After parting ways with Ais, Leo had planned to head straight back to his room and get a proper night's sleep.
He'd already bathed at Babel, so there was no need to wash up much at ho either. He could just strip off his gear and flop into bed.
Unfortunately, Leo didn't make it.
He'd barely separated from Ais before his goddess, who had a knack for popping up out of nowhere, blocked his path.
"You're finally back, Leo!"
Loki ca pouncing at Leo, looking ravenous, with all the nace of a hungry wolf.
Leo got a fright and dodged to one side almost on instinct, letting Loki skim past his outline and slam straight into the wall.
"Owwwwwwwww!"
The impact actually made Loki's nose bleed. She crouched down clutching her nose and started wailing.
"...What in the world are you doing?"
The corner of Leo's mouth twitched and twitched, and he was past the point of words.
"Wh, why'd you dodge?"
Loki, eyes brimming with tears, kept her hand pressed to her nose and rounded on Leo.
"That question... maybe you'd better ask Ais and the others?"
Leo pressed a hand to his forehead. He couldn't take much more of this.
He knew his goddess loved to cop a feel off the pretty girls, which was why she was always finding excuses to pounce on Ais and the others. But he wasn't a pretty girl, so what was the point of pouncing on him?
Had this useless goddess flipped sides? Finally grown a conscience, given up groping pretty girls, and developed a taste for taking advantage of handso boys instead?
Or had soone managed to do the impossible and bend this useless goddess straight?
Leo folded his arms and looked Loki up and down.
"Hey! You little punk! What's with that look?"
A god's perceptiveness was, in the end, formidable. Loki figured out what Leo's look ant in an instant, which made her furious.
"Don't go talking trash about in your head! I just wanted to see whether you'd gone and pulled off another world-shaking stunt today!"
Leo's eyebrow rose.
"You an...?"
He had a guess about why Loki was here.
"Ti to update your Status." Loki lowered the hand from her nose and grinned like a clown, with a sly, ridiculous smirk. "I wanna see whether that ridiculous growth rate of yours has held up."
......
Twilight Manor, top of the Central Tower, the God's Chamber.
The Hieroglyphs surfaced from the engraving on Leo's back. Under Loki's fingertips they slowly shifted, taking on a new shape, and Loki's pair of divine eyes opened without a sound.
......
Leo Eligos
Lv.1
Strength: D557 → C623
Endurance: E496 → D545
Dexterity: D581 → C639
Agility: C644 → B717
Magic: B752 → A831
......
Looking at this freshly-baked new Status laid out in front of her, Loki's expression went blank.
A total gain of over 300 across all abilities!
"This crazy growth rate... hasn't dropped at all?!"
Loki was honestly getting dizzy.
In a single day, the proficiency across all abilities had climbed by more than 300 in total. If that kept up for another nine days, wouldn't it be the sa as before, with the total proficiency gain over ten days topping 3000?
Wasn't the basic ability proficiency supposed to get harder to raise the further you went?
Almost all of his abilities were already at D or higher, and yet he'd still managed to push every single one up a whole rank in the span of one day. What kind of growth rate was that?
At this pace, in just a few more days, wouldn't this kid hit the achievent of all abilities at S?
It was beyond belief.
Loki felt a little chill running through her, and at the sa ti an inexplicable thrill.
Even Leo, when he saw the Status translated into the common language, was a little surprised.
He hadn't expected to be in the latter half of Lv.1 and still pull off a total proficiency gain of more than 300 in one day.
"Well, it's not that hard to understand though."
Thinking back on his day's worth of adventuring, Leo found the result less than unexpected.
He'd burned a fair amount of ti on the commute, with three full trips between the Exchange at Babel and Floor 10 of the Dungeon alone, and yet his kill speed now was incomparably faster than before.
He'd filled his waist pouch twice over, and his third haul wasn't small either. That spoke for itself when it ca to how many monsters Leo had taken down today and how much excelia he'd racked up.
It was precisely thanks to that that he could keep growing at this kind of pace.
But...
"It probably won't be that easy from here on out."
That was how Leo saw it.
The further along you took your basic abilities, the harder they got to raise. That was a fact, no doubt about it.
By now, Leo's abilities were all at D or higher across the board, and his strongest, "Magic", had even reached A. After that ca S, the highest evaluation an ordinary adventurer would ever see, and beyond that, maybe SS and SSS. Counting on his current pace to push his way up there was, frankly, a bit of a pipe dream.
On top of that, of the Upper Floor region a Lv.1 newbie adventurer could tackle, Leo only had Floors 11 and 12 left unexplored. Once he'd cleared Floor 12, he wouldn't be able to push any deeper. He'd be stuck holed up on Floor 12 until he leveled up, and that was bound to slow his pace down so too.
From Floor 13 on, the Dungeon officially entered the Middle Floor region, where only Lv.2 upper-class adventurers could go. Leo had no plans to play tough and go charging in while still at Lv.1. That would absolutely be a one-way ticket.
The Middle Floors and the Upper Floors were completely different territories. Even though only one floor separated them, the difficulty of clearing Floor 13 was at least double that of Floor 12. Not only would new species of monsters appear, but huge monster waves would also co pouring through one after another. Even Lv.2 upper-class adventurers had trouble catching their breath in there, let alone Lv.1 newbie adventurers.
In the original work, the protagonist, having just leveled up to Lv.2, took two Lv.1 teammates with him down to Floor 13, and that very day they hit a crisis and ended up unable to get back. That was proof enough.
Bear in mind, the original protagonist wasn't your average Lv.2. His four basic abilities, "Strength", "Endurance", "Dexterity", and "Magic", had all hit SS at the ti he leveled up, and his strongest, "Agility", had gone all the way to SSS. With potential like that going into Lv.2, he was unquestionably far stronger than the usual Lv.2 adventurer, and on top of that he had quick-cast magic the likes of which no one had ever seen before or since, plus a Skill that let him turn things around in dire situations. And yet he'd still hit a crisis not long after entering Floor 13. That was how dangerous the Middle Floors were.
Of course, the reason the original protagonist's party had hit that crisis was that the Takemikazuchi Familia had used "Pass Parade" on them, and they'd been attacked by the monsters the other party led in. That was what ultimately produced the result. But what kind of lineup did the Takemikazuchi Familia have at the ti?
Two Lv.2s on the front line, plus several Lv.1s as support, and even they'd been chased to the wall by the monsters of Floor 13, forced to dump the monsters onto the protagonist's party. If Leo dared to go down there alone at Lv.1, dying outright would honestly be the better option. If he ca back alive, Loki and Finn were absolutely going to skin him alive.
Putting all of that together, there was no way Leo could hit the achievent of all abilities at S in just a few days.
And besides, his goal wasn't a asly all abilities at S anyway.
With that thought, Leo's mood settled back down.
"What, you're not even excited about this?"
Loki, on the other hand, was having a much harder ti settling herself down than Leo was, and she started waving her arms around and yelling.
"It's only been eleven days! Not even two weeks! Less than half a month! And you've already pushed every single one of your abilities up past D? Hell, your 'Magic' even hit A!"
Loki had every reason to be excited.
What did everyone else's kids look like half a month after receiving Falna and becoming an adventurer?
At best, one or a couple of their basic abilities would have hit H.
Leo wasn't even at the half-month mark yet, and his strongest was already at A. By the ti he actually hit half a month, if nothing else, at minimum his "Magic" was definitely going to reach S, right?
On one side you had H, which had only just escaped the lowest stage of I. On the other, you had S, the highest stage. That was a full eight stages between them.
What did that an?
It was like everyone else had just barely gotten off the line, had only run two or three steps from the start, while Leo had already sprinted across the finish line, about to take first.
S, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I... the basic abilities had ten stages in total, and Leo was eight stages ahead of everyone else. The crucial part was that his other basic abilities weren't falling behind either, they were all climbing at breakneck speed. At that point you couldn't even call him a genius. He was a monster, a freak.
Even Ais-tan, the longest-running prodigy, was being pressed flat by this. Anyone else would probably be dancing for joy by now.
And yet Leo was still looking as calm as ever.
"It's just the strongest basic ability reaching S in half a month. What's there to get excited about?" Leo said honestly. "I can already level up. Is sothing like this really worth getting excited over?"
Loki froze mid-motion.
True enough. This kid was already on the verge of leveling up, so what reason did he have to get worked up over a couple of basic abilities going up a single stage?
Compared with the strongest basic ability reaching S in half a month, going from Lv.1 to Lv.2 in ten days was the actual earth-shattering news, wasn't it?
"You really don't feel happy at all?" Loki pressed, not ready to let it go. "Your current Status, even within Lv.1, puts you at the very top. Which ans among low-class adventurers you already count as an ace, and you're still not happy?"
It wasn't wrong. With Leo's current Status, within Lv.1 he was absolutely at the top of the pack, much stronger than your average low-class adventurer.
Other newbie adventurers might struggle for several years at Lv.1 without getting even one basic ability up to D. Only those with a certain level of potential, the ones capable of moving up to higher Levels, could break above D. Leo had already caught up with them and beco one of the top one or two adventurers at Lv.1.
Especially with his "Magic" hitting A, and the fact that he was a Magic Swordsman himself, even if he ca up against another Lv.1 with all abilities at S, he'd have a real chance of winning.
Compared with the Leo of eleven days ago, who didn't even have Falna and was just a trainee doing odd jobs in Loki Familia, he'd genuinely been remade from the inside out.
If this wasn't worth being happy about, what was?
"It's not that I'm not happy. I'm just not excited," Leo said, throwing Loki a glance, perfectly at ease. "I'm going to be able to rank up to Lv.2 any ti now anyway. So no matter what I achieve at this Level, there's no real point in getting too excited, right?"
Unless he could confirm he was capable of breaking past the limit of his Status and reaching SS or SSS, then it might be worth getting a bit excited. Otherwise, even if he hit the all-abilities-at-S that Loki and the others were hoping for, he wasn't going to get too worked up about it.
Even though the achievent of all abilities at S was already pretty stunning.
"All right, you really are no fun."
Loki rolled her eyes, snarking.
A result like this, on anyone else, especially soone like Ais-tan, whose obsession with getting stronger was off the charts, would have been enough to crack that expressionless pretty face wide open. They'd be straight up laughing out loud by now. But this kid actually thought it wasn't worth getting too excited about.
If she hadn't been able to tell that Leo wasn't lying, she'd already be ribbing him about it, accusing him of humble-bragging, of putting on airs.
"Excited or not, happy or not, just rember to keep that little secret of yours buttoned up. Don't go letting it slip by accident," Loki warned, switching gears. "With a growth rate like yours, if word gets out, every god in all of Orario will lose their minds. And if so thick-skinned bastard latches onto you, you're in for a rough ti."
"Oh?" Leo crumpled the parchnt in his hand and looked at Loki with a smile. "What, our great Loki can't even protect her own kid?"
"Who do you think you're talking down to?" Loki snorted. "Sure, I'm not scared of anyone. If sobody tries sothing with you, I'll march right up to their door and show them what's what. What I am worried about is people scheming behind the scenes. That whole crowd of bored, ball-aching bastards of gods is full of types who don't care if they die. By the ti I've gone to get your revenge, you'll already have raised the white flag."
Loki's tone shifted.
"That said, in general, those bastards aren't going to do anything too brazen. Around this little patch of dirt called Orario, there aren't many people, gods included, who don't fear my Familia. As long as you stay on your toes and don't fall for any obvious traps, the rest of it I and Finn and the others will handle for you."
After getting a look at Leo's astonishing potential, Loki, Finn, and the rest had already started treating him as the future pillar of the Familia.
They'd spent all of yesterday night talking it through, taking every kind of scenario into account, even deciding on counterasures, all for the sake of keeping Leo safe.
The intel on Leo's Status, too, had been classified by Loki, Finn, and the rest as the Familia's top secret. Not even all the executives were going to be told.
But this could only be hidden for so long. It wouldn't stay hidden forever.
Once Leo formally hit Lv.2, the truth about him was almost certainly going to co out.
That was why Loki was telling him this, urging him to be careful.
"Got it."
Leo wasn't about to play tough either, and nodded in agreent.
He knew he was still weak. If he wanted to grow up smoothly, he couldn't do without the Familia's protection.
So he was going to accept all of this without making a fuss.
And once he'd grown strong, he'd repay the Familia for it.
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