Is it wrong for slimes to be in dungeons? (revised)

Chapter 41: Minor Memories

(Rimuru POV)

I sheath my sword and stare down at the destruction before me.

"Whoo," I let out a small sigh. "I think that's all for this floor too," I say, turning toward Sophia.

"...Is that right?" she asked after a moment of silence as she surveyed the scene I had created.

"Hey...don't look at me like that," I say. "I'm just making sure I don't miss anything."

She pursed her lips, "uh huh, right," She said in a tone clearly indicating her lack of faith.

"...Okay fine, maybe I wanted to let off some steam, can you blame me? So much has happened lately," I murmur. Ever since I had met the Loki familia on floor 59 I had never had the opportunity to let loose. And with everything that's happened, I would be lying if I said the stress hadn't been getting to me just a little.

She shrugged, "as long as we're being honest with ourselves," She looked at me with a small smirk. I couldn't help but smile back at that.

"Onto the next floor then?" she asked.

"Yeah."

Leaving the magic stones in the snow we move onward toward the next floor. As soon as I take a step there a strange feeling washes over me. It's a little intense but it's also familiar.

My soul is on this floor. It was little more than a gut feeling, but somehow there was no room for doubt in my mind.

I sucked in a breath and closed my eyes. While I could be sure it was at least on this floor, actually figuring out where on this floor would be a bit of a challenge. As the floors get lower down in the dungeon they also get larger. Down where I was born it was almost like an entire small country in terms of size. Here, on floor 61, it was a few sizes larger than the entire city of Orario.

I gave up on fully exploring the floors rather quickly so there was actually quite a bit of searching through this floor that I'd need to do before I could find my soul more than likely.

"–?!"

I turned around and saw Sophia fall onto one knee. I rushed over, "are you alright," I asked.

She nodded. "Yeah, I just..." She was sweating slightly. "I guess that means your soul is here?"

"...yeah," I nodded. "But how did you..."

"Really it'd be harder to not notice, this aura is...suffocating," she explained. I blinked, "if you want I can send you ba–"

"Don't bother," she wiped the sweat from her brow and got back up with a breath. "Might be because I'm just that much weaker than you, but it seems like I'm more sensitive to your soul then even you are."

Strictly speaking it's probably not your soul specifically, but just the amount of power. She added. I couldn't exactly argue either. It was a blur, you'd think with great sage I'd be able to pinpoint the location, but even for them it was a difficult thing to locate.

"But isn't that more reason that you should return?" I asked.

"No, in the first place, I have your barrier," she argued. "It's not like I'll get hurt, besides as things stand I can act as your tracker." she added. "It'd be faster than searching this entire floor."

"..." I still hesitated. While I trumped this soul piece by far in terms of how much of my soul I had, there was still the factor of how strong it was as a monster on its own. I wasn't too worried if it came down to a fight, but...