Three young men and women were facing off against a large monster. The monster looked like a giant with a bulls head and four hands. It was holding an axe, a spear in those four hands and looked very imposing.

The red haired young man was the first to charge at the monsters with his sword and he faced the monster who was six times taller than him in a close quarters battle.

He used his sword to block and parry the monster's attacks and counter attacked him back whenever he got a chance.

From the way he handled his sword, it was evident that the young man was quite skilled in sword arts. But even though the monster looked like it had taken quite a beating it was nowhere near going down. But then a girl with wolf ears on her head chanted some sort of spell and dark tentacles came out of the monster's shadow to bind its hands and feet.

As if waiting for that exact moment, a golden haired girl with long ears shot three arrows targeting the monsters heart. Using the moment when the monster was unable to move because of the bindings, those arrows hit perfectly and penetrated the skin and muscle, but were unable to pierce the heart.

But the red haired boy was not dumb enough to miss this chance and he immediately ran toward the monsters. The bull headed monster who had managed to get one of his arms out from the binding tried to stop the boy, but he just side stepped it and slash with his sword once to cut the arm off.

Feeling the pain off losing a limb, the monster screamed in pain and lost sight of the red haired boy. He took this change to jump on his body and immediately pierced the hole that the long eared girls arrows had created. It was enough to strike the heart of the monster and soon after trembling for some time it fell down and died.

Seeing this the long eared girl walked close to the boy and said -

"That's another boss down. Good job, Rein."

The wolf eared girl also came close to the boy and said -

"Yeah, now we have another dungeon under our belts. Nice work, Rein."

"Thanks, and nice assist Stella, Tasha. I really can't do it without you all."

"Heh, no need to be modest among ourselves. This boss is quite weak. You faced it with pure sword skill and nothing else. Or you can finish it in one shot, can't you ?"

"If you're going to say that then both you and Stella can do the same, right ? She just used regular earthen arrows on it. If she had used a combination arrow then she could have one shot it. The same is true for you and your assassination techniques or even a strong dark magic spell could have done the job."

"That's true I guess."

"But still, good job everyone."

Saying so the boy Rein started to pat Tasha's head between her wolf ears with his left hand. He also extended his right arm to caress Stella on her long ears. Both of the girls closed their eyes contentedly and enjoyed the sensation.

"Now let's go and check the central room of the dungeon. Let's see what reward this dungeon had to offer."

"It was quite an easy dungeon, so I don't think the reward will be too great."

"Tasha, the only reason we had such an easy time conquering this dungeon was because you disabled all the traps along the way. Or it would have been a bit troublesome even though the monsters were quite weak."

"Stella is right. Do you remember that crocodile monster suddenly coming out of the wall. Actually there was a teleportation trap that was supposed to appear just behind us when that monster appeared. If we took a single step backward in surprise then that trap would activate to separate all of us.

Normally no one would go out of their way to disable that teleportation trap that was supposed to change location as it was quite far away from the normal route. But Tasha disabled any all all traps of the dungeon, it was not a problem for us at all. I think you were the MVP of this dungeon raid."

Hearing Rein praising her, Tasha's mood became very good. She loved getting praises and love from her partner. She muttered -

"Any one of us could have soloed this dungeon though. It's not like you two can't take care of some flimsy traps."

"Let's not think about it anymore as we have other things to take care of. Like the rewards or you know the rewards."

Then they entered the central room to take a look at their rewards with happy smiles on their faces.

...

The world Rein was living in was a world filled with magic, swords and dungeons. Even though it was a world of magic, not everyone would be born with elemental affinity to magic. Only a very few chosen individuals could have the needed affinity to use elemental magic.

There were a total of eight elements. They were fire, water, earth, wind, ice, lightning, light and dark. Most chosen people only had affinity to a single element and a very few could have affinity for several.

Other than elemental affinity and magic, there were also special abilities. There were two kinds of special abilities. One inherent and another one acquired. For inherent special abilities, one would be born with it and it was mostly unique to a person or a bloodline. Almost 99.99 percent of the time, one person could only have a single inherent special ability.

But acquired abilities could be learned in many ways and there were no limits to how many a person could learn. The most common way for a person to get an acquired ability was by conquering a dungeon. Some very talented individuals could even get an acquired skill by practicing very hard or by creating one themselves.

This world did not have any leveling system. So it was not possible for anyone to numerically judge a person's growth. But the power of a person was not constant throughout their life. Generally training more could make a person stronger.

A very integral part of this world was dungeons. They were created by the world itself and conquering them could bring immense value to anyone. But doing so was not easy. Actually, it was extremely hard.

There were various kinds of dungeons, from weak and easy ones to super hard ones. But even conquering an easy dungeon could not be done by anyone. One needed to at least be a gold rank to have a slight chance. But mainly only a platinum rank powerhouse would be able to conquer one and that was true only for the weakest of dungeons.

Even though there was no full proof system to rank individuals according to their strength, in ancient times many used the grade of the metals to roughly grade individuals according to their powers. From bottom to top they were - copper, iron, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, mithril, adamantine and orichalcum.

There were individuals even stronger than an orichalcum rank, but the division above that was unclear as almost no one could reach that stage in their lifetime or even after death.

Now, we will watch over our protagonist, Rein who wants to conquer many more dungeons to become the strongest. His journey to the peak was only just beginning.