Chapter 12: Prince Kurobuta Raises his Level

　Efficient leveling without waste.

　In a character development game with a level system, this is the first thing that the player should consider.

　And the key to efficient leveling is finding the right enemy monsters for leveling.

　Of course, in order to raise your level, it’s necessary to gain experience points in battle.

　However, the experience points gained when defeated vary greatly depending on the race of the monster.

　Therefore, players search day and night for enemy monsters that can help level most efficiently by weighing the difficulty of subjugation against the acquired experience value.

The same happened in "Final Quest", and as a result of tens of thousands of players searching for it, the monster with the most experience point gain was discovered.

　This particular monster was extremely difficult to defeat, but it had a huge amount of experience value, over 100 times more than normal monsters.

　And it is--

"...... There you are."

　It was the golden snake-shaped monster that just appeared in front of Brad.

　--Orichalcum Snake.

　That is the name of this monster.

　Its height, when it raises its sickle-like head to threaten me, is as tall as a man's chest. It looks like a golden king cobra.?

Its level is 25-but the difficulty of defeating this monster called Orichalcum Snake cannot be measured by its level alone.

　Its body is just too hard.

　As its name suggests, its body surface is covered with the magical mineral Orichalcum, which is said to have the highest hardness in the world, so basically, both physical and magical attacks are almost nullified.

　It's not that you can't do damage, but it's so durable that it's almost impossible to shave one point of its 100 health points with a single attack. It's even been named by experts and adventurers as the "immortal snake " or  “undead snake” that can't be defeated.

　The only possibility of defeating it is to aim for a critical hit with a high level of physical attack power, but since it’s also very fast, you can’t even hit in the first place. Getting a critical hit was a Herculean task so you had to hope for a miracle.

　For that reason, when Brad asked around before visiting Sky Mountain, almost no one had ever subdued this monster.

　The only exception was Glace, who said, "Hmmm, I remember there was a hard snake... ☆ I killed it, but... ☆", but that was an exception because he was one of humanity's strongest monsters and used an extra skill to defeat the Orichalcon snake.

　Anyway, the monster in front of me, the Orichalcum Snake, is definitely not a monster that can be defeated with Brad’s current strength in the common sense of this world.

　But Brad was an out-of-the-box irregular being to this world, and he knew how to defeat this monster- with a skill.

　And I’ve learned that skill from Glace, and have already mastered it.

I can beat it as the current Brad.

(I have only one shot)

　However, there’s a high chance of failure.

　The Orichalcum Snake has a timid personality.

　Thanks to its overwhelming defensive power, it has almost no natural enemies, but if it notices the approach of other creatures, it will try to escape by itself.

　In fact, the Orichalcum Snake in front of him already noticed his approach and is wary. Given its agility, it would escape if not defeated by the first strike.

　I probably only have one chance.

"..."

　Brad gently touches his sword so as not to agitate it, and took an iai(Sword draw) stance.

　Then, he lets the magic flow out of his body and visualizes the skill he’s about to activate.

　　In this world, imagery is very important for activating magic and skills.

　The more concretely you can imagine the magic or skill you want to activate, the more effective the magic or skill will be.

"--" Penetrate Slash "!!!"

　Immediately after, Brad activated the skill.

　The effect of the skill is activated, and Brad's sword flashes at an ultra-high-speed that ordinary people cannot see, and attacks Orichalcum Snake.

　The slash that would normally be repelled by the Orichalcum armor, however, digs into the snake’s body.

　And with a--SPLAT!　The Orichalcum Snake's body, which had an ironclad defense, was split in half.

　The Orichalcum Snake, which was divided into two halves, writhed several times like a fish washed ashore, and then stopped moving. It seems to have died.

(Yes!)

　Brad involuntarily struck a guts pose.

　-"Penetrate Slash".

　This was the identity of the new skill taught by Glace.

　It's a swordsmanship skill that can penetrate the defenses of even the hardest objects and inflict damage. It was a skill that seemed to exist solely for the purpose of hunting orichalcum snakes.

　Suddenly, a faint light came out of the corpse of Orichalcum Snake, which rushed into brad's body.

　It's probably the experience from the Orichalcum Snake.

　Eventually, Brad's body emits a faint light, and he feels that something fundamental to him-something like his soul-has advanced to the next level.

　With the enormous amount of experience from the Orichalcum Snake, his level went up.

(... I just defeated one)

　To be honest, I couldn't believe it.

　No, considering the experience points required to level up and the experience points given by the Orichalcum Snake, leveling up is quite natural.

　However, it’s not so easy to accept that the level that I finally raised by training desperately with Glace every day could be raised by only defeating one monster.

　However, the level system was always such a thing originally.

Your level goes up according to the experience value obtained, regardless of the process, effort put in, or even hardship faced to obtain the experience. And you get stronger according to your level. That's it.

　Well, brad was able to subdue it because he knew how to due to the knowledge from his previous life, but without knowing, this monster called Orichalcum Snake wouldn’t have been defeated even if he took a lifetime. With that in mind, this enormous amount of experience is quite natural.

(Don't forget to collect the drops ...)

　 Brad cleanly strips the Orichalcum armor of the Orichalcum Snake and collects it in a bag.

　Orichalcum is a precious mineral that can only be found in a few labyrinths in the world. During the "Final Quest" work, it could be used to create equipment in the final stages, and it is bought and sold at an exorbitantly high price. It has similar value in this world, and there’s no doubt that it will bring a considerable amount if sold.

　The Orichalcum Snake gives such a huge amount of experience and also brings a huge amount of wealth on subjugation-it’s a "good" monster in a double sense.

(At this rate, I’ll be earning lots of experience and money!)

　Gamers are creatures that feel tremendous pleasure in leveling up and acquiring items, and Brad was already incredibly excited.

　He should have been tired of exploring the labyrinth for a long time, but his fatigue was blown away.

　But just as he was about to go in search of his next target.

"Okay, we’re going, brace yourselves nya!”

A girl's boisterous voice reached my ears from ahead.

　When I looked toward the voice, I saw a party of about five armed men.

(It doesn't look like usual adventurers )

　If you look closely, all members of the party have beast ears and tails.

　Considering the unique light armor with a lot of exposure, they must be cait sith, the cat people. There must be a number of settlements scattered in the forests around Sky Mountain. They should be from one of those settlements.

　When I use the level scouter to check, their levels are between 15 and 20.

　　Considering that this world is real and fighting monsters is directly related to real-life death,  you have to really be on the edge to explore this labyrinth.

.

(Funny, the cat people are supposed to be a conservative race that don’t willingly take risks, but what are they doing here ?)

　As brad slowly approached, the girl who seemed to be the leader, and also the owner of the voice, turned to me curiously.

　The girl was small and thin, with a cute cat-like face that had an air of cheekiness to it.

"Wait, huh...... Mina !?"

　Brad took a closer look at the girl's face, and then his eyes widened in astonishment.

   He was familiar with the girl's face.

　No, it's not just a familiar level. It was a face he had seen more times than his family and friends.

　To be specific, my memories of her were not from the memories of the 14 years I lived as Brad, but from the memories of my previous life as Kurokawa Hayato.

(Two unique curved swords at the waist ......there’s no doubt)

　She is the twin sword fighter, Mina Libert.

She was one of those who joined the hero’s party in final quest.

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