Tatsuya awkwardly smiled, his lips twitching more than normal. "Message received and understood, Miss Thandria," he politely bowed before backing away, deciding to save his conquest of her for later. The other girls, however, were still swooning over his fight and the way he moved as well as spoke like a refined gentleman. 'One gets away, but the others come dancing into your arms,' he thought as he inwardly smiled a lecherous kind of smile.
While Tatsuya slithered his way over to the female Heroes with a plan to get them into his bed and his harem, Ryota collapsed to the ground with all the color missing from his face. "Lose…" he mumbled. "How could I possibly lose…? I am the Main Character…" suddenly, he recalled what Priestess Thandria said about leveling up in a dungeon. "Yes, that must be it! I have to level up and acquire a better cheat! Yes, that is why I lost!! I simply haven't unleashed my full potential!!!"
With his spirit ignited to the fullest, Ryota leaped up off the ground and rushed over to the Priestess, requesting that they head off to the Dungeons right away!
Akira, on the other hand, realized that he had a lot more growing to do if he wanted to one day compete with something of the caliber of Tatuysa's Reality Sever S-Rank Unique Skill. If he truly wanted to court the school president and obtain her affection, then he had to do better. Haruto, the muscle head, was thinking along the same lines, but he yearned for greater prowess with the blade, not some silly woman.
Everyone else also had new goals they wished to accomplish, so it was with steeled minds that they followed behind the Priestess, ready to see what would happen when they leveled up!
It was unknown what greater power would do to this lot of Heroes, but for the one who was discarded at the very beginning, greater power was just a means to an end.
—-------------------
Within the depths of the Forbidden Zone, Ghost Town's Inner Circle, surrounded by a sea of B-Rank and C-Rank monster corpses.
"The monsters — they never stop coming," Romulus said coldly, his eyes sharing the same level of coldness. "If not for the fact that after achieving Level 25, my status restores to full condition with each level up, then I would've run out of MP ages ago."
There were a few things that he learned in the few hours that he's been chopping away at monsters. First and foremost were the stats themselves, which may have been set where it seemed like each point was worth the exact same. When, in actuality, every point allotted him a different amount of advancement in that specific stat. For example, his Strength Stat at 1000, when compared to the 500 it was previously at, was like the difference between heaven and earth. The difference was nowhere close to being double or half of something.
The next thing Romulus learned was that his MP worked in the same way, as no one point was worth the same amount. Then, there was the monster and EXP situation, where the higher his level, the less he got from lower level monsters. This essentially forced him to keep on fighting stronger foes, bleed and get injured, obtain a few BP, and then hope for marginal amounts of EXP.
So far, his system interface has evolved into something that looks like…
BLING!
—-------------
[Name: Romulus] — [Level: 34]
[Job: None]
[Title: None]
[MP: 4,700/12,000]
[BP: 97]
|Strength: 94 (470) | Defense: 83 (830)|
|Intelligence: 77 (385) | Agility: 97 (485)|
{[Skills: [EX-Rank Truck-kun's Retribution], [S-Rank Magical Eye (Lvl 3)], [S-Rank Minimap (Lvl 3)], [S-Rank Elemental Dominator (Lvl 2)], [S-Rank Elemental Dominator Transformation (Lvl 2)], [A-Rank Rudimentary Ascendant Glow (Lvl 2)], [A-Rank Elemental Condenser (Lvl 2)], [A-Rank Hyper Regeneration (Lvl 2)], [B-Rank Twin Cleaver (Lvl 3).....]
—-------------
A lot of Romulus's skills hadn't increased by much, even with all the fighting he was doing. But considering that the higher the rank of the skill, the harder it was to level it up, the seemingly insignificant gains became a lot more significant.
"Yet, there are still a few things that I'm confused about," he said thoughtfully. "Firstly, I haven't obtained another element in all this time, which is odd, especially when considering that I have wished for different types of sensations and such on more than one occasion."
Romulus's leading hypothesis about this subject was that there needed to be more fulfilled conditions. With the dark element, for example, he had to kill the Grimwatcher and crush its B-Rank Core. However, when it came to his other elements, acquiring them was far easier. It was to the point where all he had to do was wish to become closer to whatever he was feeling or wanting, and bam, an appropriate element would come to him. Now, though, things were getting a little confusing.
"Even if I spent all day thinking about how I want to fly or control the air, I will still never obtain an affinity with the air element," Romulus mulled. "Moreover, the only type of elemental monsters in this place are of the Darkness and Physical Elements, making it virtually impossible to find an Air Element Magic Core," he sighed.
There were several times where he found the lost loot and remains of what were clearly humans. Yet, even after searching them, he was unable to obtain a single Magic Core. Originally, he just assumed they were quite rare and not very common for the humans of this world to have. However, after massacring hundreds of B-Rank and C-Rank monsters, around one in every ten of them gave him a Dark Element Magic Core, which subsequently improved his affinity with the Darkness Element.
While brooding over this matter, Romulus looked around at all the scattered corpses. He felt it to be a massive waste to just leave them here to rot or get eaten by other monsters, but what could he do about it? It wasn't like he had a Skill that could—
….