My Upgrades Are Invincible

Lili would have liked to present a proud image of a skilled and useful support but when the four-foot woman had to stand on her tippy toes to push the cart's handle that was right at her faces height made it very hard to take her seriously.

We didnt even make it past the tenth floor before we all lost our patience at how stubborn she was at pulling the damn cart, because every time she hit a decent sized crack, the weight of the cart as it tipped back literally threw the midget in air as she held onto the handle like a parent playing upsie and throwing there kids in the air.

Seeing as I was the strongest other than Ryuu and Bell would have been better at running around to kill any monsters approaching us I took the responsibility of pulling the cart and even put Lili on top of the cart to play sniper.

"Jake I can't be sure whether I should be mad that you mounted me on top of here like a child or thank you for how convenient it is to shoot monsters from here." Lili grumbled reloading her bow gun after shooting some of the flying monsters following us.

Pretty sure that's the definition of short girl problems. Finding the irritating convenience's in mildly awkward positions.

Well either way now that I was the one pushing the cart, we were making pretty good time and seeing as there was certainly no Goliath or other Monster Rex to impede our path, we quickly continued our way into Rivira without any problems from other monsters.

"Ok so Ryuu do you know any secluded places on the floor we can setup?" I asked and she nodded.

"Yes, I do."

We followed the taciturn elf as she led us to one of the surrounding hills within the deep forest and against the rock wall of the hill there was a thick covering of vines and moss on the walls. "It's here." She pointed and I saw a decent sized rock covered in moss in an awkward position. Ryuu proved my thoughts of it being a hidden little cave as she was able to roll it easily to the side and as we walked in, I was surprised to see a number of what looked like jail cell's and supply's already here.

"This was the holding area for criminal Adventures detained in the dungeon as no one in Rivira is trustworthy, so we had to have a place where we could detain criminals and not risk them being freed."

"So, it's not a problem if we use this place?" Bell asked.

Ryuu looked a little nostalgic as she looked around the down the tunnel with jail cells lining the walls and the big storeroom plus living quarters in the back, but she shook her head. "It's better for this place to be used rather than simply forgotten."

For the next hour or two, I had no idea exactly as we had no clocks or anything I got some practice experimenting with my fusing abilities as I merged the stone walls and even the jail cell's doors into pillars to support the cave's structure and also giving us a lot more room. I also fused the ceiling and floor deeper into itself so rather than a hardy sandstone it fused into a much more durable limestone while also sinking or retreating a good bit making the cave's height a few feet higher so we wouldn't feel as claustrophobic if we ever had to spend a night or two in here.

"Alright that should do fine for the structure now let's get to making the lantern portal and go back home to our goddess's."

Bell replied. "Thats fine and tomorrow we can start getting into the monsters in the lower floors and explore the Large Tree Labyrinth." Yeah, not looking forward to all the antidotes I am going to need to chug from all the poisonous monster's down here...

Wait could I make like a necklace or something with a Bezoar added to it to ward off poisons?

I will have to try even if I doubt it would be that simple.

Either way after finishing up and making the cave livable we soon made our way back home through the lantern we took with us, and it was certainly a different experience. The teleportation was like trying to walk through a blow-dryer being blasted in your face at tornado speeds and its only as you power through, that you are launched out of the flames on the other side at the fire behind the church.

Thankfully with my newfound agility I was able to roll with the momentum and not fall on my face as Ryuu followed through the flame next and also skid across the ground from being launched out but Bell and Lili's arrival on the other hand wasn't nearly as graceful as Bell was bent halfway over obviously covering his face from the heat and quickly tripped and fell on his face while Lili tried to munchkin the space force trying to push you back through the lantern as she flew out of the flames with her bow gun aiming behind her.

"Huh so Rocket Jumping is a thing here too..." I got some weird looks for making no sense, but I was too busy mentally giggling at the thought of a midget Spartan in Halo trying to Rocket Jump to care about there opinions.

I clapped my hands getting everyone's attention as they sorted out there gear and stuff after returning home. "Alright guys we are moving out bright and early tomorrow so get some rest. Also, Bell, Lili, make sure to do some research on the Lower Floor's we are going to enter, as the Large Tree Labyrinth lives up to its name." I ordered and they slumped agreeing to do the homework.

I on the other hand already did plenty of homework studying the layout of publicly available maps of those damn jungle floors as most of them aren't even fully explored and there are numerus dangers in there that frankly don't belong at such a level like several level five predatorial plants that somehow got there. But in those five floors between the nineteenth and twenty fourth there's more variety of monsters there than from the first to the eighteenth.

So, in other words I will be milking my quests to level up even faster than before.

The next day before we left, I decided to try to be try my idea on making an anti-poison accessory and it was only when I fused several dozen antidotes and a gem that I was able to get one that would do so I put the anti-poison gem into a necklace and just wore it beneath my armor.

We were already starting off strong as I gutted open a Bugbear for my first monster of the day after moving into the nineteenth floor.

"Jake you should be wary of the Bug-Bears deceptive speed." Ryuu warned me and she was right as the big foot looking monster was much stockier than a minotaur but had the same fighting style and was much stronger and faster despite its size.

Despite coaching us on the monsters within the floor Ryuu wasn't just staying back watching us. No she danced around the jungle trees and low hanging vines to kill the monsters flitting around them as they ran at what they assumed to be the easier prey.

But even as our small party started to get surrounded by larger groups of monsters, we still had plenty of ways to clear out large groups of monsters with Bell and I being able to create large firebombs around us and with how moist the surroundings were with it being a jungle we weren't in too much danger of making an uncontrolled fire.

The most annoying thing so far was the groups of lizard men as they had a decent amount of heat resistance, so they were able to survive a good amount of our firepower along with naturally being within a group.

'Thankfully they aren't as strong as Bugbears.' I thought as I stabbed into one of them and used my shield to block the attacks of a duo on my side but they both combined couldn't hit as hard as a bugbear punching my shield.

I was already glad that I had the poison necklace as having a literally giant mushroom monster spray a thick cloud of poison spores over your group while fighting another group of monsters was annoying but instead of choking and dying on the toxic monster's spores, I just coughed like I breathed in some chalk dust after clapping the chalk board wipers and my response was to gleefully throw a huge fireball at the annoyance.