20demayo Chapter 861: Level 84
Chapter 861: Level 84
The chime that normally marked the best moment of a week fired again before its own echo finished, then again, stacking on itself until the level-up sound stopped being an event and became a drumroll, golden script scrolling past faster than anyone could read their own windows."EIGHTY-THREE?!" Luna’s shriek tore across the formation, the gremlin gripping her display with both hands as if it might bolt. "I was FIFTY-NINE a minute ago! Fatty, tell me yours says less!"
"Eighty-three, gremlin bestie." Nyx’s grin spread with indecent slowness. "Twins."
"Eighty-three is an acceptable number, I suppose," Bastet informed her own status window, tail swaying in a rhythm that betrayed exactly how acceptable.
She giggled cutely, loving the moment.
Kaiden’s own scroll slowed, settled, and stamped its final line.
[Name: Kaiden Grey]
[Class: Paragon of Sin]
[Level: 84]
His Rank was no longer shown. Past Rank 3 - Star there was nothing left to climb; the system had named him inheritor of the entire heritage and retired the measurement.
’Twenty-four levels in under a minute...’
He pulled up his full status to see the damage.
[Stats]
[Vitality: 183]
[Strength: 218]
[Agility: 263]
[Endurance: 192]
[Mana: 180]
[Magic: 178]
Same as what was shown before.
But...
[Unallocated stat points: 960]
Nine hundred and sixty.
Forty points average for the twenty-four levels, sitting in one spendable pile beneath stats he had bled to raise eight and twelve at a time, and Kaiden’s knees dipped before he caught himself on his own greatsword.
A level 84 frame, still running on level 60 numbers, with a war chest big enough to build the next thirty levels of his body in a single sitting.
’Later.’ He closed the window before the temptation grew teeth.
The XP windows had passed the Dungeon-Born by entirely, because the dungeon raised its children by a different ladder.
[Dungeon-Born achievement recognized: war against a rival Dungeon Master, waged and won.]
[Dungeon-Born Evolution Protocol: engaged.]
Behind the formation, bronze light rolled down the shield line, and Taigi’s forty-one warriors gripped one another’s shoulders as the change worked through their bodies, the domain reshaping what it had reborn once already.
The Leader of the Dungeon-Born turned her forearms over to watch her command sigils climb past her elbows in fresh lines of light, her own growth echoing every one of theirs.
Scarlet and Vespera shared their windows with no one, and no one needed them to.
The Flame Monarch’s grin had stretched to full width and kept going anyway, flames curling off her shoulders in lazy, satisfied spirals.
Beside her, Vespera had gone completely still, lips parted a fraction, the shadows at her hem curling and stretching like cats in sunlight.
Neither monarch said a word, yet, somehow, both were extremely loud about it.
’Option A would have paid this out kill by kill across thirty days, split between whoever landed each blow,’ Kaiden thought, watching his people glow. His gamble had paid everyone he loved, simultaneously, in full.
One by one, the chimes around the formation went quiet.
Except one.
Alexandra’s window was still rolling.
She had woken up that morning as a Level 1 commoner girl.
Now, she was a Valkyrie, and the system was climbing her through the cheap early floors at a rate the eye could barely follow, tens of levels flashing past while she flapped both hands at the scrolling script as if she could shoo it away.
"Why is mine still going?! Make it stop! My head is about to explode!! So much ding! Ding! Ding!"
"That’s the most beautiful sound in the world," Kaiden grinned.
"Kai?" Aria’s voice sounded deathly dangerous all of a sudden.
"After the voice of my girls, of course," Kaiden quickly corrected, and the ominous aura receded, replaced by bubbly cute maiden energy as Aria jumped to grab onto his arm and hug it to her chest lovingly.
"What level is it?" Nyx asked amusedly as the phenomenon slowed down.
"Level 77..." Alexandra whispered, full of shock. Although, unlike Kaiden and the main combatants, she received fewer stat points per level to allocate, it was safe to say she went from a giant weak link to a woman who could now become a respected member of Valhalla’s Sinners.
’Great,’ Kaiden thought. As the guardian of the group, she would become the glue who kept them all alive. It was only natural he chose her as a recipient of the XP boon as well.
His palm settled on top of her head. "Congratulations, my protector."
Alexandra burst into tears and laughter in the same breath, and didn’t stop doing either for a long while.
- sinnamon_roll99: Did the maid just become level 77 in a single afternoon?
- MoonlitSinner: So many women will beg to become Kaiden’s Valkyrie now...
- Lady Leia (mod): Oh, absolutely. There’s a generational line waiting to kneel between those legs.
...
[Dungeon Integration: complete.]
[The Claimant is registered: Guardian of the Abyssal Dungeon.]
[Guardian retains full combat capability. Dungeon Master functions: revoked.]
The last silver-grey river ran dry, and the leftover mass on the white plain stood up on four legs.
The same shape remained at a fraction of the scale, dense dark carapace under a crown of six bright eyes, compressed into a body that could exist near people without erasing them, and it was still the size of a fortress.
It trotted.
The Guardian of the Abyssal Dungeon crossed the plain at a happy bounce that quaked the ground in marching rhythm, planted itself in front of Kaiden, and pressed its crown against his chest with what it clearly believed was restraint.
He slid backward half a meter with both boots carving furrows into the white floor.
"You’re forgetting your size! Just because you shrunk a lot doesn’t mean you’re easy for humans to handle now..."
It rumbled, a sound like a contented landslide, then flopped sideways and presented the belly again, six eyes watching him with shameless hope.
- sinnamon_roll99: ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
- bella_nocturne: BELLY RUBS OR I HATE WATCH FROM NOW ON ???? ???? ????
- TouchGrass: Chat is 90% dog emoji right now.
"For the record, I hate this thing," Luna announced from a safe distance, arms crossed.
The Guardian’s crown swung toward the gremlin, and it whined at her, that same impossible sound from a creature its size, and nudged her with the very tip of its snout, which still knocked her onto her butt.
"...Okay." Luna stared up at six expectant eyes from the ground. "That’s a little cute."
[The Guardian may now be named.]
The chat erupted into the largest naming war in streaming history, candidates scrolling too fast to read, Lady Leia composing anthems for nine of them at once.
- xXShadowMilkXx: DOGZILLA. it has to be DOGZILLA
- PrincelessPrincess (mod): Fluffy. The lack of fluff is the point
- Kaiden’s Wife (mod): Pupcake!
"Ragnarok!" Calypso proposed to the group, radiant. "Short, classy, apocalyptic!"
"Something regal," Bastet countered toward the demoness, ears angled with conviction. "He is a king reborn into service. Ozymandias."
Kaiden looked up at the creature in question, currently lying on its back at his feet with one leg the size of a watchtower paddling the air.
"Pebble."
The plain went quiet for a heartbeat.
[The Guardian has been named: Pebble.]
- xXShadowMilkXx: PEBBLE ???? PEBBLE ???? PEBBLE
- sinnamon_roll99: ????????????????????????????????????????
- PrincelessPrincess (mod): The mods surrender. Let the dog spam flow
Pebble’s happy stomp cracked the white floor for two hundred meters in every direction, and somewhere in the system’s eternal records, the great devourer, the doom of twenty dungeons, the challenger of humanity, was filed forever under a name that weighed six grams.
Now, it was time to return to Earth!