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"That doesn't make any sense," Tom muttered, unable to tear his eyes away from the slime. "Level fourteen? On the forty-second floor?" he asked, voicing out the obvious contradiction. 

Sweat started to trickle down Tom's neck. 

This wasn't the first time for the young man to be puzzled by the findings of the dungeon. But for the first time, he couldn't even form a single guess as to what this peculiarity could mean. 

Or rather, the answer was so obvious that it almost pushed itself to the tip of Tom's tongue, begging for him to spell it out loud. The thing was, the meaning behind such an answer was too disastrous for Tom to accept it. 

"What if all the monsters are on low levels? Just... stronger?" Marvin proposed the solution that Tom was unwilling to speak about.

Not because monsters being stronger on the first level was that much of a big deal on its own. After all, as their adventure within the dungeon proved, this didn't change anything. 

But the slime on Tom's shoulder proved something, of which ramification was easily capable of scaring Tom. 

'If monsters can be powerful even on their first level... How strong would they be if they were allowed to level up freely?'

Like the slime that they managed to tame proved, monsters were likely capable of leveling up.

"Why are you so concerned about this, guys?" Cleo asked, looking at the two of them as if they were over-worrying themselves for no reason. "It's not like the monsters can leave the dungeon, right?" she pointed out, alternating her eyes between her brother and her friend and, since recently, lover. 

"That's... yet to be confirmed," Tom sighed. "Even if it didn't happen before, we have no idea if it can or can not happen in the future," he said. 

"Is there even any point in worrying about it?" Cleo asked, unwilling to drop her agenda. "It didn't happen. That means neither of the worlds is prepared for such an outcome. And if the push were to come to shove..." she smiled deviously. 

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"Nuke solves it all," Tom muttered, finishing the girl's sentence. 

One could have all the magic that one wanted. One could have the strongest body that one wanted. But in the face of total annihilation, of the forces of nature brought to their extreme, no living matter could survive. 

In the face of the plasma hotter than the sun, everything was bound to perish. 

"The thing is," Tom shook his head, "even if our home can defend itself if the push were to come to shove, we can't say the same about the world we are heading towards," he said, his face taking a look of worry again. 

Sure, an atomic bomb could be the ultimate solution. Even if there existed a creature that could resist a single element of the atomic explosion, it was ultimately all the natural disasters combined into one. 

If there existed something capable of resisting the temperature of the nuclear discharge, then it would perish to the radiation. If something could withstand both radiation and temperature, it would be turned into smithereens by the shockwave. 

The problem that Tom had with this kind of solution was... that he had no means of getting his hands on a single nuke!

'Raiding the earth is out of options. Even if any nuke survived the last war, they are bound to be strictly guarded. And it's not like my skills would make me able to outrun a sustained and heavy fire,' he thought, biting his lips. 

"Tom!" Cleo shouted, finally getting through the intense layer of anxiety that Tom built around himself as he immersed himself in his thoughts.

"What?!" Tom snapped at the girl. It wasn't his intention. All the emotions pent up in his soul, all the stress, anxiety, and burden of leadership combined into this single shot at the girl. 

"Calm the fuck down!"  Cleo shouted, slapping her hand against Tom's face. 

For a moment, Tom simply stood in shock. The intense sensory experience overloaded his brain for a moment, making him struggle to regain control over his body.

"Wheeez," Tom took a deep breath, slowly releasing the air back while relaxing his body at the same time. 

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"Thanks," he said, rubbing his hand against his cheek. "You didn't hold back at all, though," he added, sending a sad puppy glance over to the girl. 

"Don't you make those eyes at me," Cleo smirked, "it won't work," she added.

The situation was more or less diffused. Even though they figured out or solved absolutely nothing, Tom returned to his senses.

And looking at the stares that Kira and Rufus were throwing them from the back of the corridor, it was clear that solving that problem was an absolutely greatest priority. 

In the end, how could they hope to pass through the dungeon if the strongest person in the group and their leader would lose himself to the pressure?

"I guess I was overthinking too much," Tom summed up his previous behavior. "Whether monsters can level up or not, it's not something that I should be thinking about right now. Since they don't seem to be capable of leaving the dungeon..." he muttered when another realization struck him. 

'Are they?' he thought when a single figure appeared before his mind. 

"I will wait for you on the other side," said the mysterious girl before Tom engaged in combat with the last boss of the dungeon. He never saw her again ever since that time, but if she was in a dungeon...

Was she a human? An elf? Another kind of humanoid? Or was she a monster?

'Damn, I'm really overthinking this,' Tom thought, swallowing a gulp of his saliva. He then raised his eyes and looked at Cleo. 'For now, I need to focus on getting us out of this place,' he decided. 

"You good?" Marvin asked, patting Tom's shoulder. 

"Yeah," the young man nodded his head before shaking it a little. "Anyway, whenever we say to stop wasting time, we end up wasting even more of it. So I won't repeat it this time," he said with a smile. 

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"Yeah," Cleo nodded her head. "Since I'm not sure if I should use that skill of mine, I will hold the backline," she announced, turning around and moving towards the rest of the group. 

"Care to join me, then?" Tom asked, grasping his spear a bit tighter. For some reason, the cold metal of the spear's handle had a calming effect on his mind. 

In a sense, holding on to his weapon made him slightly tunnel-visioned, as if only combat existed in a world where he held his spear. But within the confines of the dungeon, it was hardly a bad thing. 

"Sure thing," Marvin smiled, seeing that the real Tom returned. "I want to test my skills. And since I'm support-oriented..." he shook his shoulders. 

"You can't do it without someone to support," Tom finished his friend's words with a smile. "Let's get going then!" he said. 

Yet, before either of them could make as much as a single spell, the monsters finally appeared from behind the corner of the corridor. 

"It seems like we really took more time than we should," Tom muttered, silently blaming himself for the fact. 

Fighting the monsters within the same corridor as the rest of their group theoretically wasn't anything bad...

'I don't want Rufus to see any combat,' Tom thought, starting to slowly jog towards the mixed group of monsters. 'His childish ideas of what it means to be a hero are already a force strong enough to pull him towards exploring the dungeons later on,' he thought, scanning the composition of the monster's group. 'I don't want to make any flashy scenes for him to be even more inspired,' he thought. 

"Marvin!" Tom shouted, right as he leaned his body forward. 

"On it!" Tom's friend didn't waste any time. 

There were seven wolf-like monsters, three of which carried goblins armed with various kinds of sharp tools and dressed in leather armor. Behind them, a group of three orcs, three heads higher than your average human, followed. 

"I GOT IT!" Marvin suddenly shouted, filled with excitement. 

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"What?" Tom shouted back, fighting the desire to turn back and look at his friend. 

"I have no idea!" Marvin dutifully reported. "Just brace yourself!" he added, warning his friend. 

Tom's vision tunneled. This time, it wasn't the effect of his spear but an event that he could clearly observe. The corridor seemed to elongate, turning the monsters into a faraway sight. 

Only to suddenly collapse right on Tom's face, as if the passage shrank from roughly fifty meters it was in reality, to just a single step. 

This strange vision ended as soon as it ended. Tom's sight returned to how his eyes would normally operate right after that. 

With one distinctive difference. 

Right now, he could see some kind of strange, red paths cutting right through the corridor. Paths that, for some reason, had a strangely attracting force over his body!

Unsure what this feeling was, Tom decided to give himself up to it. 

His body moved as if pulled by the strings. His hand shot backward as his legs pushed him ahead. By the time he reached the group of monsters, the same strings had pulled his hand forward, sneaking his spear right underneath the guard of the goblin only for Tom to cleave its head cleanly off!

'Could it be?' Tom thought, breaking control of this strange feeling of his body and kicking the ground. After he gained a tiny bit of distance, he quickly got to the work, massacring every last of the monsters, leaving only a single orc alive. 

This was still just the forty-third floor. Monsters that populated it were of no challenge for Tom to slaughter. But there was still one thing that he wanted to try. 

"Marvin, can you try it again?"

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