Yuuto slept like a stone the night he returned from the dungeon. His whole body ached the next morning, but it was the good kind of pain—muscles that had worked hard, not the dull, grinding exhaustion he had known as an office worker. This fatigue came with proof that he had done something real.
It was already past noon when he finally dragged himself out of bed. He showered, washing away slime residue and sweat, and caught his reflection in the mirror. The scrapes and burns he'd earned yesterday were gone, as if they had never been there. Leveling up had healed him completely.
But something in his eyes had changed too. There was a spark there that hadn't existed before—not even before the layoff.
After a quick meal, Yuuto laid out his "treasures" from the first dive. Dozens of small bags sat on the table: clear, blue glow from the high-purity slime jelly and a pile of tiny magic stone chips. He stared at them with a strange mix of pride and disbelief.
This was the result of his first job—won with his own hands, his own risk. Yet when he checked prices online, the numbers were depressing. Even high-purity slime jelly only sold for a few hundred yen per piece. The magic stone chips were worth so little that some sites didn't even list a price. If he sold everything, he'd be lucky to cover a couple of days of groceries.
He sighed. It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough to keep a roof over his head.
Yuuto picked up one piece of slime jelly and held it up to the light. The [Break] skill had stripped every impurity, leaving a perfect, smooth gel.
"Is this really the limit?" he wondered.
The guild staff had dismissed the [Break] skill as useless in a fight. But that was only one way to see it. Back when he was an SE, the word "break" didn't just mean destroy—it meant analyze. Break things down to understand their structure. Why should this skill be any different?
Systems always hid their best functions deep inside. Anyone who trusted the manual alone was a third-rate engineer.
"Let's try this," he muttered.
Even outside a dungeon, materials that held magic element—the energy of monsters—let him use the skill in a small area. He had nothing to lose. Yuuto focused on the slime jelly in his hand.
"Break."
Magic flowed out of him, and the jelly glowed. It shook in his palm and shrank fast, as if the water inside was boiling off. Seconds later, the light faded. Yuuto stared.
A small, perfect blue sphere the size of a marble sat on his hand. It shone like a cut gem.
A slime core.
His heart slammed in his chest. Slime cores were the weak point of the creature—valuable, but almost always destroyed in battle. Even if someone managed to retrieve one, blades and spells usually left marks.
But the core in Yuuto's hand was flawless.
The [Break] skill had done more than pull materials from a corpse. It had taken the material itself and refined it, extracting the most valuable part.
His mind raced. If that worked for the jelly, then what about the chips?
Trying to calm his excitement, he used [Break] on a magic stone chip. Light flickered again, and the chip became a pile of fine blue powder. It looked like colored sand, but the magic was stronger—far stronger—than before.
He let out a shaky laugh. "A useless skill, huh?"
He remembered the researcher at the appraisal room, the pitying look, the soft shake of the head. He wanted nothing more than to push this discovery right in that man's face.
This wasn't a cleaning skill or a joke. It was a skill that could create value—refine it—after the fight was over. Even with zero combat strength, he could compete in a completely different field than other explorers.
No... he could build an advantage nobody else could copy.
Breathe, he told himself. Don't get carried away.
He still needed proof. Maybe these flawless cores and refined powder were valuable, but he wouldn't know until he tried to sell them.
So he kept going. Yuuto spent hours breaking down every jelly and chip he had, resting whenever his MP ran low. At the end, a small mountain of shining slime cores and sparkling magic stone powder covered the table.
They looked like hope.
"Tomorrow, I'll take them to the guild," he whispered. If this worked—if they were worth something—everything could change.
That night, for the first time since the day he lost his job, Yuuto slept with a light heart. The fear that had followed him for weeks finally began to turn into something else.
Hope.