After his adventurer credentials were checked, Keyaru followed the crowd down the spiral stairs into the Dungeon.
First stop: the safe floor, the "Beginning Road."
It was a textbook cave environment—lantern-fruit clung to the walls, shedding a faint glow. The maze-like layout funneled adventurers into different passages; even footsteps were swallowed by the empty tunnels.
"Training at night pays off."
He drew the short sword at his hip. In the Dungeon, you don't just watch for monsters—you watch for other adventurers. Without the Ganesha Familia keeping order, all that's left down here is Dark Forest law.
Avoid strangers. Stay alert.
He passed through the safe zone and into danger proper, eyes hardening. The lantern-fruit's light didn't carry far; visibility wasn't great. Picking his way through the winding corridors, he soon spotted two shapes up ahead.
Dark-green skin, long ears, stunted bodies with ugly faces, wooden clubs in hand, scarlet eyes—
Goblins.
Most of his impressions came from the anime of his past life; this was his first face-to-face. Let's just say the stereotype wasn't wrong—disgust rose unbidden when he saw a small pack of them.
"Not bad luck…"
Besides their magic stones, goblins sometimes dropped "Goblin Fangs" as materials. Thanks to last night's sparring with Mikoto, Keyaru didn't panic. He slid into the same headspace as the training.
Two hands on the short sword—basic forms already burned into muscle memory. He lunged off a bow stance; with his updated stats his body far outstripped a normal human's.
And goblins were enemies a normal human could handle.
His blade swept across the nearest neck; the edge bit cleanly and the head came free—dead before a scream. Fetid blood spattered behind him before the corpse burned away in black flame. A small magic stone clicked against the floor.
Staying keyed up, he didn't back down when a goblin on his flank sprinted in and leapt, club raised. He used reach—drove the point straight into its heart.
"Yeah… pretty low-threat."
Two goblins down didn't even count as a warm-up. He bent to pick up the stones—remembering Eina's warning from the Guild: always take the stones, or other monsters might eat them and evolve into something nastier.
With that, he pushed deeper. If you want to raise your stats as much as possible, you need a lot of combat—safely. Compared to other solo delvers, his ace was Heal: even if he got hurt, he could recover. Anything non-fatal wouldn't stop him. Use the edge; maximize the gains.
"Keep moving."
Low-tier goblins weren't remotely oppressive. He headed down into the depths. Along the way he met more goblins and kobolds—club-swingers and claw-scratchers who, against someone with Mikoto-level fundamentals, were kids flailing at an adult.
Since he was here, he didn't leave meat on the bone—everything turned into valis to improve his life.
He reached Floor 2. The paid monster notes from the Guild came in handy against dungeon lizards. Not lizardmen—think Komodo dragon scaled up, gray-brown scales, a body as big as an adult man.
"Time to be a bit careful."
Solo delving meant no division of labor. If something jumped him, safety was on him and him alone.
A faint rustle brushed his ear—the kind of sound that says danger's coming. He snapped his head up: there it was on the ceiling, perfectly blended into the gloom by its scales—a huge dungeon lizard. Its claws bit into the rock; a dark-red tongue flicked; strings of bacteria-laced drool pattered onto the floor.
Realizing it'd been spotted, the bulk twisted with surprising agility—and launched straight at him.
"…Tch."
No time for pride—there was no tanking that hit. He threw himself sideways into a roll, the lizard slamming down where he'd been. He sprang up and counterattacked. The steel edge was sharper than expected; one foreclaw came off, hampering it. The tail whipped back—he slipped it—then took the head with a clean cut.
Fight over.
The magic stone this time was the size of a pinky knuckle—much better than a goblin's.
"Technique… does work down here. But my overall toolkit is still pretty thin."
The ambush drove the point home. Heal let him ignore a lot of worries, and even counting Mimic, one fact hadn't changed: he had no tools for truly sudden situations beyond pure technique.
By contrast, the legendary healer at full power— front hand "Transformation" to buff his body, back hand "Corruption" to sabotage the enemy's flesh, and the core "Looting."
Right now he had only the basics. He couldn't copy "special techniques," which meant his combat options were inherently limited.
But only by seeing your flaws can you chart your growth.
He shook his head, eyed the black throat of the tunnel ahead, and kept going without a pause.
"Given all this… if I want a visible power-up, I've got to speed up developing Heal's derivative abilities."