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Chapter 18 - Chapter 18: The Orc

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After an hour of battle awareness training, Ronen had reached the point where he could at least use a weapon.

His mana consumption had remained very low—about a tenth of what it normally would have been—so after thinking for a moment, he decided to delve even deeper into the dungeon.

Upon reaching the ninth floor, a single pulse from his detection wave revealed a swarm of life signatures.

"Group-type monsters, huh…"

The presence of monsters was distinctly different from that of adventurers, and adventurers from ordinary humans.

As members of the gods' familias, adventurers carried divine blood, so their aura was naturally unique. Monsters, by contrast, had an opposite resonance—easily distinguishable from any human or divine.

"Faint life signs, massive in number… On this floor, that could only mean—Killer Ants."

After making that judgment, Ronen began heading toward the swarm.

Killer Ants were weak, but they had numbers rivaling real ants.

Their most annoying feature was their death cry: if they had enough time to react before dying, they'd emit a piercing signal only their kind could hear—triggering a Monster Party.

"Perfect time to test my wide-range shockwave spell."

Aside from basic magic like the shockwave, Ronen had developed an advanced variation of wind magic—sound magic.

It created shockwaves through controlled sound frequencies.

This magic was more powerful, consumed less mana, and could be shaped into single-target or AoE attacks.

It wasn't on the level of Alfia's Satanas Verion , but it didn't need to be. This was just a mid-tier spell. Think of it like an elemental vacuum blade.

Wind: Edge Spiral

Five circular wind blades spun around Ronen as he strode into the middle of the ant swarm.

Guided by detection waves, he carved a bloody path straight into their core. Faced with these grotesque, cat-sized insects crawling all over each other, even he felt goosebumps.

Shockwave: Silence Pulse

The moment the spell activated, all sound disappeared from Ronen's ears—like a vacuum had formed around him. A destructive force radiated outward, clearing a 10-meter radius of Killer Ants in an instant.

Over 120 ants were disintegrated in the blink of an eye. Their magic stones clattered to the ground—though those too close to the center had their stones annihilated by the blast.

"Mana consumption's pretty high… Big AoE spells are still hard to sustain."

Ronen stretched his back with a sigh. That single attack had burned through a large chunk of his reserves.

He estimated he could cast it twenty-something more times max. Still, that was quite the feat for someone who wasn't even an adventurer yet.

In just twenty days of training, his mana had increased fivefold, now sitting at around 300 amount—the equivalent of a well-trained Level 1 adventurer.

And this wasn't his limit—he was in the midst of a rapid growth phase, with noticeable improvements day by day.

"He calls that high mana usage…?"

From afar, the Hera Familia member watching him clutched her chest in shock fearing she might have a heartattack.

Ronen had casually charged into a nest of Killer Ants and slaughtered them en masse—not as a trained adventurer, but as a civilian.

Just watching it , she could hear her own heart pounding with anxiety.

"What if something happened? How would I face Meteria?"

But clearly, she had overreacted.

"That idiot Meteria… she didn't tell me any of this..."

She grumbled to herself that about dying form heart attack as she hurried to catch up—because Ronen had already descended further.

What exactly was he capable of?

Somewhere in her heart, she began to look forward to the answer.

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The tenth floor—here appeared a new type of monster: the Orc.

Standing over three meters tall, orcs were massive green brutes—like obese giants. The floor was bleached white and filled with towering pale trees.

These trees weren't just scenery. The orcs would rip them from the ground and wield them as clubs, earning this place the nickname: the "Natural Armory."

"Now the real mid-tier combat trials begin."

Monsters from the first to ninth floors were small and weak. Even an average adult could defeat one with a bit of courage and a decent weapon.

So Ronen had been using his vacuum-blade spells at their lowest output—making mana consumption almost negligible.

"Here it comes."

From ahead, a thunderous vibration shook the ground. A massive orc tore a pale tree from the earth and raised it as a club.

Ronen raised his hands—five wind blades formed again—and rushed forward. He easily dodged the orc's slow, clumsy swing, circled behind, and sliced its throat in one clean arc.

Two more enlarged wind blades followed, cleaving another orc clean in half.

Now he had an estimate of the orc's strength. If he tripled the size of his standard wind blade, even mid-sized versions could decapitate orcs with ease.

More importantly, his attack speed was simply too fast. Most monsters—or even adventurers—couldn't react in time.

With his training, Ronen's combat power had clearly reached Level 2.

Or perhaps even higher—because anyone below Level 2 was simply getting one-shot by his spells.

His attacks had no cast time, no recovery delay—just a thought, and the spell was unleashed.

"Time for the second trial."

Ronen casually walked toward another orc, getting dangerously close.

"What the hell is he doing?"

From a distance, the Hera Familia member grew tense. Was he trying to get himself killed?

She was on the verge of jumping in—when suddenly, she heard a high-speed sound break the air.

"Oh no."

She gasped, pupils shrinking. An arrow had been fired—from far away. Whether it was aimed at Ronen or not, she didn't know. But there wasn't enough time to intercept it.

"Arrow?"

Ronen's detection spell had picked it up—an incoming projectile at high speed. Instinctively, he fired a small shockwave toward the arrow.

It knocked the arrow off course—but ironically, that change in trajectory made it veer toward Ronen instead.

Shockwave: Barrier

His battle reflexes, honed from playful sparring, kicked in. He calmly unleashed a full-powered defensive spell.

A one-meter-radius shield of shockwaves burst around him with a thunderous boom. The arrow was caught in the blast and thrown skyward, rendered completely harmless.

This was a shockwave barrier—a defensive spell that released a full-power burst in every direction at once.

"That force… an 2-tier adventurer?"

Ronen narrowed his eyes. This arrow hadn't come from an ordinary foe.

Someone powerful—possibly a high-level adventurer—had just attacked.

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