It turned out cutting glass wasn't hard at all. Well it was very hard, but only in a physical sense. Once Shiina figured out how to get her pseudopods tough enough to get a groove in the glass it was simple. Carve the desired shape into the glass. Make a mold to match the groove, carefully break the glass along the lines. The surface was rough and there was a lot of glass sand, but that was a problem for the buyer.

  "As much fun as you're having Shiina, we should probably move on," Ife said with a grin.

  Shiina pouted, but the woman was right. "Okay." Maybe there'd be a treasure chest or something!

  Zanya moved to her side as she felt up the door. "So much nicer knowing all that work won't go to hireling fees."

  "Wait, doesn't that mean I can get more going solo?" Shiina realized.

  "You can get more per job," Delilah said. "You saw how hard it was to get a job."

  "Oh. Yeah." Shiina nodded. That made some sense. If you couldn't get money often you'd have to ask for a lot. Something to consider for after this mission.

  Ife looked pleased. "Many aren't as wise as you are. Nice to see we found clever allies."

  "But we need to make you well equipped allies so-" Zanya opened the next door revealing a crystal storage shed and their next victims.

  Zanya smashed her way through most of the enemies, while Ife cut down the rest. None of the crystal gardeners or glass plants got an attack off, though Shiina managed to stab one.

  The individual rooms started to blur. A few stood out a little. The ballroom they stumbled into was very nice. Mirrored walls, crystal chandeliers, and glass furniture everywhere created a shining monument to wealth. Shiina grabbed a shimmering glass rose from one of the vases along the way just because it was pretty.

  Finally they ended up in a proper greenhouse, with a large set of double doors leading on. And as a bonus there was a treasure chest!

  "That should be the end of this section," Ife said, nodding to the doors. "If we're lucky a crystal treant will be past it. If not we'll just harvest a good branch from the orchard for a new staff. Either way that will be the end of the run."

  "But first treasure!" Shiina said shifting towards the chest.

  Zanya raised an eyebrow. "Not going to check if it's a mimic?"

  Shiina turned her human torso to stare at the woman. As if she couldn't sense one of her brethren from this distance. She kept the glare up until the humanoids all looked embarrassed. "Apologies," Zanya said, looking away. Shiina nodded and went back to the chest.

  It was a nice big one, similar to the fake chest she'd used back in her old dungeon. Of course this one actually had a real lock with tumblers. It also had a magical rune in the back that would violently electrocute anyone who fiddled with the lock. She worked to get rid of that first.

  She carefully went over Mali's instructions as she handled the trap. First was to determine what the trap was associated with. Dungeons only used 'protecting,' 'holding,' and 'killing,' as the foundations of magical traps. The magical trap had the rune for 'holding' and 'killing', which meant it was a double stage trap. One rune was guarding the other, so they'd have to be eliminated in order.

  Honestly given the level range she could probably assume holding was the primary rune and killing the secondary rune. After all, holding wouldn't protect the rune itself from thieves. But it was better to work through the whole system instead of rushing.

  Next was to check the power connections. Sadly it seemed the rune gathering power from the dungeon was attached to both the associated runes, so there was nothing useful there. She marked the other runes that were being fed power with chalk, then advanced to the next step.

  Electricity was a big part of the trap so she traced the connections of that rune. Most of them were to fakes or deception runes, but it did trace back to killing. That was good. It meant the killing rune controlled the lethal part of the trap.

  She then moved to the holding rune and looked over the connections there. Clearing out the fake runes she discovered it was attached to 'honesty,' and 'ownership.' That must be how the person with the key could get in. Not that dungeon chests usually had keys. But they liked pretending. Finally there was an anti tamper rune and the connection to the killing rune via some general spellwork.

  With the trap's details all hashed out, she began disarming. First sever the anti tampering protections. Then cut the power to the electricity rune and the various confusion runes. Finally scratch out killing, then the holding runes.

  "Done!" She happily announced. With that she went to the tumblers.

  This was both easier and harder. She forced herself to use fingers, to keep her hands working like a human's would instead of letting her pseudopods go wild. Feeling the tension of the lock and the click of the tumblers.

  Eventually the lock popped open. Shiina peered in and smiled as she saw several real gems and a heavy parchment. "Ooh! Magic item~!"

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  Delilah leaned over. "Um, let's see.... Selective Parchment? Oh it limits who can read it."

  "A good find. We might have a use for it in our job," Ife said. "As for the gems..." the fox woman leaned over and checked them. "No real magical potential from any of them, but jaspers are rare in this area so they might get interest as something different from the local crystals. Probably worth three hundred as a group."

  "Okays." Shiina handed them over to Ife since her bag of holding was mostly filled with glass. "So what's the plan with the boss?"

  Zanya shouldered her axe. "Assuming it's there, Delilah throws her strongest mana boost on Ife, and Ife shows what happens when she cuts loose instead of hoarding energy for emergencies."

  "That's the plan for if it's not there too," Ife said with a smirk. Zanya raised an eyebrow, but Ife continued. "If there's no boss we'll want to sweep up the trash quickly. If there's a different boss I'm not interested in finding out what strange tricks it has."

  That didn't seem to leave much for Shiina, but maybe there'd be another chest or something. "Alright. Let me finish sweeping the room."

  She checked over everything one last time, not finding any goodies. With a shrug she focused on the humanoids again. "This room is cleaned out."

  Delilah looked around herself. "It's a little weird that you can look everywhere without moving at all."

  "What's weird is you people and your only seeing in front of you," Shiina replied before sticking her tongue out. She followed it up with a wink since she wasn't sure how well Zanya understood her jokes. Reading people was hard, and the Ophidian was more stoic than most.

  "A valiant attempt but most humanoid's tongues don't go past their chin," Ife said, tail swishing happily.

  Shiina pouted. All these little stupid hidden details were hard! No one complained if you got the inside of a chest wrong. Well okay they complained a lot but it was usually more about the biting and the dying parts. Not the construction details.

  They moved as a group over to the final doors. Delilah concentrated, holding her staff towards Ife. "Splendor and Awe, grant this woman the Power she deserves."

  Ife laughed and arranged her long black hair. "Well, you know how to flatter a woman. That's quite a boost. Shiina, Zanya, if you'd please?"

  Figuring that was the cue, Shiina pushed open one of the double doors while Zanya got the other. Inside was the crystal treant, a twenty foot tall tree with a gnarled face filling up its trunk, crystal eyes darting wildly about. Surrounding it were gardeners with twisted crystal growth sprouting from them, all laying corpses down at its feet. Shiina figured that was probably a bad thing.

  It didn't matter though. Because Ife pointed and snapped her fingers. "By divine right I decree your extermination. Judgment of Anubis."

  A beam of blinding light and one of incredible darkness spun from her staff, circling each other in a double helix. They grew closer and closer until they slammed together in front of the crystal treant.

  Shiina's sense of sight shut down. When she could see again the room was now completely filled with corpses. The treant had toppled over and all the gardeners were now lifeless on the ground. "Wow," she finally said.

  "Remember I'm an average combatant," Ife said as she wandered in. "Well in terms of power. The guards we're going to be dealing with will be my equal in a fight."

  That was a little worrying, Shiina had to admit.

  "Which is why you won't be fighting them," Zanya said. "But I'll be training you how to in the future. For now let's get the items."

  Shiina wandered in and looked over the place. "No chests." She gave the bodies some attention. "All monsters. Though I don't recognize some of them." The ones that the gardeners had been offering as tribute all had crystals in them, but she couldn't see what they were through the damage.

  "Check the pockets for spare change and items," Ife said as she started looking over the treant. "Delilah come over here. We need to find a good branch for you."

  Shiina started going through the pile. The large gold and silver coins that formed in dungeons for some reason, a few crystalline sickles and crude weapons, and in a pocket of a corpse at the bottom, a torn page with arcane scribbles. "Oooh! Found something!" She checked it and quickly determined these weren't trap runes. "Yeah it's for one of you."

  Zanya looked from her own looting and scanned the paper. "A spell base for a limited ritual. Divination I think. Interesting. Nice find."

  "Er, so is it expensive?" Shiina asked.

  "Probably not," Zanya admitted. "It's only part of a spell, so it will require a proper researcher to make something useful out of it. But I'm pretty sure Delilah and Ife will be able to use it for their own needs."

  Shiina felt a little down that they hadn't gotten anything super nice. She'd expected more loot.

  Zanya patted her on the shoulder. "Not all the stuff is super exciting. But between the glass you harvested and spare coins we're all getting three hundred coins after the guild cut. That's a pretty good profit for a low level dungeon like this."

  "Really?" Shiina considered it. "I guess all those coins add up."

  "Yep. One of the things Mali was right about." Zanya moved towards the other women. "Sadly she was mediocre in a fight, so once we find a proper staff and do some logging you're going to be joining me for combat practice."

  The mimic slunk after. She knew she needed that. But it didn't sound like fun.

  Maybe she could unlock the mythical skills of the bard and insult people to death instead? It was worth a thought.

  One of the first things to be (re)formed by a dungeon level is a 'boss.' Zanya says it's a holdover from when the levels were meant to hold off invaders. The fodder along the way filters out weaker threats, but the boss is the cornerstone of defense.

  As such they're both the most dangerous thing in a dungeon level, and they usually guard the best loot. Killing one causes the dungeon to enter a 'repair mode' where it draws in power to reform the boss, reset the rooms leading to it, and then fill in the monsters. This is why adventurers can't just nibble at the fringes to make a profit. You need to go in and kill the boss to get things (other than monsters) reforming.

  Bosses are unique in that unlike the other dungeon creatures (me!) they can be intelligent, but are always soulless. They're also always hostile, except to other dungeon monsters. Finally they don't need to eat or drink, meaning they can hang out in their boss chamber forever. (They might still eat adventurers, but just for fun.)