The biased power level of this world

Two weeks after we started leveling up…

Immediately after taking down a minotaur…

“Hah…hah…, whoo, I finally hit level eight. Two more levels, hah…”

Hana had bought a healer’s cloak, a cotton white robe with blue markings on the front and gold markings on the back, over her green shirt and red skinny jeans which complimented her yellow eyes. She had a steel staff with gold wing markings all over it.

“Good work Hana, I hit level twelve myself.”

Aoyama wore steel chest armor over his plain clothes and had two broad swords on his back. He wore black gloves and boots with a red scarf around his neck which complimented his green eyes, strangely.

“Stop showing off Aoyama, you’re gonna piss her off.”

“Already. Pissed. Haah, which level are you now by the way?”

I wore my self-crafted outfit which I poured half my total mana into on a daily basis. The gold shoulder pieces got harder as time went by and the outfit got softer and more comfortable to the touch but too hard to stab through. Its toughness was on par with orichalcum and its softness couldn’t be described. My mask had changed to a dark blue color, the same as my hair. I had incorporated a few more immunity spells into my equipment when a merchant with scrolls came around town a few days ago. With my mythril straight sword on my right hip, I looked really badass.

“Doesn’t matter. We have enough horns to get four platinum coins.”

Around my waist hang six minotaur horns. I cut off the additional two from the minotaur we just killed. We had been killing slimes till I hit level three, then we moved on to orcs, which were hard at first but we managed to kill it. Then we regularly killed C Class monsters, cashing in their valuable parts at the adventurers guild. The representative reminded us that we needed our party’s total level to be at least level ten but we declined. We had decided that we weren’t going to register until we all hit level ten so we worked hard.

“Yeah, well…level seventeen. That’s right, suck it Akatsuki.”

“Show off.”

“We’ll catch up soon.”

Even though Petra was my slave, we all got along well--well enough to be on a first name basis with us, though she still referred to me by my last name. She let go of her condescending attitude after the first week so we quit ignoring her. She wore steel arm and leg braces and chest armor over her green shirt. She had her war two axes ready on her and a dagger attached to her lower back. She kept an orange band tied around her head(forehead obviously), a smaller one tying her silver hair and a final one around her waist covering the dagger.

“If you can’t catch up to me then you’ll never catch up to him.” She said, pointing at me.

“Huh? I’m level eighteen so it’s not a big deal.” I lied.

“Quit lying, after all the solo work you’ve done by yourself I wouldn’t be surprised if you were level thirty.”

I bought a low level skill scroll called ‘The Degenerate’, which hides your true level from people with low level scanning skills or magic and incorporated the skill into my orange gloves. Basically, the only way to see my real level was to have a higher level than I did or have a high level skill or magic which sees others’ levels. My real level was twenty eight, but I set my visible level to eighteen.

“Anyway, we’ll be registering as adventurers tomorrow so you have to level up faster Hana.”

“I know, I know, we get less pay for our catches because we’re not registered adventurers. You should know how hard it is to level up as a healer.”

“You chose that job.”

“What!?”

“Nothing! Nothing at all!”

“That’s what I thought.”

“We need to get back soon. Everyone grab on.”

Since I killed the most monsters and even went solo hunting a lot, I had the most funds. So I used them to upgrade my gear and spells whenever I had the chance. I bought two flight skills, used one on my dark blue boots and equipped one into one empty slot of my eight skill slots I had. I also bought and learnt a flight spell in case of emergency. I used my boots a lot so moving around quickly was easy for me. My party members started holding on to me to move around quickly as well, when Hana made a joke about it.

“Petra, I’m holding him from the front this time, you get on his back.”

“Why should I, you didn’t really heal me that much today.”

The two of them argued a lot over issues like that, I thought it was because Petra and I slept in the same room, on the same bed.

“Off we go.”

With Petra losing the argument this time, Hana hugged me from the front as we took off toward the village.

After cashing in the horns, we headed back to the inn to rest up, or I should say, they headed back to the inn and I went solo hunting as usual. After sleeping the first night in the inn, my memories of the ‘Pride Dorm’ all returned at once. I was determined to see my dad soon, and my mom for the first time, so I started saving up so I could travel to the Holy Kingdom.

“Hmm, seems there are less monsters around every day. So they don’t just respawn, that’s good to know.”

As I moved further south from the village, deeper into the forest, I found an ogre group of five. Monsters were ranked in different classes, normally ogres were C Class monster—Ogre Champions were B Class and Ogre Lords were Higher B Class—so facing a group of five alone was a stupid idea for even a group of Elite Rank adventurers. I charged in quickly and cut off the closest one’s head. The startled ogre nearby quickly grabbed his club and knocked me into a tree. I threw a gas bomb when I landed on my feet and went in for another kill, but another club came at me quicker than I could dodge.

Gleergh-I vomited up some blood as I went flying. I counted the seconds as I fought so I could use my main ability more efficiently. I focused on dodging till four minutes were up, then I took a huge axe to the neck and died. Then my ability activated, I got a massive energy boost and killed the ogres quickly. I never told my friends about my abilities so I preferred hunting alone so no one could see me die. With that battle finished, I harnessed the ogre spirit energy off the dead ogres and cut off their ears.

“Village is safe. Time to head back, one level up is good enough.”

Plus I don’t want to try when I’ve used my trump card.

Ogres which wondered near the village were either outcasts or those who abandoned their tribes. Killing them brought no issues, but hunting ogres in their territory was a crime in their tribes as well as human settlements since ogres were an intelligent and peaceful race.

I headed back to the village to cash in the ears which I added all the funds to my savings. All my solo hunting money went straight to my savings in my ‘Personal Space’.

“Do I really have to explain this? Fine…”

Personal Space is a unique ability which is only accessible to summoned ones. It allows one to keep their belongings in their very own dimension, no matter the size, for as long as they needed. Since my friends and Petra were-technically-summoned to this world as well, they also have theirs.

When I reached the inn, my food was set out on my table as usual and everyone was asleep. The inn started getting more customers when the people of the village noticed number of monsters we cleared out from around the village. Travelers felt safer staying at the inn with the ‘strong adventurers who popped up’. I ate my food quickly, went upstairs to find Petra in my bed with Hana. Hana’s jealousy was getting annoying but for the sake of peace, I kept quiet and went to sleep in her bed.

*

The next morning, I woke up before the others and went solo hunting as usual…but this time was different.

As I was leaving the town as usual, I noticed some new faces asking questions around town. They were discreet in how they asked and who they asked so I knew they were smart. I ducked into the adventurers guild when I saw one coming straight at me.

“Hey, Masayuki, you’re earlier today.”

“Umu, I just…”

If I say I came to say ‘hello’, she’ll let it go to her head. If I say I’m hiding from someone, the other adventurers will get suspicious. If I say…

“Masayuki…?”

“Huh? Oh I’m uh…”

“You’re finally here to register huh?”

“Oh, well yes, but no…umu, it’s later today. Yes! We’ll be registering today and I came to inform you.”

“Sure…”

“Great! Well I’m off!”

I left the adventurers guild after the strange woman left. I headed back to the inn to make sure everyone was safe. They were also surprised to find me back so soon, they assumed I couldn’t wait to register as an adventurer so they got their gear and we set off together. We left earlier than any other day, some adventurers were pissed at us for taking their work whiles others were motivated to do better. The total number of official adventurers was eleven now. Eight left to other towns and villages, four quit altogether when we cleared out most of the monsters around the village and three died. The remaining eleven consisted of one Elite Ranked adventurer, nine common adventurers and one domestic adventurer-which had basic jobs like saving animals that wandered off or finding lost pets.

“I found a cave yesterday, the hardest fight of our lives is waiting for us.”

“What? Is it a dragon?”

“I’m not sure what a dragon would be doing here, Hana.”

“I’m pretty sure we can’t face a dragon now, or you know, we die!”

“Calm down Petra, Masayuki, you mind filling us in?”

“We’ll be facing a pack of dire wolves I discovered.”

“Dire wolves? I heard of those, they are Lower C Class. We should be able to take them if we trap them and use a large area spell to get them at once.”

“Yeah, I had the same idea, Petra.”

“Great minds, am I right?”

“Lucky guess.”

“Would you two stop that? We’re almost there.”

We climbed a low hill and found the cave exactly where I found it the day before. After killing the ogres, I hid in a tree to catch weak prey when I saw the dire wolves and followed them to their cave.

I had cast barrier on myself and cover my bare skin with mud and leaves to mask my scent to follow them to their cave. After scoping out the cave, especially behind the hill to make sure there weren’t alternate routes, I left to go home.

I cast a silence barrier ovr us before we started planning.

“Dire wolf fur, fangs and claws are all pretty valuable so we can’t risk burning them to ash or something.”

“Right, then we could trap them in the cave with a barrier spell and take out all the air in there.”

“No, that’s a bad idea.”

“You’re a bad idea.”

“Guys!”

“Sorry.” The girls both replied.

“Hana, what did you mean it’s a bad idea?”

“Oh, well I was reading up on dire wolves and I found that some dire wolves with more spiritual energy don’t need to breathe for weeks.”

“Hmm, then we could drown them.”

“What!?”

“Shh…”

They all disliked the idea of drowning the dire wolves. I didn’t know why until Hana hit my leg with the stick. In hunting, the person who kills the monster gets most of the XP. Since I was the only one in my party who knew water magic, I was guaranteed to level up again. There were around fourteen dire wolves asleep in the cave at the time.

“Okay, how about this; Petra puts up a barrier, then I fill the cave with water then Aoyama uses his lightning spell to stun them all. It’s not strong enough to cook the dire wolves or ruin their fur so we can divide up the wolves to all level up.”

“Yeah that could work, let’s try it.”

We did exactly as we planned and got all the dire wolves at once. There was a larger, stronger dire wolf we assumed was the pack leader and another large, strong dire wolf we assumed was the son of the leader in the back of the cave. We let Hana have the pack leader and his son, this was enough to level her up to level ten. Aoyama level up after killing six dire wolves, I leveled up by killing three and Petra killed the rest—even though she leveled up after killing one. We were on our way back to the village when we were surrounded by the strange people I saw earlier in the morning.

After a few minutes of silence, one of them stepped forward.

“My name is Mjanomin Erseth Mimoa, I am the Paladin of the Shadow Sect of the Holy Kingdom. I’ll need you all to come with us.”