A True Warrior 1
Even a hundred-odd healthy, sturdy goats and sheep are helpless once a predator comes crashing in. And when that predator isn't some starving fox but a pair of thoroughly enraged tigers, the outcome is even more one-sided.
A hundred-odd Intermediate-grade Naga could hiss and spit at us, thrashing their serpentine lower halves and contorting their ugly human faces all they liked — that was the full extent of their resistance.
Every time Manash's dark-blue aura-wreathed trident swept through the air, every black Naga body within a five-meter radius snapped like a spent rubber band and tumbled to the floor as Mana Stones. Anything that slammed into my shield went bouncing through the air like a rubber ball and turned into Mana Stones mid-flight.
"This clearing seems fine. The passage down isn't… dark and gloomy either. Same as up here."
"Come to think of it, you said you noticed something was off last time because the passage down from the collapsed clearing was pitch-black, right?"
"Yeah. Once I thought about how dark it was compared to the clearing, it felt wrong. If it was going to be dark, the clearing should've been dark too."
"Sssertainly… bright… thisss place… isss sstrange."
We swept the black Naga clean, then crushed and burned the flesh-sacs that looked like eggshells — the things that had been mass-producing them and serving as their food. The whole process wasn't a life-or-death struggle so much as simple, repetitive housework, like tidying a room.
Every so often a desperate fist or thrashing tail came flying in with real weight behind it, but all that accomplished was hastening their own deaths. Forget the reflection-damage passive — bare flesh against a body wreathed in vivid blue aura was never going to end well.
Punches and tail-strikes that could have caved in an ordinary person's skull were meaningless flailing against flesh reinforced by mana and overflowing with aura. One Upper-grade fighter would already have made this leisurely; with two of us, it felt less like tigers among sheep and more like a tank rolling over infantry.
"If you're done cleaning up, let's head down."
"Whatever's hiding down there, I hope it comes out right away. This descending passage is way too long."
"It is pretty long, yeah."
Even after we'd completely wiped the first clearing, the ceiling hadn't so much as trembled. Convinced this place wasn't going to collapse, we entered the passage again. The one silver lining was that the gently spiraling tunnel only went on like that at the start.
Maybe the long entrance passage was just camouflage, and after that there was no need to hide anything. Unlike the first stretch, where the slope had been so gentle it took dozens of minutes just to realize we were going downhill, following the slanted dirt path this time brought us to the next clearing in under five minutes.
"Hey, this is probably meant to be monster-wave content. These ones look a bit bigger than the ones on B1. Still smaller than Manash, though."
The minor snag was that this cavern, too, was packed with black Naga — and, as Han Se-ah had observed through the stream camera, they were a little larger.
Manash stood at 2.5 meters; the Naga on B1 had been around 2.1. The ones on this floor looked about 2.3 meters — roughly half a head taller. Unlike the B1 Naga, which had clustered together like newborn snake hatchlings, these stood in neat ranks like soldiers, long spears gripped in their hands.
Of course, cleaning them up followed the exact same procedure as B1. Dark-blue aura danced, vivid blue aura tore through without restraint, and the Naga went tumbling across the floor or bouncing into the air, popping into Mana Stones one after another.
"Yep, it's a monster wave! The money's ridiculously good!"
Even thrusting spears carved from tree roots instead of bare fists and tails, they were still only Intermediate-grade. If anything, the ones that stabbed and then died to reflection damage kept dropping, and the clearing went faster than B1.
…This wasn't a level you could clear without an Upper-grade adventurer.
A hundred-odd muscular 2.3-meter warriors who knew how to use weapons. Five Intermediate-grade adventurers in a party couldn't handle this. It was like a monster wave designed to warn you to raise your companions' level before facing the Floor 40 boss.
Whether Manash would show up to help other players, I had no idea — but by average standards, this was a fight a full party of 4★ characters would have to stake their lives on. Katie was a 4★ and still couldn't project aura, so maybe 5★ was the Upper-grade threshold.
"There's another passage over there!"
"Let's grab every Mana Stone first. They're too valuable to leave behind."
Watching Grace bustle around the clearing, scooping up Mana Stones and stuffing them into Han Se-ah's inventory with the single-minded conviction that all of this was money, I found myself thinking. What if the party had Intermediate-grade Roland instead of Upper-grade Roland?
Manash would still rampage alone with his aura flaring, but with only one of us instead of two, cleaning up would take longer.
That would naturally leave a few dozen remaining troops free to pour into the clearing after us. I'd hold the choke with my shield, Katie would support, and Grace and Han Se-ah would pick them off one by one.
The problem was that the sheer numbers would be too much for a scout-type archer and a support-type mage to handle. Still, Manash would probably finish sweeping the stragglers before our whole party got wiped.
In short, the Floor 40 cutoff was 4★. Using Grace from her 3★ days as a baseline, a 3★ party would get overrun and wiped before Manash even arrived.
…I really wished the party's levels would climb a little higher soon.
I wanted the party's levels to rise, but personal quests weren't updating. Mulling that over as we walked, we arrived at the third cavern.
"…Biggg…?"
"What the hell is that? A boss monster?"
B1 had held newborn Naga. B2 had held Naga warriors lined up like soldiers. B3 held a Naga… giant.
How it planned to leave through these narrow tunnels was anyone's guess. It looked more than twice Manash's size — bigger even than the ogre we'd fought before — so roughly six or seven meters tall. Factoring in the serpentine lower body coiled on the floor, it might stretch to ten meters fully extended.
A black Naga giant occupying the clearing alone, yet projecting a presence more oppressive than a hundred-odd regular Naga. The moment I felt that ominous pressure, I understood.
"That one… hasss… assscended."
"Ascended? You mean that giant can use aura too?"
That thing had just stepped into the threshold of Upper-grade.
Its black-stained scales made it look less like a living creature and more like a statue that belonged in front of some Southeast Asian temple. We'd stopped at the mouth of the passage the moment we spotted it, so it hadn't moved — but the second we entered the clearing, those eyes would snap open. That much was certain.
So my guess that 4★ was the bare minimum had been right; they were dangling an Upper-grade monster right in front of us. A kind of milestone, telling you not to push past Floor 40 into 41 until you'd reached the Upper-grade realm yourself.
"Alone… would be… difficult."
Manash's mutter backed up my theory.
Lower-grade, Intermediate-grade, Upper-grade — or low, mid, high, whatever the labels — fantasy loved sorting mages, knights, and even monsters into three neat tiers. Natural enough, since NPCs couldn't read levels as numbers the way players could.
Born with average human physical ability: Lower-grade. Honing magic or martial arts to the level of a skilled practitioner: Intermediate-grade. And when the mana you'd accumulated finally projected beyond the body: Upper-grade.
Sure, some novel protagonist might be Intermediate-grade with techniques so absurd they beat Upper-grades anyway — but the baseline was still drawn that way. And the problem with this classification system was that an Upper-grade person could not one-v-one an Upper-grade monster.
A Lower-grade monster, a Lower-grade could handle alone — it was just fighting with human-level flesh.
An Intermediate-grade monster, an Intermediate-grade could handle alone — martial arts existed precisely to overcome differences in physical ability.
An Upper-grade monster, an Upper-grade could not handle alone — the gap in mana wasn't something technique could bridge.
"Then we fight it together."
"Hah… hunting an Upper-grade monster. Back in the mercenary company, I only ever got to watch."
A red-belt in taekwondo might beat a black-belt. A Gold player in League might win a mid-lane duel against a Diamond. But learning kendo didn't mean you could take a wooden sword and cut through a steel pillar — that was physically impossible. Upper-grade monsters were beings saturated with mana, so unless you were one of the vanishingly rare few strong enough to simply crush them, the standard approach was multiple Upper-grades working together.
If Intermediate-grade numbers could push back an Upper-grade, I never would have spent ten years in Roland's body living out some isekai reincarnation overpowered-protagonist novel. Upper-grade had to face Upper-grade, matched in weight class and mana capacity.
Manash was Upper-grade. That giant was Upper-grade. What remained was the difference in innate physical ability and mana quality. The fight was probably tuned so that without player help, Manash would lose to the giant. Sensing that instinctively, the rest of the party stirred with fighting spirit, their will to battle rising.
"…Jussst… Roland… you handle it… no?"
"Uh, Roland? …Can you take it alone?"
Manash, for his part, seemed perfectly content to dump the bothersome burden on me so he could go looking for the source of the corruption.