Danmachi – Card Wizard

"What are you searching Aidan?" Asked Riveria as she had seen the young 12-year-old boy walk in the direction of the library while his partner had walked towards their residence to most likely rest before she planned their next dungeon dive.

"I'm looking for records of the Zeus and Hera familia and their dive to the 59th floor. Us not finding the stairs leading down is a problem. Not only will it stop us all from gaining enough excelia to raise our parameters properly, but it will also stop us from conquering more of the dungeon and beating their records. Moreover, their familia could make their way down, but why can't we, why did the dungeon change?" Answered Aidan while sending a question towards Riveria who was the most knowledgable person he knew on the subject of the dungeon. Even the gods weren't as learned as her when it came to this subject.

"We have a few records of their expedition to that floor, from what I read before, there were proper stairs and it was not a closed surface. However, as far as excelia is concerned, you should be able to raise your parameters to the maximum if you fight enough and spend enough time, but it would indeed take a lot of time. I'll research a but on it. I know a few ancient members of the Hera and Zeus familia who survived the fight with the one-eyed black dragon and the subsequent war on Orario. Maybe they'll have answers to your questions." She replied with a thoughtful look as her hand was prepped on her chin.

"Alright. In that case, I'll go and join Ais. She wants to make a trip to Melen so we'll be leaving for a while." Continued Aidan as he abandoned the idea to continue searching after learning that they didn't have the records he wanted. Instead, he decided to join Ais who was resting after their previous dive not that it took a lot of effort.

Aidan left behind a stunned Riveria who couldn't believe that the two youngsters of the familia would take a few days off to go and relax instead of immediately diving back into the dungeon.

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The following morning, the two teammates left the familia's mansion behind as they left towards Melen with a boy who was planning a vacation, unknown at what his partner had prepared for him.

Arriving at Melen half an hour later after they did some light jogging as a small workout, Ais took his hand before leading him towards the shore of the beach as he looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

"Don't you want to get a room before we go to the beach?" Couldn't help but ask Aidan who was being led by the golden-haired girl.

"I brought a tent. Before we go back to Orario, we'll be cleaning all the monsters in Lolog lake." Said the girl confidently as she looked at Aidan with a determined look.

"Eum why did you suddenly have this idea?" Asked Aidan as he felt a headache coming as looked at the incredibly huge lake with an opening on the ocean than at Ais who looked as determined as diving in the dungeon.

"Before we left for the expedition, I met a young girl who asked for my help." Answered Ais straightforwardly.

"And...?" Continued Aidan as he knew her well enough that she would not normally care about such things.

"I forgot my storage card and I ate my jagamarukun and couldn't pay, so the girl paid for me." Continued the girl as she took one out at the same time, feeling a bit hungry after talking about her favourite food. "So, I asked her if she needed my help for anything in exchange for paying for my food and she mentioned the problem of monsters in the lake and how she would like them all gone since they were a problem for everyone in Melen." She completed while looking at him with a helpless look as if saying 'It's not my fault, the circumstances forced me!'

'This is so stupid.' Thought Aidan as his previous headache only deepened while looked at Lolog lake. 'Well not that I have other things to do until we can make our way to the next floor, I don't want to only waste my time. Moreover, it'll change the pace of our lives for a while and I believe there was a familia level quest in the guild about clearing the lake of monsters, so it should keep Loki off of our backs for a while about never helping the familia.' Aidan thought while heaving a sight at the job ahead of them.

"Sure, why not?" Replied Aidan as he smiled at her.

"First thing to do is to make a barrier to block the monsters coming from the ocean to not make our job meaningless. Afterwards, we'll have to do a wide search and annihilate every single monster from the lake before completing the work." Completed Aidan as he gave a few tasks to accomplish.

"Thankfully, I already developed a wide-barrier card and a self-replenishing card to create large and sustainable barriers that would only hinder specific targets." He continued with a smile as the duo used a feather-weight card and ran atop the water in the direction of the huge hole in the rifts that opened a way to the ocean for both boats, fish and monsters alike.

Giving a few cards to Ais who knew what to do, they quickly set up a temporary barrier which Aidan would reinforce after having cleared all the monsters in the lake. The barrier had multiple effects such as a barrier against monsters, a monster repellant function that would repel the weaker ones to save energy on the barrier, a monster illusion barrier to make it seem as if it was a rock to try and evade the stronger monsters while adding a water regulator to stop any sort of waves from leaving the lake and make it seem as if waves simply hit a rock and broke apart. It was all in the goal of stopping monsters from even recognizing the place as a place where humans thrived.

As for the reason, it was a temporary barrier, if Aidan made the complete barrier immediately, the weaker monsters on the inside of the lake would also be repelled and end up near the shore where they would become a deadly force on the normal inhabitants of Melen.

"With the barrier done for the moment, let's move on to the next phase." Said Aidan as he gave Ais a hundred cards. "Place them on the west side of the lake including the side of Melen. There isn't a need for the perfect distance between each of them. Just make sure to place them all around. With the cards I place on the other side, they will create a sort of grid that will record the location of all the monsters in the lake simply by them moving. Then we only have to drop a few strong attacks on the lake to wake up all the monsters and they'll all move one way or another allowing us to locate them all." He smirked as he quickly started to set up the cards to make the grid on the east and rocky sides of the lake.

A few hours later, everything was set up properly as the mapping card linked to the grid was functioning properly. Now, he only had to send a few strong magical attacks on top of the lake randomly and the monsters would do the rest of the work for them. It was mostly for the slumbering monsters and those not moving much as the others were already perfectly shown on the grid.

"Ready?" Asked Aidan as he handed a few cards to Ais to play with, she always loved to throw some magic cards around to make huge explosions.

"Hum." Nodded the girl as she threw out ten cards with all of her strength at different places on the lake, all of them exploding at almost the same time.

With a look at the card that located more and more monsters, Aidan handed over another ten explosive fireball cards to Ais to throw at other random places, just in case they missed some monsters.

Finally, after a few minutes of huge steam and strong waves, Aidan located about fifteen thousand monsters living in the lake.

With a raised eyebrow, stunned at the huge number of monsters in the lake, Aidan remembered that there seemed to be a locked passage to the dungeon in the lake blocked by the corpse of the Leviathan. It wasn't hard to find it as they simply had to look at the map and find where some of the monsters disappeared and they would directly find the entrance to the water floors of the dungeon.

With the entrance located, Aidan went and added another barrier in the lake to prevent any small monsters from finding a way to leave the dungeon and sent them back inside of it.

"Alright, the preparations are done, let's move on to the clean-up operation." Concluded Aidan as Ais nodded her head with her sword in hand, ready for the bloodied battle in front of her.

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Yo, my Grammarly premium subscription has ended so for a while I won't correct the 62 mistakes of clarity, engageness and whatever else.. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, took me two and a half hours after work, good day.