Taking the exploration difficulty of the "Souls-type Dungeon" as a reference, Ron felt that the goal he had set for himself was fairly conservative—when fighting an elite goblin alone.
Even so, he still felt some strain.
Not to mention whether the so-called dungeon's hatred might give rise to other types of monsters.
To live.
An adventurer could go without making a living, but could not go without living!
After accepting the setting that monsters dropped Soul Shards upon being killed, Ron's next plan became very simple: to do his best to exchange for a "Random Character Card."
Otherwise, it would truly be difficult to contend with stat monsters.
"It feels like I'll have to pretend to be very busy from now on—"
After leaving the Adventurers' Guild, Ron headed straight for the Hephaestus Weapon Branch. His armor had been pierced through by a scimitar during the fight with the elite goblin.
He did not really care about appearance.
The main issue was that the appearance of a breach would inevitably reduce its defensive performance.
To prevent minor wounds from monsters from consuming his Revival uses, he at least needed to find out the cost of repairing armor.
However, as he walked along the street, before he had even reached the weapon shop—
A figure caught Ron's attention: a girl standing at the entrance of the Hephaestus weapon shop, wearing a clerk's uniform and brown leather shoes.
Her recognizability was truly very high.
Her smooth black long hair was tied into twin ponytails, and the slightly ill-fitting uniform was stretched taut by a figure that did not match her youthful appearance.
At this moment, Hestia was holding a thick stack of flyers in her hands, handing them out one by one to passing adventurers.
The girl who was working hard to pay off debts had not yet noticed Ron's arrival. Her voice sounded tired as she called out, "New weapons have arrived—feel free to take a look if you're interested."
"Good quality at a fair price, the best choice for dungeon exploration~"
However, adventurers busy heading toward the Tower of Babel rarely stopped, even though weapons produced by Hephaestus were suitable for ordinary adventurers.
But price was absolutely not something they could afford to consider.
Just as the girl was feeling somewhat discouraged, she heard a familiar voice: "Lady Hestia, may I ask how much armor repairs cost?"
"Ron?!"
"You're back?"
Following the direction of the voice, Hestia perked up and turned her head.
When she clearly saw the armor on his abdomen that had been pierced through, the girl's brows instantly twisted together, and her eyes filled with undisguised, heartfelt concern.
The good news:
Ron had followed her advice and withdrawn from the Dungeon after the uses of the Revival skill were exhausted.
The bad news:
The exploration difficulty of the Dungeon might be even higher than she had anticipated!
"Giving it everything I had, I defeated an elite goblin."
Summarizing his first Dungeon exploration experience today in the fewest words possible, Ron explained further when faced with the puzzled look in Hestia's eyes: "I mean one that was much more robust in build than ordinary goblins."
"A rare variant that used higher-quality weapons and had mastered combat techniques. But in the end, I still had the upper hand and successfully completed the monster subjugation."
Explaining all this was mainly to keep Hestia from worrying.
Ron added at the end, "Being burdened with the Dungeon's hatred does indeed cause some trouble for routine exploration, but it's not purely a bad thing."
"High-intensity combat will definitely help with improving ability values!"
"You being able to think that way… of course, that's for the best."
Hestia was still worried.
High-intensity Dungeon exploration could have made Ron lose his nerve, but judging from the results, the child she had picked up had a mindset far better than expected.
As for the armor repair issue—
The girl patted her chest and said confidently, "Leave the armor repairs to me. Work in the shop isn't that busy right now anyway."
"Do you need me to help you update your ability values?"
"Is it convenient?"
According to what Eina had said—ordinary goblins were like stray dogs by the roadside, while the strength displayed by elite goblins was at least several times greater.
Although he had not gone through that many battles, Ron still could not help but feel anticipation. After being tempered by a gate-blocking elite monster, what kind of concrete improvement would he see in his ability values?
"It's convenient."
"Updating ability values doesn't take much time anyway."
Most importantly, Hestia was just as curious. With a talent unprecedented in Orario, what kind of surprise would Ron bring her?
She put away the flyers she had been handing out and pulled the boy by the hand as they entered the weapon shop.
Ignoring the astonished looks from the other clerks, they arrived at Hephaestus's office. Having gone through the process yesterday, she was already becoming familiar with the operations.
"All right!"
"Take off your clothes first and lie facedown on the sofa."
Standing in front of the sofa, the girl did not hesitate. After pricking her finger with a silver needle, she squeezed out bright red divine blood and let it drip onto Ron's back.
A flowing radiance flashed forth, and obscure divine script emerged from his back.
It overlaid the ability value gains that Ron had obtained during this period of training and Dungeon exploration onto the adventurer's original base values.
Immediately after—
This panel, which even gods found difficult to understand, was presented before Hestia once again.
...
Ron
Level: Lv1
Strength: I0→H103
Endurance: I0→H110
Dexterity: I0→I86
Agility: I0→H107
Magic: I0→I0
...
After taking an impression of the ability values onto parchment, Hestia's gaze lingered on the updated attributes, her eyes full of astonishment.
Just through basic training and a brief Dungeon exploration, Ron's overall ability values, starting from the initial stage of an adventurer, had all achieved a cross-rank-like increase—except for Dexterity and Magic!
'This ability value increase is a bit exaggerated, isn't it?'
It might also be the benefit period of having just become an adventurer.
With Ron's current rate of improvement, among Orario's many Lv1 adventurers, he would likewise be a top-tier "standout" genius.
What kind of newcomer could obtain close to 400 points of total ability values?
Hestia suddenly felt incomparably gratified. The talent her new familia member had delivered on was completely worthy of the many efforts she had put in during this period.
But when she thought of what lay behind the ability value increases—
It was the result of Ron giving it everything he had, bearing the Dungeon's hatred, and fighting monsters in life-and-death battles...
The girl felt that this kind of improvement was the reward Ron deserved. She handed over the parchment: "Ron, your talent is truly outstanding."
"However, improving ability values later on will be relatively difficult."
"I hope you can keep at it and work even harder!"
"…"
Ron, of course, understood the principle of small accumulations adding up. When he saw the changes in his ability values, he instantly felt that all of his efforts had been worth it.
Given the strength of Dungeon monsters going forward, even if the speed of ability value improvement slowed later on, it would still be far faster than that of ordinary adventurers!
But when he thought of the setting of the DanMachi world—many adventurers, due to their own talent limitations, could not even raise their ability values above C-rank, and would stagnate completely in the D-rank range of 500–600, Ron's mood became somewhat wistful again.
He knew that this was not the limit of an adventurer. In the original DanMachi work, the protagonist Bell could break through the S-rank limit in every ability value.
'Why does it feel like…'
'there's still a long way to go on the road to becoming a stat monster?'