"I'm surprised you didn't turn into a worm," Vee said as we reached the next floor.

"I don't have the slime, although I could make a miniaturized version. But at the moment, I just want to be a blob. I've been stuck in one form for so long that I worried I'd forget my original form."

"Suuuuuure," Vee replied sarcastically.

The staircase we had climbed vanished, and now we were in a sealed room. I was surprised to see there weren't any monsters yet, but then Vee and I received a few notifications explaining the situation.

The Trial of Combat will commence shortly.

"Oh, it looks like Dran can send us notifications while we are in his dungeon," I said to Vee.

"Neat."

Each floor will offer a challenge. Some will be unique, while others will be previous challenges at higher difficulty.

"That sounds pretty fun," Vee commented.

Every 10th floor will have a boss monster.

"Yes!" I cheered.

You must pass at least 20 trials to earn your mark of proof.

"I hope that doesn't mean twenty is the limit; I'd like to go as far as possible."

"Yeah, let's aim for the top of the tree!" Vee agreed.

First trial: Survive for 5 minutes.

"Oh! A survival challenge!" Vee said excitedly.

"Only five minutes?" I complained.

The circular wall of the room began to shimmer, almost like a portal. My [Spatial Sense] didn't really sense anything about it, so I wasn't entirely sure what it was. Then monsters began to emerge from the glowing wall—they sort of resembled goblins if you closed one eye and squinted, except they were made out of bark, vines, and other forms of foliage.

I activated [Pseudopod] and formed my eight highly controllable tentacles. Half of them I tipped with weapons, while the other half I kept as grabbers as I unleashed them upon the incoming horde of monsters.

Tentacles grabbed and crushed the plant goblinoids before bringing them to my central mass for consumption, while others began to swing or stab their various forms of weaponry. For the sharpest blades, I used [Metal Slime] to create Mythril while also coating the edges in [Acid Slime], causing them to cut through the creatures like a hot knife through butter.

"I can see why you complained about it only being five minutes," Vee chuckled as she watched.

She had started next to me, but when the monsters had started spawning, she had shot a web to the ceiling and grappled upwards. It worked out perfectly for me as the horde of monsters saw me as the only viable target now and ran towards their own death.

"Are all normal monsters this dumb?" Vee asked.

"No, dungeon monsters are specifically like this," I answered. "Other than the boss monsters, don't expect them to really do anything more than charge forward or shoot from range. Unless the [Dungeon Master] takes direct control of them."

With Vee safe above, I shifted all of my tendrils into blades. I then held them parallel to the floor before spinning my body on the spot, creating a blender of death.

Any advancing monster was instantly bisected, but I noted that it didn't "kill" some of them immediately, as they could still crawl with their lower torso missing. I pulled back a few bladed tentacles and turned them into collectors to grab the helpless creatures for eating.

"How often does that happen?" Vee asked, continuing our casual conversation despite the situation.

"It only happened when the mutation dungeon was pissed off; it controlled a group of ant monsters directly to spread hallucinatory pheromones and attack in an almost military formation with tanks, mages, and ranged attackers."

"I can see why you said you might want to make a dungeon yourself at some point; this sounds like quite some fun."

"Maybe we can start one together? You could make the traps. Or, at a minimum, you could be the final boss of my dungeon," I jokingly offered.

"Ha! I've seen your slime mines; I think you'd be a better trap master than me."

You two aren't really taking this trial seriously…

"I mean, these small fry aren't much," I admitted. "I'm not even using magic or like half of my traits."

"Yeah! Syl isn't even using a fraction of her power!" Vee said, giggling like crazy. "You'll have to try harder for Syl to remove her limiters."

...

Sadly, Vee's taunts didn't change the outcome, so I just kept fighting on autopilot while we talked. I wasn't too fussed about the first floor being nothing but a light warmup, but I was somewhat disappointed that the plant monsters gave less slime mass than I was accustomed to.

If I had known this, I would have asked for that brown slime before coming here. If I had its vegetarian trait, then I bet I'd be growing my slime reserve by leaps and bounds.

Congratulations, descendant! You have passed the first trial.

"I don't really think that deserved congratulations," Vee snorted.

A lot of the trial messages are premade. Please understand…

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

"Vee, stop bullying the [Dungeon Master]," I reprimanded her.

"Yes, mom…" Vee replied back in a bratty tone.

At this rate, Vee is going to be on the top of the dungeon alliance blacklist. I'm really having second thoughts about exposing the world to her unfiltered words.

A staircase appeared again. Once I finished cleaning up the room for food, we ascended to the next floor. It was nearly identical to the first, except for a wooden pedestal in the center. Atop it was a golden apple, illuminated by a single ray of light that seemed to come from nowhere, causing it to sparkle and glisten with temptation.

Second trial: Protect the artifact for 20 minutes.

"This should be pretty easy," Vee said as she grappled to the ceiling again.

I maneuvered to the pedestal at the center and stared at the apple. I could never imagine that my highly anticipated dungeon adventure would include safeguarding a piece of fruit.

I looked around the room and saw the walls begin to glow, preparing for the incoming attackers. I readied myself, and shortly after, they emerged—a horde of plant monsters, upsized from their previous form as a middle ground between goblin and orc and, this time, armed with various weapons or claw-like appendages.

Well, even if the quality is bad for slime mass, I'm getting such a quantity that I'm finally restoring my reserves. Maybe I'll even get to play around with my [Nitro Slime] on the later floors—I certainly haven't had enough fun with explosions!

They began advancing in a lax rank and file, so I again extended my tendrils and formed my weapons. Despite being a supposedly harder floor, I certainly wasn't feeling it, and these upgraded planetoids didn't seem any stronger from my perspective.

"Well, if it's the same as the last floor, I can stand here and repeat what I did last time," I said.

"I'm just going to hang out then, maybe get some knitting done," Vee replied.

It really was beginning to feel like a rehash of the previous floor. Although I supposed that a normal challenger would have moved around the room to better position themselves against the invading enemies to focus on survival. Of course, I didn't need to do any of that. Instead, I welcomed them to come towards me, as it just made eating them even easier.

Suddenly, a much larger plant creature emerged. After spawning, it pointed directly at the golden apple and fired magical water directly at it.

I instantly recognized the [Torrent] spell and began casting my own spells to protect the apple.

I wanted to use [Rampart], but without direct access to stone and soil, I'd need to magically form it, which increased its cost and the time to create it. To avoid the latter problem, I opted to use [Aegis] and formed multiple barriers to block and divert the gushing water.

"Can you not pick up the apple to protect it?" Vee asked.

I ordered my [Sub-Cores] to protect while I shifted some slime over to the apple while giving it my focus. I poked it, but it wouldn't even budge.

"Nope, looks like it's rooted to the spot."

Vee sighed, "Bummer that would have made the test rather easy."

"I mean, I could just build a defense around it using my body," I pointed out.

"Oh, right. I almost forgot about the cheating slime powers," she teased.

I sighed and began pulling out more slime while my [Sub-Cores] continued to protect the apple. I hadn't specified how to defend, so they had resorted to a magical approach and destroying the assailants before they could attack.

It seemed to work pretty well until the monsters spawned while attacking, and one even lobbed a [fireball] spell! Six [Aegis] spells went off in perfect unison and enclosed the burning ball inside a cube of shields, causing it to detonate when it hit the front shield and the entire explosion to be captured inside it.

Huh… now, why did I never think of that? Still, I can't believe that was a plant monster with [Fire Magic]. I guess this dungeon likes to play loose with the rules, too.

I had enough slime now and began surrounding the apple, ensuring I didn't touch it directly, just in case. I was effectively making a big dome of highly compressed slime that entirely encompassed it. However, I wasn't going to stop there as I began to shift the slime into adamantine, as it was the strongest metal I had in terms of pure defense and its semi-anti-magical properties.

With my construction done, I ordered my [Sub-Cores] to stop, as I wanted to see the fruits of my labor. A fresh batch of invading monsters spawned, and a volley of spells and thrown spears went out at me. Fire detonated, water gushed out, and even some blades of wind were added to the mix, but they all failed!

"Success! And this is just raw slime! Imagine if I started layering the dome with monster parts; I could probably double the defense depending on which parts I use."

"Please don't turn your dome into a worm dome," Vee pleaded.

"Yeah… I think that's probably still my highest defensive form, especially if I used [Blaze Slime] to heat it up. I'm just worried about potentially damaging the apple from the residual heat. I could create another layer of [Cryo Slime] to counteract it and protect the apple… although I'd probably need another neutral layer or two between those, I've never really considered needing to protect things from my slime in this manner."

Vee sighed, "Syl… don't overcomplicate things. You're already winning, and I doubt these low-level grunts can break through the defense."

"I guess that's true; I should rather focus on killing and eating them now that I don't need to worry about any stray explosions."

And so I sent forth my tendrils to claim food for myself again while killing the invaders. Seeing as I had the time, I started delegating the tendrils to [Sub-Cores] and began tinkering with my dimensional debuff since I had a never-ending supply of potential targets.

"If all these floors are going to be time-based, I think the real test will be our patience," Vee said, laughing at her own joke.

"Well, hopefully, the boss floors aren't."

"What if it's to protect the golden apple while fighting a giant tree boss?"

"Don't give them any ideas… plus in that case, I could just rush to kill the boss or even use a pocket window to store it safely?"

"Please don't call it 'pocket window'… that's not what it's called!" Vee whined.

"Would you prefer 'create: pocket window'?"

"That's so stupid. Who would add 'create' to their spells? The spell is already creating something!"

"Ha! Exactly!" I agreed, feeling triumphant to have gained a fellow hater of 'create: stupid.'

You two… you're really not taking this seriously. Can I really not just give you the token now?

"No!" Vee and I shouted together.

...fine.

So my one-sided slaughter of the planetoids continued until, eventually, the timer ran out, and we received our victory notice.

Congratulations, descendant! You have passed the second trial.

"Good job, Syl," Vee replied.

I pulled in my slime, revealing the apple in perfect mint condition.

May the fruit you protected be an offering to your further success in the trials!

The wooden pedestal began to sink into the floor, leaving the golden apple suspended in the air.

"That's pretty neat. You get to keep the apple as a reward," Vee replied as she dropped from the ceiling.

"I wonder what it does? Is it just a tasty apple?"

I grabbed it with a tendril and held it before me, trying to examine it.

The spider should eat it. It would have no effect on a slime.

"Oh? Why?" I asked curiously.

It rejuvenates your body, permanently increasing your maximum stamina.

"Oh, that makes perfect sense; thanks for the heads-up!" I said and tossed the apple to Vee.

Vee quickly grew to a larger size and caught the apple.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Dran is right; I have no use for stamina. Plus, you love fruit, so eat up."

"Awesome! Bottoms up!" Vee replied cheerfully and chomped down. "It's sooooo good! It's exploding in my mouth with sweetness!"

"I'm Glad you enjoyed it. If there are any more fruit-based rewards, I'll be sure to send them your way."

"Syl~, you're the best!"