Roland woke up in confusion, immediately feeling the sensation of something heavy pressing against his chest.
This weight gave off a warm and comfortable feeling, like a cat crawling into your bed and poking its head out.
Roland realized what was happening and slowly lifted the quilt.
Est, with her silver hair casually draped behind her, was looking at Roland with a faint gaze. Her creamy skin pressed tightly against Roland's body, her beautiful face was flushed, and her cherry-colored lips slightly opened and closed, uttering an ethereal sound.
"Master?"
Roland's breathing stopped for a moment, not because Est ran into his quilt, but because of her current attire.
"Est, where are your clothes?"
Roland spoke in a calm and gentle tone. It was not until this moment that he truly felt his own growth. If he had not seen even more enchanting scenes in the Einzbern Castle, he would probably not be able to remain so calm now.
"With this... In front of the master, just having socks is enough."
With a sound as clear as water drops, Est tugged at the only piece of clothing on her body—a pair of black over-the-knee socks.
The clothes woven by magic have the same elasticity as the real ones, and the rebound of Est's skin creates a sensational scene. Compared with being naked, leaving only a pair of over-the-knee socks, it is more charming.
Coupled with Est's beautiful face, which showed a pure expression as if she didn't understand the current situation at all, it made her look even more charming.
"Are you dissatisfied with your knee-high socks?"
Because of Roland's silence, Est's extremely beautiful face came closer, causing Roland's heartbeat to speed up a little.
Est looked at Roland like this, leaned back, and raised her toes.
"Although I can't take off my socks here, but if it's the master..."
"stop--!"
Roland stopped Est's action with his backhand.
"If I keep going like this, I feel like my reputation is going to be ruined again. I've been giving up my hand fetish for a long time, so let's just keep my XP within the normal range."
Moreover, the perception that socks are more important than clothes is really hard to understand.
Roland glanced at Hestia, who was hugging a pillow and sleeping badly beside him, and decided to get up quickly before the matter got out of hand.
"Owner..."
Est moaned softly, blinked her eyes, and felt the tickling touch on her toes, her eyes became hazy.
"Um?"
Roland found himself holding the tip of Est's sword without knowing when, and his eyes were filled with regret.
Could it be that my hands have their own thoughts?
After thinking for a while, feeling the smooth and delicate touch in his hands, Roland simply continued kneading.
"Didn't the master say to stop? Why are you…"
But I don't know if Est was too natural or a little bit sinister, she launched a ruthless finishing blow at Roland.
"I don't even know where the end of the universe is, how can I know this?"
Roland sighed and decided to go with the flow. While Hestia was still asleep, he used whatever was available to resolve the early morning restlessness.
Looking at Est who had put on her clothes again and changed into a pair of grey over-the-knee socks with the blush still on her face, Roland, who had finished tidying up, took Est's hand again.
"Let's go, we have things to do today."
——
Although Roland's departure time today was much later than usual due to the situation in the morning, with the help of the Black Shadowkhan and yesterday's progress, they soon arrived at the fifteenth floor.
By this point, the number of people has been greatly reduced. Starting from the thirteenth floor, even level 2 must form a team, and the deeper you go, the fewer people there are around.
The reason for this is that in addition to the increasing strength of the dungeon, the increasing refresh frequency of monsters cannot be ignored.
Even if you have reliable teammates, you will not be able to guarantee your own safety when facing constantly refreshing monsters if you don't have the ability to break the deadlock.
Because of this, although you meet fewer people as you go down, their levels are also improving and you gain more.
Therefore, the deeper you go, the more adventurers should be wary of the so-called monsters.
"Isn't that right?"
Roland smiled and stepped on the guy wrapped in a robe in front of him. He exerted a little force and broke his spine in two.
"Ahhh! Stop kidding, you are the one who covets my gains..."
Although his fingers were deeply embedded in the ground, the adventurer who suffered such pain still gritted his teeth and insisted on his previous words.
"Oh, what a tough guy," Roland said with an interested smile. "But, he is clearly a level 3 player, but he is pretending to be a level 2 player when walking and moving. This is suspicious in itself."
"It's just that I didn't have time to report it to the guild..." The pale-faced adventurer gritted his teeth and still refused to admit it. Anyway, he didn't do anything. He just approached Roland and was attacked by him. In this case, even if he was a member of the Ikelos clan, he had the right to argue.
"I didn't have time. Well, let's put that aside for now, but it seems that you haven't been back to the surface for a while. Although I have only been in Orario for two days, I am still somewhat famous."
Roland held his chin up and released flames from his hands, burning through the adventurer's clothes on his back.
"Oh, the ability value is still locked. Well, even if I don't have the medicine to unlock it, it won't be a problem for me."
Seeing Roland's reckless behavior, the adventurer also became a little flustered. He originally thought that the other party spared his life because of his conscience, but from his understanding of the unlocking medicine and his nonchalant behavior of peeping into other people's ability values, which broke the taboo, he realized that he might have really offended the wrong person.
Ability points are the foundation of adventurers' survival. Any snooping will evolve into irreconcilable hatred, and people who can casually say such words are definitely not good people.
"Hello..."
He wanted to struggle one last time, but Roland's tone suddenly turned cold.
"That's enough. Stop insulting my intelligence with your so-called lies. When I saw the look you gave Est, your fate, which is even more despicable than a frog's piss, was already sealed."
"Speaking of which clan are you from... never mind, it's not important."
Roland raised a finger and placed it on the adventurer's back, his sharp eyes full of anticipation.
"Anyway, from now on, you will be my slave."
Dark malice overflowed from his fingertips and dripped onto the back of the unfortunate fellow. The next moment, the color of the sacred text was stained with darkness.
The power called grace was forcibly distorted by the malice of mankind. As for the grace itself that was guarded with all his might, he could not specifically change its nature, just as the black mud would not take away the power of the heroic spirit itself.
All it took away was their belonging.
"Ahhhhhh!"
The black mud quickly reconnected his broken spine, but the scum rolled on the ground as if his whole body was burning with pain. When he found that Roland had released his restraints on him, he gritted his teeth, bent his legs, and prepared to rush out quickly, and then use the terrain to get rid of Roland.
But what was incredible was that as a level 3 adventurer, he just stumbled weakly on the ground.
"How is this possible! My power... my power!"
With a mouthful of mud, he even forgot about running away, and instead grabbed the dagger at his waist in panic. This fine weapon, which used to be so easy to use, now seemed extremely heavy.
He had never felt his body so weak before. This state was completely different from the curse, magic, and fatigue.
——As if he had never received any favor at all.
Roland walked towards him slowly and said in a joyful tone.
"The so-called power of grace, if you don't integrate it into yourself, is essentially just a strengthening spell. It is completely dependent on the gods. No matter how high the level is, if the god to whom it belongs dies, you will become the same as an ordinary person. You can only be reactivated after finding a new god and converting. If the authority is high enough, you can even directly seal the power brought by grace."
"Impossible, even if there is such ability! No one else can do it except the clan's main god!"
"That's natural," Roland nodded affirmatively. "If every god had the GM privilege to ban players, then this game would be extremely boring. Therefore, this is destined to be a privilege for a few."
"The reason why I can do this is very simple. I just forced you to convert to another religion. Now you officially belong to the Shendu's Familia."
Roland smiled as he looked at the defenseless male adventurer in front of him. Seeing the man's desperate look, he stretched out his hand and let the surging black mud completely envelop him.
"Next, let's spend the last few minutes of your life together happily."
After a long while, when the demon-like wailing stopped, Roland clapped his hands and pressed his thumbs, turning everything that had ever existed about this guy into ashes.
In terms of results, today's experiment was much more successful than yesterday's.
Through the power of the evil of this world, he can be called a phantom god of civil war. Any adventurer who relies on grace and whose power does not belong to himself can be easily bullied into the Familia of the Shendu.
It is a pity that he cannot directly absorb other people's past experience points, perhaps because that status has been updated and fixed.
However, before the update, those experience points that have grown but not been formally solidified can be successfully absorbed by him.
Moreover, after being poured into the black mud, he can choose to let it lurk, not forcibly convert the other party, but quietly absorb its experience points like a parasite.
The feasibility of this is much greater. He can let the slaves of his clan act as hunters in this regard, knock down those adventurers before they return to the surface, force them to drink Roland's black mud, and snatch the experience points that have not yet been converted.
If this is done once and for all, all the experience points gained by this adventurer from training will belong to Roland.
If all goes well, it won't be long before all the adventurers in Orario will be working for him alone. What a blessing that would be.
However, Roland was still a kind-hearted man after all, and he was not prepared to eat alone. After all, if there was no motivation at all, the adventurers would not have much motivation to exercise.
After all, to achieve sustainable development, sustainability must be the first priority.
Let's distribute the experience points in a ratio of 70:30 for now.
Moreover, even if there was no experience points, distributing the black mud was something Roland had already thought of.
During the Type-Moon period, although the identities of the six beasts had been officially integrated into Roland, they were still only juveniles after all.
In order to fully grow the seven heads and ten crowns of a great red dragon and become a complete form that can cause the destruction of humanity, it can not only devour the souls of servants, but also ordinary souls. However, compared to the souls of servants, this requires a much larger number.
After continuous upgrades and training, the quality of the souls of these adventurers in Orario is quite good.
If possible, Roland even planned to let ordinary people be infected by the evil of this world. After all, he was not picky about food.
The souls of adventurers in the dungeon can be eaten, and the souls of ordinary people outside the dungeon must not be spared. This is what can be called healthy!
Unfortunately, he has not yet found a suitable channel to spread the evil of this world on a large scale. Even if it is mixed into drinking water and food, there will always be some abnormalities in order to reach the amount that can devour souls. Others are not fools, and they are not so vigilant.
Therefore, Roland could only target the adventurers first.
It's not so bad for people who are parasitized by the black mud. The amount of soul consumed is insignificant compared to the amount of grace consumed to cover all the sacred texts, and the higher the level, the greater the consumption. Therefore, it is not easy to be detected.
However, the selection of clan members still needs to be carefully considered.
With the black mud and demonic energy around, Roland didn't have too many concerns about the strength and loyalty of his clan, but the selection of people was a problem.
After black mud converts the adventurers, their appearance and strength will undergo great changes. A normal clan, even if the main god is a little lazy, still needs to be renewed once in a while, so they will not fail to notice this abnormality.
Moreover, if possible, Roland wanted to directly take over the nest of a clan belonging to another main god and use other people's mature organizational structure directly. This would be much easier than looking for people one by one by himself.
Roland touched his chin, pondered, and began to gradually move up the ladder, thinking of options that met the requirements.
"This clan must be easy to control, its members must have a need for worldly demands, the main god must be completely rotten and not care about anything, but they must know how to accept guidance, and it is best if they have a certain identity and status, so that it will be very convenient for them to do things and even transform."
After listing all the conditions, Roland himself raised his eyebrows because of such harshness, but he actually thought of a suitable option.
Just as Roland was about to go back to collect relevant information, he suddenly stopped and looked at the corner ahead.
There, a male adventurer wearing leather armor, carrying a long sword on his back and with a very fierce look in his eyes, was scolding impatiently at a girl who was wearing a white robe and looked very petite, probably only about eleven or twelve years old at most. She was carrying a backpack that was several times larger than his body.
"It's really true that there is no coincidence in the world..."
The moment Roland had the idea, fate could not wait to give him the answer. This was the favor it bestowed on its only favored one.
"I am really lucky. So lucky that others... despair."