Boom!!
The massive Orc violently uprooted a thick, bleached-white tree trunk from the ground, wielding it like a colossal club. As the makeshift weapon came crashing down, Lucian vaulted into the air. He gently tapped the club with his palm, using the immense kinetic force to propel himself away like a leaf riding the wind, effortlessly dodging the catastrophic impact.
The shockwave generated a violent gale that whipped his hair wildly.
"Insane power output, but far too slow and clumsy," Lucian chuckled.
While the Orc was locked in the recovery frames of its swing, desperately trying to heave the massive trunk back up, Lucian had already closed the gap and driven his arm-blade deep into its skull.
"Armor rating is pretty pathetic too."
With a casual flick of his wrist, the black blade phased back into his coat, shaking off the blood. To this moment, Lucian remained completely spotless.
Mana consumption is getting a bit steep. I'm down to 80%, Lucian analyzed, checking his internal UI.
[Mana Reserve]
[• Passively stores regenerated mental energy.]
[• Maximum storage capacity is capped at 300% of the user's base limit.]
If he hadn't engineered this specific passive, sprinting from the 1st Floor down to the 10th would have burned through roughly 60% of his mind. Dropping to 80% meant a slight degradation in combat efficiency; hitting 95% guaranteed a severe state of mental exhaustion and potential blackouts. The final 5% was the absolute redline—draining it completely was lethal.
Since every single one of Lucian's combat maneuvers burned mana, he had heavily prioritized energy management. Aside from the [Mana Reserve] passive, he possessed a permanent magic beast operating as an external battery. Buried deep underground, the [Mana Battery Beast] constantly farmed ley line energy, wirelessly transmitting the surplus directly into his reserves the moment they hit maximum capacity.
Only after thoroughly depleting these external buffers would Lucian actually start burning his own internal mana.
According to the rules of the Falna, frequently exhausting one's mental energy stimulated the growth of the 'Magic' stat. Essentially, leveling up the Magic stat acted as a multiplier for 'Magical Attack Power', refining the purity and potency of his mind. However, the raw volume of his mana pool—his maximum MP—lacked any definitive training method. Upgrading the Magic stat helped, but it wasn't a one-to-one conversion.
Lucian's unique exploit allowed him to convert raw EXP into specific stat points. Crucially, this included hidden attributes completely invisible to the gods' Falna. He could manually upgrade his HP pool, MP pool, physical resistance, magical resistance, latent potential, luck, processing speed, and eventually, even his Development Abilities.
I'm almost at one full stat point... Isn't the scaling on this a bit absurd? Lucian grumbled.
He had butchered his way down ten floors and hadn't even scraped together a single point. Honestly, doing regular push-ups might have yielded faster results. Sure, he had spent most of the time sprinting past mobs, but the drop rate was offensively low.
To balance the system and prevent catastrophic reality collapse, Lucian had hard-coded a specific penalty: the EXP-to-Stat conversion ratio would exponentially decay as his baseline power increased. Furthermore, he couldn't stockpile points. He was forced to immediately convert raw EXP into stats. If he waited until he leveled up, the identical mob would yield drastically less EXP, completely nullifying any attempt at hoarding.
The restrictions were brutal, but the inherent advantages of the system were undeniably game-breaking.
The most critical factor was that EXP was an entirely supplementary resource stream.
The first massive advantage was that he could meticulously distribute points across the board, forging himself into a mathematically perfect, flawless all-rounder without a single weak point.
The second advantage was the ability to artificially inject 'Potential.' This meant that even if Lucian's baseline talent was complete trash, he could brute-force all five of his core stats to their absolute maximum limit.
Once he maxed out his HP, MP, resistances, and 'Latent Potential Parameters,' his baseline foundation at any given Level would completely eclipse that of the canon protagonist, Bell Cranel. Furthermore, by artificially inflating his potential, he could eventually engineer a custom skill mimicking the effects of Liaris Freese, allowing him to shatter the standard 'S' rank stat cap and push into the theoretical SS and SSS tiers.
Magic and skills were direct manifestations of an adventurer's innate talent. Liaris Freese existed simply because Bell's raw, unadulterated potential overflowed the absolute limits of the Falna. To replicate a skill of that caliber, Lucian first needed to artificially gorge his own potential to the bursting point.
With this roadmap firmly established, Lucian's vision for the future was crystal clear.
The mobs on the 10th Floor aren't pushovers, and the EXP drops are finally decent. No need to rush anymore, Lucian decided, pacing slowly into the gloom. I'll start my actual grind here. Time to farm combat experience and raw EXP.
Without realizing it, he was already surrounded. Between twenty and thirty massive Orcs emerged from the shadows, uprooting dead white trees and slowly enclosing him in a tight perimeter.
A Monster Party? Lucian grinned.
A Monster Party was a lethal Dungeon trap. The labyrinth would actively spawn a massive horde of monsters to silently encircle an adventurer the moment it sensed fatigue, triggering an overwhelming, inescapable slaughter.
Unfortunately for the Dungeon, to Lucian, these Orcs were nothing more than a localized EXP farm. The labyrinth had completely misread his stamina levels.
His grin widened. "[Metal Affinity: Pierce!]"
Lucian aimed his arm-blade at an approaching Orc. A surge of mental energy condensed into a hyper-pressurized bullet of air that shot straight for the beast's head.
Smack! A shallow crater blew open on the Orc's skull, blood pouring down its face. The sheer kinetic impact knocked the massive creature flat on its ass.
If I compress the mana output by another ten percent, that's a guaranteed one-shot, Lucian calculated.
The Five Methods were technically foundational tier magic, but their raw stopping power was devastating. Normally, the damage output of a spell cast with Mind energy was hard-capped. To increase a spell's lethality, a mage had three options: utilize a specialized catalyst like a staff, unlock the 'Mage' Development Ability at Level 2 to forcefully inject excess mana, or rely on a rare buffing skill.
Lucian bypassed all of that. Utilizing [Rule Creation], he fundamentally rewrote the spell's formula, inserting a localized 'mana compression' protocol. This artificially multiplied the density of his mental energy, allowing him to manually adjust the spell's payload. Not even the highest-ranking grand mages in Orario possessed this level of granular, source-code manipulation.
"[Pierce!]" Lucian recalibrated the spell's output.
A second compressed air bullet tore across the cavern.
Bang! The Orc's head violently detonated like a water balloon, scattering gore across the stone floor.
Witnessing the upgraded lethality, Lucian nodded in deep satisfaction.
Boom!!
A massive tree trunk slammed down. Lucian effortlessly sidestepped the crushing blow and retaliated, his blade carving a deep gash across the Orc's shoulder. Blood sprayed, but the strike lacked the raw physical strength to secure a clean kill. He immediately chained it into a second strike, cleanly severing the beast's jugular.
"Their armor rating is low, but their raw HP pool is massive," Lucian muttered, launching into a flurry of hyper-agile evasions.
"[Wood Affinity: Bend]."
Applying a massive multiplier to his physical output, Lucian executed a series of biomechanically impossible maneuvers, systematically and effortlessly slaughtering the entire horde.
Not enough.
The heavy thud of footsteps echoed through the dense fog. Lucian eagerly charged straight into the mist, plunging into a whirlwind of carnage. The roles were entirely reversed. The adventurer, who should have been fighting for his life, was enacting a one-sided massacre; the monsters, who held the absolute home-field advantage, were reduced to helpless livestock.
Their sluggish attacks couldn't even graze him. During an Orc's sweeping attack, Lucian casually hopped onto the incoming weapon, surfing the blade as he looked down upon his execution target!
It was a flawless, video-game-esque grind. And finally, Lucian secured his first stat point.