"Cough...!"
Sliding down from the shattered wall amid the dust-choked rubble, Leo's footing stumbled, and he coughed up a great mouthful of blood on the spot.
His body felt as if it had been ground to pieces, wave after wave of violent pain crashing through him, almost dropping him to the floor vomiting blood.
"This... is a little bad..."
Feeling the searing pain coming from every part of his body, Leo couldn't even tell how serious his injuries were now.
How many of the bones in his body were still intact?
How many of the organs inside him weren't ruptured?
He didn't know. All he knew was that right now he was barely holding his battered body up by sheer desperate willpower, keeping himself from collapsing outright.
A Lv.4 Floor Boss, and a super-large-type at that, its full-power blast of a strike. Forget Leo, a third-class adventurer whose ability values just barely rivaled Lv.3. Even a Lv.5 first-class adventurer taking one of these head-on, unless they were someone like old Gareth with hide so thick and tough they'd trained their Endurance all the way to S, would have no chance of walking away unscathed.
This was without question a grave injury, and one capable of killing.
If not for the cushioning effect of the battle clothes and robe he wore, which gave him a certain degree of protection, Leo was certain he'd already be lying in a pool of blood right now, never to rise again.
"GROOOOAAAAR!!!"
Goliath was still roaring there, its bellows turning into wave after wave of sound that rattled the whole chamber.
It violently stomped the floor to pieces and charged at Leo, as if to put him in his grave here once and for all, mercilessly slamming its great fist down again, making the people watching from outside the chamber either cry out in alarm or lean forward, ready to rush into the arena to save him.
"Still too much for him, huh?"
Even Finn murmured this, raising the spear he'd been gripping the whole time.
He too was getting ready to step in.
Though Leo hadn't seen any of this, he could roughly guess what the situation was now.
So he snapped his blood-drenched head up, spent the last of his grit to lift his hand, and with a roar fired off an enormously thick meteor.
This meteor was bigger than any before it, so large it actually covered half of Goliath's body.
"BOOM!!!"
With a deafening blast, the meteor struck Goliath head-on and exploded across it.
Instantly Goliath's charging steps were forced to a halt, its raised fist hammered back down, the terrifying firepower of the blast lifting both its feet off the ground, the entire massive body blown up into the air, sent flying backward to slam into the floor with an earth-shaking crash.
It let out the most agonized wail yet, the skin across its body bursting open, flesh festering, spraying out great gouts of blood.
This wound was beyond any comparison with the ones it had taken before.
"That..."
The crowd, who'd been about to charge in and save him, froze.
"That strike just now..."
Gareth's brow furrowed tight.
"...the firepower has reached Lv.6."
Riveria spoke the words with a grave expression.
The moment they heard this, everyone present was stirred.
"Lv.6 firepower...?"
They were utterly dumbfounded.
Tiona, Tione, and Line stared with their mouths agape.
Bete's face twisted slightly.
Ais's eyes went wide.
Raul and the others were full of disbelief.
As for Lefiya, the expression on her face was something to behold.
Lv.6-class firepower spanned a full four Levels.
The instant this strike landed, the entire arena fell into dead silence.
But the price of this strike was Leo's vision going black, almost losing consciousness outright and slipping into a faint.
His Mind had been nearly drained dry, just a hair away from falling into Mind Down and being completely unable to fight on.
His hands were shaking. It took everything he had to pull four potions from his waist pouch.
Of these four potions, one was an Elixir, and the other three were all Magic Potions.
Leo struggled to pop the caps off all four and downed every one in a single go, swallowing them all.
The moment the potions hit his stomach, their effects showed at once.
The Elixir took effect first, healing Leo's body almost by the second, mending his injuries, reconnecting his snapped bones one by one, filling in his ruptured organs one by one, slowly restoring him to perfect condition.
The top-grade potion that ran five hundred thousand valis apiece, said to bring you back so long as there's a single breath left in you and to cure any injury, that effect really was no exaggeration, healing Leo's battered, broken body at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Then the effects of the three high-quality Magic Potions began to show too, dragging the last shred of consciousness Leo had been clinging to back out of the dark abyss, and his nearly exhausted Mind slowly came back to life like a withered tree meeting spring.
"Cough, cough..."
Flinging away the four empty bottles in his hand and wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth, Leo could finally stand steady.
"GROOOOOOH!"
On the other side, Goliath had finally seemed to recover as well, slowly rising to its feet, its eyes full of fury and bloodlust as it looked at Leo, drenched in blood from head to toe and yet aching to tear Leo into ten thousand pieces.
All that could be said was that the last strike Leo had unleashed really, truly hurt.
Though Leo had been dealing damage to Goliath all along, those wounds only looked severe. In truth, for Goliath, they weren't really all that serious.
Even when Leo pushed his Magic's output up to Lv.5 and could deal damage to a Goliath whose Endurance was specialized all the way to Lv.5, that only meant he could break through its defenses.
When output and defense were at the same Level, even if he could break through, how serious a wound could he really inflict?
And there was another benefit to high Endurance, which was that the self-recovery ability was just as strong.
As a Floor Boss specialized in Endurance, Goliath actually had very high self-healing. The bit of damage Leo dealt, given just a little time, it could surely recover from.
Leo himself was well aware of this, which was why he'd never stopped attacking from start to finish, kept up the output the whole time, precisely so he wouldn't give Goliath any time to heal.
But this solid punch, this strike that had nearly shattered him to pieces, had already brutally told Leo that dragging the fight out was absolutely to his disadvantage as well.
Goliath had thick hide and a high tolerance for error. No matter how many times Leo wounded it, as long as the wounds weren't fatal he couldn't truly turn the tide.
But Leo was different. The Level gap was right there. One solid punch from Goliath landing on him and he'd immediately be plunged into a near-death corner, forced to use a precious Elixir just to come back to life.
And how many Elixirs did he even have?
So...
From the very beginning, I can't pin my hopes on luck, and even less can I hold anything back.
Leo walked down the rubble pile step by step against the wave of Goliath's furious bellowing.
His body was a battered, ragged mess, his face all streaked with blood, but his eyes were frighteningly bright.
His figure looked wretched and pitiable, yet the aura radiating off him didn't weaken but grew.
His gaze, his expression, even his heart, all at this moment suddenly turned incomparably calm.
Frighteningly calm.
To bring it down, just same-Level Lv.5 firepower is definitely not enough!
It has to be overwhelming output firepower to deal it a fatal wound!
Which means... I have to push the firepower up to Lv.6!
But could he hold up?
Just pushing the firepower to Lv.5 had already been such a heavy burden, and he didn't have many Magic Potions left. Raising the output one more Level, would he really not suddenly Mind Down and collapse?
Could those high-quality Magic Potions keep up with the speed of his Mind consumption?
And if they couldn't, then what was he supposed to do?
The thoughts flashed by one after another, only for Leo to press each of them down.
There was no other way.
No choice but to make it work!
Because, apart from doing this, he had no second path left to choose.
Firepower!
He needed firepower!
The power of his Magic had to be raised, no two ways about it!
"Light of heaven, sword of stars."
Leo resolutely raised the Emerald Staff in his hand, the gem at its tip blazing to its utmost brilliance, the magic circle radiating gorgeous starlight turning brighter than ever before, spinning round and round.
Goliath seemed to sense the crisis and let out a furious roar, charging at Leo with reckless abandon.
"Meteor Dance!"
Just as that massive body was about to trample down onto Leo, Leo succeeded in unleashing an immense meteor.
"BOOM!!!"
The huge meteor struck Goliath square in the chest and blew apart with a roar, blasting it open until its flesh split, wail after wail tearing out of it.
Leo felt his vision go black again, the Mind he'd just barely restored most of drained dry once more in an instant.
Again Leo fished three Magic Potions from his waist pouch and gulped them down in one go.
"Light of heaven, sword of stars."
Leo chanted the Magic with a roaring, screaming intensity.
"Meteor Dance!"
The huge meteor shot out again, striking Goliath's massive body without fail, blasting it away while also vaporizing its skin, exposing the raw red flesh beneath.
This time Leo didn't even give himself the chance for his vision to go black. The very instant the Magic was successfully released, he immediately fished out three Magic Potions and tipped his head back to gulp them down.
"Meteor Dance!"
The huge meteor fired out a third time, and the instant it exploded the entire chamber shook.
"Meteor Dance!!"
No one could see what Leo did anymore. They could only hear him let out an even more throat-tearing roar, firing off a fourth huge meteor that blasted Goliath away.
After this strike, Goliath's pained wailing had turned completely into screams of agony, the flesh on its body vaporized by the astonishing firepower of the Magic, leaving its chest cavity, bones, organs and the rest all exposed directly to the air.
Thanks to this, everyone saw it: a huge blue crystal sitting in the position of Goliath's chest.
That was the magic stone, the life core of all monsters.
It was precisely because of the power supplied by the magic stone that the monsters of this world could maintain their existence.
In other words, that was also the common weakness of every monster.
What became of a monster that lost its magic stone, every adventurer in the world knew.
That was, it turned to a drift of ash.
In this moment, every single member of Loki Familia clenched their fists.
In this moment, everyone watching the battle held their breath.
They watched that wretched yet unfalling figure, watched him stand blood-spitting before the screaming giant, and a vast emotion rose up in their hearts that they couldn't suppress no matter what.
...
"Go!!!"
Whoever they were, friend or foe, in this moment everyone, as one, followed that vast emotion in their hearts and let out this single cry.
Even Finn, Riveria, and Gareth, the three Familia leaders, or Bete, who'd never gotten along with Leo, couldn't help shouting it out too.
Only Ais, her golden eyes gazing at that back, let out a faint murmur.
"Leo..."
The cry and the murmur both, in this single second, reached Leo's ears with perfect clarity.
So Leo took out every last Magic Potion he had and poured them all into his mouth.
"Meteor Dance!!!"
A roar enough to drown out every other sound in the place rang out all around.
Before the Emerald Staff Leo had raised, a magic circle a full twice the size of the ones before burst open, spewing out starlight.
That starlight scattered the endless darkness, lighting up the entire far end of the 17th floor, the blinding glare even seeping out from the large round entrance.
The people standing at the entrance watching the battle didn't even have time to react before they were swallowed by the intense light.
"BOOM!!!!!"
And inside the entrance, within that vast, sprawling hall, an earth-shattering roar erupted, making the entire 17th floor shudder violently.
The walls were cracking.
The rubble was tumbling down.
The dazzling meteor, as if it could split heaven and earth, while radiating a glare no one could look at directly, struck that giant that stood towering like a nightmare.
"BANG!!!"
The struck giant couldn't even get out its final wail before its whole body gradually crumbled, shattered, and was annihilated in the intense starlight, making the huge magic stone at its chest let out a loud cracking sound and blow apart outright, scattering into shards across the air.
This sight, no one could see.
But when the intense light faded and everything at the scene fell utterly silent, the spectators who timidly opened their eyes and instinctively struck protective postures could no longer find any trace of that giant.
The giant hadn't even managed to leave behind a drift of ash, vanishing directly into the starlight.
All that remained at the scene was a piece of tough hide drifting down from the air, and Leo, still holding the pose of his raised staff, not moving at all.
People stared blankly at this sight.
People gazed dumbly at all of it.
No one spoke up in those first moments, and no one could make any move in those first moments either.
Time passed like this for who knew how long, until Leo's body gave a slight sway and toppled toward the floor.
He only felt his whole body go weak, his Mind unable to hold out any longer, and he sank into darkness.
But before he completely lost consciousness, Leo saw a streak of gold sweeping toward him.
That color, brilliant and lovely.
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200 powerstones for the extra chapter
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