After the onslaught she just faced with the bats, the sight of a vast open landscape was a sight to behold. Even though she had to be several hundred dress of feet below the surface, the floor had its very own sun in a blue, cloudless sky. Feeling the warmth of it on her skin and scales was quite relaxing. She used this chance to do a quick inspection of her body.
She felt a little remorse upon seeing her numerous patches of scales covering about 40% of her body. While they were highly beneficial, and were not hindering her figure, mobility, and even went well with her hair color, they were not origionally her's. But from now on, they would be. She would possibly die while still clad in these scales.
She was glad that she didn't have a way to see her face though. Her face had by far received almost all of the most severe damage she has accrued so far. Her eye, her tongue, and her cheeks had all been significantly destroyed and replaced. And while they were excellent additions in terms of potential, they were still not a part of her body a few days ago.
After patching up a few tiny scrapes with a few more scales, Laire recollected herself and focused once more on the task at hand. This floor would be a real bitch to clear, as it wasn't like the other floors which had a set path to follow. This floor was simply a massive open area, where boss creatures roamed around and within their specific territories, with a few not even bound to a set area and being "field bosses", as many have taken to calling them. Unlike how it had been upto now, there would be no "safe zone", and Laire would need to be constantly on guard.
She was about to descend into the forest below in order to make her way towards the large lake she could see off in the distance, when she heard a loud, familiar screeching from above. Laire grinned and wryly chuckled to herself.
"It must really be my lucky day."
She took a deep breath in and waited for a second. Then she looked up and unleashed her lightning breath, bisecting the diving gryphon in half only a few feet above her head. The two chard and cauterised halves fell to either side of her, just barely missing her by a few inches.
With a reluctant sigh, Laire knew what she should do next, but didn't like what it was. However she couldn't ignore this amazing opportunity that had just presented itself to her on a silver platter. And it was going to would hurt like hell.
Laire used her claws to cleanly gouge out the wings of the gryphon as cleanly as she could and set them aside. After preparing herself mentally, she carved into her shoulder blades and quickly attached the wings to her upper back. The procedure took less than half a minute, but she had nearly fainted from the pain a few times. However, now she had the ultimate tool for traversing this floor as efficiently as possible. She decided to test out her wings by giving them a few flaps and she immediately shot into the sky on her first downwards flap. As she was only a small fraction of the weight of a gryphon, this should have been expected, but it still caught her off guard.
She lost her balance and rolled forwards, but managed to level herself out quickly. Learning how to fly would have to be a trial by fire, but Laire was still elated nonetheless. She could fly. And not just fly, but fly with the speed of arguably the fastest creature with wings too.
Laire quickly mastered flying after only 2 hours of practice. It felt unexpectedly natural to fly, as if her body knew exactly what to do and when to do it. This likely was the result from the muscle memories of her new wings being added to her body's collection of knowledge.
If there were to be any downsides, it would be with her human eye. It wasn't able to keep up with her new speed, nor could it resist the wind pressure while staying open. Thankfully, her vampiric eye could keep up and easily could withstand the pressure too, though having limited depth perception while flying could become an issue.
So, with everything all set to go, Laire set out towards the lake in order to find herself a good spot to set up a temporary base of operations for the floor.