Chapter 81: This Isn't Magic at All!
Dungeon, 58th Floor.
Unlike the floors above, this place had no maze and no surrounding walls.
It was one vast, open space.
"Hey!"
Torajirou Shiro and the others descended all the way to this floor before finally stopping.
When Shiro set Lefiya down, she finally realized how improper it had been for her to cling tightly to him like an octopus.
That made the pure elven girl feel rather embarrassed, and she began acting a little shy and awkward.
After landing, everyone except Lefiya quickly observed their surroundings.
The wyverns that had spawned from the walls again were chasing them down through the large hole overhead.
The seven Valgang Dragons that had sniped at them earlier had also yet to be eliminated.
"Let's take care of those Valgang Dragons first."
Shiro made the decision on the spot.
Among these monsters, only the Valgang Dragons could interfere with the team above from extreme range, so they were the highest-priority targets.
"Can we really clear out all these monsters...?"
After hearing Shiro's words, Lefiya came back to her senses and looked around.
Huge wyverns flapped their wings in the sky.
All kinds of monsters were slowly closing in.
Far away, the Valgang Dragons were preparing their next shots.
On top of that, the Dungeon walls were desperately spawning new monsters.
In this place with no cover, the four of them now had to deal with several thousand monsters.
"Tch. If we can't beat them, we're dead anyway. What else can we do? Shiro, give me that thing."
At this point, there was no room to worry about saving resources.
Shiro took a magic sword from the Gift Card and handed it to Bete.
Bete placed the crackling sword beside his boots.
With a sharp sizzling sound, the silver-white boots devoured the magic sword's lightning power.
This was Bete's special equipment, [Frosvirt], which had the ability to absorb magic power.
With lightning beneath his feet and unbreakable twin blades in his hands, he charged toward the monsters.
"Rooooaar!!!"
The Valgang Dragon's roar became the signal for battle to begin.
A beam of light shot toward Bete.
He leaned forward and avoided the attack, then stepped down hard.
Like a bolt of racing thunder, he flew toward the Valgang Dragon.
The monsters that blocked him along the way were either cut apart by his twin blades or turned into ash beneath the lightning of his boots.
The second wave of bombardment came.
Bete kicked off a monster's chest and used the jump to avoid the attack.
The monster swarm that had been fighting him earlier was also turned into dust by that wave of attacks.
There was more than one Valgang Dragon.
While Bete was fixed in midair and unable to move freely, the third wave of attacks had already finished charging.
A pillar of light that looked like it could destroy the world was about to fire toward him.
"Gah—boom!"
At the instant before the attack was released, a figure fell from high above and smashed the Valgang Dragon's head apart in one blow.
The Valgang Dragon's attack also vanished into nothing.
"Yo, you brats still alive?"
Gareth pulled his axe out of the Valgang Dragon's corpse and greeted Lefiya and the others, who were frozen in place.
"Old man?!"
Bete, who had just been saved by that attack, shouted in a very rude tone.
"Rooooooar!!!"
At the same time, seeing their companion instantly killed, the Valgang Dragons roared in anger.
Using that as the signal, the monsters quickly surrounded the dwarf who was standing alone inside the monster swarm.
"Hahaha! Come on, then!"
Gareth let out a bold laugh and grabbed the Valgang Dragon corpse by the tail with both hands.
"Hey... no way..."
Tiona's ominous feeling came true.
Gareth stomped down and shattered the ground beneath his foot, using it as a pivot.
Then he grabbed the Valgang Dragon corpse by the tail and began spinning.
The sight of a small dwarf swinging around a dragon nearly three stories tall was extremely shocking.
"Get down!" Shiro shouted.
Gareth used the Valgang Dragon's corpse like a chain ball and swung it like a windmill.
When it reached a certain speed, he let go.
The Valgang Dragon's corpse flew over Shiro and the others' heads, then smashed hard into the monster swarm and crushed them apart.
"Now that feels good! This is what exploring the Dungeon should be like!"
Looking at the result of his attack, Gareth let out another hearty laugh.
"You brats, stop watching and start making a mess like young people should! Don't leave all the work to an old man like me!"
"What part of you looks like an old man?!"
Tiona shouted back, but she still obediently stood up and charged toward the nearest monster.
After Gareth's rampage, a clear gap appeared in the monster swarm.
Bete, moving like thunder and wind, instantly rushed through that opening and kicked another Valgang Dragon's head apart.
"Five left!"
"Then let me finish them all at once."
At some point, Shiro had already stood to the side with his sword raised horizontally.
Lefiya and Bete had seen that stance before.
Although it was slightly different, judging from the way the magic power was gathering, they could tell.
It was the skill that had wiped out over a thousand worms in one go that day.
"Wait! Gareth and I are still over here, you bastard!"
Bete cursed, grabbed the confused Gareth, and ran toward Shiro.
A huge amount of magic power containing a concept was released by Shiro.
It swallowed several thousand monsters and all five Valgang Dragons at once.
Just like that, one-fourth of the monsters in the massive room turned into ash.
The sight made Tiona, who had no magic, deeply envious.
"Ugh... I want magic like that too."
"That probably doesn't count as magic..."
Lefiya, who had studied under Riveria for years, shook her head.
In her understanding, magic meant refining magic power through a chant, then using that refined magic power to release an ability.
But Shiro covered his magic power with an ability, then directly threw it out through a slash.
It was a brute-force attack that only someone with a ridiculous amount of magic power could use.
Even if Riveria were asked to judge it, she would probably shake her head and say this was not magic at all.
Besides, judging from how Shiro could still hold his sword and watch the others after releasing that "magic," he clearly had energy to spare.
If Lefiya had released an attack of that level, she would have already fainted.
After hearing Lefiya's explanation, Shiro shrugged under everyone's monster-like gazes.
Would I tell you that I still haven't used my Desperado ability in the Dungeon because I'm worried about causing a rampage from this place that might be something like Gaia?
"In any case, before we meet up with the others, let's clear out these monsters first," Shiro said.
Even though his attack had cleaned up the most troublesome Valgang Dragons and several thousand monsters, three-fourths of the remaining monsters were still there.
Just cutting them all down would take several hours.
"You're not going to keep using that magic?"
Tione sounded a little confused.
Even with this many monsters, if they gathered around Shiro and let him use that attack a few more times, they should be able to kill most of them.
"Don't you all need to grind ability values?" Shiro said as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Lefiya and the others were rendered somewhat speechless.
When surrounded by several thousand monsters, most people would only think about how to escape.
Only Shiro still had the mood to think about grinding ability values.
However, after thinking about it again, their eyes changed.
Several thousand monsters, combined with Shiro's special skill.
Didn't that mean they might gain a huge harvest this time too?
Before Shiro arrived, they had worked hard for an entire year just to raise their values by three or four hundred points.
In Orario, that already put them among geniuses.
With several thousand monsters this time, plus Shiro's skill, was it possible they could gain the results of a full year's effort in one go?
"Charge!!!"
"Don't steal my kills!"
"Small fry should stay out of my way!!!"
Lefiya watched the three who had suddenly caught fire with motivation and hugged her staff with an awkward smile.
It seemed she had been enjoying the benefits of that skill for quite a while already.
Although she was not as urgent as them, she still quietly wondered in her heart.
Her ability values were also almost at their limit.
Could this expedition possibly let her level up?
Beside them, Gareth stroked his beard and laughed boldly.
His gaze focused on the group of five fighting fiercely over kills, and he could not help sighing.
"Ha! Youth really is wonderful."
…
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