Twilight Manor, in the northernmost tower, inside Finn's office.
Loki and the three leaders of the Familia were gathered together, deep in a heated discussion that no outsider was privy to.
"I'm telling you! You guys have no idea how shaken up I was back there!"
"SS! And SSS, of all things... I never imagined a stat tier like that could even exist!"
"This thing goes way beyond the miracle we gods grant to mortals! It's an unknown that surpasses the theoretical limit!"
Loki had worked herself into a feverish, manic state. She was past flailing around at this point; she was thrashing and yelling like she'd come down with a fit, and while she yelled, she was shaking Finn behind his desk so hard his head was spinning.
"I've never seen this kind of possibility! These kinds of ridiculous stats!"
"Can you guys even understand how I feel right now?"
"I can't even tell anymore, is this because there's a region inside the Falna we haven't touched yet, or is that brat just so special that he can break through even the miracle we brought down with us?"
Loki's half-crazed voice kept ringing through the office, while the three Familia leaders looked at each other, until they too were swept up in the shock.
SS and SSS... a basic ability tier like that, they hadn't just never seen it, they'd never even heard of it.
Whether for basic abilities or Development Abilities, the limit was S. That was the lesson countless people had distilled over a thousand years, the stat ceiling for the countless adventurers the gods had witnessed, the absolute limit.
And now Loki was telling them someone had gone past that theoretical limit, that two more tiers had grown out above the highest one (S)?
If that got said out loud, never mind mortals, even most of the gods would assume Loki had lost her mind.
After all, Loki was on the unstable side normally, prone to manic fits, and just how much weight her words carried was, frankly, hard to say.
If they hadn't spent decades with Loki, if they didn't know that on matters like this their goddess wouldn't just spout nonsense, they would've been wondering if she'd cracked, or if she was actually drunk right now and throwing a drunken tantrum.
But the state Loki was in now was even wilder than her drunken tantrums, which actually told Finn and the others she wasn't drunk, she really was in a state of indescribable excitement.
It couldn't be helped. That was a region the gods themselves had never discovered, a true "unknown."
Why did the gods go to such lengths to descend to the lower world, willing to seal away their Arcanum and live like ordinary people, willing to leave the carefree Heaven and come down here to taste hardship?
It was because over their endless years, they had simply been too bored.
They were omniscient and omnipotent, knowing every secret in the world, capable of every impossibility, which meant that across those endless years they couldn't get a single sliver of stimulation. Their lives were unbearably dull, starved of entertainment.
To stave off that fatal boredom, that interminable tedium worse than death, they had scrambled over each other to descend, willing to seal away their divine power for it.
What such beings most wanted was entertainment and stimulation, and what they craved most was anything unknown to themselves.
"The unknown" was the greatest pursuit there was, for the gods.
What Loki was showing now was the truest face of a god chasing the unknown, the most excited, most fevered, most unhinged state they reached upon encountering something they couldn't comprehend.
Watching Loki like this, Finn and the others simply had no way to write her words off as nonsense.
"SS and SSS..." Riveria said, her expression complicated. "Does something that can break the theoretical limit of stats really exist?"
"...Well, since even Loki has ended up like this, eight times out of ten it's probably real." Gareth was silent for a long while before he sighed. "That kid, when he stays quiet, he stays quiet. But when he speaks up, he stuns us all."
In the year leading up to now, Leo had come across as a perfectly ordinary Human boy with nothing special about him. Even his progress sparring with Ais couldn't be called fast. Painfully mediocre. He'd seemed so out of place in Loki Familia, a Familia overflowing with prodigies.
Who would have thought that a whole year of mediocre behavior was nothing but a facade.
His mediocrity was strictly surface-level, and beneath that mediocre-looking performance was actually a possibility this staggering, hidden away.
"We all read him wrong."
Gareth said this in a self-deprecating way, drawing wry smiles from everyone.
"All right, Loki, stop shaking me, I can't even think with you shaking me like that." Finn pressed down on the worked-up Loki, helpless. "I know you're excited right now, we are too. After all, someone who can drive even a god like you crazy is now in our Familia."
"We underestimated Leo. To think that abnormal growth rate was only the beginning, and his truly special qualities are still being revealed to us little by little."
"We've got to give Ais our proper thanks. If she hadn't brought Leo back a year ago, a special talent like this might've ended up belonging to someone else."
Finn's words calmed everyone down while also drawing scattered laughs.
"That girl probably didn't expect it either, did she? A man she just casually picked up in the Dungeon turning out to be this special!" Gareth burst out laughing. "We really do owe her thanks, for bringing back such an incredible person to our Familia."
"Maybe it's some kind of fate?" Riveria pursed her lips. "After all, Ais is also a very special existence in her own right."
At that, the smiles on everyone's faces faded, and silence settled in again.
But the silence only held for a moment before the excited Loki broke it.
"Whatever, that kinda thing doesn't matter, as long as the kid's on our side now." Loki was grinning slyly, still unable to hide her excitement as she clamored, "So what if that lust-struck goddess has eyes that see through mortal souls? She's still not as lucky as me, is she?"
"Even without something like that, I got such an outstanding child. That's destiny!"
"So what if she's got the only Lv.7 in the city? Can he beat my Leo's specialness?"
Loki was rolling up her sleeves and rubbing her hands together, looking like she was ready to throw down with her rival right then and there, giggling like an idiot.
"Once Leo grows into his potential, let's see if that lust-struck goddess can still flaunt that pack of fawning lapdogs of hers!"
The way Loki looked, she could barely hold herself back from dragging Leo out and showing him off everywhere.
Which was exactly why Finn had to step in with a reminder.
"I shouldn't have to say this, right, Loki?" Finn said, quite seriously. "The fact that Leo can break through the stat limit absolutely cannot get out!"
"Right." Riveria agreed. "This is an unknown that not even the gods foresaw. Once it gets out, even our Familia probably won't be able to hold back all the existences who'd take an interest."
"Normally, no one would dare cross our Familia. But this time's different, isn't it?" Gareth said, his brow tightly furrowed. "Leo's existence is a giant rock dropped into the stagnant pool that the lower world has become. The moment he's exposed, the splash is going to be enormous."
When that happened, the kind of insane lengths those unknown-chasing, unknown-craving gods would go to was completely unpredictable.
Just like Loki had said before, there would always be some, gods included, who didn't know any better and couldn't stop themselves from making a move on Leo. Even if they couldn't do it openly, they had their underhanded plays.
When it came to that, even though Loki Familia wouldn't be afraid, they'd inevitably run into trouble.
"The fact that Leo can break through the stat limit, it's best if it stays known only to the few of us in this room."
Finn gave his counsel calmly.
"Forget outsiders, even among our own people, if we can keep it secret, we should."
This was, without question, another Familia secret, and the biggest, highest-stakes Familia secret to date.
If it ever leaked, Loki Familia could very well become a target for every major faction (Familia) in Orario, and even the entire world.
"If we could, we'd hide Leo's growth rate too." As Finn said this, he sighed. "Unfortunately, now that Leo's hit Lv.2, even if we wanted to hide it, we probably can't."
Riveria and Gareth both nodded.
In Orario, regardless of which Familia someone belonged to, the moment they leveled up, they had an obligation to report their level information to the Guild.
This was so that each faction's (Familia's) strength could be assessed, and the appropriate tax levied.
The Guild ranked every Familia in Orario based on strength or scale. The higher the Familia rank, the more tax owed to the Guild, and the Guild would also assign mission quotas based on Familia rank, all to maintain the city's stability.
Like Loki Familia and Freya Familia, hailed as the Two Great Powers of Orario, both Familias held the highest Familia rank of S, and the tax they had to pay the Guild was frightening in scale.
Before now, since Leo hadn't leveled up, since he was still just Lv.1, there'd been no need to hide his level info. But now that he'd leveled up, Loki Familia had to file a fresh report with the Guild, reporting that he'd become Lv.2.
And once the Guild knew, they'd publish the information immediately.
The Guild also had an obligation to publicly announce the levels of well-known adventurers. Whichever adventurer it was, the moment they leveled up, their name and basic information would appear on the bulletin board at Guild Headquarters, made known to the world.
That being the case, Leo's outrageous record of leveling up to Lv.2 in less than a month would blow up across the whole world.
"...Couldn't we just file a false report?"
Loki, doused with cold water by what Finn and the others had said, went from excited to looking puzzled.
Falsely reporting a level wasn't exactly rare.
Some Familias, in order to pay as little to the Guild as possible, would conceal the levels of some members who had already leveled up.
Just among the ones Loki personally knew of, there were several Familias doing this. Some did it to pay less tax, some to hide their strength, and some did it for less-than-savory purposes.
Right now, Loki was thinking along the same lines.
She couldn't help it. Leveling up to Lv.2 in under a month really was a little too earth-shattering.
After all, the previous record was the one Ais had set, and even she had taken a whole year to level up.
Leo hadn't just broken that record, he'd left it far, far behind.
Leveling up in less than a month, never mind in the past, even going forward this record was probably never going to be broken.
Loki wasn't trying to keep her own kid from becoming famous, she just wanted it to not be quite so earth-shattering.
It'd be best if they could file the report a year, or even six months later. That way it wouldn't cause too big of a stir.
Unfortunately, that wasn't possible.
"For anyone else, sure, but we're the city's strongest exploration-type Familia." Finn smiled bitterly. "Our Familia has to go on expeditions, has to meet the quotas the Guild hands down. With Leo's growth rate, sooner or later he's going to become one of the most important combat assets on those expeditions. How could we hide it then?"
"Other people can hide it because they can. We're the kind of Familia the whole city, even the whole world, has its eyes on. Countless people are staring at us, watching us conquer the Dungeon. With that many eyes on us, how could we keep it hidden indefinitely?"
"If it ended up like that, we'd be the ones who falsely reported a level, and the Guild would slap us with a brutal fine. In the worst case, they might even hand down a Mission."
Mission.
This was an absolute order from the Guild directed at every Familia under Orario.
Sometimes it was to deal with abnormal conditions appearing in the Dungeon, sometimes it was to subjugate a high-threat, high-power monster, and sometimes it was to handle an emergency descending on the city from the outside. In short, it was an order handed down by Orario and the Dungeon's governing bodies to resolve major problems.
Once such an order was issued, no Familia could refuse. They had to carry it out to the letter. It was something almost every Familia hoped never to encounter.
It wasn't that Loki Familia had never executed a Mission. As one of the strongest Familias in the city, over so many years, Orario had certainly run into plenty of emergencies that required them to step in.
But these situations were typically very dangerous. Unless there was no other choice, even Loki Familia wouldn't willingly handle them at the risk of losing members.
If accepting that risk could even achieve the goal, fine. The problem was knowing the matter couldn't be pulled off and taking the risk anyway. That was more loss than gain.
For that reason...
"The information that Leo can break the stat limit has to stay hidden, but as for the news of him leveling up, it's best if we report that honestly."
Finn said this helplessly, and Loki's shoulders sagged.
Riveria and Gareth exchanged a glance.
The city's about to get lively.
The same thought rose in both their minds.
That was already a predetermined future.
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