Once it was clear he wouldn't be leveling up for now, Leo left the God's Chamber.
"...Something big's about to happen."
Watching Leo's back as he walked off, Loki abruptly stood up.
Her face was flushed with excitement. She paced around the God's Chamber, then after a moment slapped her thigh.
"Nope! Gotta go tell Finn and the others!"
With that thought, Loki bolted out of the God's Chamber and tore off in the direction of Finn's office.
......
In the tower due north of Twilight Manor, inside Finn's office...
Just like the time Leo had come here before, the Three Heads of Loki Familia were gathered together, working through internal Familia affairs.
The expedition had ended not long ago, and the whole Familia was still busy with the cleanup afterward. As leaders of the Familia, Finn and the others had absolutely more on their plates than anyone else, unlike the young executives who didn't have to deal with the heavy paperwork and didn't have to do the odd jobs ordinary members got stuck with, leaving them comparatively free to do their own thing.
Before Loki arrived, the three Familia heads had been discussing something together.
But right now, they were no longer in any frame of mind for it.
"All abilities, total proficiency gain over 3,000?"
"Cleared the conditions for leveling up in ten days?"
"This..."
Listening to Loki's wildly excited words, Finn, Riveria, and Gareth all started doubting their own ears at the same time.
"Is, is this for real?"
Riveria, normally the picture of reason and composure, had nothing but bewilderment on her face, her eyes full of disbelief, refusing to accept what she'd just heard.
"Hey now, you didn't get drunk and have some kind of pipe dream, did you?"
Gareth voiced his suspicion in a gruff rumble, his brow knit tight.
"What pipe dream gets that good? Even I wouldn't dare dream that big, okay?" Loki was still going strong, gesturing wildly as she crowed, "If I'm gonna dream sweet, I'm dreaming about pretty girlies. No way I'd dream about that brat!"
The corners of the Three Heads' mouths twitched in unison.
But, well, that was actually pretty convincing.
"So... everything you just said is true? You're not just messing with us?"
Finn kept up his usual calm, but he was biting his thumb without thinking.
It was a habit of his when he was thinking through something important, or when he was brainstorming.
Clearly, this Pallum-born Familia captain had also been thrown by the news Loki had brought.
How could he not be?
What Loki had brought them was, frankly, world-shaking.
"It's just too unbelievable. Hard to take seriously."
Riveria was still doubting whether any of it was real.
"Right, a growth rate like that just shouldn't be possible," Gareth agreed with Riveria. "Forget us. Even Ais couldn't touch this. Are you trying to tell us that kid Ais picked up out of the Dungeon a year ago is some super genius who'd leave our Princess so far behind we couldn't even see her back?"
It wasn't just them. Anyone in the world would refuse to believe it.
Eight years ago, an eight-year-old girl had climbed to Lv.2 at an abnormal pace that ignored all sense of measure, and the memory was still vivid.
In a single year, going from a complete newbie who'd just received her Falna to surging straight to the limit of Lv.1 and successfully reaching Lv.2, becoming an upper-class adventurer. That achievement directly broke the all-time speed record for reaching Lv.2, sending all of Orario... no, all of the world into an uproar.
And she hadn't even been one of those magic-blessed Elves, nor a Dwarf, Beast Human, or Amazoness, races born with body potential a cut above the rest. She'd been a Human, falling behind every other race in both physical capability and intellect.
So even to this day, people still talked about that achievement endlessly. Calling it the stuff of historical record, a name carved into the annals, wouldn't be overstating it in the slightest.
And now, this unbelievable achievement, Loki was telling them another Human had just turned it into rubble?
All abilities, total proficiency gain over 3,000. Cleared the conditions for leveling up in ten days. It really was, as Loki said, beyond what anyone would dare dream.
"I figured you wouldn't believe me, so I brought along a copy of the kid's Status."
Loki cackled with mischief and tossed a piece of parchment onto the desk.
"See for yourselves. Seeing is believing."
At that, Finn and the other two immediately turned their eyes to the parchment.
And then they saw the kind of content they wouldn't be able to forget for years to come.
......
Leo Eligos
Lv.1
Strength: I0 → D557
Endurance: I0 → E496
Dexterity: I0 → D581
Agility: I0 → C644
Magic: I0 → B752
......
"This..."
Finn, Riveria, and Gareth all felt a jolt at the same instant.
They looked at one another, then sank into an indescribable silence.
"Well? Believe me now?" Loki said smugly. "Don't try telling me I read it wrong or wrote it down wrong. The Familia's been around for decades. When have I ever read or written one of your Statuses wrong?"
Truth be told, that had never happened.
So the moment they saw the parchment, all three of them already believed it was real.
However unbelievable, however hard to take in, the fact was sitting right in front of them. None of them could afford to look away.
"...If this is true, then it only tells us one thing."
A long moment later, Finn, biting his thumb, was the first to break the silence.
"Tells us what?"
Riveria still hadn't put it together.
"What else could it tell us?" Gareth burst out laughing. "It tells us the secret on that kid is even bigger than we thought!"
How could an ordinary Human possibly have a growth rate like that?
Even the Falna the gods granted, which let the people of the lower world grow stronger on equal footing, had its limits.
The Falna wasn't some miracle that let people grow infinitely strong. It was a catalyst.
What it did at the root was excavate the possibilities buried in a mortal's body, give form to potential the person couldn't find, couldn't use, couldn't reach, then through the act of "leveling up," expand the container that was the human body, granting mortals a stronger, larger, broader future.
In other words, if your personal potential ran out, then no matter how many monsters you slaughtered or how much you adventured, you'd never gain a more powerful set of abilities.
Take basic abilities. Everyone knew that the more you used a given ability, the higher its proficiency climbed. But some people could push an ability all the way up to the highest, S, without obstruction, while others couldn't even hit D, the baseline for leveling up, no matter how hard they tried. That was personal potential running short, or running dry.
Take Elves, the natural magic race. They could usually push Magic, the basic ability tied to spellwork, up to B or A, with the best among them reaching the highest, S. But in Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, and Agility, the body-bound abilities, they struggled to climb.
Riveria was an example. As a High Elf, she was hailed as the strongest Mage in the city, and yet her Strength and Endurance were only at E, and her Dexterity and Agility only at C, with no real room left to climb.
Gareth, the great Dwarf warrior, had clear leanings too. Dwarves were a race of immense strength and thick hides, so his Strength and Endurance were peerless. Nobody in all of Loki Familia, or in all of Orario, could really compare. But in Magic, he sat at only H.
And Finn, born into the physically frail Pallum race, had Strength and Endurance both below D, one at E and the other at F. It went to show just how deeply personal potential and racial potential shaped how much your Status could grow.
That was already the case for the three of them, fewer than ten Lv.6 adventurers existed in the city, never mind the more average, or rather more mediocre, Humans.
The best example was Raul. He was a Human and already Lv.4, yet he had no Magic, no Skill, and his basic abilities all topped out at C with nowhere to climb. That was why the gods had bestowed him with that alias of his: High Novice.
As for Ais...
To the outside world, Loki Familia claimed she was a Human, but she really wasn't as simple as just a Human, so she didn't count as an example.
In a world like that, for Leo to push his basic abilities up over 3,000 total proficiency points in ten days, and clear the conditions for leveling up on top of it, that couldn't be explained away with a line like "exceptional potential."
Even with that kind of potential, pushing abilities up still took time, didn't it?
Status growth needed enough excelia. In just ten days, even if Leo had killed monsters without sleeping or stopping, how much excelia could he really have gathered?
Finn and the others were all veteran adventurers. They'd already reached the ceiling at Lv.6 and weren't far from Lv.7. There was no way they didn't know exactly how that math worked.
"Something else has to be at play here for a result like this to even hold together."
Finn's eyes turned sharp and lit up as he looked at Loki.
"Is it because of that unreadable Skill of his, Loki?"
At Finn's words, Riveria and Gareth both turned to look at Loki too.
The matter of Leo having an unreadable special Skill, Loki had told them about that long ago.
It was personal, technically, and normally Loki as the head of the household wouldn't go spreading it around, not even to fellow Familia members. But the three of them were the Familia's leadership, and they needed to know what the members under them were capable of so they could place and deploy them properly.
So Loki hadn't told anyone else, not even Ais, but she had told the three of them.
Which was why Finn had pieced it together right away.
"I dunno, honestly. I really can't read that broken Skill, no clue what its effect even is." Loki spread her hands, but the divine eyes on her face had opened, and she said with a grin, "But other than that, can't think of any other reason that brat would have a hellish growth rate like this."
A god's intuition was unreliable, and yet it tended to be very convincing.
Especially on a matter as important as this, Finn and the others trusted Loki's gut, and they didn't think she was just running her mouth.
What's more, just like Loki, they couldn't think of any other reason a growth rate this absurd would appear.
"This is genuinely going to be something," Gareth said, half delighted, half reflective. "Never thought that kid was sitting on potential even scarier than Ais's. If the youngsters find out about this, the place is going to blow up, isn't it?"
"...Forget within the Familia. If word of this gets out, all of Orario will be in an uproar." Riveria's expression was complicated. "A growth rate this astonishing, once it's out there, even we'd have a hard time holding off the people, or the gods, with bad intentions, wouldn't we?"
"You think? Even my Ais set off an uproar back in the day, never mind this kid." Loki gave a cold smile. "But anyone who tries to snatch one of mine, the door's not even open. Not even a window."
Loki wasn't a serious person, that much was true, but if anyone dared lay a hand on her family, she'd happily lop the offending paws right off on the spot.
Even if a certain lust-struck goddess came calling, she'd chop just the same if any hand came her way.
"Looks like our Familia's about to gain another pillar." Finn smiled and asked Loki, "Did he level up just now?"
"Nope." The cold smile on Loki's face shifted into a delighted grin, and she said cheerfully, "He thinks he hasn't reached the limit of his current Level yet. Says he wants to keep training a while longer."
"A wise choice," Riveria nodded in agreement. "If he can push his basic abilities to this level in ten days, his potential definitely hasn't run out yet. Putting everything else aside, his Magic can definitely climb to S. Leveling up now would be a waste."
"Who knows. Maybe that kid will reach a height even we couldn't reach." Gareth stroked his beard and smiled. "Maybe he'll pull off the miracle of all abilities at S."
Even within Loki Familia, not many had abilities at the S rank.
Finn had only Dexterity at S, Riveria had only Magic at S, and Gareth had Strength and Endurance both at S. As for the four executives, only Bete Loga's Agility was currently at S; the other three didn't have any ability at S.
Even Orario's sole Lv.7, in the original work, had only four abilities at S, with one ability sitting at D.
If Leo could pull off all abilities at the S rank, that itself would be a miracle.
Finn and the others, animatedly discussing it, had no idea their imaginations were still falling far short.
Soon enough, they were going to see something they'd never seen before.
That was what a true miracle looked like.
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