"Name?"
"Jeanne d'Arc."
"Gender?"
"Female."
"Level?"
"Lv. 1."
"Age?"
"Nineteen."
Rose looked up, her eyebrows raised slightly.
"Starting at nineteen? That's a bit late. But..." She glanced at Ronan beside her. "It's better than a certain someone who started even later."
"Which Familia do you belong to?"
Jeanne looked at Ronan instinctively. Seeing him give her a look, she pressed her lips together.
"Demeter Familia."
"Place of birth?"
Ronan pointed at the blank space on the form at the right time. "We don't need to fill out the rest, right? It's not mandatory to finish every line anyway."
Rose stamped the parchment without expression and put it away. She handed an identification tag and a Familia emblem to Jeanne.
"Keep these safe. It's a lot of trouble to replace them if you lose them."
"Thank you." Jeanne carefully put them away.
Then, Rose suddenly smiled in a teasing way. She lowered her voice and said to Jeanne, "Miss d'Arc, you are very beautiful. You should be careful of certain people... don't let him take advantage of you so easily."
Ronan's mouth twitched as he listened. His face turned dark. He grabbed Jeanne's wrist and started walking out.
"Miss d'Arc, protect yourself!" Rose's voice followed them out.
Ronan stumbled. Under the teasing gazes of the people nearby, he practically fled the Guild hall in embarrassment.
However, the moment he stepped over the threshold, Ronan suddenly turned his head. His eyes locked onto Rose behind the counter.
The wolf-girl narrowed her eyes dangerously. She clearly read Ronan's silent lip movements:
'Your panties are nice.'
After saying that, he pulled Jeanne and ran away quickly.
Crack!
The water cup in Rose's hand shattered. The veins on her forehead stood out, and her face twisted with anger. She growled through her teeth:
"Ronan Veyr—you bastard!"
Adventurer's Main Street.
Jeanne didn't stop walking until they reached a street with fewer people. She looked at Ronan playfully, a teasing curve on her lips. "Hey, how long do you plan on holding my hand?"
Ronan didn't change his expression and acted like it was natural. "What's wrong with holding my own family member's hand?"
"..." Jeanne was speechless. She didn't expect this guy's skin to be so thick.
With people looking at them curiously, her cheeks felt a bit hot. She hurried to pull her hand away from Ronan. "There are so many people watching... behave yourself!"
Ronan chuckled. "I get it. It's fine at home, right?"
"Ronan!!!"
"Blehh!"
Jeanne's face turned red, and she hurriedly looked down to hide it.
The two of them joked around and soon arrived at the large plaza beneath the famous Babel. They stopped for a moment by the familiar fountain.
Jeanne looked up at the iconic building of Orario and said honestly, "So this is Babel... the Dungeon is directly underneath it?"
Ronan nodded. "Yeah. From what I've read in history books, Orario was originally a fortress built to guard the Great Hollow of the Dungeon. Babel's role is to act as a lid to keep the monsters from coming out."
"A place that keeps producing monsters..." Jeanne whispered. "Unbelievable."
"Let's go," Ronan smiled. "You'll see it for yourself very soon."
After nearly half a month of recovery, Ronan returned to his daily adventurer routine in the Dungeon.
Different from before, he was no longer alone. He now had a partner fighting by his side.
They walked down the slow, spiraling stairs to the plaza on the first floor. Jeanne looked around carefully.
"This is the Adventurer's Plaza, a safety zone. Once you pass through those tunnels," he pointed to several dark entrances, "you have truly entered the Dungeon."
"?"
Just after he finished speaking, he noticed that Jeanne's aura had changed completely now that they were underground.
Her posture looked relaxed, but her muscles were tight. She was like a cheetah ready to strike, prepared for anything.
She also moved her position slightly to protect Ronan's side.
"Ronan," Jeanne leaned close to his ear. Her voice was very low as she shared what she felt. "I can feel hostility everywhere. That feeling... it's not aimed at me alone. It feels more like the whole place is hostile to us."
Hearing this, Ronan raised an eyebrow. "Revelation? Your feeling is right. The Dungeon is alive. It feels absolute malice toward every person who enters it. What you feel is probably that."
Jeanne's face stayed calm, but her heart was racing. "It's alive. No wonder the Dungeon is so dangerous..."
It was hard to imagine what a labyrinth this large would become once it had a consciousness.
"Then, what exactly is the Dungeon?" she asked.
"I don't know." Ronan shrugged and shook his head.
Ronan didn't know how to answer that question because the answer didn't matter to him.
To him, using the Dungeon to get stronger was more practical than investigating its nature.
The First Floor.
"Giee giee giee giee—"
Two monsters appeared from the cracks in the wall right in front of the pair. As soon as they hit the ground, their red eyes glared, and they lunged with claws out.
"Just Goblins." Ronan stepped aside. "Jeanne, want to try?"
Facing the ugly Goblins, Jeanne frowned. A strong feeling of disgust rose inside her. It made her body and mind instinctively reject them.
Her silver gauntlet gripped the handle of her flag-spear. She stepped forward, and the tip of the spear flashed with a clear light.
Swish— swish—
Before the monsters could get close, the flag-spear turned deadly in Jeanne's hands. With two thud sounds, it pierced the monsters' heads without any struggle.
Jeanne shook her wrist expressionlessly, throwing the dirty slime off the spear tip. The disgust in her heart finally eased a little.
"..."
Ronan stood behind her, staring in shock. He opened his mouth but didn't know what to say.
He felt that Jeanne's condition in that moment was... a bit strange.
He thought for a moment and asked curiously, "Jeanne... you seem to... really hate Goblins? This should be... the first time you've seen them, right?"
Hearing Ronan's words, Jeanne finally realized her reaction.
She frowned and thought about it. "Yes... it's a natural disgust. Also, my back suddenly felt hot. Revelation was giving me a strong warning that I had to kill them immediately and cleanly."
"..." Ronan's mouth twitched. Was Revelation even a normal skill anymore?
They were just Goblins, even if Goblins were indeed evil.
Especially for Jeanne, with [Holy Maiden] and that knightly nature, they were like natural enemies to her.
No wonder her reaction was so strong.
The two continued forward and encountered several more waves of monsters.
But Ronan soon realized with a sigh that the battles on the first few floors gave Jeanne no training at all.
She killed them the moment they appeared.
"Ahem," Ronan cleared his throat. "It seems the first few floors aren't very useful for your training, other than getting used to the monster types and how they fight. Let's go deeper. We can learn about the monsters we meet along the way."
Environment was important.
Compared to Ronan, who had come from a peaceful world and knew almost nothing about fighting, Jeanne had fought on real battlefields full of blood and fire.
So, while Ronan had to start from zero and slowly increase the intensity to adapt, that process was unnecessary for Jeanne.
She only lacked knowledge and experience with monsters and the Dungeon. Once she gained that, she would naturally adapt her old techniques and strategies to hunting monsters, and the result would be completely one-sided.
Floor 2.
Floor 3.
All the way to Floor 6.
Their pace finally slowed down.
Along the way, Jeanne used her high-level combat skills and experience to cut down monsters one after another. Combined with her strong skill set, no monster could stand against her.
She swung her flag-spear with ease. It was powerful and sharp, but it also had a natural beauty to it. Her body and spear techniques moved together as one. Ronan could hardly look away.
In a certain room, Ronan finished picking up the magic stones and drop items. He took out a waterskin and handed it to the girl.
"Want some water?"
Jeanne shook her head. Her breathing was as steady as usual as she pushed the waterskin back to Ronan. "No, this level of fighting is nothing. It's not even enough to warm me up."
"..." Looking at her forehead, which didn't have a single drop of sweat, Ronan silently took a few big gulps of water.
He remembered how he had struggled to survive alone on the sixth floor before, and then he looked at the person in front of him...
"As expected..." he whispered to himself. "Sometimes the gap between people is just ridiculous."
"Hmm? What did you say?"
"Nothing..."
As Ronan shook his head and sighed, several lines of light gold text appeared silently in his vision:
[Jeanne d'Arc killed a Goblin. Experience +1]
[Jeanne d'Arc killed a Kobold. Experience +1]
"Wait—what!?"
[Jeanne d'Arc killed a Dungeon Lizard. Experience +1]
"What the hell—?!"
The sudden notifications made Ronan choke on his water. His eyes widened in disbelief, and his mind went blank for a moment.
He never expected this.
When Jeanne killed monsters, he received experience too.
A huge burst of joy hit him at once. His heart pounded with excitement.
He never thought the problem that had bothered him for so long would be solved so easily.
When in a party, he could get experience from monsters his Familia members defeated. This meant that even if the Familia grew larger in the future, he wouldn't have to worry about his growth slowing down because others got the kills first.
In fact, it would make his experience gain much faster.