Toxic Donkey woke up after an hour nap and jumped up in full alert as he didn’t remember when he fell asleep. Everyone laughed and he got explained that he got put to [Sleep] on Io’s request.

  The last hour was spent relaxing and having dinner. It didn’t feel so to them but day 3 in the dungeon was coming to an end. The clear blue sky was throwing most of them off as it looked daytime. Giana was the only one aware what the time really was.

  “Do you think we will get time to sleep?” Vinny asked as he finished his meal.

  “I think we might after finishing this floor. Or we need to sleep before finishing whatever trial we get.” Toxic Donkey said as he threw carrots into the hurricane and watched how the wind swept them away and even tore some to pieces, as Toxic Donkey hated carrots.

  “I feel uncomfortable not being connected to the ground for so long.” Noelle looked at the bald cyclops scalp under them. She had been warned to avoid stomping while on the cyclops head as they didn’t want to fight it. “Also how many floors do you think this dungeon has?”

  Giana finished off some stewed rabbit and thought for a bit. “Hmm maybe 9 floors?”

  “Oh I surely hope not. But uhhm I have a question.” Toxic Donkey looked at the stewed rabbit Giana had just finished and then at Yvonne. “Uhm, how does this work, isn’t Yvonne a rabbit too? Surely you don’t…”

  “Oh that! It took Noelle and me quite some time to resist the urge to bite down on her. We can control ourselves now!”

  “Y…yeah. That was scary!”

  “So uhm, Agnis is also a fox and Raishin is a tiger, right? And do cats eat rabbits?”

  Noelle seemed to want to answer but realized she didn’t have an answer. “Oh…”

  Giana seemed to already realize she had no answer. “Oh no…”

  Yvonne turned pale.

  Toxic Donkey was baffled. It didn’t seem that the idols had thought about this.

  “I guess it will be fine as long as we keep their bellies filled! Learning how to cook has become even more important!” Giana said as she took a cheery and confident pose but Toxic Donkey had his doubts.

  “You guys keep getting weirder and weirder by the day… How long do we have left Giana?”

  “The next trial should start in 4 minutes. I think we should clean up and get ready.”

  Io protested as she didn’t like cleaning up but the party managed to leave a clean cyclops scalp behind.

  The scene changed and the party found themselves in a strange city.

  Yvonne's ears moved around as she recognises the unique sounds coming from this place. “O..oh I recognize this city! This is I…Itris, we had a concert planned for this city at one point.”

  “Why does it look so strange? I vaguely recognize some things but why…” Toxic Donkey got interrupted as a car slammed into him and sent him flying. “What the fuck?!”

  “Look a signpost!” Giana read what the signpost said. “Beware of coffins on wheels and junk shooters… what does that mean? Does he mean these cars?”

  Toxic Donkey landed in a strange position and got up. “Ouch! Why do I keep getting run over? Coffin on wheels is an accurate name. let’s move from here.” Toxic Donkey avoided 2 more speeding cars and managed to get to safety.

  “Hahaha Kyle! It seems those cars were aiming for you! You’re not hurt, are you?” Io remembered that Toxic Donkey was just human and tried to stop laughing. It still looked funny as Toxic Donkey always made strange flips when he gets run over.

  “My donkey suit saved me yet again. And that’s not funny! I’m probably the only one in this party that can get hurt from cars!”

  “I don’t think this is the work of Yttroz Industries.” Noelle said as she punched a building and easily created a hole in the wall.

  Giana pulled Noelle away as she was about to punch another hole. “Noelle! You can’t just punch random buildings! Only if they’re a nuisance!”

  “Their feeble structure is a nuisance to me. which idiot thinks that creating buildings without strengthening augmentation or stability augmentations is wise. Even worse! I can’t sense any mana in this city. What is wrong with this place?” Noelle stomped and the tiles under her shattered and sent pieces of broken tiles everywhere.

  “Hey watch it!” Toxic Donkey yelled as he managed to avoid getting hit by tile fragments. It was the first unexpected attack he had evaded since entering this dungeon.

  “Even worse even the tiles are feeble! This place pisses me off!”

  “Hmm, Noelle you’re right. There is hardly any mana in this city. How strange. Why did you arrange for our concert to be in this city again Yv?” Giana asked.

  “T…they offered to pay us a lot. We were still re…relatively broke back then.”

  The party walked through the city. Every illusion seemed to make way for them except for Toxic Donkey so he had to evade the stream of people that walked in the direction opposite of him.

  “Hey why are these illusions not paying attention? And Why am I the only one they don’t avoid?”

  “Walk behind me Kyle! I’ll protect you! I’ll turn them into ash!”

  The party was unsure what the objective was but Noelle became angrier and angrier the longer they walked around. Noelle had a builder’s heart and every building and structure was like an insult to her. She believed that she could build a better city in her sleep. Did she had experience building a city? She didn’t but that showed how poorly built this city looked to her.

  Yvonne collapsed coughing. *cough cough* “T…this air is so polluted…”

  Vinny applied some nature energy to Yvonne to help her.

  “Someone is hurt!” Giana ran to a dark alley where 2 men were getting assaulted by 3 men in dark clothing. They were holding some strange metal rods.

  Everyone easily caught up to Giana as she was a slow runner. Giana started healing the two men slumped on the ground with what looked like puncture wounds.

  “Oh look what we have here Ed! Some babes just came out of nowhere! This is our lucky day.”

  “But why are they wearing onesies Eddy?”

  “How should I know?! Kill those dudes and we’ll take those chicks!”

  The three thugs were completely ignored and the party was crouching around the 2 injured men while Giana was healing them.

  “Hey don’t ignore us!”

  A loud sound went off. Everyone besides Toxic Donkey smelled a strange compound as something flew at Giana at great speed and bounced off her.

  “Huh what the fuck?” Ed exclaimed as he looked at Giana and then inspected his gun.

  “How could you miss from this range Ed! Here let me show how it’s done!” Eddy took out another metal rod and both dual-wielded the metal rods and shot several times, sending projectiles at high speed at the party.

  Noelle body-blocked the projectiles and caught two of them. “What? They are shooting junk at us. Oh, is this what he means with junk shooters.”

  Toxic Donkey inspected the weapons of the three thugs. “Oh, those are guns, not junk shooters but against beings as tough as you guys…” Toxic Donkey looked at the deformed blobs of metal on the ground. “They might as well be junk shooters…”

  “I don’t like this place. Can I burn them?”

  Toxic Donkey nodded and Io incinerated the three thugs.

  Giana got up. “These two will be fine. I’m not sure what the objective here is but I want to leave.”

  A loud screech was heard before anyone could respond. The sound was followed by a crash. It sounded like metal colliding and screams of people followed after.

  “No! more people got hurt!"" Giana ran out of the alley toward the disaster that had unfolded. Several people had gotten caught up in the car crash. Giana pulled the debris away and started healing the injured. Several had died instantly.

  “What is that? Is that magic?!” A voice in the crowd said.

  “Not in our city!”

  The bystanders started to yell and throwing trash at Giana.

  “Hey no! I’m trying to help! Stop it!” She used her tails to block the trash that got thrown at her.

  “We don’t need your magic go away!” Several loud bangs got heard and more and more people took out their guns and started shooting at Giana.

  Noelle stomped and used [Earthquake]. “That’s enough! Come Giana! We’re clearly not welcome but that’s fine, this city is atrocious and brittle. I have heard that it disappeared from the map. Good riddance!”

  Noelle stomped toward Giana, who was still getting shot at and picked her up. “Guys we’re leaving.” Everyone agreed. Io protected Toxic Donkey from gunshots while Noelle gave Yvonne some [Crystal Armor] as those two were the only ones that could get hurt from those.

  “That was terrible…” Giana looked at her hands that were bloodied. It was not her blood but she still felt terible.

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  A large flashy car making obnoxiously loud sounds rushed by and smaller obnoxious flashy cars followed it. The smaller cars stopped and surrounded the party. Humans wearing the same uniforms stepped out and aimed their junkshooters at the party. “I sense mana. Magic is forbidden in this city. Please surrender!”

  “Wow what a shitty city. How has Agnis not destroyed this city yet, oh wait it did disappear so maybe he did… Io, do your thing. I won’t stop you.”

  Io stepped forward after getting permission from Toxic Donkey to burn the place down.

  “L…look! Illusionary arrows!” Yvonne said as she pointed at arrows pointing northeast.

  “Oh, it seems they’re leading toward the powerplant just outside the city. I suppose that’s the next target. Do I need to buff you Io?” Giana asked after confirming the objective of these arrows.

  “No need! These puny humans are no match for me, a dragon! I will catch up to you guys.”

  Io didn’t turn into her dragon form but she grew some red dragon scales and started punching and slamming the uniformed humans who were using their junkshooters.

  The party ran away. Not from the humans but from Io who was ready to tear the place down. Yvonne did her best to purify the air but there was too much pollution in the air for her to make a difference.

  “W…we need more forest rabbits and even some e…elves to clean the air here…”

  “I’m not a fan of this idea but I think wiping this city off the map is the most efficient way to solve that problem…” Vinny wasn’t someone who normally would suggest this but anything else would require a lot of work and races that might have better things to do than save this horrible city.

  “I feel stupid now in getting angry about lil’ bro’s actions that caused our concert to be cancelled in this city. It seems he did us a favor…” Noelle said, still angry. “I wonder what other bullshit this place has.”

  The party arrived at the powerplant after following more arrows.

  “Whoa that’s a lot of anti-shadow magic guards. Guess I’m up. Can you guys wait here for a bit? This might take a while. I could use Io’s help when she returns.” Toxic Donkey went into stealth and systematically started to wipe out the guards that posed the biggest threat.

  “It seems that any party that attempts this without a Toxic Donkey will run into a lot of problems…” Vinny admired Toxic Donkey’s efforts and wondered if he was the best humanity had to offer at this point. He had adventured with many humans but none came close to the competency of Toxic Donkey. He admitted that he might have been partially responsible for this but he was still amazed by Toxic Donkey’s capabilities.

  “I’m back! Oof this place is crawling with anti-shadow magic guards. I suppose Kyle needs my help.” Io said and also went into stealth and more guards started to disappear.

  “What could be inside here if the security is this tight?” Giana wondered.

  A stomp shook the party. “Nothing good I bet. I think we can enter.”

  The party followed Noelle who was attempting to keep her stomping to a minimum. They entered through the entrance since Giana had covered them in illusions and Noelle had made sure that they wouldn’t get found out.

  “Oh no… not the spirits!” Giana gasped and covered her mouth and pointed down.

  “What did you see Giana? Do I need to stomp this place down?”

  “No! we need to save the spirits! They are wringing energy out of the lightning spirits to power this city!”

  “What?!” Noelle stomped and created a hole in the ground. She abandoned secrecy and anything related to infiltration and followed Giana’s directions. An alarm went off as it detected magic. The guards were no match for angry and upset mythical and legendary beasts.

  Giana’s directions lead the party to a wall of steel.

  They encountered an obstacle but Noelle punched the thick metal reinforced door. “Oh, aren’t you tough?” The thick reinforced metal door fell after 2 [Crystal Punches]. “What a weak door…”

  The party found themselves in a large hall. The humans were alerted to the presence of the party. Giana linked her vision with Noelle and Yvonne and showed them how spirits were getting tortured on the other side of the hall.

  A stomp shook the whole building. “This is what you guys did with the crystals I sold?! Unforgivable!” Another stomp went out and a mana wave went out. Noelle had seen enough and went 7t mode. A grid appeared on everything and everyone and polygons started to form around her. She stomped toward the other side of the hall and any opponent with a grid on them got split up into polygons, instantly killing them.

  Noelle leveled the whole hall. She didn’t touch her party or any spirit. All the machinery and pods holding spirits had turned into polygons and had lost their form.

  “I see, they even put my crystals in these walls to keep spirits from escaping.” She unraveled the walls and ceiling of the hall by turning them into polygons. She didn’t stop there; she turned the whole building into polygons.

  The party suddenly found themselves in an enormous rectangular hole in the ground. The powerplant they had been in until recently had disappeared without any trace as everything had been turned into polygons.

  “I don’t like deconstructing but it’s part of being a builder…” Noelle looked at arrows pointing up the mountain. “We’re not going to like what we’re going to find there will we?”

  Noelle stomped and the polygons gathered and formed a platform with seats and tables. Wolves made of crystal approached them, who spread out and returned with Io and Toxic Donkey on their back.

  “Let’s go.” Noelle took a seat on the platform she had created and gestured for her allies to do so too.

  Toxic Donkey was taking everything in. The platform started to rise and float while It followed the arrows. Crystal polygonic pillars shot out of the ground, pushing the platform up the mountain in a fluid motion.

  “So this is the 7t mode.” Toxic Donkey said as he didn’t notice any vibration or tremor indicating that they were moving. It felt as if they were stationary but he could see that they were moving.

  “Yes, I still haven’t mastered it but this will do for now.”

  Toxic Donkey and Vinny looked at each other. They couldn’t imagine what more there was to improve on this.

  “Hey Vinny do you also…”

  “No I don’t have an impressive dragon mode or something. I just turn into plants and can blend in better in a jungle but it’s not very useful when outside a jungle. I assume Io’s true form is more useful than mine as turning into fire is more useful that turning into plants.”

  “Oh so you don’t turn huge like that dragon that helped torching Bizax?” Toxic Donkey asked out of curiosity.

  “Uhh I think that might be the difference between no-winged and two-winged dragons. Maybe those just turn enormous.”

  “I see…” Toxic Donkey dove out of his seat as his seat got struck by a lightning bolt. “What is it this time!?”

  Noelle flicked her wrist and a roof formed. “I see the humans are using my crystal goggles to catch the spirits. They even use a stupid robot for it. It looks so feeble! I know that spirits are supposed to be your thing Giana, but do you mind if I deal with this?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Noelle easily dismantled the mechanical contraption the humans had put together. For this to work it was required that Noelle understands the structure. This was why a 9t and 7t teaming up was strong because, with Elgards eyes, the 7t can rely on the 9t eyes to understand the structure of almost anything.

  Noelle had studied the human body together with Giana to dismantle humans in her 7t mode. This contraption was so simple that it was easy for Noelle to dismantle it, she didn’t need the aid of Giana’s Elgards eyes. The same was with the electronium plant. Nothing in this city was complex enough to give Noelle a fail rate in dismantling it.

  The robot didn’t get dismantled into polygons, just its components, burying the humans inside under a pile of metal.

  Polygons formed a large crystal shovel which shoveled up the pile of metal and threw it off the mountain and Noelle cancelled her 7t mode after that. “Ugh, I’m still pissed!”

  Giana started to sing to calm Noelle.

  “Thanks. Are you ok Giana?”

  “Yeah, just a bit upset. This city, how spirits were treated… I never knew about this. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

  “We couldn’t see spirits but I guess that might be a good thing judging by how upset you 3 are…” Vinny said and was curious but he realized that it might be a bad idea to inquire.

  The scene changed and the party didn’t know where they were. Toxic Donkey spotted a familiar object ans walked over to a signpost.

  “Last trial of his floor. Assassinate the king…”

  “Ohh Kyle! Look it’s the house made out of yarn!” Io said as she pointed at a familiar sight.

  “This… is this when you guys assassinated Taylor?”

  “Yes! Come come! Does anyone of you have mustard?” Io said as she excitedly ran to a meat stand near the ‘Yarn Palace’

  “What? Why do we need mustard?” Toxic Donkey said as he stopped Io by holding on to the hood of her dragon onesie.

  “The reports said that even salt could kill him! So Agnis made very strong mustard and had the king eat it!”

  “That… is very creative so some simple poison gas would work then, right?” Toxic Donkey said as he took a canister out of his suit and went into stealth.

  ‘More anti-shadow magic guards.’ He thought to himself. He had dealt with them before but only in this dungeon had he been constantly exposed to them. He knew exactly what to now. At least so he thought. He noticed that they had a complicated buddy system.

  He saw Giana and Noelle waving as he read some sentences floating above their head. They had covered him in illusions so that he could ignore the guards. He smiled and went inside the building made out of yarn. He wondered why Io just didn’t torch it.

  A quick inspection revealed that the yarn was fire resistant.

  Of course! This is Jarn! Hethought as he looked at his donkey suit. This was the place that made his trusted donkey suit. He shouldn’t underestimate any fabric in this place.

  He navigated through the multicolored yarn corridors and found the room of the king when he noticed that his poison had been made inert. He checked his other poisons. Any poison stored within his onesie was fine. Was their own textile technology becoming their own downfall?

  Toxic Donkey put on a gasmask and released a canister of poison gas. It would normally take between 2 or 3 minutes for a person to die to the poison gas but the king died after 7 seconds.

  “Even weaker than a clear frog, eh?” Toxic Donkey didn’t need to be stealthy anymore because the challenge had been cleared. The room changed and it was a large empty room and there was a staircase leading down.

  “That was… surprisingly easy.” Toxic Donkey said, unsure if his onesie had trivialized this challenge as any other Toxic Donkey would have all his poisons be made inert and would have to rely on close range assassination, which would be an issue with all those guards everywhere.

  “That’s because you’re THE Toxic Donkey, I’m sure no other Toxic Donkey could assassinate him that easily.” Toxic Donkey wasn’t sure how true Vinny’s words were.

  “A…another signpost!” Yvonne walked over to the signpost. “A…at this point there is a low likelihood that anything got this far. C…congratulations Toxic Donkey. Not sure if Io told you about this quest. Either way it doesn’t matter. This me…message can only be read by Toxic Donkey or people close to me or him so it won’t m…matter if I’m wrong in this because nobody else can read this! Jokes aside, there are 3 more floors left. An e…exit will form for those that can read this, as the following floors are bru…brutal. But the pride of Toxic Donkey has no li…limits so just a warning. You will d…die if you don’t pay attention or don’t rest up so the decision is yours.”

  A soft rumble and a door appeared that had the words ‘Exit’ above it.

  “Wait… ‘the following floors are brutal’… he thinks that the previous floors weren’t brutal? This stupid fox! Everything was brutal! How is anyone supposed to clear this?!”

  “Calm down Kyle, let’s take this opportunity to rest and decide.” Vinny said as he nodded at Noelle.

  Noelle stomped and created a small house out of crystals and the party decided to rest and recover.