Thanks to the map crystal sphere, Gauss's progress through the second floor was completely unhindered.
Along the way, he also unexpectedly picked up two new normal monster entries for his Index.
Compared to the outside world, the chances of running into rare monster species in a labyrinth really were much higher.
His group soon arrived at the entrance from the second floor to the third.
Unlike the entrance from the first floor to the second, there was no one lingering here at the moment.
Which made sense. The entire labyrinth was like an inverted triangle with a rigid hierarchy—the deeper you went, the fewer people remained.
Or rather, the journey from the second floor to the third naturally weeded out quite a few people trying to muddle through on luck alone.
Gauss's group had arrived here with ease only because their strength vastly outclassed the monsters on the second floor. For ordinary low-level professionals, getting here without capable, well-coordinated teammates would have been anything but easy.
Of course, some might think they could simply rely on others—temporarily party up with stronger teammates and let themselves be carried. That was possible in theory. But unless there was enough profit in it, most adventurers would never agree to drag dead weight along. That would be gambling with their own lives and their teammates' lives.
In the end, the adventurer's world was still ruled by strength. Opportunists and freeloaders rarely got far.
After a short rest, the group quickly headed down the tunnel.
The relatively narrow staircase was filled with the smell of blood, probably left behind by those who had passed through earlier. But nearly everyone in the Red Dragon Company was an experienced adventurer, so the scent of blood was as ordinary to them as daily life.
After about ten minutes of moving through the tunnel, a glow at the far end gradually brightened. Gauss knew they had reached the third floor of the labyrinth.
Passing through a thin membrane like a ripple in space, Gauss stepped onto the third floor.
The ground around the entrance was occupied by one temporary camp after another.
Most of those who could reach the labyrinth's third floor were adventurer companies and teams. Lone wolves were rare here—in fact, seeing one at this depth was more reason to be wary, because anyone who could roam the third floor alone usually had something special about them.
"More newcomers?"
"So many people! It's another adventurer company!"
"They look unfamiliar."
"I recognize that red dragon banner. Back when I was working around Falrim, I heard of that newly established company."
"So the provincial capital companies move this fast?"
People in the camps all turned to look at the newly arrived Red Dragon Company, their eyes full of caution as they whispered among themselves.
Even the members of the other adventurer companies were no exception. Their main forces were already on the fourth floor, and only a small number had been left behind here on the third-floor access point to receive and relay information.
In other words, although there seemed to be quite a few people gathered around the entrance, all of them combined probably still weren't as strong as the main body of an adventurer company the size of Red Dragon.
Of course, they weren't overly worried either. Unless the Captain of this newly arrived company had gone completely insane, he wouldn't suddenly attack the members of multiple adventurer companies and numerous smaller adventuring teams at the same time. Their caution was simply an adventurer's instinct.
Their gazes drifted over the members of the Red Dragon Company.
Seeing that their gear bore little grime and that there was hardly any fatigue visible on their faces, the caution in those observers' eyes deepened into something closer to respect.
The distance from Falrim to Barry wasn't short. Add in the time spent on supply preparation, travel, and fighting their way from the first floor to the third—this was very fast. It only further proved the strength of this company. Most likely they wouldn't remain on the third floor. They would become powerful competitors among the first-tier groups pushing deeper into the labyrinth.
Better not provoke them.
That thought appeared almost simultaneously in everyone's mind.
"Captain, should we leave some people behind here as a receiving group?" Ivan asked in a low voice.
Gauss glanced at the others gathered around the entrance, then shook his head.
The people staying here were either adventurer teams too weak to enter the fourth floor, or the wounded and relatively weaker members of the other companies. For the Red Dragon Company, staying by his side was probably safer than remaining here.
For one, he didn't need any map information for the first five floors.
For another, he now possessed transcendent-level combat strength. The labyrinth's monsters were one thing, but in terms of the human adventurers here, none could compare to him. True master-class adventurers, because they possessed domain-type power, were more easily rejected by the labyrinth environment in its current state. Even if they were strong, they couldn't enter.
As for him, he was basically exploiting a loophole.
In this enormous Timber Labyrinth, while the mountain had no tiger, his strength could easily place him in the top tier among adventurers.
Even if he encountered larger adventurer companies, he wasn't afraid in the slightest.
As for why he had brought so many members of the Red Dragon Company, it was because once they reached the fourth floor and surrounded the labyrinth lord, the others could deal with the assisting monster underlings.
Just as the others had assumed, the Red Dragon Company only paused briefly around the camp before moving on in an orderly line.
Gauss still led from the front.
Normally, by the time one reached the third floor, there wasn't much public information left to gather.
On the one hand, fewer people made it this far, so less information spread outward. On the other hand, everyone deliberately kept their discoveries close, or traded them only in small circles with other teams.
Inside a labyrinth, different teams were competitors.
No one entered a labyrinth simply to kill monsters. More importantly, they came for the treasures and artifacts buried inside.
Every so often, news would spread of someone picking up a rare magic item or encountering a special opportunity that pushed them to a new level.
The entire labyrinth was like a proving ground, imbued with a strange power that accelerated growth.
Of course, hidden behind those bright stories were far more adventurers who died silently without ever making the news.
They might already have become dried-out skeletons—or been eaten by monsters and excreted as waste, becoming part of the labyrinth's nourishment.
Gauss still chose the shortest route.
Even though he also believed there were plenty of undiscovered treasures and new monster species on the third floor, the place was simply too vast. Searching the entire floor would waste too much time.
It was better to head straight to the fourth floor, get ahead of the others, and find that fourth-floor lord first.
"Everyone stay close to your squad leaders and team captains. Don't fall behind."
"Yes!"
Soon, the long line of figures was swallowed by endless greenery.
By the time they reached the third floor, the odds of encountering elite monsters had risen sharply, and every so often they would run into a challenge-level-four or five creature. At one point, Gauss even encountered a Commander-class animated armor.
They had entered a hall shaped like a chapel. Ahead of them, a group of adventurers was fleeing for their lives.
"Kill all intruders!" the animated armor roared as it ran.
The sword in its hand casually sliced one of the hall's columns clean in half.
From a distance, Gauss narrowed his eyes.
Since the thing was blocking the route he intended to take, he thought for a moment and then decisively acted. With Any Door, he appeared beside the suit of armor—its helmet glowing with eerie red light, as if it were an empty shell haunted by something invisible.
Animated armor was a very strange kind of monster. In appearance, it was simply an active, empty suit of plate armor, but it possessed a certain degree of intelligence.
According to legend, creating one required a ritual sacrifice of many lives to have even a chance of succeeding. The process was so bloody that the technique had already been lost. Yet if successful, the created construct's loyalty to its maker was absolute. Even after its creator died, a thousand or ten thousand years later, it would still carry out the orders left behind.
It needed no food, no sleep, no breath. It was a terrifying creature.
Of course, perhaps because the creation process had been so horrific, the art of making animated armor had vanished from the world. These days, such things could only be found in labyrinths or a few ruined places in the wilderness.
As he flashed beside it, all that information ran through Gauss's mind.
"Challenge rating… around level seven?"
Honestly, to Gauss now, a monster of this level was hardly a threat.
The only reason it interested him at all was because of its unusual life-form and how rarely it appeared.
"Control Water."
Blue-gold holy water surged around Gauss.
Although the animated armor reacted a beat late, its Commander-class combat instincts still let it notice Gauss almost immediately.
Its hollow helmet slowly turned toward him.
But one step too late was too late all the way through. Gauss, already fully prepared, had no intention of giving it a chance to attack.
The water around him burst outward, then transformed into countless threads of liquid forming a dense spherical web.
The sphere hummed violently.
To the naked eye, it seemed frozen in place. But anyone with sufficient dynamic vision would have seen the truth: the water threads were vibrating and slicing through the air so rapidly they looked motionless.
In a single second, they could oscillate and cut dozens or hundreds of times.
The armor had only just turned, only just begun to raise its sword arm, when the entire two-meter sphere of cutting threads engulfed it.
A dense burst of shrill, grating sounds erupted.
The adventurers hiding behind cover in the distance instinctively clapped their hands over their ears.
Blood dripped from their earlobes.
The sound waves alone had ruptured their eardrums.
Fortunately, they had the good sense not to leave cover. They hid there, not daring to move.
They had already seen a figure appear beside the armor. Surviving now was the greatest blessing they could ask for. Temporary deafness no longer mattered.
Nor did they dare flee. It wasn't curiosity that kept them in place, but fear.
The sounds alone had torn their ears apart. If they stepped into the attack's true radius, it would only be worse.
In fact, they were right. Stone fragments launched outward in the shockwave like battlefield shrapnel, blasting pits into walls and columns.
After more than ten seconds of sustained cutting, the sphere finally ceased.
"Animated Armor Kill ×1."
The kill notification flashed before Gauss's eyes.
"Stubborn thing."
He couldn't help but sigh.
A normal level-seven goblin would have died within a few seconds to the current version of Thousand-Thread Severing Domain, likely killed in the initial barrage.
But animated armor was different. Their strange life-form meant they had almost no true weak points.
To destroy them completely, you had to unleash damage past their tolerance threshold in an extremely short time—so fast that they couldn't restore their internal energy.
Gauss glanced at the Commander-monster page in his Index. With the addition of the animated armor, the number of Commander-rank monster species he had collected had now reached fourteen.
One step closer to the twenty-species threshold needed for another purple-quality racial talent.
Once the fighting stopped, Gauss picked up the armor's helmet with interest.
Inside the armor were carved extremely intricate mana patterns.
He felt they were worth studying.
But this wasn't the time, so after a quick look, he stored all the pieces away.
"Um… thank you for saving us!"
The group of adventurers who had been hiding finally poked their heads out.
When they saw the armor gone, and the handsome man in the distance looking over at them, one of them finally managed to thank him.
"It was nothing."
Gauss nodded.
Under normal circumstances, he always chose to help weaker adventurers in the wild when he could.
This wasn't even the first time. To him, scenes like this were already routine.
The rest of the Red Dragon Company arrived a moment later.
"Selandur, fix their ears."
"Understood, Captain."
Since the others clearly had more they wanted to say, Gauss had Selandur step in.
For him, ruptured eardrums were not difficult to heal.
As green, life-filled light flowed around their ears for a few minutes, they were restored. Selandur even healed a few scrapes on their knees and arms while he was at it.
Once treatment was done, Gauss pointed them in the direction of the third-floor exit route, then continued onward.
To them, it had all happened in a flash. But Gauss's group had no intention of lingering. They crossed nearly half the third-floor map, and by evening they reached the entrance to the fourth floor.
"Find a place and rest."
Gauss didn't rush in immediately. Instead, he had the team make camp nearby.
They had been fighting nearly nonstop since morning, carving their way from the first floor all the way here.
Total Monster Kills: 39,540
In a single day inside the labyrinth, his total kills had increased by three thousand. The pace was absurdly fast.
Not all of that was his own doing, of course. The others had contributed heavily throughout the day as well.
Gauss sank into his awareness, and a faint look of surprise crossed his face.
His mana cup had become incredibly full. He was clearly not far from a breakthrough.
So fast? Is that really the labyrinth's effect?
Even he found it surprising.
Still, it wasn't quite enough.
Gauss took a slow breath and didn't dwell on it. If he reached the fourth floor tomorrow, found the fourth-floor lord, and began using it to draw in and slaughter more monsters, the remaining gap would probably disappear on its own.
Thinking that, he took out the metal token and checked it again.
4.89%
The number had climbed substantially.
And after spending the afternoon studying it, he had also realized that this did indeed seem to function like an exploration percentage.
It wasn't tied solely to map coverage. Killing monsters advanced it too.