The sparring between Leo and Ais kept going until the sun had climbed high into the sky and all of Twilight Manor was lit up by sunlight.
"...Let's stop here."
Ais saw that Leo was already on the verge of collapsing. A brief flicker of confusion passed through her golden, transparent eyes, and then she spoke.
"Tomorrow... should we continue?"
Ais asked, quite seriously.
"Let's continue."
Leo took a deep breath, pushed down his ragged breathing and the pain in his body, then gritted his teeth and nodded.
Since he'd decided to walk the path of a Magic Swordsman, swordsmanship was sothing he absolutely had to learn. Otherwise he had no business being on the front line.
Once he reached Lv.2, Leo also planned to go to the Mages in the Familia and ask them about Concurrent Chanting, learn how to use Magic in the middle of a fierce fight.
Generally speaking, no matter what kind of Magic you were casting, it required extre focus and a proper chant. Otherwise, your attention would scatter, you'd lose control of your Magic, and the Magic would misfire, doing no harm to the enemy and only damaging yourself.
Because of that, when using Magic, people without exception stood still in one spot, concentrating entirely on the chant, preparing the spell, unable to do anything else.
This was also why Mages needed comrades to protect them. Without comrades, they couldn't focus on chanting and casting Magic at all, and could only stand there passively taking enemy attacks.
But there were so high-level Mages who could maintain the focused concentration needed to chant Magic while also taking other actions.
Attacking, defending, moving, dodging... a seasoned Mage could maintain focused concentration while doing any of these four, finish the chant, fire the Magic, and break free of dependence on comrades. Even without teammates to protect them, they could weave through a swarm of monsters and freely cast Magic to wipe them out. This was Concurrent Chanting.
Unfortunately, Mages were rare to begin with, and Mages capable of Concurrent Chanting were rarer still. Even within Loki Familia, only a handful could do it.
But for a Magic Swordsman, who needed to fight on the front line and unleash Magic attacks in the middle of intense combat, Concurrent Chanting was a technique they absolutely had to master.
Until now, Leo had been able to cast Magic in combat, but he wasn't casting it while actually trading blows with the enemy. When he needed to cast, he stopped, and like any other Mage, he stood still, gave up every other action, focused his mind on the chant, and only then released the Magic.
For any other Mage, doing that would be flat-out suicide. But because teor Dance was ultra-short chant Magic, Leo didn't need much ti to chant at all, which was why he could find openings in the middle of a fight, stop, and unleash the Magic.
Because the chant was so short and the ti needed to cast was so little, Leo could slip the casting in through the gaps in combat.
But that was only possible because the fights weren't intense. If he ever ran into the kind of situation where he couldn't spare an instant to stop and chant, where he couldn't even snatch a mont to breathe, then he wouldn't be able to cast Magic.
So Concurrent Chanting was sothing Leo had to learn as well.
For now it was fine. He was only venturing into the Upper Floor region of the Dungeon, where it was hard to run into the kind of brutal life-and-death fight that didn't even give you room to breathe, so he didn't really need Concurrent Chanting. But once he entered the Middle Floor region, the number of monsters he'd have to deal with would skyrocket, the difficulty would jump dramatically, and he wouldn't be able to comfortably find openings to cast Magic like this anymore.
With that in mind, Leo planned to formally start learning Concurrent Chanting after he reached Lv.2.
It shouldn't be too hard to manage.
Concurrent Chanting was certainly difficult to learn, and even in Loki Familia, the city's strongest Familia, only a handful of people could do it. But Leo's Magic was only ultra-short chant. In a fierce fight he only needed to recite a tiny bit of incantation, which would make executing Concurrent Chanting that much easier.
If he were like the original protagonist and possessed quick-cast magic that required no chant at all, then he wouldn't even need to learn Concurrent Chanting. He could just raise his hand and fire, no matter how fierce the fight.
As for now... learning swordsmanship from Ais was the more important thing.
An adventurer's combat strength wasn't asured solely by their Status. Technique and strategy were just as important.
As long as your combat technique and strategy were refined enough, you could even beat soone stronger than you.
The patron god of Takemikazuchi Familia was a perfect example. As the god who presided over "martial arts," he possessed martial skills that surpassed any adventurer in the lower world, skills that could be called divine technique. Even with his Arcanum sealed away, with only the abilities of an ordinary person, he could defeat twenty Lv.4 adventurers on martial arts alone. In a one-on-one, he could hold his own against, or even defeat, a Lv.5. It was absolutely absurd.
That kind of absurdity was sothing only the gods could pull off, and even then only gods whose domain was related to combat. A mortal could never possess combat skills that reached into the gods' own domain. Forget defeating a first-class adventurer with the abilities of a normal person; even just crossing a single Level on pure martial skill alone was nearly impossible.
At the very least, Ais, the strongest female swordsman in Orario, couldn't do it.
On pure swordsmanship alone, even this prodigy of a female swordsman couldn't beat an enemy across a Level gap, unless her opponent was a completely brainless monster.
That was, of course, assuming she only used swordsmanship.
If she weren't limited to swordsmanship, then with that special Magic and Skill of hers, fighting across a Level gap wouldn't be out of the question.
Thinking of that, Leo's gaze drifted toward Ais.
Perhaps sensing Leo's gaze, Ais hesitated for a mont, then asked softly.
"Do you want to go to the dining hall for breakfast together?"
At that, Leo ca back to himself, smiled, and shook his head.
"No, I'll just grab sothing quick outside later."
Even though he'd formally joined Loki Familia and shed the title of trainee, Leo still hardly ever ate at the dining hall.
There was no helping it. If he ran into a certain soone who didn't like him, he was bound to get humiliated.
Leo had no interest in being humiliated by that tsundere werewolf, which was why he rarely went to the dining hall to eat with everyone else in the Familia.
Ais clearly knew this too, which was why she'd hesitated just now.
"...Mm."
Ais pursed her lips and nodded.
The two agreed to spar again at the sa ti tomorrow, and then parted ways.
Leo headed for the tower where his room was, intending to change out of his filthy clothes and wash the dirt off himself first.
Ais didn't need to bother with that. She hadn't shed a single drop of sweat, let alone gotten dirty. Leo at this stage simply didn't have the ability to make her do either.
It was just...
"Sothing's a little off..."
Watching Leo's back as he walked away, Ais felt puzzled.
In the past, in their sparring, Leo would inevitably end up covered in cuts and bruises, which always left Ais, who couldn't quite control the force of her blows, feeling rather guilty.
But this ti, even though Leo was a filthy ss, Ais had noticed that he wasn't injured.
Even after rolling across stone-covered ground, today's Leo hadn't gotten so much as a scrape. That level of Endurance shouldn't be possible for a newcor who'd been an adventurer for less than half a month.
And in their sparring just now, Ais had sharply noticed that several tis Leo had started to move, then suddenly suppressed it, stopping his own small actions.
The way he'd done it looked like he was holding sothing back.
Ais didn't know why Leo would act that way.
She only realized one thing.
This man she'd brought back from the Dungeon was keeping a secret from her.
As that thought flashed through her mind, a sense of loss she didn't even notice in herself welled up in Ais's heart.
"Leo... is keeping secrets from now."
On the girl's delicate face, usually so devoid of expression, an obvious dejection surfaced.
......
Leo had no idea that his deliberate suppression of his own abilities had already raised Ais's suspicions, even left this normally emotionless girl feeling dejected and lost.
After he returned to the tower, he washed himself off right away, changed into clean clothes, then left his room and headed for Finn's office.
A short while ago, a mber had told him that the Familia's leadership wanted him to co by after he finished training.
Is sothing going on?
Leo wondered, but his pace didn't slow. He soon reached Finn's office and t the Familia's three heads.
"I'm not keeping you from anything, am I, Leo?"
Finn sat behind his luxurious desk as he always did, looking like a child play-acting at adult work, perched in a chair that didn't suit him at all, and smiled at Leo as he walked in.
"Of course not." Leo shook his head and asked, "Was there sothing you needed for, Captain?"
"There is, actually." Finn nodded and, without wasting ti, got straight to the point. "Loki told us you're thinking of hiring a Supporter from outside. Is that right?"
That was sothing Leo had indeed ntioned to Loki last night when his Status was being updated.
"Yes, I was thinking of hiring a Supporter."
There was nothing to hide about it, so Leo just nodded and admitted it.
"You're already at this stage, huh. That's fast." Gareth, sitting beside Finn, said with a sigh. "We figured you'd spend a few months grinding on the early floors of the Dungeon before you got here."
Hearing that, Leo could roughly guess that his unusual rate of growth had probably already been disclosed to the three leaders in front of him.
Thinking about it, that wasn't strange at all.
If a mber with such an abnormal growth rate had appeared in the Familia, other people might not need to know, but these three Familia leaders certainly did.
Loki wasn't the kind of god who gossiped. Even if it was family from the sa Familia, that extrely improper-looking goddess could be unexpectedly reliable when it counted, playing the part of a proper parent, never carelessly leaking a child's secrets.
But Leo's existence was, in a sense, already capable of having a major impact on the Familia's developnt and future, so Loki had to tell Finn and the others about him.
That included Leo's special Skill, the one that couldn't be deciphered. Finn and the others definitely knew about that too.
The conversation that followed confird it.
"With your current Status, as long as you don't go into the Middle Floors, just venturing in the Upper Floors shouldn't put you in any real danger." Riveria warned, in earnest. "But you're still a newcor, and you don't have enough experience handling the sudden situations that co up in the Dungeon. So neither we nor Loki are entirely comfortable with you hiring a Supporter from outside."
How could a Supporter from outside ever be as trustworthy as family from your own Familia?
They took adventurer jobs to make money, doing odd work for adventurers, and if danger struck, they'd turn and run without a second thought. So might even use the adventurer who hired them as bait, buying themselves ti to escape.
In the Dungeon, it wasn't unusual at all for one adventurer to prey on another. Most adventurers went into the Dungeon to get rich, to make a na, to chase treasure.
What if Leo hired a Supporter with bad intentions, and that person, watching Leo rake in magic stones and drop items by the armful, watching him about to make a fortune, suddenly got greedy and decided to take the haul for themselves? What then?
This was exactly what Finn and the others were worried about.
Maybe with Leo's current strength, he wouldn't end up cornered in the Upper Floor region. But if he got jumped, set up by a fellow adventurer whose greed got the better of them, that would be more dangerous than any cornering by far.
Even experienced adventurers could fall for that kind of trick, let alone a newcor like Leo, who'd been an adventurer for less than half a month.
Leo had naturally thought about this too.
"But if I don't hire soone from outside, who in the Familia would be a good fit to be my Supporter?"
Leo gave a wry smile.
Then, he heard this.
"Why do you assu there's no one in the Familia who'd suit you as a Supporter?" Finn said with a chuckle, as though he'd seen straight through the worry in Leo's heart. "It's true the Familia doesn't have any other newcors at Lv.1 like you. But not everyone here is a combatant."
"There are so people in our Familia who don't fight on the front lines, who serve full-ti in back-end support as non-combatants."
"If you don't mind us old folks ddling, we could introduce you to a Supporter who'd suit you."
This was the main reason Finn and the others had called Leo over.
Hearing Finn's words, Leo's eyes lit up.
"Would that really be all right?" Leo said with a touch of hesitation. "Wouldn't it be too much trouble for that person?"
"Of course not." Riveria shook her head, reassuring him. "That child isn't a combatant. When there's no expedition, she basically just handles miscellaneous work at the headquarters. Letting her go down into the Dungeon with you isn't a bad thing for her at all."
"We've already called her over." Gareth stroked his beard. "She should be arriving any mont now."
The words had barely left Gareth's mouth when a knock ca at the office door.
"Um... can I co in?"
A voice rang out beyond the door, carrying a hint of nervousness.
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