The Cardboard Explorer

On the way there, Cade pa.s.sed through quite a lot of people. He never once came out at that time and he thought maybe it was normal that people woke up that early every day.

"Urm, I guess not," said Cade immediately as he found out the real reason for that many people. Cade finally saw the slime dungeon"s portal. It was located in a small children park and it looked like kids had been block from entering the area.

To Cade surprise, there were a lot of explorers there and the slime dungeon was supposed to be the most unpopular dungeon in the universe but looked at all the explorers around.

As Cade got closer to the portal, to his surprise, the level limit of the dungeon had increased to 20 and that meant there will be 20 floors for this slime dungeon.

"That was fast. How in the world did they managed to add another five floors in a night? Did the explorers bulldoze the slime to reach the boss floor?" said Cade as he was surprise to see the level limit of 15 had increased to 20 overnight.

As he was looking at the dungeon portal, suddenly the level limit increased to 21. Cade"s mouth was wide opened. He wondered how strong everyone there that they cleared a floor that fast.

"I feel bad for the slime because they were easily killed by the explorers… I need to get that language skill fast and ask them what is actually happening," said Cade.

There was nothing much to do outside as Cade had already prepared everything and he will only wander around on the first floor for two days max.

Cade entered the slime dungeon. Nothing surprised Cade when he entered the dungeon. It had quite the same feeling as the big tongue toad dungeon. It did not look like the dungeon made any change after he got out of the big tongue toad dungeon.

Looking around, Cade went to find some slime to kill. He wanted to know if they really became hostile as what the other explorers said.

They might turn out like that when many of them were killed just like what he had encountered before. He wondered if it was the same.

As Cade walked around, something caught his eyes and it was not a slime. Cade stared at what he saw and he walked to the direction of that thing.

Once Cade arrived to the thing, he stood there staring at it. On the ground, there were something bulging out of it… no, something grew on it. Cade remembered the system had the new appraisal function after the new update.

Cade appraised that thing on the ground and he was not surprise by it. The reason was because it might have something to do with the dungeon changing. Nothing about the dungeon changing surprised him anymore.

The system appraised the thing on the ground as iron ore. Other than the name, there was no other info shown.

There was never once an ore can be found inside the dungeon. When the dungeon appeared for the past 10 000 years, other than the drops from the monster, there was nothing else can be gained from the dungeon.

Something like ore and herbs were inexistent in the dungeon. All explorers will get were the magic crystal, random equipment, skill book and puzzle piece.

The dungeon had apparently changed and materials like part of the monster body can be get from drop, more different type of magic crystal (only for Cade at the moment from Cade"s knowledge) can be found.

Cade still did not find out any news about the uses of the materials. No one had said anything about them and he was sure that they were researching it.

Cade can confirm one thing about the material drop he got; they can be eaten. It will taste better if they know how to cook them.

Cade took out his cardboard short sword and dug the iron ore out. It was quite easy to dug out that ore as if it was just recently planted there.

Cade held the iron ore and to his surprise, the appraisal function of the system updated the info about the iron ore.

Name: Iron Ore

Stats: Attack, Defense, Iron

As Cade stared at the iron ore, he put it inside his storage. There was nothing he can do to the ore and decided to sell it once he got out of the dungeon. If he found more of them, he will just dig them out and sell them later.

Cade continued walking inside the dungeon and he was thinking if the ore or materials he found can be used to upgrade his linked equipment when they can be upgraded once more in the future?

Cade found more and more iron ore laying around and that confirmed his thought earlier that this was part of the changes happening to the dungeon.

With all these resources around, Cade found it weird that contrary to the bustling of explorers outside, there were not many of them inside the dungeon.

At the moment, Cade had never once met another explorer. He wore his cardboard equipment and the only time he was stared at was when he was outside the dungeon.

He can feel that no one was staring at him at the moment inside the dungeon and that meant no explorers were around.

Cade thought that maybe the slime was too easy for them and decided to let only the weaker or beginner member of their party to handle them while they wait outside.

As Cade was collecting the iron ore, his pace had slowed down. He was not that far into the dungeon and while he was collecting the iron ore, he saw a slime jumping around towards him.

Looking at the slime"s face, Cade knew it was hostile and confirmed what the other explorers had been saying.

The slime came to him fast and Cade saw the slime stat thanks to the system"s appraisal. Just like the iron ore, only the name of the slime was shown.

"Hmm…" Cade was thinking of something and when he saw the slime had taken a position to attack, Cade did not do anything as the first floor of the dungeon only contained level 1 monsters.

The slime attack and Cade had quite a bit of experience killing a slime and he easily slashed the slime"s core and immediately killed the slime.

The notification to choose his drop appeared and he checked them one by one to see what the slime can offer.

There were three materials can be gained from the slime. The slime"s core, the slime"s jelly body and the slime"s fluid. Cade knew about the medicinal properties of the slime fluid but did not know the other two materials uses.

He ignored them as that was not the reason he came to the slime dungeon. Moving on to the magic crystal list, there were three of them.

The first magic crystal was the vitality crystal and that was what the slime usually dropped. The second magic crystal was the slime crystal. There was no picture shown but Cade can guess the appearance thanks to him obtaining the toad crystal.

The third was the null crystal. Null crystal was quite common but it uses was quite limited and due to that, it did not fetch for quite a lot of money.

Looking at the last magic crystal, Cade can somehow see a pattern there. The big blue tongue toad had the last magic crystal being the ice crystal and the slime had the null crystal.

"Hmm~ is the last crystal indicating their elemental?" thought Cade. Cade moved on to the equipment and nothing special from them and he quickly checked the skill book.

There were two of them. First being the physical resistance that Cade had already learned and the second being fluid body skill.

Cade had never heard of the fluid body skill and thought that it must be a new skill for the slime or maybe it was that hard to get.

Cade had no intention of getting the skill book and he moved on to the puzzle list. The first was the figure puzzle that will give free stat points when completed.

The slime figure only needed two puzzle pieces. It will be too easy for Cade to complete one. Since he can only use one, so, he will not need to farm them.

He might collect a complete few of them for maybe Jonathan… and Cynthia too as thanks for taking care of him for his duration in the hospital if she survived the time limit dungeon… Cade sighed when he thought of Cynthia.

Just like the big blue tongue toad, the next of the puzzle were the bloodline skill. It comprised of the physical resistance and fluid body with another one being another leader skill and Cade smile when he saw the language bloodline skill.