Laying down as she kept an eye out for any monster that might want to try and ambush her while she was recovering her mana, Scaly only calmed down after a little over two hours passed since she had made her way inside the small mountain valley. Feeling confident that there shouldn't be any more monsters secretly watching over her.

Even if there were still a few monsters watching over her at this point in time and they decided to attack the moment she closed her eyes to sleep, Scaly was confident that she would be able to take them on now that she had already recovered a good part of her strength.

With that in mind, Scaly decided to take a quick look at her status. Feeling curious about how much her strength had increased after she had managed to kill so many strong monsters thanks to the help of the powerful human scaring all of them to the point where she could easily kill them off without any fight.

Name: Scaly

Race: Water Dragon Hatchling

Dragon blood: 3% (Inferior)

Level: 7/10, 78%

STR: 188 |VIT: 330 | DEX: 143 | M: 455

Skills: [Dragon Bloodline, lvl 4], [Dragon Flight, lvl 2], [Dragon Water Magic, lvl 2], [Poison Resistance, lvl 3], [Dragon Claw Strike, lvl 5], [Swimming, lvl 1], [Dragon Breath (Water), lvl 3], [Corrosion Resistance, lvl 1]

Looking through her status, the first thing Scaly noticed was the fact that the concentration of her dragon blood had increased. Although only a single percentage, it was still a massive change for the current Scaly who only had two percentage points before.

Next up, she also noticed that her dragon water magic had increased in level. Making her unconsciously relate the increase in dragon blood with the increase in level of her dragon water magic.

Is the concentration of dragon blood perhaps related to the level of my dragon related skills? If I continue increasing their levels, will the concentration of dragon blood in my body continue to increase!?

Narrowing both her eyes as she thought about this, Scaly unconsciously turned to look at a small squirrel monster that just so happened to have wandered down to the ground a few meters away from her new temporary home to drink from the small stream running down one of the mountains surrounding the valley.

Squeak…? SQUEAK!?

Feeling Scaly's gaze that seemed to be anything but friendly, the squirrel jumped up in a panic before giving up on its original goal. Soon disappearing up a nearby tree before Scaly could continue her train of thought and use the squirrel to try and increase the level of her dragon skills.

How unfortunate… Oh well, I still need to recover my strength before I start hunting again…

Shaking her head as she watched how the squirrel disappeared the moment it sensed her gaze, Scaly didn't care too much about it as her attention returned to her status- or more specifically, her stats.

The reason for this was that none of them had reached the number she expected to see after reaching level 7. Instead, they seemed to have increased more than expected.

Not something Scaly would complain about, but she still wanted to find out why her stats had increased more than expected so she could repeat whatever she had done to cause this unexpected increase in strength.

Although the total increase in strength only amounted to each of her stats increased five points more than expected, it was still a full 20 points in total. Almost the same as the 31 points she got whenever she leveled up.

Is it perhaps also related to the increase in my dragon blood…?

In the end, not able to figure out where the random increase in strength had come from, Scaly ultimately turned towards the dragon blood that had increased by a single percentage since that last time she had looked at her status.

However, no matter how hard she tried to inspect her dragon blood to figure out if this was the case, nothing happened, and she could only throw the matter to the back of her mind for now

If it really was the dragon blood that increased her strength as it grew more concentrated in her body, she would inevitably learn about it when the concentration increased again in the future. After all, she had only reached a measly 3 percent so far. Still far off from being at the level of a true dragon that didn't have any other kind of lesser bloodline present in noble blood.

Shaking her small head as she thought about all of this, Scaly glanced over her status one last time before finally laying down to sleep so she could properly recover her mana.

The last thoughts appearing in her head before drifting off to sleep being whether or not she might be able to reach 500 magic before her next evolution with the help of her dragon blood that seemed to increase her strength.

Considering that she would currently end up with a total of 491 magic when reaching level 10, she just needed to increase the concentration of her dragon blood to 5 percent if she wanted to reach the 500 magic before her next evolution.

Of course, this was far easier said than done, as she still didn't have any idea about how to quickly raise the level of her dragon-based skills without hunting down powerful monsters and push her own limits like she had done not too long ago when confronting the large number of monsters that had surrounded her and forced her to come up with a new and improved water ball to deal with them.

Well… It wasn't so much the giant water ball that ended up dealing with them, but more so gravity that had dragged the few closest to her back then into the valley she was now sleeping inside of without any major problems.

…

Unknown to Scaly, just as she closed her eyes to sleep and recover the strength and mana she had used up not too long ago, a large monster emerged on the mountain she had just fought the large number of demon beasts on not too long ago, as it seemingly searched through the mountain with both of its eyes scanning the surroundings.

Whoosh-!

Unfortunately, it didn't seem to find what it had been looking for even after it used its some kind of strange magic to sweep through the place and thoroughly search the place.

Luckily for Scaly, even though she had indeed been spotted by the large monster's strange magic sensing ability, it didn't seem the slightest bit interested in her, as it soon turned to leave in the direction of the newly established spiral staircase filled with killing intent.

At this point in time, it was rather obvious that the target of this large monster was none other than the human that had cleaved a path through two mountains and made all the monsters unable to do anything as they were left shivering fearfully while Scaly had taken the opportunity to rapidly grow her strength.

Roar!?

However, as the monster reached the first stop of the spiral staircase, it suddenly jumped back-

Booom-!

Just in time, as a small device popped up from the ground a exploded in the place that the large monster had been about to step.

Roar…!

Having barely managed to escape with its life, the monster understood that the path up the spiral staircase was nothing more than a suicidal mission.

Although the crimson flame knight had left in a hurry back then and didn't spend longer than necessary after killing off the branch guild leader, it didn't mean he would just leave a path up to the third floor of the dungeon open for any random monsters to wander up.

Even more so because of the fact that the spiral staircase in question happened to be located right next to a town that had already been severely damaged due to the deliberate incompetence of the now dead branch guild leader.

Two powerful B Rank Monster, like the ancient dire wolves, that had yet to be caught, was already too much for the town to handle on its own.

Tough they did have the assistance of the crimson flame knight and the few people who had come together with the guild leader to investigate the activation of the guardian formation, if more than two A Rank monsters appeared, they would quickly get overwhelmed.

For this reason, the crimson flame knight didn't hold back, as he used everything at his disposal to try and prevent a powerful monster from easily making its way up the spiral staircase.

Temporary as this solution might be, it would at least buy the Adventurer's guild a bit more time to request assistance from any of the other towns on third floor of the dungeon and try to figure out how to stop powerful monsters from crawling up the spiral staircase.

After all, the spiral staircase just so happened to have landed in one of the more dangerous regions of fourth floor, a place that even the powerful crimson flame knight didn't dare linger around for too…

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