Chapter 105 - Frustration

Nevertheless, as Vegan had said, his chattering did help in a way. It slowed the rate at which the three rookies got tired of the leveling grind. But even that had its limits. Eventually, their levels did not go up easily, unlike at the beginning. After facing the same fellspawn over and over, the children showed signs of tiring out.

Sevi grumbled, “When do you think our level will go up? I feel like it’s about time.”

“Can’t we rest for a moment…?” Julieta timidly added.

“This isn’t a suitable place to rest. If we keep going a little more…” Nova encouraged the two, but it showed on his face that he wanted to take a break as well. I glanced at the party status window, then said, “I think you’ll all level up after going through one more goblin party? Let’s rest after that.”

“Really? How can you tell that, Vice-captain?” Sevi asked in surprise. Ordinary corps members couldn’t see the party window, let alone their status windows. How could they tell their level, then? Well, fortunately, there was a magic tool for that purpose. You could check your level with it each time you went in and out of a dungeon. While you were in a dungeon, though, you could only make a rough guess based on your current level and the feeling you got when you leveled up. All that was meaningless to me, however, as I could see the party window well and clear.

“I know everything,” I joked.

The three couldn’t help but look disbelieving, even if it was coming from me. But, being the good kids they were, obedient to my orders, they moved toward the next goblin party without any complaint.

* * *

“Wow!” Julietta exclaimed. As soon as the last goblin was killed, she leveled up following Nova and Sevi. “The vice-captain is amazing…!”

The eyes of the three chicks sparkled with even greater trust, which made me shrug with a smirk. The young ones had dismissed the matter, but the seasoned members August and Vegan were wide-eyed with amazement.

“But how could you tell?”

“I had a hunch.” I shrugged it off.

“A hunch? Is it something you can tell by that…?”

“I told you I could see well. I can tell these sorts of things.” I gave an evasive answer with another shrug. So what if they didn’t believe me? It was more realistic saying that I could tell with a hunch than saying I could see the statuses of the unit members numerically. August came to terms quite quickly, having witnessed my many miscellaneous abilities. Vegan, on the other hand, looked astonished for a while more, finding the matter hard to believe. After that, the children periodically asked when their levels would rise. I replied that I would inform them when the time came and urged them to focus on defeating fellspawn, but it wasn’t easy.

A day ended in that manner. We set up camp and gathered in a circle, filling our bellies with a simple meal of bread and jerky. The grain of the sliced bread was soft, which was a luxury that could only be enjoyed on the first day. Nova chewed on his bread as he sighed and said, “Only level 22 now… We’ve been at it all day long yet it’s only this high.”

“But don’t they say it’s harder to level up as your level increases?” Julieta wondered.

“Agh…” Sevi began counting off his fingers and hung his head in frustration. “Who knows when we’ll level up as much as the elite squads like this. I can’t imagine…”

Vegan chortled at that. “Do you realize that this is already very fast? A few years of this and you’ll be able to join the elite squad.”

“Yikes, a few years?”

“Come now, it’s only a few years. You’ve got to consider that you kids started years later than the current elite members.”

“That’s true, but…”

“At least you’ve got the chance, right? Have you heard of level 50 being called the ‘wall of lament’?”

“I only know what it’s called.”

“It’s because people feel their limit upon becoming level 50. Even when you’re at the same level, the difference in specs can be huge. And since it becomes even harder leveling up, a lot of people grow complacent. They end up only going to level 50 dungeons, even if they get higher in level.”

There was a thing called character efficiency, back when this world was a game to me. The characters didn’t all perform the same just because they were at the same level. This feature especially stood out in games like The Sacred War, which had a lot of characters. Jun Karentia’s stats weren’t on the good side, on top of having the trait of being a support-type mage. These made her an even less desirable pick for players.

“Wh-what if we can’t pass the ‘wall of lament’ too?”

“The vice-captain swore she’d make us elites… There’s no way we can’t.”