From the sixty-sixth floor on, there are minotaurs, but also their superior species king minotaur.
These are treated like bosses, but they spawn randomly, not at the end.
The thing to watch out for here is whether there are still minotaurs alive when the king minotaur spawns. They’re strong on their own, but according to what I’ve read, when king minotaurs spawn, they take command of the minotaurs around them.
It was like this in Majolica’s dungeon too, but monsters under the command of a superior species are trouble because they coordinate their attacks.
Minotaurs that spawn after that also join the king minotaur, meaning that in a way, the difficulty varies depending on how quickly we can take it down.
That said, on the sixty-sixth and sixty-seventh floors the king minotaur spawns at the end, so we get through these floors without much hassle.
“It’s here.”
But on the sixty-eighth, luckily or not, it spawns with the starting batch.
We move to take it down, but the others buy time by acting as a shield.
I say acting as a shield, but many of them are actually holding shields instead of weapons, and some even block magic.
It’s not just the monsters that get upgraded as we go up, their equipment does too.
In the end, it takes us an hour to get through this floor. We change how we fight halfway through, splitting between a team that draws their attention and defends, and one that takes them out one at a time.
The first one is centered around me, accompanied by Kaina, Hikari, and Mia. The other is Sera and Rurika, with Chris moving between teams as the situation calls for it.
Hikari is put on defense because she’s fighting making use of the paralysis status condition. The minotaurs are resistant against it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work at all, and we were expecting a long fight anyway.
“I’m tired.”
Says Rurika and we all nod.
Chris in particular was under a big strain, so she sits on the ground like she’s falling.
I was busy guarding and casting support magic too, but I was walking here and there, so it’s not as bad for me.
“Should we go back? I want to finish the dungeon, but we’re not in a hurry, and it’ll be trouble if this happens again on the next floor.”
“That makes sense. We can talk about what to do after we get back.”
Says Sera, and no one objects.
There are going to be minotaurs and king minotaurs on at least two more floors, so we should go back and plan… Talk about what to do in what situation.
We spent a lot of time on that floor because we were on the defensive too much. It’s not wrong to focus on being safe, but it was too intense on our stamina.
We’ve had long fights before, but it’s different when it’s minotaurs. It’s not like we can’t take them down, but they’re strong. And they’re the kind of thing that is exhausting to fight against for a long time.
There were even ones that used magic weapons and equipment. The fact that the king minotaur used them effectively is part of why we had trouble finishing it.
We leave the dungeon just as Naoto and the others are leaving too.
“Hey guys. Done for the day?”
It might seem soon to them, because we’ve been exploring the dungeon until dinner time lately. But today, dinner time is in three hours when we leave.
“We need to discuss strategy, so we left… We can talk more there.”
There are a lot of adventurers here, and they’ll listen if we talk here, and bother us.
Naoto thinks so too, so we leave the building.
“By the way, now that the tournament is over, we should look for an inn, right?”
With not as many people around, there will be room in inns too. We can’t just let them look after us forever.
“True. I want to talk to Argo and the others about that. We have those two kids too.”
Leaving and going to an inn might affect them.
When we return to our lodging, we talk about king minotaurs. Naoto’s party is surprised to hear what we have to say, but we talk about strategy while listening to their thoughts on how they would deal with them.
This goes on until dinner time, when Argo and the others get back and are about to join us, but the conversation is cut off when we’re called for dinner.
And after we have dinner, we ask them about inns.
“I think you can stay here for now. You can pay your rent by fighting the beast king or knights once in a while, they said.”
Then we all talk about the dungeon, and the beast king even drops by, but he’s dragged away by Ryuryu.
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but the others buy it time by acting as a shield. -> but the others buy time by acting as a shield.
Thanks.