Even a little bit helps

Most of what was on had was a load of raw materials- very useful for building a house or the like, Lyrissa notes, but doesn't sell for much and takes up too much room in the inventory. Excepting a Main Gauche Lyrissa appropriates to replace her dagger, what remains is 'vendor junk'; items that can be sold for coin and take minimal carrying capacity, but are not terribly useful for anyone in the party. You currently split it between you, with the agreement that you'd figure out what was more useful for a lair and what was better sold after dealing with the boss. And maybe split some of the currency made by selling it, later.

Unfortunately, you cannot repeat the same strategy you used on this floor on the second one- the spiral staircase that leads up the tower was carefully designed to prevent that sort of tactic. Unsurprising and likely useful once you own the place, but aggravating while trying to conquer it. In the end, you decide on an old adventurer standby: The melee breaches first, while the caster exploits elemental weaknesses and tries to keep the melee from being overwhelmed. Hopefully, the fact that shades are weak and their thinned numbers makes this less suicidal then it sounded.

Lyrissa meets a shade upon opening the door, and a quick dual-hit with her sword and new dagger dispatches it. She pushes onward, the new dagger being a definite improvement over her old one. Starting equipment is that bad, it seems. Maybe it's a combination of that and the level? Well, shades are weak, so you don't need to be too concerned. Even a little bit more damage getting past their resistances would be noticeable. You put that thought on hold as you send your new Shadow Bolt zipping past her head and causing a shade to pop. Less charge time. Useful.

Between both your growing experience fighting shades, your new spell, and Lyrissas' new dagger, you clean out the main room despite the occasional shade drifting in from the rest of the floor. Lyrissa takes a moment of downtime to check her quest log, trying to assess how much harder you have to push if you want to clear the tower by nightfall.

"Hmm. Looks like there are two shades left on this floor and... maybe some of the ones we got were from the third floor? Looks like they've dropped in population," She muses. "I don't think anyone could have gotten past us..."

"Not... impossible," you note. "But we didn't see anyone on the way here other then Jhondoe. Of course, if they arrived as we were working on the second floor they could have just gone straight to the third. We had to stop because the Boss doesn't come out till all the shades are vanquished, and the could have just decided to take advantage..." You pause as a concerning thought hits you. "Or... Jhondoes' ramblings about there being a necromancer in league with the shades might have had some truth to it. He was obviously wrong that it was me, but there are some spells that consume your minions for extra power. Doing it is a bad idea, non-sapient undead kind of poison you and sapient undead... well, having voices in your head is not exactly conductive to sanity."

She winces. "So we're going to have to push hard, and spend less time looting if we want to get this done before they get too powerful or another party to beat us there."

"It seems likely," you admit. Neither one of you likes the implications of that.