Frostfire Legacy

Chapter 287 Back to the Dungeon!

6 a.m. sharp, at the Adventurer's Guild.

Aster and the girls were already gathered, waiting patiently at their usual corner table. Sitting around the table were Aster himself, Cassy, Kali, Liz, and Tina—all of their current members.

Then, what are they waiting for?

"Princess Celes! Sorry, I'm late!"

Right then, a young catkin man, with the same shade of hair color as Tina had, entered the guild and ran to their table in a beeline. Tina sighed, checking the floating timer on top of the guild's reception table, and muttered in dissatisfaction.

"You're not just late, you're half an hour late!" She scolded the man, who looked a little younger than she did.

The man looked apologetic, his misshapen cat ears lying flat on his head as he weaved out words—excuses—for his tardiness. "It's just that your father, the president, asked me several things before letting me go, delaying my departure by a full hour..."

Hearing that her father was involved, Tina's brows twitched before she let out a deep, irritated sigh.

"... Alright. Then, as discussed, you and your party will take this girl here straight from the 20th floor to the 21st floor," Tina continued.

The one she was pointing at was, of course, Cassy.

Unlike the others, who entered the 21st floor to exit the dungeon, Cassy was still on the 20th floor when she got kidnapped by Lorelai's group. As such, the girls, even Aster himself, couldn't help Cassy through the 20th floor by themselves.

Having no other choice, they had to request a different party to accompany her through the 20th floor, escorting her safely. And for that task, Tina took it upon herself to arrange the party—or rather, parties—who would help Cassy out.

The catkin man before them, despite his young appearance, actually was the leader of the 20th-floor raid party under the Zirroth Family. In truth, the said party was formed by Tina's father to keep an eye on her daughter as she speeds through the dungeon, but he hadn't expected them to breeze through several floors a day as if they were just walking in the park!

Aster sent a cursory look toward them, assessing their strengths from the amount of "mana" leaking from their bodies—an ability he learned naturally while trying to survive his hellish training with Ardra. Most of them were around level 30, which was quite high when considering the level of the 20th floor. However, this doesn't mean that Aster would feel safe leaving Cassy in their care.

"Cassy, take this."

As a safety measure, Aster passed something that he had been saving for a while—a small crystal that could fit within one's palm, glowing in a faint green hue with a faint white light in the middle. It looked fragile enough to crack from gripping it too tightly.

Cassy, unable to see, could only carefully feel the crystal's structure and ask. "What's this?"

"It's a teleportation crystal. When you're in danger, use that to exit the dungeon in an instant," he explained.

The item was something he got back when they went shopping for supplies a while ago but could only buy one due to the said crystal being popular and almost always running out of stock.

Of course, if such a convenient item existed, it wouldn't be weird for everyone to want to have one, for safety's sake. However, what deters them from buying it was, of course, its astronomical tag price. A single-use crystal like the one in Cassy's hand right now had cost Aster about 100 billion Tels!

"Such an item existed?" Cassy, of course, wasn't aware of the item's worth and simply took Aster's explanation at face value. "Alright, when danger approaches, I'll use it! Thanks, Star!"

Soon enough, Cassy entered the dungeon, escorted by the same female jaguarkin from before, along with the party's leader, the male catkin whom Tina already scolded to her heart's content.

After they entered, the large group of fifty adventurers entered the dungeon after them in an orderly manner. It took less than five minutes for all fifty of them to vanish into the dungeon's portal.

"... Then, shall we?"

After confirming that Cassy had already entered, Aster turned to the rest and asked. Seeing that everyone nodded their heads, he quickly turned around and headed toward the portal—paying the entrance fee to the Oni Uncle and entering.

"Be careful out there."

Just before their group went through the portal, the Oni Uncle spoke in a low, worried voice. Aster turned to him and nodded his head in acknowledgment before finally entering the dungeon once more.