The enemies this time are, once more, a group of Green Caterpillars.
(Fire Storm!)
I activated Fire Storm, and the sparks it created began to fall in the vicinity of the enemies. Most of them got burned down on the spot, but two of them actually survived, meaning that we were once again put in a situation where both Roxanne and I had one enemy to defeat. When the one I was closer two approached me, I slashed it with my Copper Sword and got body-slammed in return. It didnt hurt all that much, but it was all too evident that this shitty Copper Sword was not Durandal. If I had it with me, this bug would have been turned into shishkebab in a jiffy. I managed to avoid the second body slam that was heading my way and then wanted to launch magic at the Green Caterpillar in return, but before I was able to cast Fireball or another Fire Storm at it, it used that brief gap between my actions to get closer to me again
Damn it! Why did I allow something like that to happen! Now, if I was the previous, close combat oriented me, then I would never allow such a blunder to happen, but now that I have switched my specs from sword-fighting to magic casting, it became all too apparent to me that I simply started paying too much attention to the process of casting spells, which resulted in me not paying as much attention as I should have to the monsters themselves!
A moment later, Fire Storm finally activated, and its sparks managed to catch the Green Caterpillar just as I was in the middle of backstepping to create more of a distance between us. The flames swallowed it, and in the next moment it moaned loudly, keeled over and died, turning into a puff of green smoke.
Ugh
Just like I have previously said, fighting with monsters while being a magic user is much more difficult in comparison to having a purely physical build, and it made me groan a little in frustration. If this is how it is on the second floor, then a part of me cannot help it but get worried about how tough the things are going to get once we eventually reach the higher floors.
Uhm, forgive me for being too curious about the matters that have nothing to do with me, but may I ask what is your current level, master?
Roxanne asks about my level in a timid manner as if she thought that she was doing something that she wasnt supposed to do. She wants to know what my level is, huh? Well, I see no reason for keeping it a secret from her, so
My Explorer level, right? Currently I am at Lv.20.
Lv.20?! As expected of someone as amazing as you, master. In that case your Item Box should still have a lot of free space for all the items we obtained today!
She must know about the Lv. = number of spaces in the Item Box, but she didnt know my exact level, and thats why she wanted to ask for confirmation. I have to say, being praised by her for how big my level was felt quite good, almost as if she was saying that something else about me is quite big, if you know what I mean. So come on, Roxanne, praise my level some more!
Then again, I guess me having such a high level can actually be considered to be pretty abnormal, since normally it looks like the process of gaining levels in this world is typically associated with aging, similarly to how back on earth there was this saying that with the age comes experience. This world is like an example of putting that saying into practical use, except for the fact that there is a way of gaining EXP faster than normal people, but it has one prerequisite: youd have to be a child of the nobility, and then youd be taken to the Labyrinth from an early age so that you could have more EXP and the money until youd reach an age where you could start going there by yourself. But I am not a child of nobility according to the fake backstory I told to Roxanne. To her, I am just another country bumpkin, so it is understandable that she might be amazed at how someone whos supposedly no different from any other regular person is able to gain levels so fast.
Thinking about it that way, I guess the level of my Explorers Job might be considered a little high for my age, but it should not be that much of a deal. True, right now I am earning x20 more EXP points due to The Bonus Skill I have taken exactly for that purpose, and it was that that allowed me to achieve such a level in such a relatively short amount of time, while normally getting to Lv.20 in any Job would take a few more years, at least according to what Roxanne said at one point.