Chapter 25: Development Ability: Lucky... Pervert?
...
Back to the moment Kihara had just finished the Goliath solo.
Once clear of the other party's line of sight, he tucked the magic stone and horn materials into his dimensional storage, surfaced, converted the stones to falis at the Guild, and headed home. The horns he kept aside — useful either as crafting material or as a trade commodity with dwarf warriors, who apparently had strong feelings about Goliath-derived equipment.
He was humming to himself when he opened the front door.
Hestia and Lili hit him simultaneously at approximately full speed.
He staggered, absorbed the impact, and began patting both of them on the head before his balance had fully returned.
"Look—" he produced one of the horns from his storage and held it up "—Goliath drop. Impressive, right?"
Lili's encyclopaedic instincts activated immediately. "Goliath horns are used in great-axe and heavy armour crafting — very popular among dwarf warriors. Lord Kihara could probably get excellent trade terms from a dwarf Familia."
"That's all well and good but it can wait—!"
Hestia had already gotten behind him and was pushing him toward the sofa with both hands. "Lie down, we're doing your status update right now. Solo floor boss defeat absolutely counts as a Heroic Feat — you're advancing to Level 2 today!"
"Lili, could you run to the Hostess of Fertility and grab some food for us?"
"Of course, Lady Hestia."
Kihara pulled off his shirt and settled face-down into the sofa cushions. Hestia took one look at the muscle definition along his back, swallowed quietly, and sat herself down on his lower back with the settled comfort of someone who had decided this was simply where she sat now.
Conventional status updates didn't require this particular posture. Hestia had simply decided she preferred it. Replenishing her daily Kihara energy, she called it, without apparent irony.
She pricked her fingertip with the silver needle. A drop of divine blood fell onto his back, and the golden ripples spread outward as the divine script rose to the surface.
Kihara had expected something like a surge of refreshed energy. What he got instead felt like being fed into a machine that ground him into component pieces and reassembled him from scratch — every cell in his body broken apart by invisible blades and slowly reforged by something that didn't particularly care how much it hurt in the process. He grabbed the nearest cushion, locked his jaw, and made no sound.
Hestia noticed none of this. She was staring at his status in complete shock.
Kihara: Lv.3
Strength: I0
Endurance: I0
Dexterity: I0
Agility: I0
Magic: I0
Development Abilities:
[Lucky Pervert]: I
[Swordsman]: H
Magic: [None]
Skills:
[Hestia's Favour]
Fire-attribute attacks and abilities are enhanced.
Two Development Abilities and a new skill — and he'd skipped Level 2 entirely, landing directly at Level 3.
The most unusual entry was Lucky Pervert, which didn't appear anywhere in Hestia's knowledge of documented Development Abilities. The name alone gave her a fairly clear picture of its general function. She filed the implications away for later.
She transferred the divine script to parchment and transcribed it into readable text, then climbed off him. Kihara, who had just finished enduring what felt like a full structural renovation of his skeleton, accepted the parchment with the energy of someone who had recently been through something, skimmed it, and handed it back.
"Why didn't you tell me levelling up felt like this?"
"...Doesn't it normally feel like a full-body renewal? Refreshing?"
"It did feel like a renewal. The process of getting there felt like my bones were being individually shattered."
"That shouldn't happen at all—"
After some discussion, they arrived at a working theory: Eirin's earlier treatment had locked his physical state at a fixed baseline. The Falna's natural function — gradually expanding human potential through accumulated experience — had nowhere to go within that locked framework. The only way to advance was to break the constraint entirely, reforge the container at a larger scale.
Skipping two levels at once came down to simple maths — defeating a floor boss solo at Level 1 generated enough concentrated experience to power two advancements simultaneously. Both thresholds crossed in a single event.
"So everything I've been accumulating up to now was potential that couldn't be expressed," Kihara said, working through it.
"Each level-up is when it all gets released at once. Which means the most efficient approach is to push the potential as high as it will go before advancing, and then break through all at once."
He was already on his feet, moving experimentally around the living room, getting a feel for what had just been added to him. The difference was immediate and significant. Each step landed differently. His hands cut through the air and left it displaced.
He tried a few kicks.
The third one came with a sound like tearing fabric.
His trousers ceased to exist as a coherent garment.
"Oh—!"
Hestia's hands flew to her face. All ten fingers spread wide. Her eyes, however, found the gaps between them with considerable accuracy and remained there, taking in the sculpture-precise lines of his torso and abdomen, and the particular feature further down that inspired in her a response she found simultaneously exciting and alarming.
I wonder what it would feel like.
She was immediately appalled at herself for the thought. She fled to the bathroom, ran cold water over her cheeks, looked at her reflection, and raised her fist with conviction.
"I am going to get him the best title the Divine Banquet has ever produced!"
Adventurers who reached Level 2 received a formal title — Aiz's Sword Princess being the most famous example. The process was not straightforward. The host Familia's god submitted a proposal, which was then debated and voted on at a Denatus — the divine assembly — with the winning title requiring a majority.
Gods being gods, the debate frequently produced results that prioritised entertainment value. Aiz's first proposed title had been The Silent Golden Princess, which conveyed the exact information but lacked a certain dignity. Loki had applied significant behind-the-scenes pressure to steer the vote toward something better.
Kihara's case — Level 1 solo floor boss defeat, Level 3 in a single advancement — would almost certainly generate enough interest to warrant a dedicated assembly. Hestia intended to walk in prepared.
She met her own reflection's eyes.
For him, I will be diplomatic. I will be persuasive. I will be politically effective.
Probably.
.....
Thank you for reading.