In the pale blue underground space, an encounter erupted into a fever-pitch fight in the blink of an eye, without a moment's delay.
A Human adventurer and a monster born of the Dungeon. The two were naturally hostile the instant they shared a space, and the moment of encounter was a fight to the death.
Any other newbie adventurer, set upon by a monster on his very first trip into the Dungeon without so much as a warning, would have panicked.
But Leo, who had already imagined this scene and braced himself for it, raised his left arm without a word.
Strapped to it was the small shield Raul had given him, and as Leo lifted his arm, it swung up into place in front of him at once.
A jolt slammed into the small shield he had raised.
The Goblin charging Leo had viciously swung its hand, and the claws on its sharp-nailed fingers came down on the small shield, sparking off a shock.
"Gyaak!"
One strike blocked, the Goblin snarled in frustration and swung its other hand, raking hard at the small shield, but it couldn't leave so much as a scratch.
Tucked behind the shield, Leo blocked the Goblin's attacks with a cool expression, eyes locked on the creature, watching every move it made.
He wasn't in a rush to counterattack. If anything, he seemed to be deliberately weathering the Goblin's blows, simply holding off those claws over and over, calm and composed.
"Gyaak! Gyaak!"
The Goblin lashed out at Leo again and again, even circling around to one side, trying to get past Leo's shield and strike at the man himself. But its movements were caught entirely by Leo, who was watching the whole time. Every time the Goblin shifted its angle, he quickly shifted the direction of his guard, keeping his shield-arm planted between them, so that every attack only hit the shield and came back empty. The little monster shrieked in mounting frustration.
And in the meantime, Leo was finishing his observation.
Monster or not, the Floor 1 monsters really are weak. Not all that bright either. Only know how to come at you with their claws. Movement pattern is simple, attack pattern is bare-bones, can't even think to pick up a rock and throw it. Compared to the cunning, dirty-fighting Goblins from certain anime, there's no comparison at all.
Facing a monster for the first time, what Leo had on his mind wasn't how to take it out quickly, but how to use the safety of his guard to observe it as much as possible and gauge its strength. That way he'd have something to work with later.
The Dungeon was, after all, a dangerous place that birthed monsters. The fact that he'd run into just one this time was extreme good luck. If he'd been jumped by several at once, that would have been a nasty situation.
So seeing there was only one, Leo naturally took the chance to study it.
After watching it work, Leo had his answer: this Goblin's strength was nothing to worry about. Forget comparing it to powerful adventurers. Throw it out into the wild and whether it could win a fight with a wolf was an open question.
At under a meter tall, a Human or Pallum of the same build without Falna might have a hard time taking it down, but a Beast Human or Dwarf, with their natural physical advantages, should be able to handle it even without Falna.
A single monster at this level isn't enough to pose any real pressure. Finish it quick and move on.
The instant he came to that conclusion, Leo moved.
Going from pure defense to a sudden lunge, he charged forward and rammed straight into the Goblin, which had worked itself into a furious state and leapt high to bring its claws down at his head. The small shield slammed hard into its body.
"Gyak!?"
The Goblin clearly hadn't expected the Human adventurer who'd been on the defensive this whole time to suddenly ram into it. Caught completely off guard, and mid-jump no less, it was sent flying.
Its small body cut through the air, hung there for a second or two, then crashed to the ground and rolled away in a clumsy heap.
In the same instant he sent it flying, Leo was already on the move.
The sharp ring of a blade leaving its sheath rang out clear in the pale blue corridor, putting a colder edge on the soft, ghostly light.
Holding his shield-arm out in front of him as he charged at the Goblin, Leo's right hand, hidden behind the shield, gripped the short sword at his waist and pulled the blade free.
A cold arc of light flashed. Leo, closing on the Goblin, had already swung the short sword down in a single strike.
By the time the small monster was struggling back up to a sitting position, a streak of blade-light was already flying into its face.
The sound of flesh parting under a sharp edge came out clearer and more striking than the sound of the blade being drawn.
The short sword trailed a long arc of light as it carved across the Goblin's neck, and the small body went rigid where it sat, dead still.
Blood sprayed from the cut.
The monster's head sailed into the air, then thudded to the floor and rolled several times.
Leo, who had swept past the Goblin's side, held his finishing pose until the head came to rest, then drew up and turned, looking at the headless body as it slowly toppled.
A moment later, both the headless body and the rolling head burst apart like scattering ash, leaving a small chunk of blue-purple crystal behind.
This was what became of a monster after death.
As incomplete forms of life birthed by the Dungeon, they only had bodies and the ability to move so long as the magic stone that was the core of their power remained inside them. The moment they died, their bodies dissolved at once, leaving only the magic stone, and at most some especially developed part of their body.
The latter was the so-called drop item. Not every monster left one. In fact, monsters that dropped them were in the minority, which was why drop items generally fetched a good price. Even the weakest monster's drop items could be used to make weapons, armor, or special tools. Buyers were all over Orario, and you never had to worry about finding one.
Unfortunately, Leo's luck wasn't quite good enough to grab a drop item on his very first kill.
After the Goblin died, only a small magic stone remained.
Leo picked it up, looked it over, and muttered.
"That's a tiny magic stone..."
It barely qualified as a whole stone. More like a fragment of one.
"Sell this to the Guild and I'll be lucky to get a hundred valis, won't I?"
Leo was just about ready to write it off.
This was his first magic stone pulled from a monster, sure, but in Loki Familia, as one of the people handling logistics, he'd hauled around who knew how many crates of magic stones.
Those magic stones were the ones his Familia seniors had brought back from expeditions into the Deep Floors of the Dungeon. The smallest of them was the size of a fist, and the largest were bigger than boulders. The latter usually came out of Floor Bosses, and a single one was worth millions or tens of millions of valis.
Which meant this was the first time Leo had seen a magic stone this small.
Or maybe he should call it... a magic stone shard?
Either way, he didn't really want to acknowledge this thing as a complete magic stone.
It was too small.
The Guild set its buying price by the size of the magic stone, so the bigger the stone, the more it was worth.
The one Leo was holding was probably smaller than his fingernail. No wonder he wasn't impressed.
"Whatever. Money's money."
After thinking it over, he still slipped the magic stone shard into the pouch at his side.
Generally speaking, the magic stones obtained from killing monsters were the money adventurers earned directly in the Dungeon. The things could be processed with Human technology and put to use in all kinds of fields, used to make magic-stone lamps, magic-stone igniters, magic-stone freezers for preserving food, and the like, which made them prized resources.
Labyrinth City Orario relied on exporting these magic-stone products to other countries for massive profits, which was why the Guild required all magic stones to be sold to it. They had a complete monopoly on the industry's profits.
In that system, adventurers spent every day in the Dungeon grinding from morning to night for one reason: to get their hands on as many magic stones as possible and sell them to the Guild, turning them into hard cash.
This was the most direct source of income for adventurers, the most direct way of making money. Unless you happened to score a drop item, or stumbled across rare minerals or treasures, magic stones were an adventurer's money.
Leo needed to save up too. Once he got stronger, weapons, armor, even potions and other items, all of it had to be paid for.
He couldn't keep relying on handouts from his Familia comrades forever, could he?
"Every little bit counts. For now this is how I make money, so I'm picking up whatever I can get, no matter how small."
Steeling himself again, Leo, sword and shield equipped, moved deeper into the pale blue corridor.
From there on, Leo ran into monsters at regular intervals.
Sometimes one, sometimes two or three. The instant he encountered them, the fight began, with no way to avoid it.
The monsters he ran into weren't all Goblins either. Sometimes they were Kobolds, sometimes lizard-type monsters. Without exception, they were all small. Heights basically never exceeded a meter. Pure small category monsters.
The monsters that turned up on Floors 1 through 4 of the Dungeon were generally these: low-level monsters of the small category, not all that strong. Even an ordinary Human in a one-on-one fight wasn't likely to be killed, and properly geared up, turning the tables was easy. That was why pretty much everyone working Floors 1 through 4 was a fresh-out-of-registration newbie adventurer like Leo. Even with Falna, they weren't much stronger than ordinary people.
When he ran into these monsters, Leo stuck to the plan he'd laid out beforehand. If it was a kind of monster he was meeting for the first time, and there was only one, with no risk of being mobbed, he wouldn't be in a rush to finish it off. He'd use his small shield to keep himself from getting hurt and observe and analyze its combat pattern, only making his move to finish it once he'd fully grasped its movements and strength.
If he ran into multiple monsters, he'd immediately put a wall at his back to avoid being attacked from both sides, keeping the enemies inside his line of sight the whole time. Using his small shield to ward off attacks, he'd watch for openings, aiming to take out one enemy per strike, slowly working his way out of the numerical disadvantage and into a safer fight.
He had to admit, the quality of the weapon and shield in his hands really wasn't bad. Upper-class adventurers might look down on them, but on Floors 1 through 4 of the Dungeon, they were practically minor divine weapons.
No matter how many times Goblins or Kobolds clawed at his shield, it didn't take a single scratch. His short sword cut through monster flesh without much effort either, letting him take out most enemies in a single strike.
Monster skin and flesh were actually pretty tough. With one of the Guild's standard-issue thousand-or-two-thousand-valis cheap blades, taking a Goblin's or a Kobold's head off in one swing was a pipe dream.
The eighty-thousand-valis short sword in Leo's hand was a different story. Forget taking off a Goblin's or a Kobold's head, you could swing it at a rock and split the thing in two with ease.
With the shield and the short sword, Leo's confidence had grown a fair bit. So when he later came across the passage down to Floor 2, he barely hesitated and went straight down.
The moment he did, he immediately noticed the difference.
"The monsters are stronger. And there are more of them."
A trait of the Dungeon was that the deeper the floor, the more monsters it birthed, and the stronger they were.
Even when the monsters that appeared were still low-level types like Goblins and Kobolds, their strength was clearly a step up from the floors above. Their movement patterns even shifted a little, making them harder to handle.
On Floor 2, the times Leo ran into lone monsters dropped sharply, while the times he ran into groups went up.
Dealing with them got noticeably harder. With the shield's protection he wasn't likely to get hurt, and with the short sword he wasn't likely to fail to take a monster down. But the drain on his stamina and focus went up sharply.
Still, it was within what Leo could handle. By the latter half, he had even adapted to the floor's strength and started to find his rhythm again.
So when he reached the entrance to Floor 3, Leo only hesitated for a moment before heading down.
According to the records in the Familia library, Floors 1 to 4 aren't all that dangerous. Good for newbies to break in on. Barring an Irregular, you generally won't run into anything life-threatening. It's only on Floor 5 that the danger ramps up enough to threaten a newbie adventurer, where you can actually lose your life.
Leo ran through the Dungeon information he had memorized in his head.
So this trip, my plan is to work Floors 1 through 4. Floor 4 at the most. Absolutely no Floor 5.
While his strength was still weak, Leo wasn't planning to take any risks.
He knew risk-taking was good for earning high-grade excelia and getting stronger faster, but he wasn't about to gamble lightly with his own life.
Maybe he'd take risks later. That was a matter for later.
Right now, he was a raw newbie not much stronger than an ordinary person. Any little stir the Dungeon kicked up could take his precious life.
So at this stage, no risks under any circumstances. That was the rule Leo had set for himself.
What he forgot, thinking that way, was one thing.
The Dungeon was alive.
It never let adventurers have their way, and never let them have an easy time of it...