A protagonist situation

You know, when I came down to the twelfth floor, I didn't expect... This.

Right now, I was watching a black wyvern rampaging on floor twelve. I went into the dungeon and have been here for a week already since floor level wasn't much of a challenge, I went down another level and remained here for three days...

I decided to stay here, develop water breathing and pick up my chest plate later, but... Now I wish I would have returned.

The giant lizard flicked its tail and took down a giant rock pillar.

I sighed, the mist wasn't helping, much and now, it's looking at me... Oh wait, it's looking at me.

I jumped to the side, avoiding a pillar of fire that the bastard shot at me... This bitch!

My eyes narrowed, and I dashed forward while taking a breath. With a jump, I brought my body down, performing a flame wheel, on its head.

"I shall have your scales as armour and your head as a souvenir to hang in my room for your foolishness."

It just roared at my face in response. Now was the best time to do what I did with Hard armoured monsters, I took their shells first before killing them, the drops don't disappear. I'm honestly surprised that others don't do this more often, probably not strong enough to do so without dying.

My hit landed on its eye, and I left a gash that spread to the back of its skull.

Crying out in pain, It tried to twist its body to swat me with its tail.

...Well if it wanted to help me gather the scales I wouldn't complain.

I sheathed my sword since this was a quick slash, a quick draw should be able to add momentum.

I internally imagine the surface of the water, reflecting the moon, flowing smoothly... able to change shape depending on the circumstances,

the moon shone brightly...

I quickly drew my sword and slash swiftly in a singular horizontal motion in a crescent shape, creating numerous chaotic crescent blades...

The hell?

The tail was cut off without any resistance, and it flopped to the ground. The wyvern roared in pain and crawled away from me. I looked at my sword with raised eyebrows, that was Moon breathing. That was the breathing I spend hours researching... because I kinda liked its user. I know all of its sixteen forms, I know what they do, I just need to recreate them... Oh, the possibilities... I can create new breathing forms...

I blurred and turned to the lizard who just tried to slash me. Not only having one eye, two legs and two wings... there are scales on the legs and wings.

With a breath, I dashed forward, preparing my blade. ducking a slash from its winged claw, I slashed upward, my blade hit scales and the following fire melted it enough for my sword to cut through.

I avoid the now detached half of the wing, not wanting to be trapped under it, My blade went back into the sheath and unleash another crescent-shaped slash, tearing off the rest of the wing.

I don't stop moving as I got close to one of the legs and swung... One thing that I didn't take into consideration was that sudden unbalance, the loss of a wing would cause the wyvern... it was falling right on me.

... I took a breath and used False Rainbow to get out of there and watched as the wyvern fell down on the ground and struggled to get up...

(Mission failed successfully!)

Not now brain.

Releasing a sigh, I got ready to cut off the rest of the limbs. Looks like I would be replacing the armour sooner than expected... What a waste of money.

-An hour later-

"...You fought a black wyvern..."

"Yes."

"And you managed to cut off its limbs, take the scales while you were at it..."

"Yes."

"...Anything else?"

I developed the first form of moon breathing but you don't need to know that.

"I haven't encountered anything else... Unfortunately."

A tick mark appeared on Loki's forehead.

"Unfortunately?! You could have died!"

"...I thought it was weak..."

I got a slap on the back of my head for that.

"You absorbed so much excelia that your stats reached A, and you tell me that you thought it was easy?"

Neat.

She got off my back and handed me the paper, nothing changed except for the stats going over 800, The magic stat was still 0 but that was fine...

I stood up and grabbed my clothes and sword.

"Let me guess, you're going back into the dungeon..."

I looked at her, blinked, raised an eyebrow and smirked.

"...No, Im going to celebrate-"

She looked at me with something resembling hope, excitement and trepidation.

"By giving the smith these scales so he can make me better armour."

She threw a pillow at me.

___

I get a distinct feeling that Im going to be dragged to a tavern the next time. After giving the smith the scales. I returned to the mansion and went straight into the fire resistant basement.

I was planning to dance my way up to S rank and break the limit of that, however, someone is stopping me from following my plan.

"Train with me."

...

"Kay."

And just like that, I broke through the S rank stat limit on my second day of training with Ais.

Even though I was level one, she used level three strength...

The number of hits I took in those six hours is easily more than I took in two weeks of my dungeon crawling.

And at the end of it all, I had one thing to say...

Worth it.

The first thing that Broke through the S rank was Endurance, which is currently SSS that sits at 1168.

Ais was brutal.

My dexterity shot up but not as much as my endurance, it was sitting at SS rank 1034.

My strength sat comfortably at 1012 and agility was at 1028.

At some point, Loki just gave up, she stopped reacting to my absurd growth and just accepted my weirdness.

On the third day, Ais went into the dungeon and Riveria was keeping me company, sometimes watching me swing my sword, sometimes reading.

The silence didn't bother me as I performed my forms, but the same couldn't be said about the female elf.

"Is there a reason why you are repeating these movements endlessly? You have performed the movements without change for hours now."

I didn't stop when answering.

"And is there a reason you read that book repeatedly for hours? I've seen you start over for the third time now."

She deadpanned at me. What was her problem? Im training here to increase my stats and perfect my swordsmanship and here she sits watching me work my ass off. Someone needs to check their priorities.

"Fine then, May I ask you some questions? I have been wondering about falna and magic."

She nodded if only to pass the time

"Why do lower level monsters don't give any Excelia to high-level adventurers?"

She looked thoughtful for a bit, seemingly sorting her thoughts.

"Well, let's take goblins as an example, They are a good way to get stats for fresh adventurers because of their Excelia, but when an adventurer reaches level six like Finn, they need a better quality to gain any boost to their stats..."

So Quality equals more stats?

My progress suddenly made sense now... Since I can feel the Excelia each time I kill a monster, so when I felt the difference between a goblin and Warshadow, I felt that it didn't feel the same, after that, each time I killed a monster, I would feel the same way I would when I absorbed an Excelia of the strongest monster I killed... My body is boosting the Excelia I receive... Talk about broken...

Judging from the way it works, I need to know how it feels to gain the boost...

Having a human body is a limit!...

...

...

Nope, didn't work, maybe I need to feel divinity first.

I spent the rest of the day asking the high elf questions about magic.

I needed to level up soon, Because if the Limit break broke every limit to the stats, then I can be a level one with the strength of level three, and levels do give developmental skills, like "blacksmithing" for blacksmiths, "magic" to regenerate "Mind".

Levels are useful.

She had to leave about two hours later but I was satisfied. My questions were answered and now I knew what I needed to do...

I need to level up and find something called a "Grimoire"... Or I can just create my own quick cast spell... That's going to be a little troublesome.

"Well, time to level up."

I went to find Loki, the wyvern I killed was impressive enough.

When I found her, I was quite disappointed in her state.

"I said, stop."

Looks like Ais was back from the dungeon... And Loki was trying to grope her...

This is my life now.

___

"There, your a level two now, congrats..."

she doesn't really seem happy about it though.

"Are you mad that I broke the record?"

Surprisingly, she shakes her head in denial and stands up.

"What will you do now?"

I thought for a second, I planned to train until my armour was done and then go down deeper in the dungeon... but I need time to get used to my level two strength now.

"I will train some more..."

The redhead sighed like she was expecting it, but if she expected the answer, what was the point of asking it?

"Giyu, tell me, do you know why gods descended?"

I remained silent, I haven't thought about it and never bothered to research it. Taking my silence as an answer, she continued.

"We had everything we ever wanted, we never got tired, we never had to eat, just laze around and exist. Some of us watched humans and other races for entertainment, we watched them fall in love, we watched them live their short lives, and some reached the amount of strength to defeat anyone and then accept death like it was the best thing that could have happened in their life."

I listened, wondering what she was getting at.

"We wanted to know what it felt like, so some of us descended. I descend, meet you, and see you doing what the gods were doing in heaven, just existing and trying to pass time by occupying ourselves with something, in your case, you go into the dungeon."

She was right, I was going into the dungeon more times in two weeks than an exploration type familia did in three months.

"Just try to live, because, unlike the gods, you can't live forever to put it off for later..."

She walked out of the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts...

I stood up, put on my clothes, armour and walked out of the door. I gathered the leather version of my armour the day I came back, It didn't limit my hand movements so I was thankful for that.

Walking down the halls, I look outside the window, seeing two adventurers, most likely level ones, training together. I watched them for a few minutes, one was giving instructions to the other and they looked like they were having fun.

Looking back forward, I started walking again. Exiting the mansion, I pass the gates, ignoring the guards and they ignored me in return. Turning the corner, I observed my surroundings for the first time. Children playing ball, adventurers enjoying a drink in a bar and people mingling with each other.

I stood in the busy street and watched the kids play, once I was like that... then reality hit me like a small island.

One of the children couldn't catch the ball in time and it flew towards my head. If this was any other time, I would have cut that ball in half in reflex, but I raised my hand and caught it in mid-air, stopping it from hitting me.

I stared at it before moving my gaze toward the two nervous children, they were hesitating to approach me.

Was I really that intimidating?

I threw the ball back to them lightly, and watched their face light up in excitement.

"Thank you, mister!"

The child ran off and a small smile tugged at my lip. I turn back towards the guild and start moving, with only one destination in mind, the dungeon.