Rose's performance left Leon speechless.
He understood, though, that her ability to go toe-to-toe with an Orc didn't mean her Basic Abilities had reached the standard for this floor. It was the perfect combination of skills, technique, and strategy that gave her the capacity to fight here.
Saint in White. Steel Knight. Pure White Maiden. Sheltering Hand.
Four absolute tank skills, no flashy procs or conditional triggers, just raw stat boosts, effect amplification, and most importantly, unconditional damage reduction.
Simplicity taken to its logical extreme.
The simpler a skill was, the harder it was to counter. With all four stacked on top of Rose's own excellent technique, tactical sense, and combat experience, she could match an Orc blow for blow and still have room to spare.
Leon watched her work. His first trip to Floor 10 hadn't gone nearly this smoothly.
Against the Orc's wild, heavy swings with its crude wooden club, no matter how hard it attacked, she stood planted like she'd been bolted to the floor. Her shield absorbed each impact cleanly, her stance never wavered, and forget taking damage, the thing couldn't even inconvenience her.
Right before his eyes, the fight lasted less than thirty seconds before Rose used those overpowered skills to amplify her abilities, combined with her polished technique and battle sense, and put the Orc down without breaking a sweat.
And Orcs were no joke. According to Guild assessments, their potential attributes sat in the C-to-B range, somewhere between 600 and 799, and that was before factoring in the Endurance specialization that came with being a large-class monster and the bonus from their natural arsenal of improvised weapons. Adventurers with stats below that threshold could barely fight one, let alone punch through its defenses.
Rose's abilities had improved over the past two weeks of sparring with Jeanne, but she was still a step below where Leon had been when he first tried Floor 10. And she'd made it look easy.
Right on cue, Jeanne pulled her lance tip free from a monster's corpse and flicked the blood off with a snap of her wrist.
She turned her head, those pale violet eyes sliding toward Leon, and the faintest hint of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
The message was crystal clear: all gear, no skill.
"..."
That was a direct hit. Pure, unfiltered disrespect.
Getting silently roasted by his own girl was bad enough, but with two juniors watching the whole thing? Leon wasn't about to take that lying down.
His expression darkened. He glanced at the white mist ahead, whipped his staff forward, and aimed it at the poor bastard just emerging from the fog.
"Fireball!"
Flame compressed at the staff's tip and shot forward.
Aura and Laurier's eyes went wide, tracking the streak of light as it plunged into the mist.
BOOM.
A blinding flash swelled outward and a deafening roar shook the corridor.
The fireball, roughly the size of a millstone, detonated across the Orc's body.
The blast wave and searing heat swallowed it whole. It didn't even have time to scream before its massive frame became a sizzling, crackling hunk of charcoal. Even the Magic Stone at its core was incinerated, reduced to nothing.
So that's his new magic. Aura stood behind Leon, shielded by him, and stared at his back. That's terrifying. She'd always been drawn to strength and dependability, and being an elf didn't change that.
"Tch." Laurier watched the whole savage display, both hands gripping her pack straps, her lips puffed out in an exaggerated pout. She pitched her voice at exactly the volume needed to reach Leon's ears: "Nyeh nyeh nyeh, big tough guy throwing a tantrum. How embarrassing."
"..."
Rotten brat.
She was going to grow up gorgeous, and yet that mouth of hers would ruin it all.
Leon fought down the urge to flick her on the forehead, a vein twitching at his temple, and pretended he hadn't heard. He looked past the group, deeper into the white mist.
More tall, dark shapes were pouring out of the fog, their low growls blending into a continuous drone.
His eyes narrowed, and a cold smile formed beneath his mask.
"Sorry, fellas. Looks like today isn't your lucky day."
He ran his tongue across his dry lips, reached up and pulled the face wrap back into place, leaving only his eyes exposed, both of them flickering with streaks of blue magical light.
He dropped into a half-crouch, left hand loose and guarding in front of him, right hand locked around the staff with the tip angled forward. Magic surged into the gem at its crown, building with a deep, resonant hum, and a stance loaded with explosive intent snapped into place.
Clang. Clash. Crack.
Ahead, Rose and Jeanne wove through the swarm, never still for a second. Jeanne's Banner Lance swept in wide, powerful arcs, each thrust and slash trailing cutting gusts of wind. Rose's sword and shield were a fortress, every block precise, every deflection flowing into a counter, keeping every monster that tried to break through pinned firmly on the outside. The two of them moved as if they'd drilled this a hundred times, their coordination nearly flawless despite barely having practiced together.
But the sheer number of monsters was overwhelming, flooding in like a tide.
Jeanne's superior stats let her handle it with ease, but Rose's defensive perimeter was starting to shrink, the pressure mounting fast.
"Leon! There's too many! Should we fall back?"
Jeanne's voice cut through the chaos, clear and steady, with a question implied.
Leon glanced at the defense line, already showing cracks, and took a long, deep breath.
Not from nerves. From excitement he'd been bottling up for hours.
Behind the mask where nobody could see, his grin was stretching so wide it hurt.
He'd been holding back the entire way down. Moving with the main group of adventurers meant that even when the occasional monster popped out, someone else dealt with it first, and the ones that spawned nearby were handled effortlessly by Jeanne and Rose. He'd been sitting on a mind pool vast enough to drown in, and he hadn't gotten to fire off so much as a decent spark.
He'd kept it together for the sake of travel speed and the bigger picture, since the two Supporters in the party were rookies who needed his constant attention.
But now things were different. He'd finally found his chance to cut loose.
This was the perfect scenario.
This tide of monsters was the ideal punching bag to unload on and test his firepower.
Pass it up? Not a chance. Not in a million years.
And with Aura's magic as a failsafe for retreat, Leon decided to take the fight head-on.
"No, Jeanne!"
His voice rang with a fire nobody had heard from him before.
"This is the perfect chance to test our team coordination! Don't you think?"
"You're not seriously..."
Jeanne spun away from a club swinging at her head, the movement almost casual in its grace, and her pale violet eyes went wide as she stared at Leon.
"That's exactly what I'm doing."
The words left his mouth and he was already rattling off orders, each one crisp and precise.
"Hold the two-three linked defense. Laurier, protect Aura. Aura, have your magic ready and stay on standby. The second the line starts to buckle, you support Jeanne and Rose immediately."
"As for me..."
His gaze swept over the group and settled on the two frontliners.
The staff traced a lazy arc through the air.
"Relax. I've got this."
Jeanne shot him a look that could curdle milk.
Her Banner Lance came down with the force of a thunderbolt, punching clean through the roaring Orc in front of her.
"Oh my." Rose dodged a spray of monster fluid with nimble footwork, her signature honeyed voice carrying a note of genuine surprise. "And here I thought Leon was the cautious, play-it-safe type. Who knew he had such a... wild side?"
She blinked sweetly, but the sword in her hand flashed cold as she bisected another Orc lunging at her flank, cutting it clean in half at the waist.
The whiplash between her gentle tone and the savage kill rewrote everything everyone thought they knew about her, all at once.
"Here we go. My Fireballs aren't just for show!"
Leon roared, and it was like lighting a fuse.
The next second:
"Fireball! Fireball! Fireball! Fireball! Fireball!"
Rapid-fire incantations with zero pause between them. Technique and finesse could wait. This was pure firepower.
Every syllable that left his mouth ignited the magic coursing through him. The flood of mind energy surging around his body blew his hood back.
The gem at his staff's crown and both his eyes blazed into blinding points of blue light.
In the space of a blink, dozens of Fireballs, each one denser and more violent than the last, erupted from the staff in a relentless barrage, shrieking as they tore the air apart.
The entire fog-choked cavern ignited. Every corner lit up bright as noon.
The overlapping explosions were deafening, the sound rattling teeth and shaking the ground. Blast waves collided and compounded, kicking up scalding gusts that ripped loose stone and monster remains off the ground and hurled them through the air. The cavern itself groaned and trembled, as if the next second might bring the whole space crashing down under the weight of the storm.