Noah bathed in a field of gore and bones, swinging silver flashes of death before matching them with his speed.
As he fought with all his might, Noah gradually felt his body grow hot and his mind grow clearer.
He forgot the past, the present, and everything else, listening to the will of his body alone. Guided by the powerful instincts granted by Ode to Spring, he swung his blade.
An astonishing heat surged from within him and seeped through his skin. Like a furnace, it tempered his mind and body, ultimately fusing them together seamlessly.
When the last monster fell with the ground trembling beneath it, Noah swung his sword and looked around—but not a single monster remained in sight.
Within the range of his vision, just barely cleared as sword energy swept through and shredded the mist, the plants and trees stood silent. The killing intent was gone, and the surroundings seemed almost eerily quiet.
After taking a deep breath, Noah looked toward the distant cliff, sheathed his sword, and walked toward the two approaching figures.
Although Ais was supposed to act as support, Riveria also carried a huge backpack.
She was a mage, but her strength was no less than that of other level-five adventurers who specialized in close combat, allowing her to bear most of the load.
Ais, carrying a slightly smaller backpack, had taken it upon herself to collect magic stones and dropped items. At that moment, she was scurrying about like a little golden mouse.
With a Young Dragon scale larger than she was balanced atop her head, the golden-haired girl looked like an adorable little sprite sheltering beneath a lotus leaf after the rain.
"How was it?"
Taking the waterskin Riveria handed him, Noah drank deeply, then paused to assess how his body felt.
"Mm, honestly, it wasn't much of a strain."
Even with numerous lingering injuries, and with strength and stamina among his weaknesses, the monsters on the twelfth floor had posed little challenge to Noah.
And despite spending the past three hours running and fighting without pause, practically plowing through every floor from the first to the twelfth, he still felt as if he had boundless strength left.
His body and mind had mostly finished adjusting to each other, but he still felt there was more to be done.
"Still not enough, huh?"
Though she had been prepared for it, after witnessing Noah fight his way from the first floor to the twelfth, Riveria was so shocked that she had grown numb to it.
What shocked her wasn't that the monsters on the upper floors had failed to put any pressure on Noah. She had expected that.
What amazed Riveria was how quickly Noah was improving.
She had experienced the discomfort that came with a sudden increase in strength herself, and knew it took time and dedicated practice to overcome.
Yet, as far as Riveria knew, nobody could adapt faster than Noah.
Whether it was his control over his strength or his agility as he darted and shifted through the fight, he became more practiced and precise with every passing second. By the end, he was barely wasting any strength at all.
Combat was never simply a contest of strength, speed, or magic. An attack that couldn't hit its target was meaningless.
Compared to adventurers of the same level, monsters often had several times—or even dozens of times—their strength. A single hit was all it took to decide the outcome.
But for all their immense strength, monsters were unable to hit adventurers.
Adventurers, meanwhile, often had to dodge, but could usually land a decisive blow of their own.
That was skill—the secret that allowed the beings of the Lower World to overcome stronger foes and defeat monsters.
And as for Noah's combat skills, Riveria felt there was little she could teach him... No, that was wrong. He had already far surpassed her.
After all, he had been fighting for so long, yet not a single drop of blood had touched him. That said everything.
"Still, in my opinion, it would be best to call it a day..."
Watching Noah's eyes sparkle with eagerness, Riveria sighed and took some of the load from Ais as she came over.
"...But judging by the look on your face, you definitely don't want to leave just yet, do you?"
"Of course not. I haven't even used magic yet. I was focusing on training..."
As he spoke, Noah blinked, then slowly lowered his head to look at Ais, who was leaning toward him, her delicate, pale nose twitching slightly.
"Ais, what are you doing?"
No matter how Noah looked at it, Ais's movements just now seemed like she was sniffing him.
If their positions were reversed, Noah was sure that the moment he did that, Riveria would punish him.
"...Noah smells nice..."
Coming to her senses, Ais's cheeks flushed pink. Like a child caught doing something wrong by a parent, she lowered her head.
She was still young, but she could already tell what she should and shouldn't do.
The girl knew, at least to some extent, that what she had just done was inappropriate.
But it really did smell nice.
That faint fragrance reminded Ais of a green meadow deep in her memories, where white flowers swayed in the breeze...
Feeling guilty, Ais instinctively glanced at Riveria, only to find that she wasn't scolding her. There was, however, a complicated look on her face.
Riveria had noticed the unusual "fragrance" coming from Noah long ago.
Before they entered the Dungeon, she had to be very close to smell it.
But as Noah kept fighting, he never developed the sweat smell she would have expected. Instead, the fragrance grew clearer.
That proved the scent wasn't perfume clinging to Noah's clothes. It came from him.
Even stranger, its intensity didn't change with distance. It was always faint, hovering between barely perceptible and impossible to ignore.
Even Riveria, who had seen a great deal, was bewildered by this.
She had heard of potions and unusual races that could make people dazed or control their minds through scent alone, but she was perfectly clear-headed.
If anything, she felt unusually relaxed and calm.
Especially in this blood-soaked place, breathing in the faint fragrance from Noah brought none of her usual mild discomfort. Instead, she felt as though she were in a tranquil forest on a summer night—utterly comfortable and at peace.
What was going on?
A bewitching scent that cleared the mind?
She was certainly learning something new.
Boom, resound—
"Fragrance?"
Hesitantly, Noah sniffed his arm, but couldn't smell anything unusual.
He didn't smell of sweat, but that had always been the case. Even when he was drenched in sweat, the smell was faint.
But he couldn't smell the "fragrance" Ais was talking about, either.
Completely baffled, Noah looked at Riveria.
The moment Noah glanced at her, Riveria knew what he wanted to ask.
But as she recalled her own actions earlier, a powerful sense of shame welled up in the Elf Royalty's heart. More importantly, she was afraid Ais might remember what had happened that morning.
If that came up, she would go from an elegant elf to a crude dwarf, digging a hole right there and burying herself in it.
So she tossed Noah a healing potion and, without giving him a chance to speak, hurriedly grabbed Ais and turned away.
"All right, weren't you planning to keep going? Let's pick up the pace."
Noah caught the potion without thinking. As the crystalline blue liquid sloshed inside the bottle, the bitter taste of the healing potion filled his mind.
He immediately forgot what he had meant to ask.
After some hesitation, Noah silently tucked the potion into his waist pouch.
Training meant pushing himself to his limits, after all.
As Noah and the others walked through the mist-shrouded eleventh floor, other adventurers finally appeared around the trio who had charged ahead the whole way.
"...Damn, this is unreal. Why are there so few monsters today?"
"I promised Miss Aster from the Wind Moon Pavilion I'd bring her a gift!"
"Is the Dungeon planning to pull something big? Maybe we should head back?"
After wandering through the fog, Noah and the others passed through a long, sloping tunnel and eventually reached the middle floors' Rock Cave Labyrinth.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of gray rock, and the air was thick with dampness.
The passage was straight, but so long that they couldn't see the end. Vertical shafts opened up in various corners.
Adventurers often slowed down while passing through here, only to be surrounded by monsters and suffer casualties.
This was the thirteenth floor, known as the First Line of Death.
The difference between monsters on the middle floors and those on the upper floors wasn't just their strength, size, numbers, and spawn rate. The biggest difference was that they no longer relied solely on close-range attacks. They had ranged attacks now, too.
For adventurers unaccustomed to the middle floors' intensity, both the Hellhounds that spat fire and the Horned Rabbits that hurled stone axes were formidable foes, capable of inflicting serious injuries if one let their guard down.
Even Ais had never been here before, and couldn't help looking around with wide eyes.
Under the faint phosphorescent glow, Noah and the others sped through the straight rocky passage.
Whenever a Horned Rabbit appeared nearby, Noah dealt with it in a single sword stroke.
Eventually, the three of them reached a huge chamber.
All kinds of jagged rocks covered the high ceiling, which was supported by stone pillars.
Beyond the many pillars lay layers of phosphorescence and darkness, stretching into a distance the eye could not reach.
They risked being surrounded by monsters, but the spacious chamber offered more room to maneuver in a fight and made it easier to work with teammates.
Noah had barely begun to survey the chamber when countless ominous, blood-red lights appeared in the darkness.
Their uneven black skin made them look as if they had emerged from purgatory. They were as large as calves, with crimson eyes full of mindless ferocity.
There were about twenty of them, along with several times as many Horned Rabbits.
Even though the rabbits were covered in pure white fur and looked quite cute, it was still unnerving when more than sixty of them glared over, each gripping a stone axe that gleamed with a sharp edge.
"Mm, is this the Dungeon's friendly greeting?"
After seeing Riveria shield Ais, Noah drew his sword and charged forward with a cautious—but not overly cautious—air.
When he was still dozens of meters from the monsters, a distance that would have been perfectly safe on the upper floors, the black Hellhounds raised their heads and spat dense gouts of flame from their mouths, which were packed with fangs.
As powerful monsters rated level two in potential, Hellhounds could easily melt ordinary armor with their flames.
Adventurers generally bought Fire Spirit Protective Cloth, which offered strong resistance to fire, before trying to explore the middle floors.
But the fifty-million-Valis armor Noah wore hadn't cost that much for nothing. Fire resistance was naturally one of its standard features.
Of course, Noah didn't need to stand there and take the Hellhounds' flames.
He swung his hand and unleashed a sword strike, raising a gust of wind. The immense pressure sent the flames surging back, transforming them into a firestorm even more violent than before.
The Hellhounds clearly hadn't expected to be struck by their own flames. They scattered in all directions, howling in pain.
The Horned Rabbits fared even worse.
Their combat ability was about the same as that of ordinary monsters on the upper floors. They were rated level two solely for their agility and ability to fight in groups.
Once the flames engulfed them, the adorable bunnies didn't even have time to throw the stone axes in their paws. They were reduced to ash amid shrieks and wails, leaving behind charred rabbit heads.
Taking advantage of the monsters' disorganized formation, Noah charged in with his sword and unleashed Death Sword Dance.
The monsters on the middle floors were much harder and tougher than those on the upper floors, but under Noah's blade they were still sliced apart like butter, their blood spraying in every direction.
From time to time, Hard-Shelled Rats came rolling at him at high speed like cannonballs, curled up inside their hard scales.
But even their armor, among the strongest defenses on the upper and middle floors, couldn't stop death from reaching them.
After a bout of slaughter, Noah stopped, feeling he had gradually gotten used to the strength of the middle-floor monsters.
After exchanging a glance with Riveria, he gripped his sword hilt, took a deep breath, and began to chant.
Before you continue