Boom, boom, boom…!
Leon pressed forward, indiscriminately blasting every monster that appeared in his line of sight.
His posture made it look like he'd kick a stray dog on the side of the road just for existing.
"So this is how the big Familias feel cruising the upper floors, huh?"
He casually tossed off a Fireball, vaporizing a Silverback on the spot, and let out a satisfied sigh.
"No wonder they stroll around so leisurely when exploring the low-level areas…"
"Gotta say, this feeling…"
"Is the stuff!"
Leon chuckled softly as he picked up the Magic Stone, eyes narrowing in delight.
"Next, let's try Scorch. Fireball's power is way overkill against upper-floor monsters. I can't fine-tune the magic extraction rate like this. And each cast returns more mind than it consumes… my mana bar stays full. What a waste."
His gaze caught sight of his lifelong nemesis at a spawn point, an Orc, and the corner of his mouth curled into a cocky arc.
"Scorch!"
Crackle…!
A pleasant snapping sound rang out, along with a brief "Gah!" of agony from the Orc, cut off abruptly.
The instant the magic connected, the brawny Orc was reduced to a smoking lump of charcoal.
"Oh? It didn't get completely vaporized. Guess large-class monsters really do have a little something to them."
Leon looked at his handiwork and raised an eyebrow.
"Still got taken out by a single Scorch, though."
After that, he cheerfully turned every type of monster that appeared on Floor 12 into target practice, testing Scorch on each of them.
He finally arrived at a clear conclusion:
No matter what form a monster took, so long as its potential abilities remained within the Lv. 1 range, there was no surviving Scorch.
Even though this spell's offensive coefficient was pitifully low.
"So… the decisive difference really comes from the ascension to Lv. 2."
Leon studied the faint sparks lingering on his fingertips, thoughtful.
"With my current magic output, even if I throttle the power all the way down, Floor 12 monsters… still can't escape getting one-shot."
Having finished testing his various abilities, Leon left the upper floors without a shred of reluctance.
If not for the fact that he needed to take advantage of being alone to run a proper self-assessment, he wouldn't have wanted to linger half a second longer.
Training Basic Abilities? Inefficient.
Earning extra Excelia? A measly 0.1.
Farming Valis? Even more pitifully low.
Aside from rare drops from things like Blue Papilio and Infant Dragons, even the minerals the Dungeon itself produced didn't fetch much on the upper floors.
So what was there left to say?
Just head straight to the middle floors and get grinding.
…
Middle floors, Floor 16.
"Frost Armor!"
Surrounded by a mob of monsters, Leon had failed to dodge in time and absorbed multiple hits. At last, his previous ice shield shattered apart under a Minotaur's massive axe.
And just as the Minotaur thought victory was in its grasp, ready to cleave in two the demon that had slaughtered countless of its kin…
Leon's lips moved slightly.
The next second…
A brand-new Frost Armor instantly crystallized, once again enveloping him in a bulwark of frost.
Whoosh…!
The double-bladed greataxe ripped through the air, screaming down toward Leon's head with full force!
Clack…
Yet to the Minotaur's shock, a hand in a black glove nonchalantly caught its all-out strike!
It had no intellect or wisdom, but in that instant, its beastly instincts taught it the meaning of fear!
The enemy before it was not one it could possibly defeat!
"Roar!!!!"
The Minotaur let out a terrified bellow. Abandoning its weapon entirely, it turned and scrambled up the passage to the upper floor, running for its life!
"Uh…"
Leon blinked. Through the ice shield, he watched the Minotaur's back as it fled frantically up the slope, and let out a bewildered laugh.
"What the heck, monsters without intellect or wisdom still run from fear?"
"I've never seen that play out on the upper floors."
"Live long enough, you really do see everything!"
He weighed the captured greataxe-type natural weapon in his hand, then tossed it aside.
Raising his arm, he pointed his index finger at the Minotaur that was about to disappear into the passage. A small crimson magic circle instantly traced itself at his fingertip.
"Fire…"
Shlick…!
"?"
Leon's chant cut off.
The Minotaur, which had been a heartbeat away from vanishing into the passage to safety, was the next moment cleaved brutally in two by a streak of sharp, cold light!
Leon tilted his head, narrowing his eyes at the peculiar duo that emerged from the blood-misted passage mouth.
Good grief, Orario always had something fresh going on, and today it was extra busy.
First a monster doing a great escape, now this particular pairing showing up… what kind of auspicious day was this?
"Tsk…"
His gaze lingered briefly on the two figures, then he pulled his hood lower, silently turned, and quickly melted into the shadows of a side passage.
"Hm? That was…?"
One of them spoke up, puzzled.
"Sword Princess, you know that person?"
The other, a pink-haired girl with twin tails, narrowed her eyes as she studied her "companion" closely.
"I don't."
Ais, the one called Sword Princess, answered crisply.
But her gaze drifted thoughtfully in the direction Leon had disappeared.
"..."
Don't know him? Yeah, right!
The pink-haired twin-tail girl grumbled internally. Still, she wasn't the type to dig into things, so she soon pushed the thought aside.
"Oho, looks like quite the show just wrapped up here."
As she spoke, she strolled over to the spot where Leon had just been fighting, half-crouched, and lightly brushed the ground with a white-gloved fingertip.
A scorching heat met her skin, with wisps of smoke still rising from the ground. On her delicate face, a wild, unbridled grin broke out.
"Interesting. A mage, huh."
"Hey, Swor… eh? Sword Princess? Wait up!"
She turned to say something to her "companion" only to find that the Sword Princess had already walked quite a ways ahead.
"Oh my, if you don't do something about that awful temper of yours…"
She jogged to catch up, her mouth not giving an inch.
"Nobody's going to like you, Miss Doll!"
"Drop dead."
The cold reply came from ahead.
Their bickering, along with their footsteps, gradually faded into the depths of the broad passage.
Then, from the shadows of the sloped passage, Riveria's figure quietly emerged.
"I never would have expected Ais to team up with the Freya Familia's Golden Witch, Heith Velvet, and form a temporary party of all things?"
"Hmm… they actually seem to be… getting along? Reasonably?"
She murmured to herself, her eyes sweeping over the scorched marks on the ground, and then silently followed after them.
…
Leon, long since gone, naturally had no idea about the little dramas unfolding behind him, but he was more interested in the pairing of Ais and Heith.
"Heith Velvet, Vana Mardoll, nicknamed the Golden Witch, a warrior of the Freya Familia."
"Hmm… by the looks of it, she's probably around Lv. 2 or Lv. 3 right now? Otherwise she wouldn't be partying with Ais to farm the middle floors."
"Those two teaming up… interesting."
Though Heith was a top-tier healer on par with Airmid, she clearly hadn't yet set foot on the path of specialized healing. Relying on her outrageous automatic regeneration magic, she was enjoying a berserker's style of combat.
"And since Ais is out here, then barring surprises, Riveria is tailing her from the shadows?"
"That's a bit of a pain."
"Forget it, better to steer clear. My firepower got exposed once already. I can't let those two big Familias get a read on any more of my cards."
Decision made, Leon sprinted straight for the deeper Floor 18, the Under Resort.
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