After receiving Aunt Renee’s agreement, we all accepted the prompt, and we were quickly transported to the fourth floor.

  So far, the floors have been a cave that made us feel like we were in the body of a snake, which was followed by a rainy and humid jungle biome. Then came a murky swamp with a bunch of eel-snake things, and now here on the fourth floor, we were once again in a cave.

  Only I suppose it would be more accurate to call it a cavern instead of a cave. It was a massive cavern that was far wider than it was tall. Stalagmites rose from the ground in various sizes, while stalactites similarly hung from the ceiling in similar fashion.

  The only difference between the two being that the bigger ones on the ceiling were all dripping liquid. Small pools of that liquid formed under each stalactite, and every time a drop fell, it would cause a splash in the small pool.

  “The water is acidic. I don’t think it’s gonna help you out much this time, nephew.”

  “You’re not wrong, Uncle Terrance.” I paused for a moment as I continued to observe the water well, if it even was water. He wasn’t wrong. If there was one way to take away any advantage gained by being in contact with water, it would be to make it acidic or even poisonous.

  Maybe later in life, as my Abilities hopefully grew, I would be unable to be harmed by water no matter what it contained, but that was a long way off for now. In the meantime, we needed to figure out how to clear this Dungeon.

  Taking my eyes away from the pond, I looked around the cavern in full. It was large, yes, but it clearly had a direction in which we should follow. There wasn’t too much behind us to explore, and the path ahead stretched on for a bit.

  “Let’s move. Be wary of the acid pools and of the spiky things coming out of the floor and ceiling. There have to be snakes around here somewhere, so keep your eyes open and be ready to fight at a moment’s notice.”

  They all nodded at me, and we began walking forward just like that. Being very mindful of our steps, we made sure to stay out of the way of acid pools and the stalactites from the ceiling and obviously not walking into any of the stalagmites either.

  We barely managed to advance a few steps before a snake that none of us managed to see or spot lunged from one of the hanging stalactites straight at Uncle Robert’s face.

  “Duck!”

  The snake came too fast, so he wasn’t able to get his sword up to block in time, but thankfully he heard Aunt Renee’s shout, and he ducked out of the way. Uncle Terrance’s sword was already arching a path toward the body of the snake, and when he hit it, the snake was thrown off the stalactite and fell hard to the ground.

  Though it was still alive and not sliced in two like I would’ve expected it to be.

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  Uncle Robert, who was back standing now, didn’t waste any time and quickly followed up Uncle Terrance’s attack with a swing of his greatsword onto the body of the snake.

  That one seemed to do the trick and sliced the snake into two parts.

  Uncle Terrance was looking at his sword with a troubled expression coloring his face.

  “That little rat caused my sword to chip. It felt like I was hitting a rock instead of the flesh of a living thing.”

  “Yeah, I felt the same thing. I don’t even think my attack cut through it properly. It was more like I crushed it to the point of tearing skin and bone.”

  Hearing what both my uncles had to say, I looked toward the body of the snake, and Uncle Robert was correct. There wasn’t a clean slash wound there. Both points of separation just looked like a mangled mess.

  “I don’t think my regular shots are going to be much help here. If this one snake is anything like the boss we’re going to have to face, then I’ll need to preserve my mana.”

  “Understandable. We’ll handle everything before that.”

  If this was the Aunt Renee who initially entered the Dungeon, then of course she would practically be useless here since her arrows wouldn’t be able to pierce the body of the snakes we were facing, let alone the boss, but thankfully that wasn’t the case.

  As she said, her regular shots still wouldn’t be of much use, but they were her “regular” shots for a reason. It would’ve been a shame if she hadn’t managed to pick up a Skill or two from the Gauntlet Dungeon that would’ve helped her in the power or piercing department.

  Not only did she receive quite the powerful Skill, but she also received a really nice bow. With both of those things in mind, it was no surprise why she wasn’t worried about actually having an impact despite the ineffectiveness of what her regular shots seemed to be.

  There wasn’t an adult in the family who didn’t benefit in some way from the Gauntlet Dungeon. Now Uncle Terrance was a bit sad about his sword, but it would still have use as a club if need be.

  Now for me? I wasn’t worried at all. Water could cut through anything.

  Piercing Tide would face no issues from the snakes in this Dungeon. At least not until we reached the boss.

  So, from there we collected ourselves and continued to move forward. More and more of the stone snakes, as we’ve come to call them, continued to ambush us at an increasing rate, but now that we were prepared for them, it was a bit easier to deal with.

  It only became problematic when they started ambushing us from the pools of acid. We were honestly caught completely off guard by that since we all kind of assumed that the acid was a problem for everything.

  Well, “assume” was the wrong word. We simply didn’t even think that there was a chance that anything else was possible.

  And the problem wasn’t with the snakes themselves. It was with the water that splashed off of them as they lunged at us. Uncle Robert was once again the target the first time it happened, and some of the water splashed onto his armor, and it immediately began to sizzle.

  Thankfully it didn’t make it all the way through, but that added a new wrinkle with how we progressed through the cavern.

  Completely avoiding the pools of water was impossible since they were literally everywhere, and it wasn’t like we could blitz past them since the number of stalagmites on the ground didn’t seem to be lowering in number or size anytime soon.

  This obviously slowed our progress down significantly, but slow motion is better than no motion, so there weren’t too many complaints as we took our time navigating the cavern and fighting off the stone snakes that sought to impede our paths.

  The two main fighters during this period were me and Uncle Robert. Uncle Terrance could still help with his club-sword thing, but he didn’t have a backup weapon with him, so we were trying to preserve it as long as we could.

  Now Uncle Robert continued to crush anything that dared to ambush him, and for me, Piercing Tide never once failed to cut through anything that came even remotely close to me.

  That was how we managed to slowly progress to the end of this section of the cavern.