"Hadō Number Four: Byakurai!"
A blinding white bolt of lightning tore through the Dungeon's darkness, punching straight through three monsters and dropping them on the spot.
Rayleigh had been grinding in the Dungeon for a week straight.
He nodded, pretty satisfied with how much his Kidō's power had spiked.
After a week of this shit, all his stats broke into F-Rank, and his Magic even hit E-Rank!
Once an Adventurer got at least one stat to D-Rank and pulled off enough Great Feats, they could choose to level up during their next status update.
Over half of Orario's Adventurers were stuck at Level 1.
Stats weren't the real bottleneck—Great Feats were the bitch of it all.
Excellia would always tick up as long as you kept exploring. Grinding a stat to D-Rank was a pain in the ass, but it was doable.
Great Feats, though? That required putting your actual life on the line.
A lot of people got terrified of adventuring after they became Adventurers.
They didn't have the balls to push into the deeper floors. Instead, they lived off scraps, teaming up to bully weak monsters in the Upper Floors.
Obviously, Rayleigh had no plans to level up the second he hit a single D-Rank.
He knew how crucial Excellia was and planned to max out his stats before taking a level up.
Getting Falna meant unlocking your Vessel.
The Vessel is just a container. Its size depends on your potential, and since everyone's potential is different, no two Vessels are the same.
If your potential is garbage, your Excellia will just flatline after a certain point.
When that happens, leveling up is the only way to keep getting stronger.
Basically, a person's potential—the size of their Vessel—sets their future limits.
Rayleigh had no clue what the limits of his own Vessel were.
But he sure as hell refused to fall behind anyone when it came to spiritual energy!
In just one week, Rayleigh soloed his way through the first nine floors and hit the 10th Floor.
It didn't take long to run into the locals: Imps.
A pack of eight at that.
"Growl : Haineko."
A black whirlwind of ash ripped through the area, tearing the loudmouth Imps to pieces.
Smaller monsters usually had shit defense. Even Killer Ants were tougher than these guys.
After wiping out the eight Imps, Rayleigh dropped his Shikai and chugged a recovery potion.
He didn't just sit around waiting for his spiritual pressure to recharge.
He kept moving, taking monsters apart in close-quarters combat.
Zanjutsu, Hakuda, Shunpo, and Kidō.
A real Shinigami doesn't have blind spots, you have to sharpen every skill.
Flawless.... just like Aizen.
He pulled his newly forged Zanpakuto from his waist and switched to a dual-blade style.
Cutting down monsters along the way, he noticed the tunnels opening up.
New monsters started showing up too.
'Orcs.'
These massive, pig-headed beastmen dwarfed him. Fighting them with Haineko turned out to be a bitch.
After trading a few heavy blows one-on-one, Rayleigh chained a few Shunpo steps to break the Orc's line of sight, then took the opening to put it down.
The Orc's stats were a tier or two above his own.
Its Strength and Endurance were solid C-Rank material.
After trying to parry just once, Rayleigh gave up on blocking that attack directly and cranked up the speed of his footwork.
One hit sent enough force down his blade to split the webbing of his thumb wide open.
If a swing like that caught him in the head, his skull would pop like a watermelon!
To make things worse, he didn't even have the edge in Agility.
Despite looking like clumsy, bulky meatheads, the Orcs were just as fast as him.
'I should just use Kidō...'
Just as Rayleigh was gearing up to blast the Orc, he felt movement closing in.
He checked his surroundings and saw a few more of the bastards stepping out of the mist.
'So this is what a double-digit floor is like, huh?'
'In that case...'
Rayleigh scrapped the Kidō idea.
'I'll use that.'
He held his left-hand Zanpakuto horizontal.
The Orcs kept creeping closer, but he stayed chilled out, letting them box him in.
'Three, four... six.'
'Nine!'
'Nine of these ugly fuckers, huh?'
'I'll wipe them all out at once.'
"Bloom in a frenzy, Ruri'iro Kujaku!"
As his spiritual pressure flared, Rayleigh's Zanpakuto burst into a strange light.
The blade morphed into glowing, lapis-colored vines.
The vines grew fast, shooting out and wrapping around every single Orc.
The Orcs thrashed against the restraints, but right then, flower buds started popping up along the vines!
The vines leeched the Orcs' strength dry.
Within seconds, the massive beasts withered down to skin and bones.
At the same time, the buds bloomed into full flowers.
Once the last petal opened, every Orc dropped dead, turning to ash on the spot!
Ruri'iro Kujaku was a Kidō-type Zanpakuto.
Its Shikai unleashed vines that soaked up spiritual pressure, trapping enemies and draining their life force dry until they dropped dead.
That life force became fuel for the flower buds, making the flowers on the vines bloom.
Then...
Rayleigh reached out, snapped off a flower, and popped the petals between his lips.
He could feel his spiritual pressure bouncing back fast.
Not only that, the cuts and scrapes he'd picked up were closing up right in front of his eyes!
"A lot of that went to waste."
Rayleigh looked at the nine flowers scattered on the dirt.
He couldn't save the other eight, they'd wither and rot in a few minutes tops.
After all, they were holding the entire life force of nine Orcs.
He checked the ground.
"Nothing."
'Sigh.'
'So there's really no left over.'
Not a single Magic Stone.
He kind of saw this coming, but it was still a pain in the ass.
Rayleigh knew that for Dungeon monsters, Magic Stones were the core of their life force.
Ruri'iro Kujaku drained their life force dry, which naturally sucked up the power inside the Magic Stones too.
So the stones turned to dust right along with the monsters' bodies.
'Fuck it.'
'They weren't worth shit anyway.'
For a guy sitting on a fifty-million Valis fortune, burning a few tens of thousands in Magic Stones was no big deal.
His real goal was grinding Excellia fast.
With Ruri'iro Kujaku, Rayleigh could basically turn into an unkillable butcher with infinite stamina.
He ran both Zanpakuto at the same time: Haineko for wide-range radar and clearing out the trash mobs, while Ruri'iro Kujaku locked onto the Orcs.
"What kind of monster is that guy?!"
"He's wearing a Hephaestus Familia crest."
"There's no way he's just Level 1, right? Is that attack a Skill or Magic?"
A bunch of Adventurers who crossed paths with Rayleigh during his grind started clustering up and whispering about him.
Down on the 10th Floor, the Adventurer head count spiked.
Most were Level 1, with a handful of Level 2s mixed in.
This floor was basically their permanent home.
But lately, an "uninvited guest" showed up.
A black-haired kid who slaughtered monsters with terrifying speed and a psycho-level battle drive!
Demonic, good-looking, and inhumanly strong!
...
[Status Update]
─────────────────────
Name: Rayleigh Level: Lv. 1
[Abilities]
Strength: D552
Endurance: D501
Dexterity: D559
Agility: E488
Magic: D595
[Magic]
[Hadō (Destructive Path)]
Offensive Magic | Rapid-Cast Magic | Area-of-Effect Magic
Can use Hadō spells #1–99.
[Bakudō (Binding Path)]
Suppression Magic | Defensive Magic | Barrier Magic
Can use Bakudō spells #1–99.
[Kaidō (Healing Path)]
Healing Magic | Regeneration Magic | Purification Magic
Can use Kaidō spells.
[Skills]
[Soul Blade (Zanpakuto)]
Can forge Zanpakuto.
Can name Zanpakuto.
Gains Excellia when a Zanpakuto achieves a great feat.
─────────────────────
After grinding monsters for a while, Rayleigh found a pretty sick exploit.
Ever since he forged a Zanpakuto for Ardi and another one for himself—Ruri'iro Kujaku—he noticed his Excellia gain had shot through the roof.
After digging into it, he realized he'd missed a huge blind spot.
He's not just leeching Excellia off other Zanpakuto users.
He was leeching off his own, too.
Damn right.
Right now, he was double-dipping on the bonuses from three Zanpakuto at once: Haineko, Nejibana, and Ruri'iro Kujaku.
When a Zanpakuto pulls off a great feat, Rayleigh scores a chunk of Excellia.
The Zanpakuto he wields himself obviously count too.
But he didn't plan on spamming this exploit.
The reason was simple: he only had two hands. He could only wield a max of two Zanpakuto at a time.
Plus, with his current stats, he was still stuck in the Upper Floors.
Even if he went full Zoro and wielded three Zanpakuto at once, he'd still just be butchering the same low-level trash mobs.
That hardly counted as a "great feat."
The easiest way to look at it was this: the Excellia Nejibana was feeding him lately completely blew Haineko and Ruri'iro Kujaku's combined totals out of the water!
That was because Ardi was running the Dungeon with the Ganesha Familia, pushing into the Middle Floors past Floor 12.
The quality of the feats she was pulling off down there completely shat on anything you could do in the Upper Floors.
Looking at the numbers, Rayleigh mapped out a "Target Demographic" list for his next sales pitch.
Category 1: High-Potential The textbook example was Ardi.
Currently Level 2 (soon to be Level 3), loaded with potential, and backed by a powerhouse Familia.
She was right on the edge of a massive growth spurt. With Nejibana, she was even more of a badass, and she was already operating in the Middle Floors.
Category 2: Core Strength Second-Class Adventurers—people at Level 3 or 4.
They had the muscle to run the Lower Floors in teams. They'd bring in higher-quality feats, even if they didn't grind them out as fast.
Category 3: Top-Tier Adventurers First-Class Adventurers at Level 5 or 6.
These heavy hitters were the aces of every Familia in Orario. They didn't pull off great feats very often, but when they did, the quality of that Excellia was off the charts.
Once you hit the Lower Floors, day trips were off the table.
Runs like that were called Expeditions.
For any Familia, no matter how strong they were, an Expedition was a massive deal.
Down in the Dungeon, there were Safe Floors where monsters didn't spawn.
These floors acted as pit stops.
Familias running Expeditions to the Lower or Deep Floors would set up camp on these Safe Floors to rest and restock before pushing deeper.
They also dragged their asses back to these floors after finishing—or failing—a run.
Even though monsters didn't spawn there, Safe Floors were basically lawless territory.
Since they were buried so deep in the Dungeon, the Guild's rules didn't mean shit down there.
A lot of Adventurers who pissed off the wrong people in Orario ran down to the Safe Floors to lay low.
They literally built towns on these floors, complete with inns, shops, bars, and even black markets dealing in shit the Guild strictly banned.
The higher an Adventurer's level, the more they had to rely on Expeditions to rack up great feats.
But you couldn't just walk into an Expedition, it took the full strength of a Familia and insane prep work, burning up a ton of time and resources.
Rayleigh could feel it.
Ever since his stats hit D-Rank, the grind had gotten way harder.
He needed to sell some new Zanpakuto to crank his Excellia gain rate back up!