Ronny and his teammates went to the third floor after collecting their individual as well as team based rewards. It didn't take long for the third floor's entrance to appear before them.
The third floor pitted the team against packs of Crimson Fire Foxes. The packs would come at the group in a set pattern.
The evolution of Crimson Fire Foxes was easy to distinguish. The number of tails they had were indicative of their ranks.
The F-Rank Crimson Fire Fox would have one tail. The E-Rank fox would have two and so on.
The packs Ronny's team had to battle with would usually have one D-Rank fox or multiple E-Rank ones to make up for the rank. Rest of the foxes in the pack were usually F-Rank ones.
Lady Zee had to exert more effort 9n the third floor than anyone else. That's because the greatest threats in the pack would usually be handled by her.
Crimson Fire Foxes would release fireballs from their mouths. The number of fireballs that could be executed as well as their damage output would increase with the mana beasts' rank-ups.
The group also had to fight mutated Crimson Fire Foxes that would be blessed with odd types of fire-element spells. So Ronny and his teammates were on their toes till they defeated the pack.
But their misery would begin afresh with the arrival of a new pack. They were given only a few minutes of breather in between.
The constant battles had eventually tired the group out. Belar and Viper had it worse. Both of them had been severely injured by the time the group took care of the 6th pack.
Viper's left-half face has been burnt by the residual fire of the D-Rank mana beast's spell because he couldn't get away from the same in time. The burnt part of his skin looked as if it had melted and in the process of leaving its initial position it was hanging on to.
Jules gave Viper an ointment that finally stopped Viper's condition from turning into anything worse. But by that time the damage had already been done.
The residual fire was from a deviant D-Rank monster that had already started welding elements. The injury left by a mana beast like this wasn't easy to heal.
A ranker had to be wielding his elements themselves to get rid of the foreign influence that had invaded their bodies. Plus, they needed near perfect control to battle that influence without damaging your body.
The second method would be to find a healer who could wield their elements with excellent control. The third and final method to cure injuries like this was using potions and other such alchemy-based products that had been concocted by someone who could wield their elements.
Plus, such potions couldn't be mass produced. They had to be custom-concocted depending on the situation and condition of the ranker who was facing such an injury.
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Viper's teammates obviously didn't have any of the means available to them to completely cure Novice ranker. Therefore, the best they could do was primary healing that stopped the burnt skin from turning any worse.
And yet, Viper's condition was still light compared to what Belar had been inflicted with. The guy's right leg had been torn off from the knee by one of the Crimson Fire Foxes he was battling with.
This was the second time Belar was suffering from such an injury. But the experience in the field didn't help him have an easier time.
He was finally rescued by Jules who stepped in as soon as her battle with the E-Rank fox had ended. But by that time, Belar had already suffered from the maws of the mana beast. All she could do this time was offer him a potion to stop the bleeding.
Since Belar had faced the injury before, he had prosthetics in spare for his limbs. He begrudgingly took the F-Rank artifact prosthetic that fitted him perfectly after he imbued his mana in it. As a result, he started cursing Eren again in his mind, believing that the guy had cast some kind of curse on him.
Since almost everyone performed mediocre at best and just barely survived the third floor, the rewards for the same weren't that great. But this wasn't the case for the butcher. Because he had performed exceptionally well for his rank, using all the cards he had– from strengthening provided by Reen dubbed as his anthrope transformation to his newfound insights into spells and way of the elements.
As a result, the butcher received another tome of potion recipes that contained newer recipes and covered some D-Rank recipes as well. He also received an encyclopedia on herbs and their effects. Although he couldn't get the names of most of them, he knew he had hit the jackpot again. Because he could always find the relevant names by referring to history books.
But that was not all. He had also received a bunch of life-saving potions and a few defensive artifacts. The first artifact he had received was an E-Rank watch that showed time but also contained a function of serving as a shield when he needed it to. He just had to run his mana through it and an almond-shaped bronze shield would appear in front of him. The shield had lightning-element runes, amplifying its performance when used by a lighting-element ranker.
The other defensive artifact he had received was an E-Rank space-element artifact in the form of a pendent. It could create a spatial hole in front of him once every three days that would have the ability to send away the incoming weaponry or spell thrown at him, only to make the same appear a few meters away from him.
The spell-element defensive artifact could only be used once per three days because it wasn't used by a space-element ranker. So it would take longer to get charged through the runes inscribed on it, which interacted with surrounding mana.
Lastly, the dungeon had rewarded the butcher with another defensive artifact in the form of a simple-looking shirt in the E-Rank. It was a non-elementalized alchemy item meant to be worn by everybody. Instead of using the runs to grant it its defensive properties, the item had been immersed in the concoction once, granting it enhanced resilience against blunt impacts in the E-Rank.
'Boy, I can not wait to officially enter the E-Rank now.'
The butcher had this thought as he and his teammates got out of the dungeon.. They had decided to quit their journey while they still had the ability to do so.