Time slipped by without him noticing...
When the sky began to take on a deep red-brown color and the dusk hour known as the witching hour quietly arrived, the Central Plaza around Babel began to fill with a different kind of crowd than during the day.
During the day, the adventurers showing up here were mostly walking into Babel. At dusk, the adventurers were coming out of Babel and walking out toward the edge of the plaza.
Some were covered in wounds, some were dead on their feet, some had grim expressions, some were riding a high. You could read what kind of day they'd had in the Dungeon right off them.
Leo, too, had come out of the Dungeon shortly after dusk fell, and made it back to the surface.
"Finally back..."
He took a deep breath of the fresh surface air, and his weary mind felt a lot better for it.
It couldn't be helped. Down in the Dungeon, you had to keep your nerves drawn tight at every moment and stay alert. You couldn't dare to relax. On top of that, staying underground for a long time was suffocating and heavy, so the moment he got back to the surface he naturally fell into a kind of relief he couldn't quite put into words, and the heaviness slipped away on its own.
Looking back over the day's adventure, Leo gave himself an evaluation.
"All in all, a pretty full day."
He'd run into unexpected danger and ended up cutting his original plan short to go down to Floor 5, but Leo still felt the day had been worth it.
At the very least, he'd finally felt out what combat and adventuring actually were for himself, and he'd cast Magic, used a supernatural power. All of it was experience worth its weight in gold.
"What I didn't expect was that Floor 5 was easier to handle than I thought."
Leo muttered it to himself.
He had in fact done what he'd intended, wandering around near the entrance to Floor 5, getting a feel for the floor's clear difficulty.
How to put it... the result had actually been pretty good.
On Floor 5, Leo had run into monsters he hadn't seen on the first four floors, and felt the much heavier pressure compared to the floors above. But in the end he'd handled the monsters without a real scare, and successfully adapted to Floor 5's difficulty.
A newbie adventurer, on his first trip into the Dungeon, dropping straight down to Floor 5 and adapting to it, surviving down there. If anyone else heard about it, they'd be a little surprised.
Honestly, even Leo hadn't expected to pull off a result like this. But thinking it over, it wasn't actually that hard to understand.
After all, he'd broken out of a dead end where dozens of monsters had him surrounded, and not only survived but cleaned out the enemy. How could a measly Floor 5 of the Dungeon possibly stop him?
Floor 5 was a lot harder than the four floors above it, but compared to the dead end Leo had hit on Floor 4, it was nothing.
Generally speaking, monster groups of that size were hard to find on the Upper Floors from 1 to 12. Leo had had especially rotten luck, running into a group of that size in a place like Floor 4.
All you could say was, that was the Dungeon for you. Every now and then it threw the adventurers a little surprise.
Naturally, this kind of life-or-death surprise was something every adventurer, Leo included, would rather avoid.
"My own strength really isn't enough for me to be running around on Floor 5, but with Magic, it's a different story."
Leo understood the reasoning perfectly.
In the strategy advice the Guild handed out, a Lv.1 adventurer was generally only supposed to be operating on Floors 1 through 12.
If you graded it by the adventurer's Status, the Guild's strategy advice ran roughly like this.
Dungeon Floors 1 through 4, suited for adventurers with basic abilities at I or H.
Dungeon Floors 5 through 7, suited for adventurers with basic abilities at G or F.
Dungeon Floors 8 through 10, suited for adventurers with basic abilities at E, D, or C.
Dungeon Floors 11 through 12, suited for adventurers with basic abilities at B, A, or S.
The standard started from a "safe clearance" baseline. In other words, if you hit the standard, you'd have the ability to handle every danger on the corresponding floors short of an Irregular, and your casualty rate would be at its lowest.
So by that standard, if you wanted to venture onto Floor 5, you really wanted at least one or several of your basic abilities up to G before it counted as reasonably safe.
If you couldn't even hit that standard, the danger went way up, and the chance of dying went up a lot with it.
The records in Loki Familia's library also said that a newbie adventurer should spend at least half a month on Floors 1 through 4, building experience and bumping the proficiency on all the basic abilities, before stepping onto Floor 5. That was the safer move.
In half a month, unless you were one of those especially timid, especially useless rookies, then out of the four most basic abilities, Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, Agility, the worst case was that at least one of your strongest abilities would make it to the H stage, and several abilities reaching H at once wasn't out of the question either.
Stepping onto Floor 5 at that point was relatively safer, and you were less likely to walk into danger.
But, putting the Guild's strategy advice aside for the moment, in Loki Familia's library records, there was one more line attached to this part.
That line was: if you had Magic, the above advice was for reference only, and didn't actually apply.
Setting aside the Magic types unfit for combat, the moment an adventurer held even a single combat-capable Magic spell, the situation changed completely.
As long as you held a combat-capable Magic, even if your "Magic" stat was at the lowest I stage, that was already enough to safely operate on most of Floors 1 through 12 of the Dungeon.
If nothing else, on the floors before Floor 8 there weren't any particularly strong monsters that could take a Magic strike, even the lowest-power ultra-short chant Magic.
In other words, as long as you held a combat-capable Magic, even a freshly minted newbie adventurer could not only handle Floor 5, but range freely as deep as Floor 7.
That was the value of Magic.
"Looks like I was being a little too cautious earlier."
Leo summed up the day's experience.
"I've got plenty of potions on hand, so as long as I'm careful and don't get too cocky and drop into Mind Down, I should be able to explore a bit deeper."
The average newbie adventurer didn't have conditions as good as Leo's. Each piece of his weapons and armor was worth nearly a hundred thousand valis, and he carried a whole stack of potions on him. You couldn't even call this kit fully geared anymore. It was overflowing.
A newbie adventurer usually wouldn't bring himself to buy or use even a single stamina-recovery potion, let alone High Potions, Magic Potions, or Elixirs. Their weapons and armor were almost always cheap stuff, rarely worth more than ten thousand valis.
And Leo?
His weapon was an eighty-thousand-valis short sword. The small shield was worth about the same. The potions newbie adventurers wouldn't dare buy or use, he had over a dozen of in his bag, plus one High Potion and one Magic Potion, plus two Elixirs on top of that. The loadout was outrageously lavish.
Those two Elixirs especially. What newbie adventurer could afford them?
Forget a Lv.1 newbie adventurer. Plenty of Lv.2 and Lv.3 upper-class adventurers couldn't afford to use Elixirs. They simply weren't something that should be sitting in a bag at Leo's level.
Having those two Elixirs was as good as having two extra lives.
Add in the weapons, armor, and other potions that were already extravagant for a newbie adventurer, and Leo could actually afford to be a lot bolder in his exploration.
"That's enough for today. Tomorrow I'll try Floor 5 again, push a bit deeper. If there's no problem at all, I'll explore more boldly."
Carrying that thought, Leo didn't leave Babel. He took the stairs up to the floors above.
Babel wasn't just there to monitor and manage the Dungeon. Inside, it was also a public facility built for adventurers.
The lower floors of Babel had simple restaurants, treatment facilities, and the Exchange, as well as shower rooms and clothing shops, all conveniences for adventurers coming out of the Dungeon.
Right now Leo's clothes were torn to rags, covered in blood and dirt. He looked terrible. If he showed up back at the Familia headquarters looking like this, people would probably assume something had gone wrong.
So he didn't leave Babel right away. He went up instead.
He went to the Exchange first. This was where the Guild bought magic stones.
The Guild Headquarters over on Adventurers Way also had an Exchange, with quite a few appraisers, so you didn't have to queue much. The Babel Exchange had fewer appraisers, so when Leo got there a long line had already formed at the window.
Leo wasn't put off. He quietly took his place in line, and after about half an hour he was at the window.
"Appraise these magic stones for me."
He undid the pouch at his waist used for collecting magic stones and dumped a large pile of magic stone shards out of it.
"One moment, please."
The appraiser took the magic stone shards and quickly came back with a price.
"This batch of magic stone shards is worth thirteen thousand valis total. Exchange?"
Leo raised an eyebrow.
"That's actually pretty good."
Thirteen thousand valis didn't sound like much, but it depended on who you were comparing to.
Compared to the upper-class adventurers who could push deep into the Dungeon, of course it didn't measure up. But compared to other Lv.1 newbie adventurers, making this kind of money in a single day was already impressive.
Leo vaguely remembered the seniors in the Familia telling him that a Lv.1 five-person party spending a day in the Upper Floors of 1 through 12 generally made somewhere around twenty to thirty thousand valis.
Leo had only operated on the first five floors, and alone at that, but in one day he'd made over ten thousand valis. That was a result that would make plenty of Lv.1s jealous.
And that was just selling the magic stones.
Don't forget, Leo still had a few drop items on him.
"Too bad, even if I sell all the drop items, it might not be enough to make back what that one High Potion cost..."
Leo shook his head, picked up the cloth bag stuffed with gold coins, and turned to leave the Exchange.
You could actually sell drop items at the Guild too, but the Guild's prices were a lot lower than what you'd get outside, so almost no one chose to sell drop items to the Guild. It was just too big a loss.
Leo headed straight up to a higher floor of Babel, where a lot of shops were leased to merchants. Every one of them was a specialty store designed for adventurers, and naturally that included shops that bought drop items.
So Leo sold off the drop items he had at a shop a Familia senior had recommended, and made eight thousand one hundred valis.
Add the eight thousand one hundred valis in, and over a full day's adventure, Leo had made a total of twenty-one thousand one hundred valis.
That was already up there with the daily earnings of a Lv.1 five-person adventurer party.
"Thanks to that swarm of monsters, and thanks to Magic, I could pull in this kind of money."
Leo sighed.
With cash in his pocket, Leo could finally do some spending.
First he went to a clothing shop and bought a fresh set of clothes, then went to one of the showers Babel had set up and washed properly, scrubbing himself clean from head to toe before changing into the new clothes. He looked respectable again.
By the time Leo came out of Babel, the sky outside had gone dark.
The Labyrinth City of Orario was very lively after dark.
Adventurers who'd been through a day of adventuring usually came out into the streets at this hour, found a little place, drank a little, eased off the fatigue and pressure they'd built up over a day of fighting.
Walking along, Leo brushed past more than a few adventurer groups. Some carried entire kegs as they went, drinking and laughing loudly as they walked. Others were piled on each other's shoulders heading into the taverns, calling out loudly for the staff to bring drinks and food.
A bard from who knew where stood at the side of the street playing his instrument and singing, drawing a big crowd of locals. Magic-stone lamps glowed along the street, lighting up a lively, fantastical, restless nighttime cityscape. Leo found himself a little caught up in it as he walked.
Walking like that, following the road of North Main Street, Leo eventually came to the familiar manor.
Twilight Manor. He'd made it.
"Leo!"
"You finally made it back, kid!"
On either side of the front gate, the two members on guard duty saw Leo coming slowly back and called out in surprise.
"Yeah, I'm back." Leo waved a greeting at them and smiled. "Not too late, am I?"
The two guards looked at each other, and then both of them laughed at the same time.
"That, well, telling us doesn't help."
"Yeah, you better go explain that to the one who's been waiting for you."
The way they said it, somewhere between envious, jealous, and teasing, made Leo feel completely confused.
It wasn't until he walked in through the gate, stepped into the courtyard, and saw the familiar figure that Leo understood why they'd said it.
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