"Jiii!"
"Jiii jiii!"
"Jiii jiii jiii jiii!"
In the underground passage walled in pale green, countless red Killer Ants poured forward in a single direction like marching ants, mandibles grinding out shrill cries as they came, a red tide carrying a terrifying momentum.
Killer Ants gathered in such numbers were a sight you'd rarely see anywhere on Floor 7 of the Dungeon, yet here they were, very much swarmed together, charging as one toward a single figure.
Faced with such a fearsome host of Killer Ants, anyone short of a Lv.2 upper-class adventurer would normally have no choice but to run for their life if caught alone. Hardly anyone would dare face an army of Killer Ants like this by themselves.
And yet today, here was a newbie who'd only become an adventurer about ten days ago, and instead of falling back before this army, he was charging straight at it without hesitation.
A cold flash of sword-light cut across the air, and the sharp short sword sliced clean through a Killer Ant's body, treating that famously formidable hard carapace as if it weren't even there, splitting the ant in two.
Leo had cast aside the small shield he'd favored before, gripping his sword in one hand as he charged into the army of Killer Ants and turned the place into a slaughter banquet.
His body moved like the wind, his sword swept like rain. With nimble footwork he slipped past the Killer Ants lunging at him, and with each swing he sent out a sharp arc of light, weaving a rain of blades that cut them down one by one.
Sword-light flashed again and again, and the Killer Ants were reaped without mercy. Some were split in two, some had their limbs hacked away, some had their heads taken off. They died on the spot, their bodies dissolving into ash, leaving only magic stones piling up on the ground.
"Jiii jiii jiii jiii jiii!"
Time wore on, the Killer Ant army kept pressing forward, and yet they still couldn't bring down the newbie adventurer wreaking such carnage among them. Their cries turned anxious and impatient.
The Killer Ants that were badly wounded but not yet dead were already calling for reinforcements, drawing more Killer Ants from every direction until Leo was surrounded.
As they say, enough ants can bite an elephant to death. A lone, isolated Human adventurer surrounded by this many Killer Ants would, sooner or later, run out of strength and go down, swallowed up by them, dead beyond dead.
If this had been yesterday's Leo, he might as well have lain down in the face of a dead end like this and just waited to report to Heaven, hoping for a better roll in his next life.
But for today's Leo, a challenge like this barely scratched what he was after.
"Too many of them. Let's thin the herd."
Surrounded by Killer Ants, Leo murmured this even as he began to chant.
"Light of heaven, sword of stars."
Starlight erupted from him.
A starlight more brilliant than anything he had shown before.
Of all the basic abilities raised in this Status update, Leo's biggest growth hadn't been in "Strength" or "Endurance," nor in "Dexterity" or "Agility," but in "Magic," the stat tied directly to the power of his spells.
His "Magic" had reached B, only two grades shy of the highest, S. So when Leo cast his spell now, the magic, reinforced by seven full grades of growth in "Magic," naturally unleashed power far beyond what it had before.
Meteors rose from Leo's body, shooting up into the air before suddenly plunging back down, breaking into a small meteor shower that crashed against the ground.
The roar of meteors slamming into the earth rolled on without pause. Streaks of starlight, like real stones falling from the sky, set off explosions the instant they hit, tearing through dirt, shattering rock, leaving crater after crater along the passage.
Countless Killer Ants were caught in this indiscriminate downpour, some struck dead-on and blasted to pieces on the spot, others thrown by the shockwaves and dashed against the walls, leaving smears of blood behind them.
With "Magic" raised by a full seven grades, that corner of the future Leo had once daydreamed about for Meteor Dance had taken its first real shape.
"Good."
Looking at what was left of the broken, ragged swarm after his spell had cleared out so much of it, Leo's face broke into a smile.
The next instant, Leo kicked off the ground and tore toward the remaining Killer Ants with the wind howling at his back, beginning the slaughter all over again.
Sword-light flashed in quick succession, the short sword swung again and again, drawing shrill cry after shrill cry.
Three minutes later, with the last Killer Ant cut down by Leo and falling to the ground in pieces, the one-sided massacre was finally over.
Leo stood in the middle of a great pile of magic stones and not-yet-dissolved monster corpses, breathing lightly, a satisfied expression on his face.
"Now this is what I always pictured an adventurer being like."
There was no doubt about it, Leo was in an excellent mood.
Before all this, with every ability at I0, he hadn't been much stronger than an ordinary person. Whatever monster he faced, he'd had to handle it carefully. Even against the weakest Goblin, he hadn't dared meet it head-on without his shield strapped on.
If he ran into too many enemies, or if the situation called for tricks to get the job done with his current strength, he wouldn't hesitate to turn and run, leading the monsters on a tense, nerve-racking chase.
A scene like that was less adventuring and more scrambling for his life, throwing everything he had into a desperate dance with the monsters.
Not like now, where Leo could single-handedly massacre a swarm of Killer Ants, the kind of monster newbie adventurers dreaded to even hear about, and where before the fight even started, he'd thought the shield on his arm was just getting in the way and tossed it aside.
Even with a thousand-strong army in front of him, a host of monsters, he'd still charge in without hesitation and cut down countless enemies on his own. That was what Leo, and plenty of other people, pictured when they thought of an adventurer.
Sword in one hand, Magic in the other, sword-light flying in a fierce fight while chanting between the moves, blowing away a whole swath of monsters in the blink of an eye. That, too, was what Leo and many others pictured when they thought of a Magic Swordsman.
The Leo of now finally had the look of a strong adventurer about him, and the Magic Swordsman style of fighting he'd envisioned earlier was beginning to show real results.
"The body's about adjusted too. The mind-body dissonance has eased off a lot. Pulling out the full strength my current Status can give me, that's not going to be hard."
Leo flexed his free hand open and closed, then turned his eyes back over his shoulder.
There, behind him, was a passage leading down to the next floor.
"Floor 8... the me right now should be able to handle it, shouldn't I?"
Leo was getting restless.
For him as he was now, Floor 7 was no longer much of a challenge. Even if he didn't kill the Killer Ants, even if he let them call their friends in from every direction until a terrifying army had gathered, he didn't think they could still stop him.
That being the case, it was time to head deeper.
"By the recommended strategy, with my current Status, I can already go to Floor 8. Even deeper floors are within reach."
While picking up magic stones from the ground, Leo dug drop items out of the leftover monster corpses, packed them into his bag, and quietly thought it over.
According to the strategies handed out by the Guild and the Familias, Floors 1 through 4 suited adventurers with one or more basic abilities between I and H, Floors 5 through 7 suited those between G and F, Floors 8 through 10 suited E through C, and Floors 11 through 12 suited B through S.
By that measure, Leo's Status had long since outstripped the difficulty of Floor 7. His weakest ability, "Endurance," was already E. Even going by that one weakest stat, he was clear to step onto Floor 8.
And if you set aside the off-the-charts "Magic" stat, Leo already had two abilities at D, while his "Agility" was up to C. He could go explore as far as Floor 10 if he wanted.
"Let's head down and see. There's not much point hanging around this floor anyway."
A skilled hand makes for a bold heart, as the saying went. Now that his strength had taken such a leap, Leo had a lot more confidence in himself. Not that he'd take the Dungeon's dangers lightly, but he didn't need to be as cautious or as endlessly hesitant as before.
At the very least, he didn't see any reason to be afraid of going down to Floor 8. Not even Floor 9, really.
And in truth, that was how it played out.
Floors 8 and 9 of the Dungeon were a step up in difficulty, but not a fundamental jump.
With the kind of strength that let Leo go on a one-man rampage across Floor 7, he could move through Floors 8 and 9 like a fish in water. There was no real danger he had to fear.
Unless a monster from a deeper floor happened to wander up, and he had the very bad luck to run into it, or unless he ran into some kind of Irregular that shouldn't have been there, then on Floors 8 and 9, even if he found himself swarmed by a hundred monsters at once, Leo could carve a path clear with his Magic.
So when Leo went down to Floors 8 and 9, he still didn't feel any real pressure. When it was time to go on a rampage, he went on a rampage, killing off whole swaths of monsters with ease and walking away with a heap of spoils.
"Gah!"
A lizard-type monster didn't last a single exchange in Leo's hands. It only had time for one strangled cry before Leo's short sword split it cleanly down the middle.
"Floor 9's difficulty... so this is about all it amounts to."
Picking up the magic stone the monster had dropped, Leo stood untouched before the mouth of a tunnel, gazing into the pitch dark within.
"Floor 10..."
His eyes flickered for a moment, and then he stepped forward.
"Let's see what you've got."
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