Orario's Central Plaza, Babel.
Before the sky had fully lightened, the Central Plaza in front of Babel was already filling up with a steady stream of adventurers. Some were waiting for teammates, some were talking something over, then heading into Babel together to descend into the Dungeon.
Leo arrived at this hour as well, his figure blending into the crowd of adventurers, completely unremarkable.
"Bit early today..."
Looking up at the not-yet-bright sky, Leo rubbed his nose.
Compared to the previous stretch, Leo really had come earlier today.
It couldn't be helped. Yesterday his Status had been updated for the first time, with that ridiculous total proficiency gain of over 3,000 across all his basic abilities. He badly wanted to try it out right away, see exactly how big the gap was between his current self and the version from before.
Because of that, Leo hadn't slept well last night, and he'd gotten up much earlier than usual today. When he left the house, Ais hadn't even started her sword training in the courtyard yet, which showed just how early he was.
He didn't need to wait for teammates here, so he walked straight into Babel, took the great pit in the center of the ground-floor hall down into the Dungeon, and arrived at the long-familiar Floor 1.
The hour was still early, so there weren't many people in the Dungeon yet. Leo walked forward a short way and there were no other adventurers around him, leaving him in his usual solitary state.
At the same time, the monsters that had spawned in the Dungeon hadn't yet been mopped up by the enormous tide of adventurers, so it didn't take long before Leo ran into one.
"Gah!"
A small, dog-headed monster came howling out of the passage ahead, and without a moment's hesitation it lunged toward Leo.
It was the Kobold, a creature Leo had a long history with.
The thing was the same as ever, baring its teeth at the sight of an adventurer like it had spotted an old enemy, instantly throwing itself forward with shocking aggression.
Facing this, on any other day Leo would already have raised the small shield on his left arm, ready to take the attack.
But today, he didn't.
"So slow..."
Watching the Kobold come at him with murder in its eyes, that was the first thought to surface in Leo's head.
In his vision, the Kobold that he used to have to take seriously was, for some reason, moving pitifully slowly. He even had time left over to just stand there and think about it.
That sense of facing a deadly threat whenever a monster appeared had vanished too, as if his body could no longer register the danger, and his reactions had actually gone a little sluggish as a result.
Only when the Kobold lunged right up to him, sharp claws reaching for his throat, did Leo come back to himself like a man waking from a dream.
Then he drew.
A keen ring went up from the blade leaving its sheath. A streak of swordlight tore through the air and cut at the Kobold practically on top of him.
The speed of it was staggering.
The short sword, by now a complete afterimage, sliced through the Kobold's neck before the thing could even register what had happened, taking off its head. Its skull, still wearing the ferocious expression of a creature about to land its attack, sailed high into the air.
The headless Kobold, still locked in its lunge at Leo, scattered in midair into ash and disappeared without a trace.
A magic stone shard dropped, brushing past the Kobold's head, which had also burst into ash, and hit the ground with a clear ringing sound. After rolling a few turns, it came to rest.
Everything happened that abruptly, and returned to quiet just as abruptly.
"This..."
Leo, still locked in the pose of his swing, stood there frozen for a long moment before he came around. He looked at his own hands, stunned.
His palm opened and closed, opened and closed, until at last he accepted the reality.
"It really went down that easily?"
Compared to the caution he used to bring, that fight just now had been so easy it barely felt like a fight at all.
"This is what I can do now?"
Leo murmured it under his breath, then kept walking forward.
It wasn't long before Leo ran into a second monster, a Goblin.
"Gya-gya!"
The Goblin, like the Kobold, launched itself at Leo the instant it spotted him.
But this time, Leo didn't choose to stay put and wait for the attack. He moved before the Goblin did.
Wind howled past as Leo's figure tore forward at a speed he hadn't had yesterday, and in the blink of an eye he was in front of the Goblin.
The blade of the short sword turned into a streak of swordlight again, and in an instant the Goblin, never having had time to react, was cut clean in two.
The poor thing had barely begun to react before its body burst into ash, leaving behind only a magic stone shard, lying alone on the ground.
Leo's body shot forward another stretch before it slowly came to a stop.
By now, Leo had confirmed it. He really had grown stronger.
And by a lot, a whole lot.
"Reaction speed, movement speed, even the force behind my swings, all of it is completely different from yesterday."
Leo silently took in the difference between the two.
Yesterday, in terms of physical ability alone, I was still squarely at the level of an ordinary person. There was no way I could compete with the gifted Dwarves, Beast Humans, or Amazonesses.
But today, in terms of physical ability, I've probably already left the range of a top athlete behind. Even Dwarves, Beast Humans, and Amazonesses, unless their Status had climbed to a certain point, couldn't match what I am right now.
If today's me fought yesterday's me, it'd probably only take one move to put yesterday's me down.
This still didn't qualify as a total transformation, since all Leo had done was raise his basic abilities. He hadn't leveled up yet.
The gap between Levels was the biggest one. Only after leveling up did anyone earn the right to call it a true transformation.
But even today's showing was already enough for Leo to clearly feel what people meant by "strength."
If yesterday's him had still been just an ordinary person, then today's him had finally taken a solid step onto the road called "the extraordinary."
If it were today's me running into those earlier crises, I could probably resolve them pretty easily, right?
Thinking back to that dead end on Floor 4 the first time he entered the Dungeon, and the Killer Ant legion surrounding him on Floor 7, Leo figured that if it were his current self, he wouldn't even need to come out covered in wounds. He probably wouldn't even need to use Magic to take care of those big numbers of Kobolds and Killer Ants.
But, the current him had a problem too...
"I've gotten stronger, sure, but going from there to here so suddenly, the strength is hard to control."
Leo frowned.
A moment ago, what Leo had actually been aiming for was a swing that would cut off the Goblin's neck, just like he'd done with the Kobold, taking its head clean off.
The neck was a fragile part of the body. It didn't take much force to cut through, it gave the enemy a fatal wound, and it saved stamina and reduced wear. So Leo often aimed at the neck of a monster, going for a one-strike kill.
But just now, with his own speed surging, his sense of distance between himself and the enemy had been off, and his control over the force of the swing had been off too. Not only had he failed to hit the neck, he hadn't been able to rein in his momentum and had carried himself another stretch past the target. That, without question, was a case of mind-body dissonance.
The head, the spirit, the memory of how to move had failed to keep up with the rapidly grown strength, throwing off the rhythm of combat and creating problems. That was mind-body dissonance, and it took some good adjustment to work through.
"Didn't expect to run into mind-body dissonance before even leveling up."
Leo scratched his head.
Mind-body dissonance was something that normally only showed up in adventurers after they leveled up, because the gap between pre-Rank Up and post-Rank Up strength was so wide that you always needed a solid period of adjustment to find a new rhythm in combat and bring out the surge in power.
For day-to-day Status updates, the gains in strength didn't usually cause mind-body dissonance.
It was only a few basic abilities going up, after all. Even if every ability climbed a rank after a single update, the boost to overall strength wouldn't be enough to cause mind-body dissonance.
And yet Leo was running into mind-body dissonance without even leveling up.
There was no helping it. His gains this time really had been on the large side. Even if they still didn't match what a level up would bring, they were nothing like the boost from raising a basic ability by one or two ranks.
His weakest, Endurance, had gone up four ranks. Right behind it, Strength and Dexterity had each gone up five, and even Agility had gone up six. With a leap that big, not falling into mind-body dissonance would be the strange outcome.
On top of that, he'd gone directly from all abilities at I0 to where he was now. That was practically a metamorphosis.
Trying to fight using the same way of moving an ordinary person's body, but applying it to this body, would be strange if it didn't run into trouble.
"Going to need to adjust properly to this."
With that in mind, Leo set off on a kind of steamrolling tour he'd never gotten to experience before.
The Leo of the past had had all abilities at I0, so even the weakest monsters on Floor 1 had required a real fight. The Leo of now didn't need to think at all. The moment he saw a monster, he charged in and cut, and that was basically enough to finish it off.
It wasn't just the monsters on Floor 1, either. The monsters on Floors 2, 3, 4, even Floor 5 were the same. None of them could make it through a single move in Leo's hands. Sometimes they didn't even get to react before Leo had charged in and cut them down with a single stroke, turning them to ash on the spot.
Leo enjoyed the pleasure of steamrolling monsters while adjusting to his current strength.
Before long, he had reached the deepest floor he'd ever been to, Floor 7.
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