Month of Training

The next month passed by in a relentless and gruelling fashion. The three members of the training party would spend the whole month cooped up inside the Grand Dungeon. They would spend up to 16 hours a day training inside the dungeon, only returning to the surface after everyone else had left, returning to Tristan under the guise of night. Only to shower, eat, and sleep at the orphanage, before returning back to the dungeon, early next morning.

Since it was quite close to Tristan, the camp was relatively quiet and unused. As most adventurer's would rather return to Tristan to rest up properly. As the features of the Grand Dungeon made it easy to return to the surface and resume exploring, the need to camp inside the dungeon was erased.

From floor 20 onwards, the interior of the dungeon had changed, no longer a patchwork of rocks, earth, and metallic alloy. Instead, it became fully metallic, each wall, floor and cieling, crafted from the same metallic alloy, illuminating the floor with their luminiscent power lines. The monsters also changed, becoming more aggressive, traps became more deadly, but so was the loot dropped and rewards from chests.

During their first week, the party only managed to make their way through floor 25. Their progress slowed by lack of knowledge. Without a proper guide, they had to explore every route and side path they came across. Hounded by stronger monsters such as, Orthos the two headed hell hound, Gorgons or metallic vipers with their venomous bite and ability to turn prey into stone. 

The worst of the new monsters was the Sentinels, metallic alloy robots with humanoid upper body, and a floating sphere like lower half. Each sentinel would come with a different weapon, patrolling the dungeon in groups of 2 to 4 robots, each one incredibly sturdy, working together they demonstrated an ideal teamwork that any gold rank adventurer party should have. The party was able to fight groups of Sentinel up to 3, but if they were out numbered, all they could do was retreat.

During the second week, Reiji, Nraltia, and Souma finally have a breakthrough, able to learn from the sentinels, how to properly function as a team while still fighting with their own skills and nature. Able to control the flow of battle, the three were able to push ahead to floor 30, where they faced a Wyrm, a giant serpent boss monster without limbs or wings. 

Due to it's large size, it was stationary most of the time, but when ever it lashed out, it was Incredibly powerful, like a bullet being fired. It was also able to secrete poisonous gas that slowly filled the room, as well as shoot beams of petrification from it's eyes.

 After crushing it's eyes, the trio engaged in an all out frenzy, racing against time to defeat the boss, before the room was engulfed in poisonous gas, barely making it. By the end of the week, they had made it down to floor 33.

During the third week, they went all the way to the floor 40, engaging the boss. This time it was a lightning fast Cyborg Cerberus, a three headed dog that was part flesh and machine. The two biological heads breathed fire, while the machine head and metal front leg unleashed lightning. Unlike the Wyrm, Cerberus didn't use any indirect technique, instead choosing to battle straight forwardly.

When it's HP decreased to half, it split into three smaller hell hounds, attacking the party seperately. Normally a normal party would find it difficult, as each individual member maybe weaker than a gold rank, but together they form a true gold rank party. 

The trio challenging it however, had exceedingly high individual combat potential, thus found it much easier to fight alone. Unable to contend with the triple one sided beatdown, the Cyborg Cerberus fused back into one, and attempted to self destruct, but was killed before it could detonate it's core. After defeating the boss, they continued down to the floor 42.

From floor 41 onwards, the interior and dungeon changed again. The color of the metallic alloy became a dark gunmetal, the illumination of the power lines also changed, taking on a more sickly green color. Snaking vines of cables decorated the floors, each glowing with the same sickly green.

The type of monsters roaming the dungeon also changed, becoming stronger, they seem to become less organic, the deeper you ventured. Cyborg bats, Cyborg trees, even Cyborg humanoid monsters appeared. The cyborg humans were capable of using all kinds of spells and skills along with their cyber enhanced abilities, proving extremely difficult enemies.

During the fourth and final week, the trio challenged the boss on floor 50. It took them five days to map the way to the boss room completely. Resting on the sixth, they finally challenged the boss on the final day.

The boss on floor 50 was a cyborg Sphinx. Similar to the Cerberus, it was also a cyborg, but more of it's body had been mechanized, up to 50%. It's ability had been enhanced to be even greater than the previous bosses. It was as fast as Cerberus, as tough as the Ancient Golem, and as strong as the Wyrm.

It was able to shoot out powerful beams of concentrated mana, its claw struck with destructive lightning. It was also able to unleash a maddening roar that would instill different kinds of debuff on it's opponents. The debuffs include; blind, paralyze, fear, silence and worst of all, Toad. Each debuff would last a whole minute.

The trio was able to handle it's lightning claw just fine. But whenever it fired it's powerful beam, the party had no choice but to hide behind Reiji, who would summon his indestructible motorcycle as a tower shield. 

The difficulty was handling it's roar. It unleashed it's roar periodically, but was unable to use it consecutively, giving the party enough time to wait out each debuff. While some of the debuff was easier to handle for them like Blind and Silence, Paralyze was much harder. But nothing was as gruelling as waiting out the minute of Toad. 

Each debuff would only hit one person, meaning the other party members would have to figure out a way to defend the others who were incapable of fighting or defending themselves. The fight became a maddening battle of attrition that wore out not only their HP and MP/Ki but also their sanity.

After a long battle they were eventually able to defeat the Cyborg Sphinx, thanks to the limitations of it's madenning roar, finally obtaining the Class Up Item for Nraltia.