A Groundless Conjecture

Any newly advanced newcomer.

In theory, their strength should be somewhat weaker than those who had already advanced long ago and spent years immersed in and weathering their corresponding level.

This was experience, accumulation, and a certain kind of common sense.

It belonged to the sort of thing everyone considered normal.

A fact of life that basically nobody questioned.

Even Transcendent Stage Awakened were the same.

They even believed it more firmly.

The reason was very simple.

Back when everyone was at a lower level, forget about newly advanced people defeating old-timers.

Even newly advanced people challenging those above their level was not considered a major matter.

The utterly mediocre masses.

There were a great many of them.

Those mediocre people whose talents were unremarkable, whose wills were weak, whose minds were dull, and whose experience was lacking... often made up the mainstream at every level, even the vast majority. That was normal.

And precisely because of this.

Since the other party was, at the end of the day, merely a thoroughly mediocre person with nothing particularly outstanding about them, it was only natural for them to be easily defeated by a supremely talented newcomer, challenged across levels, and trampled into an insignificant stepping stone. There was nothing remarkable about it.

That was the helplessness of the mediocre.

Knowing the essence of the problem, yet feeling deeply and helplessly powerless.

Just like the goblins outside the entrance to a beginner's village.

Don't ask why they were classic beginner monsters.

They themselves didn't want things to be this way either.

But they clearly had no way to change it.

When their abilities fell short, they could only be like this.

Helplessly letting people farm experience...

This kind of newcomer effortlessly crushing old-timers across levels became increasingly difficult once one's strength reached