Over the next several days, Leo and the others essentially put down roots on Floor 37 and began attacking it in earnest.
Leo and Ais went without saying: from start to finish, both of them just kept killing monsters, and as if by some silent agreement, neither interfered with the other. They each staked out their own battlefield and dealt only with the enemies in front of them, never meddling in the other's fight.
After Tiona and Tione had been caught up for a while by how strange Leo and Ais were acting, they stopped thinking too hard about it too, and started on their own attack plans, making money on Floor 37.
Lefiya was still worried about Leo and Ais's condition, but with no other option she could only push down all the worries in her heart and train her Concurrent Chanting.
It had to be said, the monsters on Floor 37 were seriously strong. With Lefiya's Lv.3 Status she could barely take a step here, never mind that the floor was full of the exact monster types that countered her, which meant she got put through the wringer.
Luckily, Tiona and Tione were watching over her the whole time, so Lefiya never ran into any real danger to her life. The attacking was still hard, but her Concurrent Chanting really did get thoroughly trained, so now she could face monster attacks with a bit more composure, instead of like before, when she'd either freeze in place without moving at all, or have to use auto-suggestion to hypnotize herself into treating the monsters as radishes.
She couldn't call herself skilled at it, but she could now chant magic while moving, going from a stationary turret to a mobile turret. Her flexibility and tactical value had both risen a lot, completely different from before.
Leo didn't pay Lefiya much attention. He too was honing his skills through constant combat, putting into practice one by one all the knowledge Finn had taught him and then absorbing it completely, turning it into his own style and instinct. And, just as he'd said when they first set out, he was trying in real combat to fold his newly gained magic into his fighting, making it a part of his own strength.
In that one fight against the mysterious woman, Leo had gotten a full taste of just how powerful the Comet Chase magic was. Even with the huge gap in strength between him and his opponent, this magic had let him seize a brief advantage. If he could use it more skillfully, it would definitely help him even more.
Consider this: that was an existence Ais hadn't been able to defeat even after switching on her own magic, and he, a single Lv.4, had managed to gain the upper hand for a time in the fight against her. By any measure that was an unheard-of record.
Having tasted that sweetness, Leo naturally took Comet Chase more to heart. And so, while he kept killing the monsters of the Deep Floors and drinking in huge amounts of excelia, he also kept piling up combat experience and honing his fighting skills, entering yet another period of rapid growth in strength.
Every day the group would attack Floor 37 for a full day, and only when night fell up on the surface would they return to the Labyrinth Garden on Floor 28 to make camp and rest on the spot. The next day they'd immediately dive back into Floor 37 to keep attacking, round and round, without a single lazy day.
They only went back up once their packs were completely stuffed with loot, returning to the town of Rivira on Floor 18 to unload it, and then they'd keep heading down, back to Floor 37 to keep attacking.
And here it has to be said again: those crooked merchants of Rivira really were every last one of them a piece of work, or rather, they'd gone mad with wanting money. After something that big had happened, in less than a day they'd reopened every stall and shop, completely unaffected by the attack.
"I don't even know whether to admire them or look down on them."
Tiona said this with a complicated expression on one of the trips back to Rivira, drawing wry smiles from everyone.
Because Rivira's loot buyback prices were extremely low, the group kept only the more valuable loot, planning to take it up to the surface to exchange for money themselves, while selling everything else in Rivira as much as possible to free up pack space and keep collecting loot. That was the more efficient way to make money.
The loot they unloaded wasn't exchanged directly for cash either, but for written notes, to keep large amounts of money from taking up space in their bags. On that same reasoning, in Rivira, whether it was buying and selling weapons and items or paying for lodging and food, transactions were actually all done with written notes. Only small transactions involved actual money, like earlier, when Leo and the others had unloaded their loot at that buyback stand run by the Amazoness proprietor, they'd taken cash.
Whether buying items or selling them, the party receiving payment only had to sign the receipt the shop provided and stamp it with their Familia emblem, and then whoever held the note could take it to the signer's Familia once they got back to the surface and collect.
Under this arrangement, while it was still unavoidable that Rivira's crooked merchants would gouge a big cut out of you, because it saved the time of going up to the surface to exchange for money and then re-entering the Dungeon, the money-making efficiency was still quite a bit higher.
Thanks to this, in just a few short days Leo's group had obtained written notes redeemable for around ten million valis, and the leftover loot was all the more valuable kind, worth tens of millions of valis if taken up to the surface and exchanged.
"So this is how fast you make money in the Deep Floors?"
Leo clicked his tongue.
Back when he'd been grinding the Middle Floors, he could only make four or five hundred thousand valis a day, so over several days that was only two or three million valis. Nothing like now, where it had jumped more than tenfold.
Of course, this time it took all five of them attacking together, Leo, Ais, Tiona, Tione, and Lefiya, to make this much. If it were still just Leo alone, he'd make around ten million valis at most, and he'd have to bring a Supporter along specifically to pick up and haul the loot.
But even so, it was already terrifying.
Making ten million valis in a few days, wouldn't that come to nearly a hundred million over a month?
And this was on Floor 37. What if, like during the expedition, an entire team attacked together and pushed all the way down below Floor 50?
No wonder the Familia was so willing to throw money around during the expedition, dumping over a billion, even several billion valis in one go on supplies. If you could attack all the way down smoothly every time, even without setting a new floor-reached record, you'd probably still come out ahead, right?
Too bad the last expedition had not only failed, but because of those worm monsters' dissolving fluid, most of the members' main weapons had been wrecked. The losses were catastrophic, so even if the Familia's finances weren't in the red right now, they couldn't be doing very well, could they?
Still, judging by how Finn and the others had wrapped up the aftermath of the expedition and then quickly started building preparations for the next one, the Familia probably did still have the money to support running another expedition.
At that thought, Leo stopped worrying over things that weren't his to worry about, and kept on attacking Floor 37.
During this time, he also took advantage of a rest break in a safe floor to go back up to the surface and have Loki update his Status.
Leo Eligos
Lv.4
Strength: F364 → A831
Endurance: F322 → A807
Dexterity: S900 → SSS1345
Agility: E417 → S926
Magic: G205 → SS1052
Mage: G
Magic Attack: H
Spirit Healing: I
When this latest Status came fresh off the press, Loki spent a long while staring at Leo's back, lingering again and again in particular over the SSS rating in the Dexterity field, and finally tossed out a line like she was giving up.
"Forget it, I'm done. From now on, kid, even if you pull off something that shakes heaven and earth, I won't be surprised anymore."
With that, Loki didn't even bother seeing Leo off. She just scooped up her wine bottle and started chugging.
Leo looked at his latest Status, delighted.
Finally, an ability besides Magic has hit SSS too.
It really hadn't been easy.
Over the three previous levels, apart from Magic, which could reach SSS, every other field had topped out at SS and couldn't be raised any further. This time his Dexterity had finally trained up to SSS as well, which meant that through all three level-ups, his own container, potential, and growth limit had broken past their ceilings and reached a new height.
Every Rank Up an adventurer went through was an evolution of the self.
In that process, one's container expanded and one's possibilities grew larger too, which meant potential kept growing stronger, until it finally reached a new height, a new limit.
And so the ability fields that had previously topped out at SS at most had, this time, finally reached a new height and could keep growing upward.
If Dexterity can reach SSS, then what about Strength, Endurance, and Agility?
Leo figured those three abilities must have reached a new height too, and could keep being drawn out and grown further.
All abilities at SSS...
Leo could already vaguely see just what kind of sight he'd be able to create at the very end of Lv.4.
Now he could finally say with full confidence that in this life he was second to no one.
Even compared to the original protagonist, he didn't fall short in the slightest. After all, the original protagonist had only managed all abilities at SSS at Lv.4 as well, and before that only one ability, Agility, had trained up to SSS while the rest were SS, not much different from Leo's own situation.
So going forward, what he ought to be thinking about was no longer simply piling up excelia.
I need to start preparing for a great feat...
Leo thought this quietly to himself.
His Status wasn't far now from reaching the limit of his current level.
That being the case, it was time to press toward the next level.
The next level was another crucial threshold.
Lv.5, the baseline for a first-class adventurer. Only by reaching that level did you count as standing in the ranks of the lower world's top-tier fighting power, no longer just a strong reserve.
Raul, Anakitty, Alicia... many of the core figures in Loki Familia's second-string ranks were still working toward that goal even now.
Leo, the latecomer who'd overtaken them all, had no intention of lingering here any longer.
To meet the coming crisis, he had to keep pushing forward.
And whether by luck or misfortune, he'd already fixed his sights on an opponent for that purpose.
Back on Floor 37, Leo turned his gaze toward the central area of this White Palace.
[Read 40+ chapters ahead on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]