These Familiars Are Strange

From what I saw outside the window, I was able to figure out the location of the rooms with glowing windows.

Though it was certainly hard to pinpoint exact locations when being hung out the window like that.

At least the general locations would show where to go. After that, it was all about looking for the glows from the bottom of the doors.

With that, we would be able to find the locations of the other crystals.

But before we could run into that, we actually bumped into something else.

Since we were moving through the castle, we were covering quite a bit of area.

I didn't think that others had come to this place as well, but it turned out that this wasn't the case as we bumped into another group of humans. It was just a good thing that the Echo Bat found that other group of humans before we actually bumped into them.

So I was able to hide the ogres from sight before actually bumping into them.

When we made contact with these people, what we didn't expect was…

"Are you looking for a way out? Let's work together then."

The first thing that they offered was an alliance to find a way out of this place.

Judging by the looks on their faces and the body language that they had, it seemed like they were quite sincere in this matter. In fact, it even seemed like they were panicking a bit because of how much the situation changed.

I didn't answer right away since I didn't know how useful these people would be, but after thinking about it…

It didn't really matter if they were useful or not right now.

Right now, it was just better to have more people come along since there were quite a few of the manta rays. At the same time, more brains would help figure out just what that crystal was.

Before I could actually agree, a voice suddenly said, "So you're here as well. We should work together."

I couldn't help being surprised since this was a voice that I recognized, which was why I didn't put up my guard when everyone else did.

As if they were appearing from the void, there was a familiar face that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It really seemed like they were being revealed bit by bit with the way that they slowly appeared.

Once they revealed themselves, everyone slowly lowered their guards as well.

The other team was because they knew that they wouldn't be able to do anything against these people. Our team let our guards down a bit since I had already agreed to ally with these people.

It was Leaf and the World Tree Team that suddenly appeared.

After appearing, Leaf walked over to me with the same smile on her face as she said, "This has really become a big problem, hasn't it? Had you been expecting this earlier?"

She almost said this as if she was teasing me, but I just calmly shook my head.

At that, she gave a nod before saying, "Well, none of us would have expected something like this. Even those of us that had obtained information about this dungeon previously never would have expected this."

Then in a more serious voice, Leaf said, "Though that does beggar the question. Since there were those that could bring back information about the dungeon, did that mean that they left before waking up the Boss Monster or did they figure out a way to defeat the Boss Monster." After a pause, she said with another faint smile, "I'm more inclined to believe that it's the latter since someone must have cleared the dungeon or else there would have been a dungeon break by now. So I guess there must be a way of getting out of here after waking up that turtle."

I had to agree with the things that she said, but it wasn't as if I could actually think of an answer to the questions that she posed.

Seeing that I didn't say anything, Leaf didn't seem to mind as she suddenly turned around and said, "Alright, let's go and meet some people. It's not as if we can clear this dungeon on our own, right?"
Your journey continues with My Virtual Library Empire

I was surprised to hear this, but it wasn't as if there was anything that I could say as Leaf was already walking away with the World Tree Team. It didn't seem like she was giving me an opinion on this matter at all.

The other team looked at us with strange looks since they saw the way that Leaf talked to us.

Shaking my head and giving a sigh, I said, "Come, let's go together. You want to work together with us, right?"

I also didn't care about what their response was as I followed Leaf and the World Tree Team.

In the end, all of us headed in the direction that Leaf led us in.

From time to time, we bumped into the groups that also started to follow us.

It seemed that there were quite a few teams that had made it to this place and had been scattered around the castle.

It was surprising that we hadn't bumped into any of them before this with how many of them there were. There were a few familiar faces since we had encountered them when we were facing the Elite Monsters earlier, but there were more unfamiliar faces.

After following Leaf for a while, we suddenly arrived in a large hall.

There were already people that were gathered in this large hall and there were still others that were entering the hall at the same time as us. It seemed that anyone that was still in this dungeon was being gathered here.

At the very center of this hall were four teams that I recognized.

That was because these were the other four top contender teams.

It seemed that all of them had made it here in time and even seemed like they were the ones that were gathering people.