'A supporter? You've gotta be kidding me.'
Ever since he got to Orario, everyone told Welf the same thing.
Supporters were just walking backpacks.
They just followed the real fighters around, picking up the trash and magic stones left behind after a fight.
'Tsk.' Welf ground his teeth together.
'What's this kid's deal? I really don't get him.'
He pushed his annoyance to the side.
'Whatever. If I actually get into real trouble, he won't just stand there and watch me die, right? To hell with it. Bring it on! I'll show him what a Crozzo can do on the front lines!'
A few steps behind him, Noah raised his eyebrows.
He sensed a shift in the air and stared down the pitch-black hallway.
"They're here," Noah said, his voice calm.
"Eh? What's here?"
A confused Welf followed Noah's gaze, but he couldn't see anything in the dark.
After squinting for a second, he noticed the shadows starting to move.
"GULUGAA!"
Two glowing yellow eyes cut through the dark as Welf froze.
A spike of pure adrenaline hit him, making his fingers grip his massive iron greatsword so hard his knuckles turned white.
Cold sweat popped up on his forehead.
"It's a Kobold!" Welf yelled.
He swallowed hard.
Yeah, Kobolds were just basic monsters from the upper floors.
But these things wanted to kill adventurers more than anything else in the world.
Feeling that raw hate coming from the dark, Welf knew this beast meant business.
He was nervous, but he kept his cool.
He took a deep breath, raised his giant sword high, and swung it down right before the Kobold jumped at him.
Monsters like Kobolds don't think.
They just run on pure instinct.
The beast didn't even try to dodge the huge chunk of iron falling toward it. It charged straight ahead and got its head smashed in with a nasty crunch!
"Whoa!" Welf let out a huge breath.
With the monster dead, all his stress vanished. To him, he didn't even tried that hard.
A basic swing did the trick.
It's funny how people mess up judging their own skills. When a normal guy succeeds on the first try, his ego blows up.
He thinks, 'If I did that without even trying, imagine what I could do if I got serious.'
It usually takes a brutal failure to make them realize they just got lucky.
Standing behind Welf, the corner of Noah's eye twitched.
People say a heavy sword doesn't need a sharp edge.
But Welf's sword barely cut the monster at all!
The heavy impact just crushed the Kobold like a bug.
The blade was dull as a rock.
Using his Truth Seeker skill, Noah checked the weapon. He knew it was garbage the second he saw it, but the scan showed just how bad it was.
Killing one weak Kobold dropped the sword's durability by three percent. The metal was cheap, the mix was bad, and the design was a mess.
It had zero resilience.
The thing was going to shatter into pieces after a few more hits.
Poof!
The dead Kobold turned to gray dust and a red rock hit the floor.
Welf squatted down and picked it up.
"So, this is a magic stone, So coool!" He grinned and tossed it to Noah. "Here, catch."
Noah caught the magic stone with a blank face.
He pretended to put it in his pouch, but he crushed it into dust in half a second.
It barely had any magic in it at all. It wasn't even enough to power his passive skills for a single minute.
As they walked deeper into the first floor, Welf got used to the situation.
Noah kept calling out monsters before they even showed up, so Welf stopped feeling so nervous.
He even had time to chat.
"Hey Noah, how deep did you go your first time down here?" Welf asked, resting his heavy sword on his shoulder.
"Uh, I think we made it to the sixth floor."
"The sixth floor? On your first try?" Welf was shocked.
When he signed up at the Guild, his advisor told him to stay above the fourth floor until he got some real combat experience.
They said ignoring that rule was how rookies got themselves killed. Yet this kid made it to the sixth floor right off the bat?
'Wait a minute,' Welf thought.
'He's been an adventurer for over a year. That means he was even younger than he is now when he pulled that off!'
Seeing Welf's jaw drop, Noah explained. "I wasn't alone, i was in a party and there were four of us."
'Oh, a party. That makes sense,' Welf thought.
"I remember it clearly because we ran into a Strengthened Species on our first run," Noah said.
"A Strengthened Species?"
Seeing Welf's blank look, Noah sighed.
It was obvious Welf hadn't read the Guild's rookie handbook.
"They're monsters that eat the magic stones dropped by other dead monsters," Noah explained.
"Eating the stones makes them way stronger than normal, and they get pretty smart too."
"Wait, they eat the stones? You mean the monsters cannibalize their own kind down here?"
"Yeah. It's rare, but it happens."
Welf nodded slowly. Even though Noah was just a kid, he knew his stuff.
Welf started to see his quiet 'supporter' in a whole new light.
"You don't talk much, do you?" Welf joked, swinging his sword around. "I feel like I'm doing all the talking here."
"Isn't that a good thing?" Noah gave him a weird, mysterious smile. "It shows you've got enough energy to spare."
Welf froze.
That was the first time he'd seen the kid smile.
He wanted to throw a sarcastic joke back, but the words got stuck in his throat.
Something about that smile gave him a serious case of the creeps.
...
Second Floor.
Less than two minutes later, a new monster blocked the narrow hallway. When Welf saw it, he didn't look scared.
He actually looked happy!
"Ain't that just a Goblin?"
To most people on the surface, Goblins were a joke.
"I've seen these things in the woods back home," Welf bragged. "I beat the crap out of three of them by myself once. There's only one here, so this'll be a cakewalk."
He walked toward the Goblin with a cocky grin, dragging his sword so the metal scraped against the stone floor.
The loud noise made the Goblin spin around.
That's when Welf realized the damn thing had a weapon!
Well, sort of.
It was holding the broken head of a rusty pickaxe, tied together with some dirty rags.
"A piece of junk like that is useless!" Welf yelled.
He swung his heavy iron sword in a massive side-strike.
The big blade cut through the air.
The Goblin tracked the swing with its yellow eyes. Right as the sword came close, the Goblin jumped straight up in the air, dodging right over the heavy steel.
"What the hell!" Welf gasped.
The heavy swing threw his whole body off balance.
While Welf was stumbling, the Goblin raised the rusty pickaxe and aimed right for his head.
"Oh, shit!" Welf panicked.
'This is bad, is my skull gonna get cracked open? Am I actually gonna die here?'
Watching the sharp metal get closer, Welf dropped his heavy sword.
Running on pure panic, he threw his hands up. He grabbed the Goblin's wrist with one hand and choked it with the other.
He stopped the pickaxe, but the Goblin's momentum pushed them both down.
They hit the floor hard, rolling around in the dirt.
As they wrestled, Welf realized something insane.
This tiny ugly Goblin was almost as strong as he was!
"Get off me, you bastard!" Welf grunted.
"GIIYAAA!" The Goblin screamed.
It shoved hard, flipping Welf onto his back. It dropped the pickaxe and tried to rip Welf's throat out with its dirty claws.
Welf barely held it back.
The Goblin's breath smelled like rotting garbage, making Welf want to puke!
When a thick drop of nasty drool almost hit his face, Welf saw red. He shoved the Goblin back an inch, brought his knee up, and kicked the monster right in its flat nose.
The Goblin squealed and rolled off as Welf jumped to his feet, breathing hard.
Then, he heard the kid in the back speak up.
"Hey. Use this."
Welf turn around.
Noah tossed a longsword in a black sheath right at him. Welf caught the handle and pulled the blade out in one smooth motion.
Compared to his heavy iron slab, this sword felt as light as a feather.
Feeling armed and pissed off, Welf charged the Goblin.
He swung the longsword in a quick, clean slash right across the monster's neck.
But when the blade hit, Welf didn't feel a thing.
His eyes went wide.
'What did I just hit? Did I miss?'
Swish.
A silver flash followed the swing.
Because he didn't feel any impact, Welf stumbled forward and fell to his knees.
He looked over his shoulder, totally confused.
The Goblin's head just slid right off its neck and hit the floor. A second later, the body turned to dust.
Welf slowly held the new sword up.
He stared at the steel blade.
It was so shiny and perfect he could see his own reflection in it. As a blacksmith, he was blown away by it!
The sword was insanely sharp, it cut through monster skin, muscle, and bone, and he hadn't felt a single bump.
It felt like slicing through the air.
And even after chopping right through a spine, the blade didn't have a single scratch on it.
Not even a drop of blood stuck to the steel.
This was, without a doubt, a masterpiece!
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