"Step into a higher dimension............"
This time, Bete truly felt the gap between himself and that person.
He craved power.
That person, like him, was madly craving power.
But unlike him, that person had only begun craving power after losing everything. Yet that person seemed to know all too well that without power, one would only face endless loss.
"He and I are not of the same kind."
"He chose to crave power before losing it. There's not a trace of my former naivety in him, which is why he walked a path completely different from mine."
For Bete, the pain of losing his family, his friends, even his beloved—that agony was an indelible wound for life.
If losing his family and friends back then was beyond his control, what about the second time? After joining the familia, he encountered his true love again. But what happened then? He lost her once more.
Both times because of his own weakness.
These two lessons taught Bete a harsh truth.
The strong pay no heed to the lives of the weak. For the weak to change their fate, they must become strong themselves.
In other words, weakness is the root of all sin.
Yet there was one who arrived at this conclusion without needing any lessons, striving relentlessly toward this goal.
And the methods he employed bordered on the pathological.
Even Bete found this approach borderline masochistic.
Putting himself in that position, Bete firmly concluded he could never do it.
Thus, Bete glanced in the direction of a certain fox.
He understood perfectly the mindset of the newly joined fox among the familia. He had seen the same emotion on the faces of those others long ago.
"So that's why you chose to sever ties?"
"What a decisive creature."
The thought kept circling in Bete's mind: If his past self had been able to cut ties with them, would they have survived?
Bete drew a deep breath.
He didn't know the answer to that question.
But he understood that he couldn't dwell on it any longer. All of this was merely his own conjecture. To continue dwelling on such speculation would be disrespectful to them.
"I lost. In every way."
He lacked that decisiveness, that hunger for power, and the foresight to envision his own future.
Thus, it took him two lessons to grasp this crucial truth.
This wasn't a defeat in strength, but in resolve and cognition.
Then Bete's gaze shifted to Ais.
Now, among the entire familia, aside from the mother fox who consistently displayed such behavior, she was the only other one who showed this kind of attitude.
"If Loki noticed this, would she just fly into a rage?"
With a sense of amusement, Bete actually wanted to see what kind of reaction Loki would have then.
Meanwhile, Bell in the dungeon had already begun to accelerate.
With his power and speed fully unleashed, Bell's progression through the dungeon followed an extraordinary trajectory—nearly vertical in its ascent.
At this pace, even the 64th floor, notorious for its sheer volume and variety of monsters, couldn't withstand the pressure and crumbled.
What lay ahead was the true Deep Floors of the dungeon.
Passing through the entrance to the 65th floor, Bell stepped onto its surface.
"Whoosh~!"
The moment he stepped onto the 65th floor, a bone-chilling cold wind began to howl through the level.
The ground was completely frozen over, the actual surface barely visible beneath a thick layer of ice.
Heavy snow had accumulated atop this solid ice crust, transforming the entire floor into a silvery-white world.
All the monsters were stealthily concealed within this silver-white realm.
Under normal circumstances, Bell would have chosen to toy with these monsters at his leisure. Unfortunately, he was now locked in combat with them. Continuing to play around would only invite trouble.
Moreover, this silver-white world was no longer his "protective color."
Therefore, Bell slightly opened his hand, and a character appeared in his palm.
"Summer."
"I don't have time to play games with you today."
The character 'Summer' in Bell's hand slowly brightened, then shot rapidly into the air.
"Clang!"
In an instant, the entire floor was bathed in blazing sunlight.
The intense rays struck the snow directly, causing it to begin melting.
After the snow began melting, the thick ice layer on the ground also weakened, gradually thawing into water.
The blizzard vanished.
Naturally, the lizardmen stealthily hidden within the snow were all exposed.
The melting ice and snow turned into water, causing puddles to form across the floor.
However, as the blazing light in the sky intensified, the puddles on the ground began to evaporate completely. The entire floor transformed from its previous coldness into intense heat.
Bell, of course, remained unaffected by this scorching heat, but the monsters on this floor suffered terribly.
The Ice Lizardfolk were creatures of frigid realms, their bodies highly adapted to endure cold. But they possessed no resistance to heat.
Sure enough, one by one, the Lizardfolk's bodies began to turn bright red. They had lost the vitality they possessed in the snow, their strength now reduced by nearly ninety percent.
Now, they were weaker than even a Level 5 Goblin on the first floor.
The only creatures on this entire floor still possessing any resistance were the dragonfolk.
Yet even the dragonfolk were in a dire state.
Having lived in the frozen world for ages, their heat resistance was extremely low. Their very existence and movement required heat dissipation to maintain body temperature and basic bodily moisture.
In the past, the heat sacs within their bodies allowed them to spew flames and maintain the temperature necessary for basic bodily functions.
The current extreme heat was enough to shatter the delicate equilibrium between their bodies and the external environment, causing their body temperatures to skyrocket. The red-hot veins pulsing beneath their skin were now clearly visible.
Bell paid no mind to the gathering draconians.
"Can you still move?"
Even without looking, Bell understood the plight of these dragonkin.
Their internal heat sacs prevented any cooling, turning them into blazing furnaces on the brink of collapse.
"But as I said, I have no time to play with you now."
At Bell's command, the light in the sky intensified.
"Crackle crackle crackle!"
The ground began to crack under the intense heat. The veins across the dragonkin's bodies glowed brighter, and their skin started to splinter.
"Sizzle!"
Threads of hot vapor began to spurt from the fractured skin.
Simultaneously, the fractured areas spread outward in spiderweb patterns, expanding ever larger.
Now immobilized, the dragonkin were stripped of any capacity to continue their assault.
Without lifting a finger, Bell strolled past them, fulfilling his promise: no playing with them.