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The boar-headed monster froze for a split second. Clearly even it had never seen such an over-the-top attack.
It lifted its club to block, but the giant sword cleaved straight through both the club and its body.
One clean swing split the creature cleanly in half.
Bright red blood sprayed everywhere. Guts and intestines spilled across the ground.
Even the magic stone inside its chest had been cut neatly in two.
The cut surface was smooth like polished glass, proof of just how sharp the blade was.
"Captain, your fighting style is looking more and more like Gilgamesh," Merlin joked.
"It really does. Still missing a little something though," Morgan added.
Alex immediately felt his mood sour. Missing a little something? Excuse me?
"You're wrong about that. Sure, my Unlimited Blade Works can't match Gilgamesh's Gate of Babylon yet, but the blade works has infinite room to grow. The treasury doesn't. That alone puts me on a different trajectory," Alex shot back.
Unlimited Blade Works in Shirou's hands definitely lost to the Gate. Even if Shirou copied every single weapon and Noble Phantasm in the Nasuverse, the best he could do was catch up.
But Alex wasn't Shirou. He had a chat group. He could visit other members' worlds and copy even more weapons.
That made his UBW limitless.
More importantly, he could learn divine forging from actual gods. Someday his projection could copy god-forged weapons.
Once you compared them honestly, it was obvious. Unlimited Blade Works couldn't beat the Gate now, but it had a growth ceiling that soared into infinity. One day it would surpass it for sure.
The Gate of Babylon, on the other hand, was insanely powerful but fixed at its current cap.
"What the Captain says makes sense. But to surpass the Gate, the number of weapons you'll need to copy is enormous," Merlin said, agreeing in full.
"I know it's a huge number. The Gate contains basically the entire Nasuverse's treasury. But I've got time. I'll catch up and pass it eventually," Alex replied with total confidence.
"I'll be waiting to see it happen," Morgan said with a soft, amused smile.
The four of them continued cutting down boar monsters as they searched for the next floor's entrance.
The mist made visibility terrible, but Morgan's fae eyes could see through it without trouble.
After ten minutes or so, she found the entrance based on the map and led everyone forward.
They smiled in relief and stepped into the eleventh floor.
As they descended deeper, the monsters grew stronger.
By the time they reached the thirteenth floor, the difference was obvious.
From here all the way to the twenty-fourth floor was what adventurers called the "first dead line."
Except for the floor boss on the seventeenth floor, all monsters here were considered Level Two.
Mid-level monsters weren't just stronger. They appeared in greater numbers, respawned faster and many had pseudo-magical ranged attacks.
Hellhounds, for example. Calf-sized dogs nicknamed arson beasts that breathed fire.
Normally anyone entering the thirteenth floor needed fire-resistant elven cloth.
But with the group's strength and their defensive and water-based sorcery, such precautions were unnecessary.
Artoria joined in with her holy sword. Morgan bombarded clustered monsters with magic. Merlin kept things simple, staying behind them and layering them with buffs.
Alex also stopped using UBW for ranged sniping. Instead he projected all kinds of weapons and used the monsters as live practice to refine his martial arts.
No, that wasn't the right name any longer. It was his Grand Martial Arts.
In the Nasuverse, Luo Hao had trained him entirely for fighting humans, a pure PVP style.
But using that against monsters didn't feel right at all.
Monsters had no thoughts. They fought entirely by instinct and their attacks were wild and patternless.
So Alex needed to develop a whole new style for fighting monsters. A PVE mode.
Most adventurers in Orario were experts at PVE and comparatively weak at PVP simply because monster fighting was their daily life.
Against people, Alex preferred blades. But against monsters he gravitated toward long weapons like spears and staves.
He projected a long spear, didn't use any formal techniques, and just fought based purely on instinct and feel.
In the heat of battle he magnified that instinct without limit.
For a moment he moved almost like someone using Ultra Instinct from Dragon Ball.
He forgot all techniques and simply fought.
Of course he wasn't truly reaching Ultra Instinct. He was exploring a brand-new form of combat.
And in the middle of this exploration he glimpsed something like a path leading toward divinity.
"Martial arts reaching the realm of gods. So that's what it is," Alex murmured in sudden clarity.
Martial ascension was the state wuxia novels described as having no sword yet surpassing all swords, no technique yet exceeding all techniques.
Every movement becomes a technique because all techniques have merged into one.
He had seen the road. Now he just needed to walk it until he reached that divine realm.
His mind felt clear, countless questions untangling at once.
He burst into laughter as the fight grew easier and more fluid.
"Looks like the Captain found his own path," Merlin said with a satisfied smile.
He was growing more impressed with his Master by the day.
That monstrous talent was even more dazzling than the King he once taught.
If so, he wanted to see just how far this Master of his could go.
Without making a fuss, Merlin quietly cast Hero Creation on Alex to accelerate his growth.
The battles continued nonstop. When one floor was cleared, they descended to the next.
Thirteenth floor.
Fourteenth.
Fifteenth.
They continued until they reached the seventeenth floor, the floor of the boss.
Only then did Alex finally stop.
"Why'd we stop?" Merlin asked.
"This floor is different. The floor boss lives here. It should be around Level Four. We need to be careful," Alex said while wiping sweat from his forehead.
Even with his body strengthened by holy fire he was starting to feel fatigue after so much fighting.
"What's a floor boss?" Artoria asked curiously.
"Dungeon solitary kings. They're special monsters known since ancient times. Only one spawns per floor and they never leave that floor. Their strength is usually about two levels above the other monsters there. Their respawn time isn't fixed. While their level is judged the same way as adventurers, floor bosses are far larger and have powerful special abilities and armaments. They're more dangerous than adventurers of the same level and usually require a whole team to defeat," Alex explained.
Merlin's brows furrowed. "Definitely dangerous. We'll need to stay alert."
Morgan scoffed. "Even so, it's just Level Four. We can blast it with Noble Phantasms."
Alex stopped her immediately. "No using Noble Phantasms. If the dungeon is damaged, it activates a self-repair process and stops spawning monsters. And if the damage is severe on a whole floor, the dungeon enters an abnormal state and spawns something called a Juggernaut that hunts down the destroyer."
"Is that Juggernaut that strong?" Artoria asked.
"Yes. Terrifyingly strong. Around Level Six to Seven in raw power. But its true strength isn't the level. It's the claws that shred armor and bodies like paper, the armor that reflects magic, the insane mobility and the sensory network that instantly detects and eliminates every living adventurer on the floor. Its entire body is made of magic stones specialized for killing. To kill it you have to destroy every part of it completely," Alex said.
Artoria fell silent at that and even Morgan stopped talking back.
"No Noble Phantasms and only martial arts combat. That's rough for a mage like me," Merlin muttered.
"You can use magic as long as it's not too destructive or you make sure to hit only the monster. That's standard here anyway," Alex said with a reassuring smile.
This world had plenty of mages. You couldn't tell them not to fight.
Riveria from the Loki Familia, for example, had magic on par with Noble Phantasms. As long as she hit only the monsters and didn't damage the dungeon itself, it was fine.
Merlin and Morgan nodded in understanding.
As for Artoria, as the Saber among the seven major Servants, close-quarters combat was her natural style so she had no complaints at all.
"Let's rest a bit. Once we're recovered we can go cut down this floor's boss," Alex said, pulling food and water out of Unlimited Blade Works.
Artoria's eyes lit up instantly. After all the fighting, she was starving.
Alex handed all the food to her and only took a few sips of water for himself.
"..."
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