Floor 24 had three Pantries in all, located to the southwest, the southeast, and the north.
Leo's group had still been debating which Pantry to head for when Asfi gave them the answer directly.
"We just need to head in the direction the monsters are coming from."
Asfi's reasoning was simple too: since the Pantry was the source of the surge in monster numbers, they just had to go toward the direction the monsters were coming from.
Based on that judgment, the group immediately picked their destination: the north.
The results proved Asfi's judgment correct.
Because the closer everyone got to the northern Pantry, the more monsters appeared along the way. At its worst they even packed the entire corridor, making it completely impassable, leaving the mostly Lv.3 Hermes Familia members with their scalps tingling.
Normally the ability needed to clear Floor 24 was the latter half of Lv.2, or rather the highest tier of Lv.2 Status, but this crowded monster horde would probably scare even a strong Lv.3 into turning around and heading straight home, not daring to charge in and fight at all.
For the mostly Lv.3 Hermes Familia, this scene qualified as hell mode, making even Asfi want to avoid the fight.
The ones who stepped up in the end were, naturally, Leo and Ais.
No, it should be said it was Leo alone.
The moment he saw that crowded monster horde, he didn't hesitate to unleash a Magic he hadn't used even once the whole way there.
"Meteor Dance!"
A magic circle radiating gorgeous starlight spread open beneath Leo's feet, and countless shining meteors flew out of it, forming a dense meteor shower that blasted down at the monster horde with a roar.
Violent roars rang out through the entire corridor, so intense that even the green forest terrain shook fiercely.
The meteor shower fell straight onto the ground, bombarding the monsters without pause, running them through, blowing them apart, and shattering them amid their screams.
The wide-area bombardment turned the dust kicked up by the explosions into a rolling sandstorm that swept across the surroundings, throwing all of Hermes Familia into a panic. Without thinking, they either dropped flat or fell over, and even Ais and Asfi couldn't help but throw up their arms to shield their faces, barely managing to block the blast wind.
By the time it all settled and the dust cleared, the scene before them no longer held a single monster, only a ground full of craters and monster remains, a horrifying sight.
Asfi and the rest of the Hermes Familia members were shocked beyond words.
"...His Magic got a lot stronger too."
Ais quietly looked at the culprit responsible for all of it, murmuring inwardly.
"Mm, the firepower's improved quite a bit."
Leo himself only felt satisfied.
After ranking up to Lv.5, his Magic hadn't jumped a full two Levels in strength the way his melee had thanks to the new Skill, but it was definitely stronger than his current melee ability.
After all, Magic was the ability Leo had always been best at. This basic ability he'd already been able to train to SSS back at Lv.1, and it was the only ability he could train to SSS before Lv.4.
In other words, Leo's Magic parameter had always been stronger than his other basic abilities, and with the boost from Star Soul Eternal plus the corrections from the two Development Abilities of Mage and Magic Attack, his magic ability was naturally a cut above his melee.
Maybe my magic firepower now is already no worse than Riveria's.
A pity Leo only had two Magic, unlike Riveria, who not only had all three magic slots filled but could also use a special magic property to adjust the attribute and power of each Magic, using three Magic as if they were nine.
The alias Nine Hell wasn't given out at random. It was precisely because Riveria could use three Magic as nine that the "nine magic" saying existed.
As for a certain Thousand Elf, there was even less need to say. You could tell from the alias alone: the number of Magic this Elf could use was practically off the charts.
Lefiya's third Magic was far more absurd than Riveria's. Riveria used three Magic as nine, while she used one Magic as countless Magic, utterly against the rules.
Of course, Leo actually counted as one of those rule-breakers too.
His Meteor Dance could be used as a single-target Magic or as a group Magic, which barely counted as using one Magic as several Magic as well.
Leo, thinking this way, had no idea at all that in Asfi and the others' eyes, he only needed this one Magic to be plenty terrifying.
"...Is he a swordsman or a Mage?"
Asfi couldn't help but ask Ais.
"Both, and neither." Ais replied plainly. "Leo is a Magic Swordsman."
"A Magic Swordsman?" Hearing that, Lulune couldn't help but grumble. "Why be a Magic Swordsman with Magic that strong? Wouldn't it be way better to just be a Mage?"
The people around kept nodding, unable to agree more.
In their general understanding, a so-called Magic Swordsman was supposed to combine melee to draw out greater strength precisely because their own magic wasn't especially powerful.
At the very least, Magic Swordsmen usually couldn't trigger the Mage Development Ability, and couldn't become a high-tier Mage, which was why they had to find another path.
If you had powerful Magic from the start, you could just develop straight down the Mage path, so why bother learning melee?
A Magic Swordsman was certainly a very rare class, and could fight independently without needing teammates to protect them, but by the same token, they didn't have the ability, like a pure Mage, to turn the tables and pull a battle back from the brink in dire straits.
A Magic Swordsman, no matter how strong, could at most only deal with the monsters right in front of them.
Not like a Mage, who fired off one high-power Magic and the monsters generally died in heaps, especially a Mage who'd mastered wide-area annihilation magic. That kind could clear a battlefield through firepower alone, killing far more monsters than a whole team of warriors fighting for their lives.
The moment they ran into a super-strong monster like a Floor Boss, a Mage's Magic was also a force that could change the tide of battle. However many warriors swung their blades and kept hacking at the opponent, the damage they dealt probably still wouldn't match the damage from a single Mage's wide-area annihilation magic.
So an ordinary person probably found it hard to understand Leo's mindset, having powerful Magic yet not focusing on developing down the Mage path, right?
Ais didn't say anything to that.
She knew Leo simply didn't want to be protected by others all the time.
If he hadn't developed his ability categories outside Magic equally well, even breaking through the limits of his Status to reach the SS that ordinary people couldn't attain, maybe even Riveria would have wanted to advise him to focus on the Mage path rather than splitting his attention onto melee.
But now, Riveria probably wouldn't say anything more either.
With a Skill like Star Sword Crossing, and having learned the swordsman Development Ability, it would be plain stupid for Leo not to learn melee.
It was precisely because of his persistence all along that he'd been able to achieve inhuman results in both melee and Magic.
The Leo of now could be a high-tier swordsman or a professional Mage. Aside from the Healer position, which he couldn't fill, there was no problem with him taking on any role.
Asfi belatedly realized this, and even the look in her eyes as she watched Leo changed.
Only now did she notice how terrifying this man before her was.
He was absolutely more than just a genius with an astonishing growth rate.
Along with that astonishing growth rate, this man hadn't fallen behind in any single aspect either, becoming an almost omnipotent existence.
Asfi could already guess that Leo must have accumulated impressive latent ability before each level up, and even learned very rare, powerful Skills, or there was no way he'd have this kind of terrifying strength now, having only just become a Lv.5.
"Just how big a treasure did Loki Familia pick up...?"
Asfi was feeling a little envious.
As a captain herself, she couldn't help but start thinking: if a monster like this showed up in her own Familia, there was no telling how much labor it would save her, how much it could help her out.
Thinking of how she toiled and racked her brains in this Familia every single day, Asfi wanted to sigh.
Leo had no idea his performance had drawn the envy of another Familia.
Seeing that the monster numbers weren't dropping but rising instead, and that the corridor he'd just cleared was quickly flooding with a mass of monsters again, he immediately fired off another Meteor Dance.
With Leo clearing the way, the whole team faced no obstruction from the mass of monsters, and their pace was even faster than before.
Thanks to this, as everyone advanced, the Dungeon finally began to show changes that hadn't been there before.
"This is...?"
Everyone looked around, slightly dazed.
At some point, the terrain of tree-bark-like walls with roots and flower clusters spread everywhere had gradually taken on a rocky, uneven structure.
The green around them began to fade, replaced instead by a pale red.
The path slowly became just like a cavern, the presence of monsters gradually vanished, and a grim, eerie silence set in, making everyone brace themselves and slow their steps.
After advancing like this for a while, everyone finally arrived at the turning point of the change.
"Wh... what is this...?!"
At Lulune's cry of alarm, everyone came to a stop together.
They couldn't advance any further.
Right in front of them, jarringly abrupt, was an enormous wall large enough to block the entire corridor.
The wall had a hair-raising sheen and a swollen surface, looking both like a creature and like a plant, green overall, like a flesh wall, completely different from the surrounding stone walls in both structure and nature.
This disgusting green flesh wall was like a malignant tumor growing inside the Dungeon's body, barring the way before Leo and the others, blocking the path completely.
Everyone could be certain this was absolutely not something the old Dungeon had ever possessed.
This was, completely and utterly... an Irregular.
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