At the beginning of the second floor they met with many Acromantula mobs, each mob had a number from 4 to 9 Acromantulas, they went back to the 3 rows strategy, playing it safe as they got used to battling against the giant spider monsters.

After killing 12 mobs this way, Everette gave the order to go in teams again, Everette´s team was the strongest, with himself and his two aides, with another two 3rd ranks, they had no problems with any of the mobs they faced, Ferdinand was in another team with four 3rd ranks, the third team was all 3rd ranks, and Theo was with four 3rd rank mid-levels.

At first, Theo´s teammates felt they got the short end of the stick having him on the team, back in their first mob when they saw him get taken by a bat they knew he was a goner, he impressed them with his sharp instincts and fighting prowess, after finishing the first floor together they approved of Theo and began depending on him.

Theo´s team was made up of Flynn 3rd rank mid-level water user, Olan 3rd rank mid-level brawler, Fester 3rd rank high wind user and lastly Amber 3rd rank mid-level ice user, Amber was 1 of 2 girls in the garrison, Flynn and Olan were 17 years old, Fester was 21 and Amber was 16.

Theo was the youngest in the garrison, the second being Ferdinand who was 15, Everette was 17 and then they all varied from 16 to 24 years old, it was a young garrison, which is something they looked for, the younger the trainees were the bigger room there was for growth.

As they got used to working together against the Acromantulas, Flynn and Amber would work together to immobilize the Acromantulas, and Olan and Theo would finish them off, with Fester keeping the other monster from flanking them with fireballs, this worked great for them, they killed the mobs as quickly as Ferdinand´s team.

Theo would keep practicing his Flowerwind Stance, he quickly learned that the spider’s weakest point was its underbelly, after Acromantula was immobilized by Ambers Ice magic, Theo would defend against the other 6 legs, using his favorite combo which ended with a parry upwards, this left the spider at its most vulnerable, and Theo went for the killing thrust at its abdomen.

After about a day they were almost at the end of the second floor, in the beginning, most of the Acromantulas were all E rank, so they were easy to deal with, past the midpoint they encountered bigger Acromantulas that were mostly D rank, they proved tougher, Everette decided to keep going in teams of 5.

This increased their resting time, none were seriously injured but battling a couple of hundred spiders left everyone tired, sore, and bruised, the only ones in pristine condition were Everette and his aides, as anytime they were somewhat hurt they used their high-grade supplies, this kept them in tip-top shape.

“The plus side of privilege,” said Flynn in disdain, Theo could tell that Flynn didn’t like nobles or highborn, every time Ferdinand came over to check on Theo, Flynn would roll his eyes or scoff at him and leave, this made Theo a little uncomfortable but there was nothing he could do and just ignored him.

“Hey Prim, how am I doing? am I close to ranking up?” Theo decided to ask while resting, “You´ve improved a lot, by killing 14 E rank Acromantulas giving 10 mana, and 8 D rank Acromantulas giving 25 mana you´ve grown by 340 mana, you have enough to push your rank” Prim explained to Theo, “That’s great, how do I rank up now?” Theo asked enthusiastically.

“There are two ways for an awakened to rank up, the first is to have enough mana for a rank up and then meditate to push your core into the next stage, this needs a high level of concentration and can be done at any time as long as you meet the mana requirements for the rank up, the other is called burst ranking, as most people don’t have mana readers, they will keep improving until their core pushes to the next rank by itself, this is also one of the best ways rank up because it will make your future rank ups more powerful. For example, if you decide to rank up now, you’ll be a 1,000 3rd rank low level and your subsequent levels will be about 2k mid-level, 4k high level, and 8k peak, and it will take you about 10k to reach 4th rank but if you wait for your core to dictate how much mana it can hold before ranking up, this number could grow exponentially” Prim explained.

“Do you think I should wait for my mana core to burst?” Theo asked, he felt a little overwhelmed by Prim’s explanation. “Yes, right now you´re at the foundation of your strength, the better your foundation the stronger you will be in the future because all Higborns and nobles are required to Burst Rank from their awakening till 4th rank they are stronger than commoners, I advise you to follow this route,” Prim said emphatically.

“What is the standard for a normal ranking?” Theo asked. Prim then decided to bring Theo inside her domain, “I thought it best to show you” Prim said as a board materialized, then on the board was written down a list.

Rankings:

1ST RANK

1 - 50 mana

2ND RANK

100 - 1k mana

3RD RANK

5k - 20k

4TH RANK

40k - 200k

5TH RANK

500k - 5M

6TH RANK

10M - 100M

7TH RANK

1B - unrecorded

(The k stands for thousands, M for million, and B for billions)

“This is a summary of each rank, there is a huge difference from 2nd and 3rd rank to 4th rank, then by each rank, there will be a world of contrast between them” Prim spoke emphatically. Theo pondered on this, now he understood why the 5th ranks were the highest rank he´d heard about, the strongest powers all in the capital, he thought that if he were to get to the 5th rank in his lifetime he could protect his family.

“Ok Prim, I will wait for the mana burst” Theo decided, “Smart choice Theodore,” Prim said as she brought Theo back.

After resting for a couple of hours, Everette resumed the dungeon dive, “Ok everyone, let’s try and finish the second floor by staying in teams, let’s go” Everette ordered.

As they battled more mobs, Theo liked his team, especially Amber and Flynn, they made it very safe for him and Olan to kill the Acromantulas, sometimes Amber would even cast her Ice javelin that could pierce the spiders, she only used it a few times as it probably consumed a lot of her mana.

Theo was now used to fighting the monsters, he could see them for what they were, hungry crazed things, that would do anything to kill him and his teammates, he no longer felt bad about ending their life, and even felt motivated as he now saw them as mana juice for his core.

Feeling stronger and stronger after each kill, he had found 1 mana core from a goblin and 6 mana cores from the Acromantulas, wanting to get as much to improve his core, his ultimate goal was now to become a 5th ranker.

As they made their way to the end of the second floor they came across a different-looking Acromantula mob, it had a weird-looking monster with them, It was like the Acromantulas but it was slender, with skinny black legs and no hairs and instead of the round head with many eyes, it looked like a black wolf's head with pincers on its mouth.

“Garrison let's hold here! There appear to be some Wolf Spiders with those mobs, Wolf Spiders are on the C beasts weaker scale but are still C beasts, this is slightly unexpected, guess the Intel was slightly off on this dungeon and should be classified as a C rank, I believe we can still handle it and we are at the end of the second level, raise your hand to keep going, whatever the majority decides we´ll do” Everette said as he raised his hand,

“There is something off about this dungeon,” Ferdinand said so both he and Theo kept their hands down but everyone else raised theirs, most of the trainees had never been inside a dungeon, and they were eager for the spoils.

In this world, besides your rank, the biggest asset to a person is their artifacts and items, the best place to find artifacts and items is dungeons, so they all wanted to find something, at the very least being able to get their hands on cores to boost their strength.

Everette then nodded and they went with the same strategy to kill the remaining mobs, the mobs were spaced out so they attracted them one by one, there were about 12 mobs left, so each team would take them out with Ferdinand and Everette taking out 3 each, the remaining mobs had about 6 or 7 Acromantulas and 1 Wolf Spider, the wolf spider took the longest, it was stronger and more resistant to attacks, Ferdinand gave the finishing blow to the first Wolf Spider, after checking the corpse they had found their first C grade monster core.

It was an orange-looking gem the size of a fist, twice the size of Theo´s cores, this made everyone try to go for the kill on the Wolf spiders which was dangerous, so Everette said the mana cores will be distributed evenly among the garrison.