After a short break, Nihonium fifth floor.
Since I"ve finished clearing the fourth floor by increasing my Endurance to S rank, it"s time to head down to the fifth floor.
As one would expect, the appearance of the dungeon is similar to the rest of the upper floors where it has a limestone cave design.
Whereas for Teruru dungeon"s sixth and seventh floor, the moment you step foot into those floors, you can see a field like area in the dungeon, and the enemies are more fierce and strong.
Though, there"s only one thing that"s similar.
[Dungeon Snow….This floor also has snow falling.]
Similar to Teruru dungeon"s seventh floor, it seemed like the magic snow is falling too.
Though different from Teruru, this dungeon is completely shaped like a cave, so seeing snow covering the floor was amusing.
Immediately, a monster appeared.
A crack was formed on the ground and a Skeleton came out from it.
The Skeleton looks the exact same as the ones above, even the way it moved was the same as the ones above.
Is it possible to have the same type of monster? As I was bewildered I took out my gun and as I was aiming at the Skeleton—-the Skeleton changed.
As the snow gently falls onto the Skeleton"s body, it"s bones was soaked with the snow.
The acc.u.mulated magical snow seeped into the body of the Skeleton and it gradually turned red.
The pure white bones has turned into blood red.
[I"m glad that there"s something different bout====]
As I sighed in relief, without realizing the Skeleton came in front of me in the blink of an eye.
[——-!]
The skeleton swung its arms towards me and I swiftly guarded it with my arms and kicked it, sending it and myself backwards—but, the Skelly wandered over.
With a tremendous speed it dodged, and followed with an attack with a slam onto the side of my body.
So fast! This red Skeleton is three times as fast as the ones above!
[…..But!]
Yes, the Skeleton is indeed fast, but I"m also fast too.
The hit from before was because I was attacked all of a sudden and was surprised by it, but if I knew that it"s just [fast] then it"s alright.
Taking its attacks, the Skeleton uses it"s high speed as an advantage to hit and run away and repeating that process.
With my S Speed, before the Skeleton could move diagonally I took the first step and went ahead of him, kicking the side of it"s body where it was landing onto.
With speed and power, I crossed countered it"s movement and broke the Skeleton"s bone in half.
The Skeleton then fell onto the ground and shook for a moment, once it stopped moving a seed was dropped.
As I picked that up.
—Max MP increased by 1.
Was what the voice said.
So the fifth floor drops MP up seeds huh, yoshi, time to rack up some more to increase further.
[……Huh?]
Something popped up on my mind.
MP, does that mean the energy used to cast magic spells?
[How does one learn magic though?]
For now I increased my MP from F to E, and after that I went to the city to meet up with Celeste to talk about it.
[Normally you would learn it as you level up. As levels and abilities are unique to that specific person, the magic that you learn is already decided since the day you"re born.]
[I see. But I"m forever level 1…..Is that normal? Are there any other methods of learning magic?]
[If I"m not mistaken, if you eat a magical fruit, they might let you learn magic.]
[There"s even something like this?]
[Yep, though there are a lot of demerits when using this method, generally many people shy away from this method.]
[What sorts of demerits are there?]
[As it is against the innate growth, the moment you eat it, the level will be fixed and a curse will be inflicted upon the person, making them impossible to grow at all. What"s more you can only have one type of magic, the moment you eat it, what you learn is also random….And there are times when you can learn something that you"ve already learnt.]
[That"s certainly a huge drawback.Then wouldn"t you just have to level it up to the maximum before eating it?]
[Yeah, if it"s just one.]
[….What happens if you eat a second one?]
[If you eat a second one your level would drop by one, of course your abilities would drop too.]
[That is too much of a punishment.]
If you eat one you can"t level up anymore, and if you were to eat another one your level drops.
I guess the setback of the curse is truly terrifying.
But.
[So there"s no more demerits besides those you"ve mentioned?]
[Don"t think so. Still because one would eat it after raising their levels to the maximum, so the fruit still fetches a high price in the market.]
[Then there are no problems for me then.]
[….I guess you can say that, since Ryouta-san"s level is already at the highest, so I guess there are no demerits if you look at it that way.]
[Well that settles it.]
[I bought it.]
Standing outside of Shikuro"s largest Magical tool store, I was holding onto a luxurious wooden box.
Celeste who was accompanying me took the lid out of the wooden box.
And inside the content of the wooden box was a melon sized fruit, which has a hexagonal star pattern on the outside.
So if I eat this I will be able to learn one magic huh.
[Though, are you sure it"s alright for me to buy it? The 3 Million Piro that we had just gotten was eaten within a day, are you sure it isn"t better to keep it for the sake of y"all?]
[I want Ryouta-san to have it. Emily would definitely say that too. Eve on the other hand—-]
[If it"s not about carrots she won"t care, that"s the kind of person she is.]
The both of us bitterly smiled at each other.
Seems like all of us don"t really care about what we do.
[Well then quickly eat it.]
[Wait, please wait for awhile.]
[Why?]
[I"ve learnt something, it"s that we shouldn"t just eat it as it is.]
[??? Should we let Emily cook something outta it?]
I returned a smile towards Celeste, and closed the lid of the luxurious box and started walking.
Suburbs of Shikuro, as always a place where no one frequents.
As we arrived, Celeste sort of get what I was trying to do.
[I understand now, you want to turn it into a rogue monster and get another drop from it.]
[Correct, cause I was wondering maybe it will give a better magic fruit in comparison to this one.]
As I talked—my inner spirit was in a mess?
It"s probably because I"m certain it would turn out into something good, though I couldn"t seize that factor of something good.
Normally the drop of a rare item would drop a higher ranked item, but there are some exception for example the Gorilla that drops Tuna, I"ve gotten a gun outta it when I killed the rogue monster.
Though I doubt it"ll get any worse, but it"ll be a 50/50 whether the magical fruit effect will remain.
Even though there was a risk, I still wanted to try it out.
When I was still in the company, when someone wanted to try challenging something, it has been mostly rejected as a [Non precedent].
And because of that whenever I gave an idea someone would use that idea, the boss or the company would be filling with anger as they think that [Why didn"t I use that idea earlier!].
Thus I told myself not to fall into the same mistake again, and accept any challenge head on.
I left the magical fruit in place, and together with Celeste we walked quite a distance away.
As we were waiting for aw hile, the magical fruit hatched into a monster.
With a battle posture I flew towards it.
The monster was wrapped in metallic colour with a shape of an egg—and suddenly it dissolved and turned into a completely different shape.
The dissolved shape turned golden, and it changed into a shape of a human.
[Ryouta-san!?}
Celeste shouted in a screaming manner as she saw the human shape.
That"s right, there are two of me now.
The body and even the clothes are completely similar, though the only difference is I"m not coated with only one colour, whereas it was coated entirely in metallic colour.
It"s a liquid metal Android.
It reminded of a scene in a movie I saw once. (TL:Probably Astro boy?)
It then flew towards me. Fast!
I guarded the hollow punch, and immediately kept a distance away from it.
I prepared my gun and fired a normal bullet, it hit, but it seemed to have no effect whatsoever.
Again it flew towards me with great speed, and it"s punch and kick cut through the wind, increasing it"s speed further.
I took the hit and countered it by using a Penetration Bullet.
I aimed at the egg"s chest and fired—-though before it went in it was stopped. It guarded the bullet with it"s arms crossed.
It"s similar to what I would"ve done.
[IOt" stough, it"s fast, plus it"s powerful.]
Metal Ryouta(for now he called it that) in its basic stats it was already strong to begin with.
Though not as strong as me.
Since bullets don"t work I guess it"s time to use hand to hand combat.
I avoided it"s attack and countered it by punching it"s side and changed direction at a right angle.
After a while, I understood roughly as I battled with it repeatedly.
It"s power and speed it roughly around 80% of mine.
Probably the opponent that it copied, it will absorbed 70% of the opponent"s stats.
[I guess my partner isn"t that lucky—-Wow!]
I grabbed hold of him as he tried to fight back and threw him into the air, and shot a Restraint Bullet while he was still in the air.
The Metal Ryouta who was floating mid air was trapped by a ray of light rope and could not move.
As I roughly understood it"s ability, I quickly used that.
I took out my dual gun and loaded ammo into it, which were the Flame and Freezing bullets.
As I shot both of them together—-it fused together and turned into an Annihilation bullet which was my highest offensive power.
The bullet flew one after the other onto its body as it was unable to escape, and sc.r.a.ped it"s metal body.
One by one holes were formed on it"s better, and it continued to increase, and finally as it reached it"s limit, like a water balloon being popped, the metal liquid melted and dripped onto the ground.
Just in case I hold onto my gun, but it was a needless worry.
The liquify metal immediately disappeared and "Pon" a drop appeared.
I slowly got closed to it, and Celeste who was slightly further away from me ran towards me.
I picked up the drop, and Celeste had a difficult expression floating on her face.
[It"s exactly the same magical fruit, nothing seemed to had changed.]
[No, that"s not necessary the case.]
A grinned was floating at the edge of my mouth, and I turned the magical fruit around and showed that to Celeste.
The hexagon star sign which was just one a moment ago was now turned into two star.
[Ss that, possibly.]
[Maybe, no I"m certain.]
It"s probably the same pattern as the Slime Bros.
It"s the same item, but it was ranked up.
To confirm our theory, I chew on the magical fruit.
—-You have now learnt two new magic.
And an announcer like voice was heard inside my head.