I blew past the minotaur with one punch like the last time the moment I went in and immediately strolled towards the exit.

I only had about two hours to explore so I didn't bother breaking the minotaur into parts and only took his Mana Crystal which Eins helped me retrieve.

As I walked out, I was surprised to see the party from earlier standing at the bottom of the stairs, all of them turning to give me a look that told me they were just as surprised to see me.

"What… Did you already kill the boss so quickly?" The warrior girl asked, disbelief in her voice.

I shrugged, "I did say that I've beaten the boss here before. Why are you so surprised?"

She was about to say something before she noticed my Shadow Guards standing behind me and she pointed towards them, "Wait… Who are they? Aren't you supposed to be a solo Dungeoneer?"

I pretended to act sheepish, "Yeah… I kind of lied about that. I wanted to see if you would attack me if you knew I was alone but the truth is that I had a party with me that was waiting behind me."

She seemed convinced of that since she nodded, "I see… I understand… But still, for your party to be able to finish off that boss so quickly… We only just managed to get our bearings on the new floor and you've already finished it off… Are you really only a D rank?"

"The hardest Dungeon I have completed was indeed a D ranked one. Anyway… We're in a rush so if there is nothing else…"

"Wait… Umm… Could I ask if you would be interested in teaming up?"

Oh? That was actually a surprise for me.

I mean… Given that they seemed to be so cautious of me before the boss fight and the fact that they literally stopped me from trying to approach them earlier, I'd thought that they would be happy about me going my own way.

But I guess this woman was smart enough to know when to throw her pride away to get benefits for her party.

I tilted my head, "Why would we want to team up with you? No offence but… This arrangement seems like it would benefit you girls more than it would benefit us."

The girl who was the tank of their party stepped forward, "Hey, wait a minute! We can pull our own weight just fine! Our leader is just trying to cooperate with you!"

"Doesn't change the fact that our party is obviously stronger than yours and we would most probably be the ones defeating most of the monsters. Sorry, not interested. Good luck with your Dungeon diving though."

I walked past them without looking back, my Shadow Guards following closely behind me.

At least they didn't try to stop me though I could see that the leader seemed reluctant to let us leave while the rest were either displeased or disappointed by my decision.

This floor was still a labyrinth type floor so I decided to take the path to the right and peeled away from there.

We didn't even manage to get out of sight of those girls when something jumped out from around the corner, revealing itself to be another minotaur.

Unlike the others, this one was wielding a halberd and was wearing a chainmail shirt on his torso while its arms were adorned with a pair of steel vambraces.

I narrowed my eyes and used [Screened] on it.

[Name: Dungeon Minotaur Guard

Race: Monster

Stats:

280 Strength

80 Dexterity

280 Endurance

80 Magic

Skills:

Leadership (Tier 1), Martial Skill -(Polearm Proficiency (Tier 2))]

Ok, it's stronger than the normal minotaur but it was still weaker than the boss we beat earlier so this one should be quite easy.

Just as I thought of that, three more appeared from around the corner, though those three were the normal minotaur variants and had no weapons.

Right… She did say that this Dungeon's monsters primarily moved in groups.

I could sense the other party tensing up behind us but they weren't offering to help, most likely because they wanted to see how we would deal with the monster in front of us. 𝑅ÅƝ∅ꞖƐS̩

Well… I don't want to reveal too much so I just instructed Eins and the others to stay back while I rushed directly towards the leading monster.

It tried to skewer me with its halberd but I deftly sidestepped it and got past the bladed part of his weapon.

He tried to swing the pole towards me in an attempt to shove me away but my hand shot out to stop it from even moving an inch.

To the monster's credit, it adapted quite quickly and dropped the halberd to raise his own fists, recognising that his weapon was now useless.

He tried to swing his fist at me in a right hook but I ducked underneath it and got under his guard.

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The minotaur was just in the midst of trying to take a step back when I kicked off the ground and punched my fist up in an uppercut, my knuckle connecting with the underside of the minotaur's chin.

There was a loud 'crack' as the minotaur was sent flying up towards the ceiling, the poor monster crashing into it and smashing his skull open before dropping back down on the ground.

I didn't even need to buff myself.

The other three minotaurs let out a roar of rage and tried to charge at me but they were so distracted by their anger they ended up crashing into each other trying to get to me.

That gave me the space I needed to lunge towards the one on the far right to deliver a kick into his midsection.

The minotaur got sent flying back to crash into the wall while I drew my blade to decapitate the minotaur who had been in the centre.

The last one tried to raise his fists up but I thrusted my sword forward, impaling his head with my blade and killing him.

The first minotaur I kicked tried to get up from the ground groggily so I went over to decapitate him as well.

Yeah, pretty easy.

Eins and the rest immediately went to cut out the Mana Crystal from the Minotaur Guard's body and we started to leave when a voice called out from behind.

"Wait!"

Ugh… Is she going to try to invite me again?

I turned around to look at the other party and the warrior girl was pointing at the corpse of the monster, "Are you… Just going to leave that?"

I tilted my head, "I don't really need more minotaur materials. Why? Are you asking if you could have it?"

All of them nodded their heads quickly.

The leader stepped forward, "This… This is going to sound really shameless but…"

I raised my hand to stop her, "It's not that it's going to sound shameless but it is quite shameless. Still, I don't need it so feel free to take its parts, I don't care."

"No… Umm… I mean… We do want the minotaur parts but… I realise I was wrong… I should not have asked if you would like to join us… I should have asked if it was alright for us to join you?"

Oh wow, ok… This was more shameless than I thought…

"The same question applies though? Seems like you would be benefiting from this arrangement more than we would," I pointed out.

"We can dismantle the corpses for you! We only need the minotaur horns for a quest that we're doing! As for everything else… We would be happy to cut up the corpse and carry the parts for you!"

I was just about to reject her when I took a moment to think.

Hmm…

Like she had said, there would be groups of monsters so I wasn't going to waste time cutting open each monster just to get their parts.

Sure, Eins and the others could do it quickly but if I were to run into other parties, I don't want to draw more attention to ourselves if we have to…

That's why I opted to just take the Mana Crystals and ignore the rest.

So if I have these girls following behind and helping me harvest the monster parts, I could save time and also not feel that I've wasted a potentially good drop.

Hey, I already said before, I'm a hoarder! If there wasn't a time limit placed on me, I would have chopped up every single monster we killed including those goblins that Haddock's group had fought earlier!

There's no way I was just abandoning these monster parts if I could help it!

I looked at the warrior girl, "Fine. We'll concentrate on killing the monsters, your party will help us process the corpses. I'll give you all the minotaur horns from the kills but everything else belongs to us. Fair?"

She gave me a salute which prompted the others to do the same, "Yes leader!"

Ok, ok. Let's go already.

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