Twilight Manor, the top floor of the Central Tower, the God's Chamber.
In this somewhat cluttered room, Leo had already taken off his shirt to bare his back, letting Loki drip the bright red divine blood onto it, unlocking the seal on the Falna and revealing the clown-patterned engraving.
"Drip..."
As the second drop of divine blood fell, the engraving on Leo's back rippled like the surface of water.
The Hieroglyphs began to float up.
A bright, faint glow started to light up Loki's face where she sat facing Leo's back.
Loki stretched out a finger, working at something among the Status on Leo's back, and at one point her fingertip suddenly stopped.
After a while, Loki's voice rang out as if from somewhere very far away.
"Just like I figured."
The goddess didn't know whether to cry or laugh, and in the end could only state the plain fact.
"Congratulations. You can level up again."
Leo Eligos Lv.3 Strength: H144 → SS1031 Endurance: H107 → SS1027 Dexterity: H189 → SS1069 Agility: G235 → SS1094 Magic: F346 → SSS1386 Mage: H → G Magic Attack: H
These were Leo's final Status at Lv.3.
"Same as always, every basic ability broke past its limit. Four of them hit SS, your best one hit SSS, and even both your Development Abilities went up. Bet you used a whole lotta magic on this expedition, huh?"
Loki translated and copied down the Status, and as she handed the parchment to Leo, she said this with a twist of her mouth.
"Wasn't like I had a choice." Leo took the parchment, his eyes dropping to what was written on it, and said, "On this expedition my role was rearguard Mage. I basically never had a chance to leave the back line and fight up front. By the time we reached the Deep Floors on Floor 50, if I hadn't used magic, there's no way I'd have stood a chance against the monsters down there.
"So I had to use it."
Leo's words earned him an eye-roll from Loki.
"So what you're saying is, you barely used any of the basic abilities tied to close combat, and yet you still pushed all four of those basic abilities up far enough to break their limits?"
If you want to brag, say it here, don't say it outside, or I'm worried someone'll deck you.
Loki didn't actually say that line out loud, but the meaning came through.
"I'm just saying that without doing it, I couldn't have gotten by at all." Leo shot back, irritated, then crumpled the parchment in his hand and said, "If I can level up, then go ahead and level me up. My Status is already maxed out anyway, no point waiting any longer."
"Decided, then?" Loki didn't think it odd either, and confirmed it one last time. "Then I'll just level you up right now."
With that, Loki worked at Leo's back, which gave off a flickering red light, her fingers sweeping across it, sending all the floating Hieroglyphs flying back to reassemble into the engraving.
"There, that does it."
Loki sealed Leo's Status back up, restored his back to its smooth, bare state, then copied down the brand-new Status and handed it to him.
Leo Eligos Lv.4 Strength: 10 Endurance: 10 Dexterity: 10 Agility: 10 Magic: 10 Mage: G Magic Attack: H Spirit Healing: I
The Rank Up of his Status came to a perfect close, the Level confirmed as raised, all basic abilities fully reset, the abilities of the previous Level once again becoming potential that accumulated as the ever more solid foundation beneath Leo.
Lv.4. This was already the highest Level below first-class adventurer.
In a situation where there were fewer than forty first-class adventurers in all of Orario, an adventurer at this Level was already the core of the city's backbone, the strongest tier of fighting power apart from those fewer than forty at the very top.
An adventurer at this Level would be a key figure in the Second Army even within Loki Familia, and would be no nobody within Freya Familia either.
Perhaps, in the eyes of many first-class adventurers, an adventurer at this Level still didn't count as a true powerhouse, but they wouldn't ignore an existence at this tier either; they would see them as "chasers" who had already caught up to their own pace.
See a Lv.1 adventurer, and they'd ignore them.
See a Lv.2 adventurer, and they'd look down on them.
See a Lv.3 adventurer, and they'd look down their noses at them.
But see a Lv.4 adventurer, and most of them would already take them seriously.
That was the worth of Lv.4.
And it had taken Leo only two months to go from a body that had just received the Falna to reaching this height.
Loki didn't even know how to react to that.
"You're a freak of a kid. I gotta hand it to you."
That was the only remark she could manage.
Leo paid her no mind, turning instead to look at the Development Ability he had newly acquired.
"Spirit Healing, huh?"
This Development Ability had another name too: Mental Recovery.
As the name suggested, this was a Development Ability with the effect of automatically restoring Mind.
Once Mages spent their Mind, to get it back they generally either took a Magic Potion and borrowed its effect to recover, or entered a deep rest, like sleep and the like.
But after acquiring the Spirit Healing Development Ability, Mages could recover Mind without deep rest, restoring it automatically even while using magic, replenishing as they spent, the degree of recovery determined by the rank of the Development Ability.
If the rank of Spirit Healing was high enough, it could even recover faster than it was consumed.
To put it plainly, with this Development Ability, as long as you had enough time you'd never need a Magic Potion again, which made it an extremely precious, rare ability for Mages with their heavy Mind consumption. At least in all of Loki Familia, apart from Riveria, no one else had this ability.
"This is a Development Ability that only shows up in the very late game. I've never once seen a case of someone triggering it as early as Lv.4. Dunno if it's just that other folks never spoke up about it, or whether it can normally trigger at this Level but the conditions are so strict that nobody's managed it yet.
"Or maybe..." Loki marveled at it, clicking her tongue. "Course, it could also just be that you're a special case, kid, and you're the only one who can pull it off."
Thinking of that special Skill of Leo's she still couldn't read to this day, Loki was burning with curiosity.
Hearing Loki's words, Leo likewise suspected whether it was Stranger from Another Star working behind the scenes that had let him trigger this Development Ability at Lv.4, but this was without a doubt a good thing.
His own reliance on Mind was higher than other people's to begin with, and he'd lost count of how many times he'd run into Mind shortages and had to chug Magic Potions to recover.
But what if, in some battle, his Magic Potions had already run dry?
Then the magic ability he prided himself on would basically be useless.
Spirit Healing, this Development Ability that could automatically restore Mind, had come at a fairly opportune time and greatly eased Leo's pressing need.
Once he raised it to a certain height and sped up his Mind recovery, the Mind-shortage situation should become hard to run into again, right?
Looking at his various Development Abilities, and at the Magic field that had once again reached the SSS stage before leveling up, Leo fell into thought.
"My ability in magic is already strong enough. Next, maybe I should really work on improving my close-combat ability."
Leo had never once forgotten that his role wasn't a pure rearguard Mage, but a Magic Swordsman who could fight on the front line and break away from his companions' protection.
By now his ability in magic was already very strong, and now that he was Lv.4, this side of his ability had surely been strengthened again, far beyond the range it should have at his current Level.
All three of his Development Abilities were related to magic too, and even his Skill was related to magic; the reinforcement to his magic was already way overdone.
So next he should really work on improving his close-combat ability, fully transforming into a mature Magic Swordsman, so he wouldn't end up like this expedition again, only able to fire off magic from a safe area, where even against the female-form monster it was Ais who charged in and fought, while he himself could only pull back the distance and avoid its edge.
"If I want to improve my close-combat ability, just raiding the Dungeon and killing monsters to accumulate excelia isn't enough."
Leo thought it over, and an idea suddenly came to him.
"Maybe I could ask the captain?"
Unlike Ais, who had no idea how to teach anyone and could only correct others' mistakes through sparring in real combat, Finn was a true master of technique.
The physical potential of the Pallum was weaker than other races to begin with, falling short of even the all-around mediocre Humans. Knowing this full well, Finn had honed his own technique day after day for decades, using skill to make up for his deficits in physical ability, and this had brought the Pallum captain's combat technique to a state of mastery. In all of Orario it was probably at a level that could hold second and contend for first; even that King of Freya Familia wouldn't dare claim he was definitely stronger in this respect.
Finn's Dexterity had been honed to S as well, more than enough to prove how strong his technique and competence in combat were.
Leo could absolutely ask this master of technique to drill him in combat skill and improve his close-combat ability.
"I'm not short on Status now either. Even if it can't match my Magic field, my Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, and Agility all broke past their limits at every Level and reached the SS stage."
"So I don't need to deliberately train up the basic abilities tied to close combat. In terms of physical ability I'm absolutely a cut above anyone at the same Level, beyond even those true close-combat experts.
"What I'm missing is just technique, the skill to perfectly bring out my close-combat ability."
At this, Leo had already made up his mind.
A few minutes later, Leo left Loki's God's Chamber.
It was dead silent outside the door. It seemed that apart from Leo and Ais, no third person had come by tonight in any rush to update their Status.
And so, when Leo left Loki's God's Chamber and came out into the corridor, the only one there was Ais, who had finished her update a step ahead of him.
The girl stood at the window, gazing out at the night sky. The night wind blew through her hair, setting her long golden tresses swaying, a scene as lovely as a painting.
And yet Leo could plainly feel that Ais was in a poor mood just now.
No, it would be more accurate to say that Ais's mood was absolutely terrible.
It cut down a good deal of the joy Leo felt about leveling up.
"...You're done?"
The girl noticed Leo's appearance and turned around to look at him, her tone showing no obvious change.
But Leo could still feel that Ais was suppressing her own emotions, doing her best not to let them show in front of him.
Unfortunately, what she didn't know was that, over more than a full year together, Leo had learned the skill of finding her true inner state from the faint changes in her expression and her eyes.
So Leo stepped forward and asked, plain and direct.
"What's wrong with you?"
Leo knew well that with this girl in front of him, none of the roundabout stuff was necessary.
Asking directly was perhaps more fitting than any other approach.
Ais lifted her eyes, fell silent for a moment, and only then held out to Leo the parchment she'd been gripping in her hand.
"Can I look?"
Leo knew what was written on it, which was why he asked.
Ais said nothing, only nodded and handed the parchment to Leo.
Leo fixed his eyes on it, and immediately understood why Ais was in such a terrible mood.
Ais Wallenstein Lv.5 Strength: D549 → D555 Endurance: D540 → D547 Dexterity: A823 → A825 Agility: A821 → A822 Magic: A899 Hunter: G Abnormal Resistance: G Swordsman: I
This was Ais's current Status, and the brand-new version just updated.
It was just that this freshly produced Status had improved by far too small a margin.
Set aside the Development Abilities not improving at all, since those were hard to improve in the first place and not just anyone could raise them as easily as Leo. But even the basic abilities had barely improved, at least not enough to reach the next stage, and how was that any different from not improving at all?
The total proficiency across all abilities had gone up by 16 points, and among them the Magic proficiency hadn't budged in the slightest.
The expedition had lasted about half a month, and Ais, as the Familia's undisputed main fighting power, had slaughtered who knew how many monsters, including powerful monsters dwelling in the deep regions and existences like that female-form monster. And yet not a single ability had managed to improve to the next stage. This was already plainly telling Ais that this time she had grown not in the slightest.
How could a girl who craved getting stronger possibly be in a good mood after seeing something like this?
Leo silently handed the parchment back to Ais, and after weighing his words, finally spoke.
"This is perfectly normal. You've already reached the very top tier of Lv.5. Pushing any further is bound to be quite difficult."
The closer the proficiency of a basic ability got to 999, the closer to the highest evaluation of S, the smaller the margin of growth and the greater the difficulty of improving; everyone knew that.
And Ais's Magic was already close to S, while her Dexterity and Agility had already reached A. As for the remaining Strength and Endurance, those weren't her strong suits, so naturally the difficulty of improving them was high.
But Leo's words earned only Ais's silence.
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