A few nights passed by as I descended more into the Deep. I had seen numerous odd creatures, and fought in several intense battles. I had even had to flee from time to time. The difficulty of the monsters could be hard to gauge and there was no steady progression. I could stumble across an extremely easy enemy that died in one blow, only for a bit later to meet an enemy that I had to escape from. Size and appearance didn’t always delineate the danger either.


    I had started making it a habit of using God and Devil Eye on new enemies so I could ascertain if I could defeat them. I was increasingly finding more and more monsters that weren’t worth the risk of fighting. I wasn’t in a dungeon, but it would be a real shame if I ended up in a battle to the death because I encountered an albino squirrel that was as fast as my eyes could see.


    I was starting to notice a pattern though. It seemed like one particularly difficult boss-like mob ruled over each area, and the rest of the monsters were weaker creatures that served as its food. In that case, it was more luck on whether I ran into that particular area’s boss. So much for getting breaks every five levels, and spending my nights in a safe room. I found that when I wanted to rest, it was best to depend on Alysia or Pait to remain as a guard. In that respect, I was glad that I had brought him.


    “We just have to keep looking, Master.”


    “I fear we could keep looking for months and be no closer to learning their whereabouts.” I sighed. “We traveled straight down from a volcano not too far from Gram’s Passage. I’d have expected we’d end up pretty close to where Terra had sent the imager up the vent. Yet, I don’t know if we need to go down, to the side, or even up.”


    I was a mouse in a cage, and the trick of using the bond to track her still wasn’t working. I had allocated a month, but it could even be years I could search down here and find no trace of them. I had naturally tried again to reincarnate them, and received no response from their souls either. They had to still be alive. They just had to be!