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Name: Roy
Level: 1
Strength: 655 → 780 (B)
Endurance: 795 → 998 (S)
Dexterity: 1095 → 1120 (SS)
Agility: 1290 → 1330 (SSS)
Magic: 0 (I)
Skills: My Lord Is Here, Blood for Blood
Magic: None
…
[Great Feat Achieved. Upgrade?]
Roy looked at his updated status window and the prompt that had appeared. After killing Jura, a Level 2 adventurer, he could unquestionably advance to Level 2.
To level up, at least one attribute had to reach Rank D or higher, and one had to accumulate sufficient Great Feats.
Simply put, Great Feats meant accomplishing things others found difficult or nearly impossible—adventuring, combat, hunting, forging weapons, and more.
Roy stared at the prompt before him.
With a single tap, he could become a high-level adventurer envied by countless others, stepping over more than half of Orario's adventurers.
Jura's overwhelming Level 2 power was still vivid in his mind.
Throughout the fight, Roy had been completely suppressed, barely managing a counterkill by relying on accumulated damage and Blood for Blood.
The price was a body covered in wounds.
It felt as though two voices were arguing inside his head. One insisted that he had come here in pursuit of power—no amount of improvement at Level 1 could compare to the leap forward. Reaching Level 2 as soon as possible would allow him to do far more.
The other argued that strength had to be accumulated step by step. If he didn't push his stats to the limit now, he would gradually fall behind other powerful adventurers later.
Neither side could convince the other.
"Resisting this temptation really isn't easy," Roy exhaled and selected No.
The prompt window disappeared.
Maxing out Level 1 stats might not compare to the raw boost of a hundred points at higher levels, but Roy's goal was the Black Dragon and conquering the Dungeon. Even the smallest opportunity to grow stronger could not be wasted.
Besides, as someone with both a clean-freak streak and obsessive tendencies, leaving his stats unmaxed felt worse than death.
Roy took out three different potions—one for injuries, one for stamina, and one for mental fatigue—and gulped them down. Multicolored light flickered across his body.
Under the continuous glow, his condition steadily recovered.
"Impossible!"
The scene of Roy killing Jura stunned everyone who witnessed it. Shock spread across their faces, causing even the intense battles to pause for a brief moment.
A Level 1 adventurer defeating a Level 2 monster wouldn't have surprised them much—monsters had magic stones as fatal weaknesses. Destroy the stone, and the monster died.
But a Level 2 adventurer wasn't just vastly superior in stats to a Level 1 rookie—they were also far more cunning.
They had never heard of such a thing!
Watching the boy's exhausted back, Ryuu pressed her lips together. No matter how extraordinary the things that happened around him were, they somehow felt only natural.
On the other side, the elf girl's battle was nearing its end. With Jura killed by Roy, the remaining three members of the Rudra Familia fell into complete disarray.
This was what adventurers often called "fortune." When luck favored you, it kept favoring you; when misfortune struck, it never stopped. They were clearly the latter.
Holding the kodachi Futaba, Ryuu used the sword technique of her former comrade—Gojouno Kaguya—and in a single strike took the heads of both the captain and vice-captain of the Rudra Familia.
At this point, the Rudra Familia was completely annihilated.
Standing atop the pile of their corpses, the elf girl lowered her head slightly, lost in thought. The light in her sky-blue eyes gradually dimmed.
Then her thoughts were interrupted.
"Catch!" Roy walked over and, without hesitation, tossed three potions her way.
Ryuu snapped back to her senses and caught them clumsily, hesitation flashing across her small face.
Seeing that she didn't drink them right away, Roy said irritably, "If you die, who's going to protect me? Just treat it as payment for guarding me."
Ryuu clenched the three bottles tightly and said seriously, "I'll pay you back for these potions."
Roy waved it off indifferently. He was already speechless at this single-minded elf. He had thought he'd picked up an extremely reliable fighter, but now it seemed her usefulness and the trouble she brought were perfectly balanced.
If he didn't interrupt her, who knew what kind of mental deadlock she'd spiral into.
After completing her revenge, Ryuu had never once thought about how to go on living—like a kitten abandoned by the whole world, collapsing in an alley before being picked up by Syr Flover to work as a tavern waitress…
Roy was exhausted. He leaned against a withered tree to rest, ordering the remaining Pure Giants to deal with any dungeon monsters that appeared while he took it easy.
After drinking the three potions, Ryuu's condition visibly improved. "What do we do next?"
Without realizing it, Ryuu had begun instinctively asking Roy for his opinion. Staying here would mean being worn down by endless dungeon monsters. They had two options: head to the safe zone on the 18th Floor, or wait for someone to dig open the collapsed passage back to the 9th Floor.
"There's no need to choose. Just watch," Roy said, gesturing toward the collapse on the 9th Floor.
Ryuu looked over.
"Hurry up!"
Adventurers' voices came from beyond the rubble.
Thinking it through made it obvious. Shakti, who had remained on the 9th Floor, would have returned to the surface immediately and brought members of the Ganesha Familia down to clear the collapse.
With a loud bang, the passage was fully opened.
"Ryuu!"
Shakti rushed in anxiously. Only after seeing Ryuu still alive did she finally breathe a sigh of relief.
"That corpse—it's a Rudra Familia executive. There are more over here. What in the world happened?"
"And those are the heads of the two captains."
"They were Level 3!"
The Ganesha Familia members following Shakti entered the cavern. The sight of countless corpses made them cry out in shock.
After counting the bodies—some already devoured by dungeon monsters and Pure Giants—the remaining corpses were still enough to prove one fact:
The Rudra Familia had been wiped out.
…
As more adventurers arrived, the Xenos dared not linger on the upper floors and quietly retreated downward.
The lizardman Lyd said excitedly, "Sneaking up here was totally worth it. We got to see a lot of incredible things."
The bird-type Xenos Ray cupped her flushed cheeks with her wings, her eyes filled with fascination. "That boy is the bravest human I've ever seen."
Defeating a Level 2 as a Level 1, displaying such intelligence and courage—even they couldn't help but feel admiration.
The stone dragon Gros snorted coldly. "Hmph. Letting that kind of human live will be a huge problem for us in the future."
Lyd said helplessly, "Gros, our goal is peaceful coexistence with humans."
Gros retorted angrily, "That's just your wishful thinking. Don't forget how many of our kin have been captured by those despicable humans."
Lyd and Ray fell silent.
There was a group of adventurers hunting them with extremely brutal methods, rumored to be connected to the Dark Faction. That was one of the reasons they had come up to observe upon hearing that the Dark Faction's Rudra Familia was about to start a War Game.