The thick layer of fat on an Orc was indeed very hard to get through. Even with Leo's short sword, cutting through all that fat was still a difficult thing to do.
Unless Leo's "Strength" could reach A, or even S, would there be any chance of him splitting an Orc in two with one swing of the short sword in his hand. Otherwise, he could only aim at the parts of its body where the fat was thinner and the defense was weaker if he wanted to land any meaningful damage.
That was exactly what Leo had been planning to do, which was why he'd been waiting all along for a chance to counterattack.
Now, with one stab through the Orc's eye, Leo had landed a brilliant blow and driven the thing into a dead end.
Leo's hand twisted, dragging the sharp blade buried in the Orc's eye sideways, and the short sword sliced clean through half of the monster's skull, sending green blood flying.
Only then did Leo plant a foot on the Orc and launch himself away, dodging its dying lash-out.
"Ooooh..."
The Orc's wails of pain grew weaker by the moment, and its movements slowed. It was no longer the savage thing it had been before.
After a short while, the Orc's body slowly toppled and crashed to the ground with a heavy thud, and didn't move again.
Its body dissolved into ash, leaving behind a magic stone roughly half the size of a palm.
Leo finally shook the blood from the short sword, walked over, and picked up the magic stone.
"This thing's a different size class altogether from the small category and medium category."
Turning the magic stone over in his hand, Leo packed it away.
"Speaking of which, am I going to need to hire a Supporter to help haul this loot back?"
Feeling the small bag at his waist growing heavier and starting to drag on him, that thought came to Leo all of a sudden.
Supporters, like adventurers, were people dedicated to exploring the Dungeon.
The difference was that adventurers were the combat personnel, while Supporters were a non-combat profession. Their main job was to help carry magic stones and drop items, and sometimes to provide assistance to the adventurers up front, things like preparing suitable weapons or items, or handing over a potion when an adventurer needed replenishing, so as not to put extra burden on the comrades fighting monsters on the front line.
In other words, Supporters were the behind-the-scenes workers. The whole point of their existence was to lighten the adventurers' load.
Their work was inconspicuous, but it was indispensable.
For someone like Leo, without a Supporter at his side to handle the spoils, he had to keep the small shield he hadn't used today strapped to his body, while potions and other supplies went into the small bag he carried with him, and he had to be careful at every moment not to bump them and damage them in the middle of a fierce fight. On top of that, the magic stones and drop items he'd picked up along the way, he could only carry himself, which was burdensome and slowed down his earning speed too.
He was an adventurer, after all, so he couldn't fight while lugging too big a pack. The only thing he could carry on him was a small bag that could be strapped to his waist, and one glance was enough to see how much it could actually hold.
Back when he'd still been a newbie rookie with every ability at I0, he generally had to fight for a long stretch before he could finish an enemy off, and his rate of collecting magic stones and drop items was anything but high. So one small bag had been enough to hold all those spoils.
Now, though, he'd only just dropped into the Dungeon a little while ago, it wasn't even noon yet, and his bag was already on the verge of overflowing.
Opening the small bag and looking at the magic stones nearly filling it to the brim, Leo frowned.
"At my current clearing pace, I'm probably going to have to head back up to the surface around noon, sell all this off, empty out my bag, and only then come back in to keep exploring."
That would obviously slow down his pace of exploration too.
"A Supporter, huh..."
Leo turned the idea over in his mind.
Generally speaking, in the large Familias, the Supporter role was filled by newer or lower-level members on the side.
In the Loki Familia, for instance, during expeditions, plenty of Lv.2 and Lv.3 members doubled as Supporters so that the higher-level members on the front line could focus on fighting.
If they were exploring in the Deep Floors region, then even a Lv.4 like Raul had to take on Supporter duties as well, because on floors like that, only first-class adventurers Lv.5 and above could really hold their own.
Of course, that was the situation in the Loki Familia. In an ordinary Familia, there was no way they could afford to put an upper-class adventurer of Lv.2 or above on Supporter duty. They weren't extravagant enough to do something like that.
There were even some small Familias with only a handful of members, every one of whom had to be on the front line fighting, or else they wouldn't have enough firepower to explore the Dungeon properly. There was simply no one who could play Supporter.
In situations like that, adventurers would generally choose to hire people from outside their Familia to act as Supporters.
Some of these people were members whose own Familias didn't value them. Others had used up their potential, had weak Statuses, couldn't really explore the Dungeon on their own, and couldn't catch anyone's eye to team up with them either, and had no choice but to become Supporters, taking commissions from others to earn a bit of pay.
Leo saw people like that all the time. They generally hung around the Central Plaza in front of Babel, pitching themselves to adventurers passing by, trying every trick they could think of to get hired.
Now Leo was starting to feel that he needed to hire himself a Supporter too.
"What else can I do? There's nobody in my Familia who could be my Supporter!"
Leo sighed.
His Familia was too strong. Every single member was an upper-class adventurer of at least Lv.2, so how could any of them come and act as Supporter for a Lv.1 newbie like him?
When the Familia went on an expedition, some of the Lv.2 seniors didn't even qualify to tag along as a Supporter and had to stay behind at headquarters minding the place. In any other mid- or small-sized Familia, that would have been completely unthinkable.
With Leo's current strength, it was already a stretch that he wasn't going on Supporter duty for the seniors in his Familia, so how could he ask anyone there to come and be his Supporter?
So all he could do was hire somebody from outside.
A rustling sound came from somewhere around him while Leo was still mulling all this over.
Leo snapped back to himself and turned his eyes around, only to spot a number of black shadows closing in on him through the thin mist, surrounding him on all sides.
They were edging closer to Leo, padding across the grass underfoot, and the rustling was growing crisp and clear, with the faint sound of something licking its lips mixed in.
"Shaaaa!"
A moment later, the full forms of these monsters came into Leo's view.
It was a group of monsters, dark grey all over, big heads on small bodies, a single sharp little horn growing out of each head, with long thin tails behind them, looking like little devils.
"Imps?"
Leo placed where these monsters had come from.
The Imp, a kind of monster that, like the Orc, only started appearing from Floor 10 onwards in the Dungeon, but not a large category. They were small category, like Goblins and Kobolds.
Individually, they weren't strong. They weren't really any stronger than the Goblins or Kobolds on Floors 8 and 9. But they were cunning, smart in the head, and they always took a group-combat approach, which made them a monster that appeared more often than the Orc and relied on sheer numbers to attack adventurers one wave after another.
"Kiii!"
"Shaaaa!"
The group of Imps emerged from the mist, snickering, and the moment they did, they came at Leo from every direction at once.
Leo immediately sprang up into the air, dodging the attacks from all sides, but the Imps seemed to have anticipated exactly that, because they started flinging stones up at Leo in mid-air.
Leo swung the short sword almost on reflex, knocking the stones aside one after another, but the Imps just kept throwing more, trying to bring him crashing down.
"You lot are starting to get annoying."
Seeing that a sizeable number of Imps had gathered below, Leo didn't hesitate and unleashed his Magic.
"Light of heaven, sword of stars."
"Meteor Dance!"
Streaks of starlight rose up from behind Leo, turned into meteors racing through the air, and plunged toward the ground below.
Meteors slammed into the earth one after another, kicking up dust and explosions. The Imps, who'd been snickering only a second ago, panicked on the spot and scattered in every direction in absolute terror, but hardly any of them could get clear of the meteor shower in time.
The Imps were caught up in the rain of meteors, either blasted away or punched through, wailing as they burst into black ash, leaving behind crystal shards that were a great deal smaller than the Orc's magic stone.
Only then did Leo drop down from the air. The moment the soles of his feet planted solid on the ground, he pushed off hard and shot forward, going after the Imps that were still trying to flee in every direction.
Sword-light flickered, the blade danced wildly, and the sharp short sword cut down one panicked Imp after another on the spot, drawing scream after scream.
There were those who said that a group of Imps gathered together was actually a lot harder to deal with than a lone Orc, but for Leo, who had area-of-effect attack power, numbers really weren't a problem at all.
Compared to the Orc, whose thick hide and tough flesh gave his sword some resistance, these Imps that he could decapitate in one stroke were obviously much easier to deal with. At least for Leo they were.
By the time Leo had finished off the whole pack of Imps, he wasn't even out of breath. He just looked at the magic stones scattered all over the ground and let out a long, quiet sigh.
"No helping it. I'll have to head back for now."
With these magic stones on top of everything else, the small bag at his waist wasn't going to hold any more.
After Leo had picked up all the magic stones, he had to put the leftover ones into another small bag, the one he used to carry drop items that weren't going to be sold to the Guild.
For now, that bag had to double as magic-stone storage too.
Hauling a full load of spoils, Leo trudged out of Floor 10 with a furrowed brow and made his way back up to the floors above.
Today was destined to give him quite a few happy headaches.
=-=-=-=-=
200 powerstones for the extra chapter
=-=-=-=-=
Read 30 Chapters ahead at Patreon.com/NiaXD