Back in town, time has passed and Ace stands in the middle of the secret training room. Around him are his team, though there is one major difference. A difference that has unintentionally spread to all the town's core members.

They had diversified the types of power they used. At the start, most had followed the advice of the various tutorial guides and focused on the type of power most suited for them. For instance, Ace scored high on magic.

Except then they found out about the usefulness and propensity for humans on this planet to have psionic powers. Though most didn't actually see this as gaining an additional power source, so much as gaining a vital protection. Now? If you count the mental powers, they all have at least three powers to pull from.

As mentioned, this wasn't on purpose and it isn't like the guides were wrong in their suggestions. Trying to split your training between multiple different powers will just make you weaker unless you can use them all at once. That isn't rare, but generally something people add in after their main power is central to everything. At that point, adding in a bit of Qi to improve a wind magic movement technique doesn't really change things.

The biggest reason for this is the limits of a person's resources. You can't train Mana, Qi, and Psi and expect to get anywhere compared to similarly leveled people. It is simply not feasible for someone to train that many powers without support.

At most, people end up doing something similar to what had been done by them with psionics. Where there is a local affinity and everyone picks up just a little bit because it is so easy. After all, if you naturally have Mana, not learning a few simple spells is a waste. Even if it is just a simple spell to start a fire or similar.

Ace understood all of this, and yet, they had almost been forced into it by their situation. Well, that isn't fair and he knows that as well. It was a simple matter that the improved resource regeneration provided by the dungeon was vital, but only went so far.

As they were newly integrated, their town was missing a number of vital training aids that would have supplemented the effect. The big ones being specialty potions. Sure, people had figured out the basic recovery potions. You want to recover from a wound, some Mana, or even Psionic power; they have a potion. However, those types of potions are designed for an emergency and dump the resource on you all at once.

That suddenness makes it so that using too many in a brief span of time can cause problems. Which means you can't use them to train. What is instead needed is a slow regeneration effect. Not only are those gentler on the user, but they actually recover the max the potion can instead of a somewhat random amount.

If combined with the dungeon's effect, those potions would have allowed them to truly focus on just one power. Not that they couldn't get a normal amount of training with the dungeon's effect. While hard to judge, Ace was willing to guess that the regen field would at the very least replace the use of such potions. Except, that is for normal people.

Ace had been paying out absurd amounts of meat to those willing to relay everything the tutorial guides had said to people. And part of that knowledge base came from some trumped up 17-year-old kid who expected to eventually rule all the local settlements because the system had recognized his family's noble bloodline. Classic example of a fallen family clinging onto their history to ignore their current situation.

Anyway, the kid ended up dead in the dungeon after multiple people told him not to enter. Which made Ace glad he was able to extract all the information the kid had. But yeah; nobles, rich merchants, and various other groups all pump their hopeful talents full of slow regen potions to make it so their kids go further than regular people. So, while the dungeon could replace those potions for a normal person or even someone in a rich family or group. It could not match up to the resources of an heir or someone picked out for special training.

To match those, the field is a good start, but it can only take you so far. This was a fact everyone knew and they had all come to the same conclusion. Since the field actually worked on all resources, the more you had, the better it was. So, if you had at least three powers, most people could sustain near constant use of their various abilities, as long as they cycled between which power was being used.

So there Ace stands. Trained in Magic, Psionics, Qi, and Authority. That last one had been an oddity when it revealed itself, though they now understood it and other similar powers better. Authority was a power in the same way Bloodlust was. Mostly used for aura techniques, but you could certainly use it like any other resource pool if you are clever enough. Though doing so will weaken the aura until it has recovered.

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Ace sighed, at this point all the core members of the town had truly gone down the path of multi-classing, both figuratively and literally. It had taken them longer to train up their skills once they hit upon using multiple powers because each one had skills attached to it as well. That meant more class paths just to fit them all.

Now they finally felt ready to attempt the thirteenth floor properly. Ace even felt that they could take the kobold camp on. Though his biggest boost in confidence came from the fact that OG has picked up healing magic. He wasn't as good as Doctor, but at least they would have the time to get anyone too far gone back to town for proper care.

So, once the entire group was satisfied with their preparations, they headed into the dungeon. There, they first faced the eleventh floor. The press of sprouts and their occasional bigger brethren clogged the air with spores, each one chipping away at the group's resistance.

Even at this point, after countless hours of joint research by the Barrais, Doctor, and a number of others there was no sure fire way to solve this problem. The potions made to provide resistance did their job well enough against smaller numbers. It just seemed that after a certain point, the spore magic reached a critical mass and could penetrate any form of resistance they knew of.

Which going by some of the information they had scrounged up, was likely always going to be the case. Within the same range of ability, you can't make yourself truly immune. There were certain breakpoints where it was conceivable to completely block lower tier effects. Except no one was close to that and they certainly didn't have crafters capable of it.

Still, Sammy and Jack were doing a fine job of holding the horde back as they stood in the entrance tunnel. This left Ace, Susan, and Ruby to focus on clearing the endless sprouts. All the while OG focused on channeling a low power area of effect antidote spell. This spell barely did anything, but when combined with the resistance potion's effect, it was enough to keep everyone moving. Then, as always, seemingly endless tides of sprouts come to an end and the group can advance.

This led to Ace's most hated floor, number twelve. It honestly wasn't that hard, but even now, finding your way through takes a long while. Though what might annoy Ace the most, is what his newfound duties are on the floor.

They obviously can't carry bundles of wheat straw with them and so if they want the wheat, they need to thresh it right there. And guess what? Ace happens to specialize in plant magic, which allows him to process entire sheaths of wheat with a single smack, causing the kernels to all detach from the rest of the stem. This effect even leaves the chaff behind as only the edible part falls. So after being held back by these plants for so long, suffice it to say, he doesn't particularly like working with them.

Except ever since the magic to process the wheat quickly had been figured out, the town had grown even richer. Bread was a major part of their pre-system diets and just as with beef, you only realize how important it was once it is gone. And it wasn't even just bread as so much is made with flour. Sure, give it time and the farms would be harvesting, skills and magic allowing for plants to grow quicker. For now though, Wolf's Rest has a near monopoly on bread, pasta, and so on.

And so, a while later, after having harvested a good supply of wheat into their bag of holding, the group finally moves onto their actual goal, floor number thirteen. Once through, they take a glance up the mountain, before preparing their climbing gear and heading down towards the kobold camp. They don't even bother with stealth for this part as the trees provide enough cover.

However, once on the ground, they proceed with much more caution. Even if the camp doesn't send scouts out that far, they had stumbled upon more than enough traps in the area to know it wasn't safe. Worse, even if a trap fails to hurt them when set off, there is always some sort of noisy bit tacked on to alert the kobolds. And to top it all off, the Barrais were finally starting to reach their limits on some of their old skills.

Not that Susan couldn't spot a normal trap from a mile away. Rather, she was butting up against the fact the kobolds used magical methods to hide their traps. Which while not without tells, has completely different ones from what she knows. So, even with their impressive skills, the Barrais could no longer coast along. The supernatural had simply introduced too many new things to life.

A fact proven as the group once again triggers a trap, this one a simple snare that also releases a bunch of rocks from high up in a tree. Susan is particularly frustrated with this one as she can't even tell how the snare was connected to the rockfall. It doesn't make any sense to her, which is fair as the kobolds had actually used a very basic curse of sorts to connect the disparate pieces.

This wouldn't work to connect anything that would be dangerous as the karmic connection couldn't sustain the ill will, but it was certainly enough to add a very simple alarm to the main trap. And so, as Susan works to cut the snare off of Jack, it gave the kobolds time to prepare their defenses. Which as far as the team is concerned, was a blessing as a time or two the delve would have gone sideways if they actually came out to rumble.

Once Jack is released, the trap is certainly not enough to lift him and all his gear, but certainly capable of restraining him, the party continues. Though they are even more cautious as the closer they are to the camp, the more deadly the traps will be. Good thing Susan is able to spot what traps they do come across. Even if it is mostly because not all the traps are hidden with magic.

Despite their caution, the party soon enters the clearing with the kobold camp and are greeted with the entire camp's population ready to fight. Not only that, but the party is met with a wave of spells as the four kobold mages release the spells they had been holding. Each of the elements is represented, which actually makes the attacks harder to deal with as the party can't just use one spell that is strong against them all.

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