It was only once the city's clamor and commotion had finally quieted down a little with the fall of night that Leo took advantage of the dark to return to Twilight Manor.
He perfectly dodged all the fuss kicked up over him, slipping quietly back into his own base now that no one, mortal or god, was blocking the front gate anymore, his merits and his name kept well hidden.
After exchanging a greeting with Line and parting ways with her, Leo didn't head straight back to his room, but for once went of his own accord up to the top floor of the Central Tower, entering Loki's God's Chamber.
He'd come to ask Loki to introduce him to a reliable smithing Familia, but he hadn't expected that, upon seeing him, the worthless goddess who'd been muttering to herself in the room, cursing who-knew-who, would suddenly light up and beckon to him eagerly.
"Hold your tongue for a sec! Come update your Status first!"
So Leo set his own business aside, took off his shirt, and let Loki, golden needle in hand, drip blood onto his back, beginning the first Status update since he leveled up.
As the engraving emerged on his back, the Hieroglyphs floated about on his skin as if they'd come to life, and very soon this Status update came to an end.
Leo Eligos
Lv.2
Strength: I0 → E496
Endurance: I0 → E437
Dexterity: I0 → D529
Agility: I0 → D581
Magic: I0 → C656
Mage: I
Looking at this freshly produced Status, Loki fell silent for a long, long time.
After a good while, Loki finally spoke, sounding almost wistful.
"How should I put it... even though I'd more or less guessed that even after you leveled up your growth speed wouldn't slow down by much, seeing this result still leaves me at a loss for what to say."
A total increase of around 2,700 across all ability proficiencies!
When you tallied it up, this seemed to be less than the increase from Leo's first Status update, but at that time it had taken Leo a full ten days to push his total all-ability proficiency increase past 3,000.
And now?
How many days had passed since Leo leveled up?
By the most generous count, only about five days?
In half the time it took back then, he'd nearly caught up to that pace of increase. And what did that tell you?
It told you that this already godforsaken growth speed had, after reaching Lv.2, not only failed to slow down but actually sped up!
What in the world was the principle behind this?
Loki scratched at her hair, feeling like the brain that usually served her well enough had suddenly gone bust.
Folks, does anyone get it?
She'd lived for hundreds of millions of years, what kind of ridiculous thing hadn't she seen?
But something this ridiculous, she really hadn't seen before!
"What's so strange about it?"
Leo, by contrast, looked at the translated Status in his hands and tossed out a line without even turning his head.
"I've made it to the Middle Floors now. The monster spawn frequency, the combat frequency, and the frequency of running into danger and injury there are all much higher than the Upper Floors, and fighting in a place like that is far more difficult and stressful than fighting in the Upper Floors. After dealing with all of it, naturally I grow faster than I did in the Upper Floors."
At the very least, when exploring the Upper Floors, Leo could still rest a few times here and there, and he had to go scout the way and find monsters himself, but when exploring the Middle Floors he didn't need to go looking for monsters at all. Take a couple of steps in any direction and great swarms of monsters would suddenly come rushing out to gang up on him, and his rest time was scarcer still, sometimes a whole day of fighting leaving no time to rest at all.
If not for the potions to replenish his stamina, with this high a combat frequency and pace, forget Leo only being Lv.2, even someone already at Lv.3 would probably be left flat on the ground from exhaustion.
So, after reaching the Middle Floors, Leo had to ask Line for a potion at almost regular intervals, practically drinking potions like water over the course of a day just to keep his stamina up enough to keep fighting nonstop.
Any other adventurer, even forming a party where they could take turns resting, wouldn't dare play it this way. They'd probably need to find a dedicated rest spot after a stretch of exploring to recover some HP and catch their breath, and it wouldn't even be strange for them to retreat back to the 12th floor to recuperate.
But Leo didn't. He gritted his teeth and stuck it out by sheer force, worrying Line so much that she'd advised him against it quite a few times.
The result of all this was that Leo used each of his basic abilities extremely frequently, subjugated a great many monsters, and the excelia he gained shot up in a straight line, which finally fed back into his Status, naturally producing this kind of growth speed.
"...I understand the logic of all that, but other people increase the floors they explore and the frequency of their fighting after leveling up too. How come you never see anyone else growing faster than they did before leveling up?"
Loki said this in a faint, brooding voice.
The higher the Level, the harder it becomes to raise your Status, this was common knowledge.
For Leo to do the exact opposite was, frankly, a bit unreasonable.
Thankfully, having experienced Leo's ridiculous growth time and again, Loki was now really starting to get used to it.
All Loki could do was take a fierce swig of her drink and say this.
"At this growth speed of yours, don't tell me you'll be able to rise to Lv.3 before the next expedition rolls around?"
The moment she said this, Leo's attention shifted away from the parchment in his hands.
"What?" Leo said, rather surprised. "Has the timing for the next expedition already been decided?"
"Oh, that part's not set yet," Loki said, shameless about it. "But Finn and the others have already got ideas, so they should be starting the preparations soon."
"Counting the time, in maybe another half-month at most, the Familia's next expedition oughta kick off, right?"
"Well, it's not exactly late, anyway."
Listening to Loki, Leo fell into thought.
In Orario, generally speaking, an exploration-type Familia dedicated to cultivating adventurers and oriented toward exploring the Dungeon was, once its own Familia rank had risen to a certain degree, obligated to conduct an expedition at regular intervals.
This wasn't only for the Familia's development, for conquering the Dungeon, it was also a duty expressly stipulated by the Guild.
As the administrative body of the city and the Dungeon, the Guild was at every moment demanding that exploration-type Familias pioneer the Dungeon. After all, the Dungeon held unknown resources, unknown regions, unknown discoveries, and these, once found and pioneered, could not only promote Orario's development but also help toward freeing the lower world from the suffering inflicted by monsters.
Conquering the Dungeon, subjugating monsters, liberating the people of the lower world from the threat of monsters, this was not only the ultimate purpose for which the Guild was founded, it was also the shared wish of all life across the entire lower world.
This wish had existed ever since ancient times, before Orario was established, before Babel appeared, back when monsters could pour unchecked out of that great hole leading to the surface and ravage the entire lower world.
Even as the people of ancient times rose up in resistance again and again, braving sacrifice again and again, producing one miracle-bringing hero after another, and even as the people, under the heroes' leadership, finally succeeded in reclaiming most of the surface's territory, building Babel and Orario above the Dungeon's entrance and stopping the monsters from pouring out once more, this wish never faded.
After all, people didn't know what other threats still existed within the Dungeon, or when the monsters might once again surge up to the surface and turn the mortal world into a living hell.
And the surface wasn't without threats either. Those monsters that had once surged up to the surface had all successfully bred across the world, giving rise to one monster race after another, and even though those monsters' abilities had drastically declined over generations of breeding, their threat not on the same level as the monsters native to the Dungeon, to ordinary, common folk they were still deadly.
Especially the three great monster kings that had once brought heavy threat to the surface, those were more terrifying than any Floor Boss, and even the heroes of ancient times had failed to subjugate them, most people indeed ending up buried in their maws, which was how the so-called three great adventurer requests came to exist in the lower world, the content of these three great adventurer requests being the subjugation of these three great monster kings.
The two great Familias that once reigned over all of Orario had successfully resolved two of these adventurer requests, subjugating two of the great monster kings, but they too came to grief at the last and strongest of the monster kings, nearly wiped out to the last, and it was only after that that Loki Familia and Freya Familia rose to prominence.
Therefore, conquering the Dungeon and subjugating the final monster king were both the shared wish of all life in the lower world.
As the frontmost line holding down the Dungeon, the fortress repelling the monster invasion, Orario held an extremely special position in this world, so as its administrative body, the Guild, whether for the city's development or for the lower world's shared wish, had to make the exploration-type Familias that conquered the Dungeon hand over commensurate results.
Exploration-type Familias accordingly enjoyed all sorts of preferential treatment in Orario. If nothing else, just the taxes they had to pay to the Guild were far less than those commercial-type Familias paid.
Since they enjoyed privileges, they needed to fulfill the corresponding duties.
The expedition was one of these duties.
Any exploration-type Familia at all, as long as its Familia rank reached D, was required to conduct an expedition within the time stipulated by the Guild and genuinely produce results.
These results could be increasing the floors the Familia had reached so far, could be discovering new collectibles or minerals, mapping unpioneered regions worked too, subjugating a Floor Boss likewise, even discovering a Dungeon secret no one had found to date counted. In short, there was one premise, you couldn't "come back empty-handed."
As for the timing of each expedition, the Guild had hard requirements too, but these requirements weren't too strict, mainly depending on the situation.
For Familias that had suffered major losses to their fighting strength for some reason, the Guild's requirements would be comparatively lenient, whereas for Familias with strong fighting power the Guild would keep urging them to go on expeditions, and for a city's-strongest Familia like Loki Familia, active on the frontmost line of conquest and constantly pioneering regions adventurers had yet to reach, the Guild, out of careful consideration, wouldn't keep urging them.
After all, the region Loki Familia was going to was the Deep Floors, and one slip could possibly cause the annihilation of the entire Familia's elite, and if a corner of the city's strongest were lost down there, leading to severe damage to Orario's high-end fighting strength, then the Guild wouldn't even be able to find a place to cry.
But even so, the Guild wouldn't just sit and watch Loki Familia keep going without an expedition. Barring special circumstances, every month or two or so, the Guild's side would start urging them.
Of course, even if they didn't urge, there was no way Loki Familia would keep going without an expedition.
Pioneering unknown regions was likewise what Loki Familia sought, and if the Familia wanted to develop it needed to obtain resources and wealth from the Dungeon, to say nothing of the fact that if the Familia's first-class adventurers wanted to grow they likewise needed strong enough opponents and challenges.
And Loki Familia's last expedition had been not long before Leo received the Falna.
By now, Leo had already risen to Lv.2, and about a month had passed since he received the Falna.
Counting the time, Loki Familia really was due for another expedition.
"That bunch can't wait to dive into the deeper parts of the Dungeon now, can they?" Loki said, gloating. "I mean, after getting riled up that bad by you, if they don't go on an expedition all they can do is wander around the shallow floors, and how's that ever gonna satisfy them?"
Because the deeper the floor, the farther it was from the surface, and the greater the distance the more time it took to travel, so for a same-day round trip, even a first-class adventurer with fast enough legs could at most go to the Middle-Lower Floors, and couldn't possibly reach the Deep Floors.
So normally the likes of Ais, Tiona, Tione, and Bete could only thrash monsters around the 20th floor, and the excelia they could gain could only be described as pitiful.
In ordinary times that was fine, since something's better than nothing, and keeping at it persistently, they could still gain at least some growth.
But now, riled up by Leo, they probably couldn't be satisfied with this pitiful bit of growth.
So naturally, each and every one of them was looking forward to the expedition's arrival.
Only an expedition could satisfy their current needs.
"I didn't rile them up, you know."
Leo rather wanted to fire back that one line.
"Heh."
But Loki said nothing, only rolled her eyes and went back to drinking, not bothering with him.
Seeing this, Leo rubbed his nose sheepishly, then sank into thought.
"Half a month... huh?"
It wasn't as though he couldn't put in some effort.
If possible, of course Leo wanted to go on the expedition together with the Familia's elite unit.
If he could go to the Lower Floors, the deeper floors, or even the Deep Floors region to subjugate the powerful monsters there, then even in group combat, where the excelia would be split evenly, he could still gain a large amount of excelia, even the high-grade excelia that counted as a great feat.
And to follow the Familia's elite unit to a Deep Floors region like that, you had to be at the very least a Lv.3 second-class adventurer.
That was how Loki Familia worked. During an expedition, every member Lv.3 and above would be chosen as part of the deploying force, and only the Lv.2 members would be left behind at the Familia's main base, charged with watching the home front.
Of course, a rare Healer like Line would be brought along even at Lv.2.
Unfortunately, Leo wasn't.
If he wanted to go on the expedition with the Familia, he had to at least reach Lv.3.
There was still half a month left...
"Time to plan this out properly."
Leo silently thought to himself.
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