"Phew…"
Inside the old church, Kaelis has finally opened his eyes for the first time in days.
He exhaled slowly as he took in his surroundings.
Yet another unknown amount of time passed yet he was unbothered as it was nothing new to him.
He could only make out that it was day time.
Slowly getting up from his bean bag, he glanced at the items on the table before him.
He had studied all of them to the highest degree possible and now had the ability of using them to create varying swords as he wishes.
And his soul size is now pushing ninety cube.
I'll soon reach a hundred cube… just need a few dozen more materials…or if I'm lucky, a law or concept. He thought wryly.
He's been alive for so many years and only acquired understanding of about seventeen different concepts up to the point he could use them.
You might think that's a lot—but each concept comes with a handful of smaller, related ideas.
Seventeen was actually kind of low.
Especially considering he had a couple hundred undeveloped ones still tucked away inside him.
In any case…
Picking up the items, he pressed them one by one to his chest as they disappeared into his soul.
Once they were in his soul, they began breaking down at the lowest level possible as any and all information about each item got absorbed by his soul and streamlined into his consciousness.
"So much more information I hadn't known before. I guess this method is always the most efficient."
Even then, "But if I use this method all the time, I won't gain any strength at all." He lamented.
Various information surfaced into his mind, the majority originating from the monster materials—specifically the core."
Even gaining a piece of knowledge about the dungeon's inner workings.
These are the types of information that's impossible to be gained from simply studying the composition of materials.
I heard the dungeon was mysterious…never thought it had so many rule binding nodes inside one monster core.
Shaking his head at the possibility of the dungeon using the monsters to learn about adventurers.
That notion alone would be terrifying to anyone in this world.
In any case, it's none of my concern.
Since he has nothing else to do at this moment, he decided to take a stroll in the dungeon.
Magic conduction metal is not anything noteworthy, so you can expect him not to use it at all as he has better materials to choose from.
Might as well explore for other materials while I'm here. I should hurry and get back to that world as well.
He began recalling his time in a world he was in a few worlds ago.
Where he got kicked out for ragebaiting a clown.
Going back now might not be a great idea, until his soul quality has been improved as it might better his chances of survival.
"Hmhm. I wonder if that little spirit is waiting for me still? It's been a while…"
"Been a while," he says. Get a load of this guy.
Pushing back thoughts of the little flower at the back of his mind, he stepped through the door and down the streets of Orario.
…
Dungeon, eight floor—
As he cruised through the levels of the upper floor of the dungeon, Kaelis, with casual swings of his sword, sent the monsters into a puff of smoke.
The monsters he encountered so far were so weak, sometimes he didn't even bother to swing and just let them charge and slam into him, killing themselves in the process.
He didn't even bother picking up the magic stones they left behind as he saw no use for these small ones.
His sights have been set for the lower floors.
Before, when he came with his little disciple, he had stopped on the tenth floor but with Bell no longer behind him, he aimed for lower.
He surmised that the lower he goes, the stronger the monsters and their dropped items along with better materials.
Within an hour of strolling, he passed the tenth floor.
From then on, he encountered various new different species and the further he went, the less monsters he came across.
He kept an eye out for anything unusual—strange metals, weird stones, or monster drops he hadn't seen before.
Some pieces were stuck in the walls faintly glowing, others felt heavier than they should, and a few even seemed to hum with magic.
He picked up each one, and without bothering to test it, absorbed it into his keychain for later.
Kaelis paused at a few walls, scraping off samples, examining how the rock itself seemed to react to magic.
Everything was interesting if you paid attention, and Kaelis was paying very close attention.
By the time he hit the seventeenth floor, he had a pretty big pile of new stuff.
…
Dungeon, seventeenth floor—
"I've been grabbing anything shiny since I passed floor 10," he muttered, eyes scanning the massive pile of loot he'd heaped inside his storage.
His body was standing in a narrow, tunnel-like section of the seventh floor, but his mind was completely inside his keychain, sorting through everything.
Only Kaelis would do something like this—this reckless.
"I guess I'll need to move some of these old things out… no, better idea—I'll just make more storage. Tsk! But switching between them all the time is going to be a pain."
Items from his other worlds were stacked in one corner of the grid-like room, a perfect cube measuring ten meters on each side.
To anyone without access to this dimension, it would look endless.
But for him—someone who loved piling things—it already felt cramped.
Then again, his understanding of space was still pretty basic, barely passing the threshold as a concept.
So he couldn't just expand it past the horizon.
"Hm?"
He felt a slight jerk coming from outside.
Must be a monster.
He quickly left the other dimensional storage space only to find himself plastered inside the walls of the tunnel.
"Huh—woah!"
Kaelis looked around.
A ton of Minotaurs were surrounding him, all sneering like they were about to do something impressive.
There had to be hundreds.
He blinked. When did so much spawn here? I've only been gone for a minute or so…
"I don't think… Minotaur horns are special. So you guys just might be useless," he said while pulling himself out the wall.
And just like that—poof—he vanished.
From the outside, it looked like a single, casual swing.
But if you had top-tier perception, you'd notice the blade moved impossibly fast, slashing countless times in an instant.
The Minotaurs didn't even realize what had happened.
They stood there confused… and then, slowly, they staggered, looked down, and realized their bodies were falling apart piece by piece.
Not a single one of them had seen it coming. It was over in a second.
Kaelis just stood there, the sword dripping faintly with dark energy.
He shrugged as the sword disappeared.
"See? Nothing interesting." He smirked.
And so, the corridor went silent again, like nothing had happened—which, honestly, for Kaelis, it hadn't.
Chapter 75 end.