"So I've already reached the Middle Floors."
Rayleigh had taken less than twenty minutes to pass through the Upper Floors completely.
While maintaining Shunkō, every monster along the way had been smashed into chunks of flesh by his body alone, their magic stones crushed into powder with them.
The moment he entered the Middle Floors, he quickly encountered a small group of ten Al-Miraj.
The instant he noticed them, they also noticed this uninvited guest.
So they immediately launched an attack.
Holding deadly axes, they rushed over with frightening speed.
Still maintaining Shunkō, Rayleigh flexed his five fingers, clenched them into a fist, and lightly punched toward the direction of the monsters.
White lightning surged out.
Accompanied by the roar of his Reiatsu, all ten Al-Miraj were blown apart from a distance before they even landed, turning into flying ash.
After casually wiping out Middle Floor monsters with a wave of his hand, Rayleigh looked at his fist.
Just now, he had used at most one-third of his strength.
In truth, what had struck the Al-Miraj was merely the Reiatsu leaking from Shunkō.
Yet that level of attack power was already enough to make many Level 3 adventurers cry.
Through that strike, Rayleigh found the feel for it.
So the Middle Floors were only at this level.
In that case, there was no need to be cautious.
Having found his rhythm, Rayleigh began charging through the Middle Floors as well.
No matter what monster it was, the moment it saw that streak of white lightning, its life stopped in that instant.
Godlike speed, far beyond their ability to react.
The instant they collided with him, the first thing that came was not pain, but a distortion of vision, followed by the feeling of all the air being drained from their bodies within a thousandth of a second.
Their bodies had clearly been smashed into a mess, yet sensation still lingered.
Aside from "lightness," every other sense disappeared.
Then endless darkness and chaos swallowed their consciousness completely.
Rayleigh descended all the way to the fifteenth floor in one breath.
Only then did he begin to feel a little tired.
He stopped before entering the sixteenth floor and stood there panting.
The moment sweat emerged from his body, it was evaporated by the heat on his skin and his Reiatsu.
Wrapped in white mist from head to toe, he did not feel uncomfortable because of fatigue.
On the contrary, it felt incredibly refreshing.
The deeper the floor, the broader its area became.
Running all the way from the surface into the fifteenth floor while maintaining Shunkō the entire time, using Shunpo at high intensity, was a double test of stamina and endurance.
When he broke through that test, Rayleigh felt nothing but exhilaration.
'Hoo.'
'Huh?'
Only after stopping completely did Rayleigh realize that his clothes were now in tatters.
The moment he activated Shunkō, most of his upper clothing had practically exploded into scraps of cloth.
The remaining parts had also been torn by his violent movements.
He precisely controlled Reiryoku to reconstruct his Shihakushō, and soon, a set of black fitted clothing appeared over his body.
After checking himself front and back and confirming there were no problems, he stepped into the sixteenth floor.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Hm?
As he walked through the passage, Rayleigh heard the sound of something heavy.
Immediately after, under his surprised gaze, three Minotaurs actually appeared in the passage, running toward the fifteenth floor.
An abnormal situation?
No.
It did not look like one.
Rayleigh calmly raised his foot.
Before the three Minotaurs could react at all, he appeared before the first one with Shunpo and kicked it in the abdomen.
The bull-headed monster was instantly sent flying backward by his kick, crashing into the two of its kind behind it and sending them flying as well.
All three were smashed straight into the wall of the passage.
Bwah!
The two Minotaurs pinned behind were crushed outright.
The one that had been kicked spat out a large mouthful of blood, then collapsed. Within two seconds, it had completely stopped breathing.
Watching their corpses be reclaimed by the Dungeon, leaving behind only three magic stones, Rayleigh casually picked them up and placed them in his bag.
After entering the sixteenth floor, the first thing Rayleigh saw was the ground damaged in many places.
They were clearly battle marks left only a short time ago, and the Dungeon had not yet had time to repair them.
It seemed the Minotaurs from before had fled during a battle.
And in quite the panic too.
They had even run toward the Upper Floors.
If something like that happened on the floors above, it would be rather troublesome. After all, most adventurers in the Upper Floors were rookies.
If a Middle Floor monster escaped upward, especially a highly dangerous one like a Minotaur, it would be no different from a disaster for low-level adventurers.
A Minotaur would undoubtedly carry out a massacre on the Upper Floors.
Speaking of which, the fated hero, Bell Cranell, had met the object of his admiration because of a similar situation, beginning his cheat-like path and reaching Level 5 only half a year after becoming an adventurer.
Compared to that, he, a transmigrator, was honestly quite embarrassing.
It had already taken him two years just to reach Level 4...
"Heh."
Laughing self-deprecatingly, Rayleigh headed straight for the seventeenth floor.
By the time he entered the seventeenth floor, the energy he had consumed earlier had already more or less recovered.
So he once again opened up his speed completely.
In only ten or so minutes, he reached the room where the floor boss Goliath resided, the great hollow known as the Wall of Grief.
Halfway through, Rayleigh suddenly stopped.
Because the ground was shaking!
'This is...?'
He looked at the white wall in surprise.
Cracks rapidly appeared across it, and from within the wall, a figure struggled its way out.
Looking up at the towering giant, Rayleigh's expression remained extremely calm.
"The Guild didn't send anyone to clear it?"
How strange.
There was no one from Rivira either.
Had he just happened to arrive at the right time?
"————!!!"
The giant's roar spread through the entire great hollow.
It even traveled down the passage and into the Dungeon, instantly alarming all the adventurers nearby.
However, Goliath would not leave.
Or rather, it could not leave that great hollow. So they merely became alert. What was truly troublesome was the monster rampage triggered by the floor boss's roar.
"So noisy."
Rayleigh's brows furrowed slightly.
His right hand grabbed the sword at his left side, and as he drew it, he swung once toward the giant in front of him.
Less than a minute later, hurried footsteps sounded in the passage.
"Huff."
"Huff."
"Hey, what was that sound just now? Just hearing it made my hair stand on end!"
The Amazon girl asked the captain of her Familia.
The Pallum hero ran while replying, "That was the roar of the Monster Rex. Be careful. Right now, you two lack experience, and it is not yet time for you to fight a floor boss. If a battle happens, you should observe first."
"But the sound suddenly stopped again."
"Maybe it's already been defeated?" Tiona guessed casually.
The group from Loki Familia rushed cautiously into the great hollow.
"What is this?!"
Finn looked at the scene before him, utterly shocked.
The Monster Rex he had just seriously emphasized as being extremely dangerous, the giant Goliath, was now leaning motionlessly against the Wall of Grief.
A massive wound stretched from the top of its head all the way down its lower body, splitting it into two halves from the middle.
Even the Wall of Grief behind it had been carved with an enormous scar!