. Pulling out her katana she used diamond skin on herself while she cut down the little monsters and made sure to pick up bits of meat on her way out the floor. 

'You know I wonder what Hajime and Yue did to this monster,' she thought as she saw what looked like an armadillo rolling, trying to crush her, all the while everything she had tried to use against it had just bounced off to this point. Getting mad she used focused hardening along with body strengthening on her left fist to blow a hole into the ground big enough to trap her armored monster. Soon she led it into the hole to trap it and force it to hop up and try to crawl out. And that moment she used multi-ice spears to attack its unprotected belly. After wandering on the floor for a while, she found bullet size holes on some walls and laughed at the fact that Hajime must have brought out Schlagen to be done with it.

"Well, that answers a lot." The floor turned out to be much easier due to her following all of the bullet hole filled walls as a track. 

'Looking back at this, with just me just making my way down solo, it made me happy, at first, to get some much-needed training. But, I am starting to lose my mind here.' After what felt like days Selena had to think of her old life just to keep her sanity. During this time while she was alone, she started singing different songs she remembered. "Can we pretend that airplanes in the night are like shooting stars''. Humming it while at the same time running from a pack of monsters, as she wasn't in the mood to kill them. The reward wasn't worth the work. 

A few hours later all that could be seen was a lone girl with a horde of rollie pollies shaking the floor with their massive weight. Reaching floor seventy-one she saw no camp. "Nooo! Why Hajime? I know that last floor was a joke but I want to rest QQ." She was forced to run further into the unknown.

Her misfortune just continued since she was overconfident and almost lost an arm to a prey mantis using gale claw attacks in close ranged fights against her. She would blow through another ten elixirs in the following eight floors and almost die to get the fear resistance from hordes of centipedes crawling all over the place. She ends up using all of the remaining ammo due to not wanting to have to deal with this floor. That night she ate just enough of the bugs' meat faint on the spot to be grossed out. "O thou Hajime where are thee".

Somewhere else Hajime started smirking out of nowhere. "That moron must be suffering from something stupid, I can feel it."

"Why do you say that?" Yue looked up at Hajime with a smile.

"It was just a gut feeling. I felt that when I had helped Selena eat monster meat she could not stand."

"Poor Selena. You know she takes a lot of your cruel jokes." Recalling when he threw her at a horde of monkeys on the previous floor. 

"That was to test my strength." Looking anywhere but Yue. "And you know she had fun fighting anyways." 

"I know it's just sad. I feel as though she was very nice before she met you."

"What was that?"

"Oh nothing."

Days passed by and Selena finally cleared seventy-nine and lost two outfits one be burned off and other be torn apart due to so many fights being so close to her enemies. Reaching the eighty floor she saw a new letter written on the wall.

[If you are reading this then I slowed down since I can't find you just yet. But I got feeling you ate something great =D good job. Make sure to eat everything, it's good for you. Based on the fact we haven't found you yet, I'm betting you got teleported behind us. Hurry up, we will slow down for the next ten floors.]

Seeing this message helped her as she had begun to feel lonely. It was hard when no one was there just to hear you out. 'I know I'm physically stronger, but mentally I feel as though I have a long way to go. Hajime just makes it look easy with his stoic looks.' 

[Ps. Yue dropped a single tear for you.]

"I can't tell if Yue sees me as her mortal enemy or friend at this point." She says, while scratching her head. She then filled a hole left behind with water to clean herself off since she didn't like to smell all that much. "I can't tell how Hajime went a full month like this. I'm glad I got him to wash off at least."

That night she finally managed to make an ice bastard sword and have it last for a few hits. Now she just needs to improve it's build till it feels like Ice Release: Breaking Fist, where as long as she is pumping chakra into it, it holds its form better.

Going down floors eighty to eighty-two she kept using her new ice sword ninjutsu on her enemy spawn dual wielding just in case in the middle of a clash one broke she had another ready to go. Luckily, with all the training she does each night, she finally made her ice blade, her bigger chakra/ mana pool also didn't interfere due to learning to control the much bigger pool on most floors with her training.

Reaching floor eighty-five she found the camp Hajime and Yue made was broken due to slashes on the wall that was lucky to have survived an onslaught. Or they could be from all of the bullet holes she saw on the camp walls. Seeing no reason to stay the night on this floor she rested for a few hours to recover her strength and set off to wonder what would cause slashes that look like swords. Soon, on the edge of her sense presence skill, she felt something big walk slowly towards her. Pulling out her katana and casting ice blade she ran towards the presence, wanting to get this over with, only to see a zombie-like thing that looked like it was sewn together with three arms instead of two and its head missing, wielding three swords.   

Seeing this monster, she knew fighting it would be a lot of work, but she had the chance to polish her sword art all this time on her dungeon run. Especially since monsters don't parry and go for faints and lunges. Using body strengthening on her whole body, she lit up her body with dark purple mana eager for the fight that might finally cause her to use sword skill. 

Somewhere on floor eighty-eight Hajime stopped and looked up.

"What up Hajime?" Yue asks, confused why he stopped suddenly.

"I can finally sense Selena. It looks like she ended up being teleported some floors above us instead of further down." Though she can be exasperating. Turn around he head back to regroup with battle junky teammate.

"What is she doing?"

"I think she picked a fight with those sword wielding monsters two floors above us. She is also using a lot of magical energy instead of just using her magic. I'm guessing that she might be out of ammo." A smile appeared on his face and started running towards his best friend knowing she did whatever she wanted despite knowing she had to catch up. 

Yue exhaled. "Selena, I wish you took much longer." 

Back at the start of the fight in the middle of her run towards she activated diamond protection on her ice blade made it more durable. She swung both her blade down on to the monster and it met her clash with a cross guard with neither side winning. With the newly named Santoryu, it used its third arm going for a piercing attack on Selena causing her to break off and use her katana to divert the oncoming attack.

With that, the Santoryu overpowered her single blade with its cross guard and pushed her off. Using the momentum, Selena flips backwards in the air to get some distance from the Santoryu, but it rushes at her with the upper left and the right blades raised up aiming to slash her arms off. Selena coats her swords with Gale Claw as she moves to redirect the blows away from her, while keeping its lower left arm in view incase of another piercing attack. While the katana was able to successfully divert the monster's left blade, her Ice Blade shattered after moving the right blade a little bit to the side. After redirecting the blows away from her body, she used supersonic step to dash forward, swinging her katana towards the monster's right leg in an attempt to cut one of its legs off. At the same time, it moves faster than physically possible and jumps backwards with its whole body, making the cut Selena was going for, to become a very shallow cut.

"I know I can beat you if I use any ninjutsu, but I can't if there might be an enemy that can absorb them or outright block them." She pumps more mana into her stats while activating Gale Claw on her blade and diamond skin. She knows that making any more Ice Blades with her current skill level would be meaningless since it wasn't going to last long enough to make a difference. So she decides to only use the katana for this next part of the battle.

This time the monster rushed at Selena swinging its blades from different angles, not wanting to try another clash of strength. As the clash continues, both sides keep taking more damage, however Selena has been receiving more than she gives. It is a three v one blade fight, and she makes sure to block or redirect any fatal blows, while also getting a few strikes of her own in.

After another clash, both Selena and Santoryu leap back away from each other. At some point in one of the clashes, she had managed to cut one of the left hands off, making the blade fight to be a two v one. Selena looked like a mess, with her last set of clothes sliced and cut up, only leaving just enough to cover some of her important bits.

Her katana started glowing again as she activated the Gale Claw skill once more. The monster grew used to the feeling of when magic was on the blade and would use both its blades to block those attacks they were always stronger. As both parties met once again the clash was intense as wind was whipping all around them and the ground got marked with slashes.

At that moment she was so frustrated with not being able to break the deadlock. She just couldn't process information fast enough to make the blade connect for a finish blow. At that moment her vision became much clearer and it felt as though she had plenty of time to react to the oncoming attacks from the once formidable monster.

Noticing an opening finally presented itself in the monster's defense, she goes for a lung stab on its mana core. Her blade embeds itself into the mana core, killing it instantly. As she pulls the katana out, the blade snaps it half from all of the stress. 

"Oh, Hajime is going to kill me" looking at her once dub black blade. After the battle, she felt a wave of exhaustion as her vision returned to normal. She fell on her knees and knew she was well past her limit. She broke her emergency molar with healing water to heal up from one of her greatest fights to date. As Selena was calming down from the fight, she heard the sound of metal scraping against the floor from all around her. 

"Ah shit, here we go again…"