Growth Hero

by Brent Tyman

  Clarissa spent the majority of the time laying down next to me as we farmed the Ravens at tremendous speed. She kept a small amount of distance between us, so that no blood got on her dress, but stayed close enough that she occasionally linked hands with me.

  At first, I thought this was so she could heal me without exposing herself to the Ravens, but her knowing smirk said something else entirely. In any case, I had to let the Ravens practically maul my fist before Clarissa popped off her heal, at which point I would cut them down before repeating all this with another pack.

  As time went on, it was almost therapeutic in a weird way. The pain became less and less intense, and I noticed that towards the end of the day, the Red Ravens were having a lot more trouble breaking the skin on my hand. That had to be because of my Defense stat increasing rapidly, thanks to all this grinding.

  Clarissa was happy enough to make small talk with me during all this, and I learned several key things about her and this land. The three nations that bordered Tringall, the city we lived in, were often at each other’s throats—nothing major, like full on war, but plenty of border skirmishes over trivial issues.

  The current rulers also happened to be in Tringall in an effort to ease hostilities and arrange for a cease-fire, if not a peace. Clarissa had already noted that if that wasn’t possible, everyone hoped the heirs would develop a much better relationship with each other.

  “You know, Alex,” Clarissa said, as we watched the Ravens circle above us. “You haven’t really said much about yourself. What does a manly man like yourself do for fun?”

  I blinked as one Raven cackled and bleated hard in the air scant inches from my face before retreating.

  “Fun? This is my fun, for now. Figuring out monster behavior and taking advantage of them has long been a hobby of mine. I guess it still is.”

  “Curious how your stats hadn’t increased before you came to Tringall.”

  “Well…”

  It was probably too soon to start talking about my home world and how I was a relatively new and involuntary Isekai traveler to this land.

  “I only recently got the Growth stat. Let’s just leave it that I was blessed with it and have decided to take full advantage of it to survive here.”

  “Only survive? I would say that at this pace, you will become more powerful than anyone I know, in no time at all. I see a lot of potential in these powerful arms of yours…” Clarissa traced her fingertips along my arm, like she often did.

  I laughed at that.

  “Yeah, becoming most powerful isn’t the end goal for me. I just wanna be happy here, you know? Fight monsters, get loot and eventually settle down.”

  And maybe get myself a harem, a certain body part south of my belt buckle reminded me.

  “Is that so? A little happiness for my Alex is something I can easily provide,” Clarissa breathed into my ear.

  She used a healing spell even though I didn’t need it, and it was far stronger than before. A wave of contentment washed over me, and I felt more refreshed.

  “Wow, that was nice…”

  “Unneeded healing spells will ease your weariness. I sometimes use it on myself, but find it more pleasing to watch its effects on others.”

  I turned to look at Clarissa and found that her face was only an inch away from mine. Her beautiful eyes stared hungrily back at me. For once, I decided to throw caution to the wind and leaned in to kiss her, right on the lips.

  In typical Clarissa fashion, she automatically deepened our kiss and her tongue pressed eagerly into my mouth. Her lips devoured mine.

  She smelled of cherries all of a sudden, or I guess I had finally noticed how nice her scent was. It reminded me that this woman was world shatteringly attractive with her amazing looks and incredible body.

  Not to mention, her amazing, large, soft breasts…

  A long moment later, we parted and the sound of a Red Raven’s ‘Kraaa!’ filled our ears right after. We both looked at the Raven as it flailed about in the sky above us and we laughed in unison.

  “We should probably farm a few more packs before heading back,” I said.

  When she didn’t answer, I looked to see Clarissa staring back at me with doe eyes and a lazy smirk on her face.

  “Clarissa?”

  “Hmm? Oh, yes,” she blurted. “Come on, then.”

  Kissing a woman on our second day together might have been a bit faster than I was used to operating, but I had no regrets. It just felt right. And with how eagerly Clarissa had returned the kiss, clearly she felt the same.

  A few more packs later, I escorted Clarissa out of the Dungeon and back to her family’s High District mansion. I figured she would head back to the Academy, but her father had wanted her back home again tonight.

  The same guard from the night before was on duty when we got there. He glared at me, but then his chin nearly bounced off the ground when Clarissa planted a tender kiss on my lips, right in front of him.

  To say that this woman was bold would be quite the understatement. I naturally got glares from every guard there that had seen it, but I couldn’t care less what they thought.

  Clarissa’s kisses were… heavenly.

  As I headed back to the Windy Wolf this time, I couldn’t help being optimistic about my future.

  Clarissa was right. Compared to when I had started, I had progressed well beyond survival at this point.

  And with this Growth stat, maybe the sky was the limit.

  Or maybe, just maybe…

  There were no limits.

  13

  It wasn’t long before we’d completed the second floor of the Dungeon. We rapidly advanced to the fifth floor.

  A large part of our success was because Clarissa was over leveled for these floors. According to her, academy students likely wouldn’t risk fatal injuries until between the eight and tenth floor, but were expected to work as a party and dispatch a certain number of monsters per floor on the easier levels to improve their teamwork.

  That was what most academy students lacked at the moment, teamwork.

  Academy students could survive a lot of blows and dish out plenty of damage, but it took time to sync up class skills within their parties. That seemed to be why none of them had made it to the fourth floor yet.

  To be fair, Clarissa was skipping out on her retinue’s party, so she wasn’t exactly the paragon of ideal teamwork, either.

  In any case, we reached the end of the fourth floor in only two weeks; we could have gotten there faster, if we hadn’t spent so much time training up my Defense stat. Neither the third nor the fourth floors were particularly difficult. The only difference was the monsters it held and the setting.

  Giant Spiders inhabited the third floor, and I had to admit, the strategy I worked out to defeat them was more of a cop out, than anything else. These Spiders were the first ranged attack monsters I had encountered. They spun webs and lobbed sticky strands of it in our direction constantly.

  If we got hit, the web would immobilize us until we could cut it off our bodies.

  What was worse, the Spiders liked to hang from the walls, and we frequently found them above us on the ceiling. This area of the Dungeon resembled the dark caves from the first floor, only with webs everywhere.

  A ranged party member was essential here. I quickly noted that the Spiders aggro range was quite large. They would follow us for quite a while if we tried to get away.

  Because of this, though, we were able to run behind corners and force the Spiders to meet us face to face, where I quickly cut them down.

  They never lasted long to my sword; probably because of my high Strength stat, but it could also have been the Spiders’ rather weak bodies. Either way, once we had figured out a way to beat them that didn’t involve having to deal with their webs immobilizing either of us, they were easy pickings.

  I just wished I didn’t have to let them chomp on my arm to increase my Defense…

  The fourth floor was more akin to the secon
d, in terms of aesthetics. Tree trunks again served as walls and ceiling, but the foe here were Foxes, of all things. Foxes with three tails!

  I wasn’t entirely sure what advantage a three tailed Fox gained by having multiple tails, but they had tails to spare. Luckily for us, their behavior was similar to the rats from the first floor, but with one caveat—the aggro range they had was insane.

  I was fairly sure that if I came across a Fox, and it vaguely looked my direction, it wouldn’t stop chasing me until I was either dead or outside of the Dungeon. This meant we had to rethink our initial strategy for dealing with them.

  I noticed that when we came across a Fox, there was a good chance it would be alone. That simplified things a great deal; I just let it attack and stabbed its head with ease.

  If there was more than one, on the other hand, then I had to approach carefully and take tiny steps to ensure that I flanked them so they didn’t both attack me at once. It was strange, trying to employ this strategy when a Fox happened to be hundreds of feet away from me.

  The Foxes proved to be fairly standard once we got used to them, and once I’d had enough of them biting my wrist to develop my Defense stat, we were ready to move on. We were due to head to the fifth floor now, but I had to wait for Clarissa to be available. After finishing the fourth floor, she’d had to make more time for her retinue, which meant diving into the Dungeon with them instead of with me for a bit.

  That took a few days. While she was gone, I simply grinded on the fourth floor by myself. Today should have been the day where she should be done with her retinue and ready to continue with me. At least according to her near constant Clan Messages, anyway.

  I had to admit, sometimes woke up and felt like I hadn’t escaped modern life at all—not with all the messages waiting for me. Clarissa clearly got up far earlier than I did for her academy classes. She usually showed up in the afternoon anyway, so I skipped the late breakfast the innkeeper usually offered and headed out into the city.

  I had gotten used to some of the streets near the inn and there was a really great place that served the best fish I had ever eaten. I had no clue what a ‘Jasake Jape’ fish was, or even what it looked like before being served, but I knew it was tasty.

  There were small, outside tables I normally frequented to take in the fantasy feel of the city. It definitely wasn’t because the inside of the shop reeked overwhelmingly of heavy, greasy, burnt food.

  Definitely not.

  The fish plus a glass of simple water was my preferred treat here in this world. I loved to sit here and watch elves, dwarfs and the other races go by about their business. It was nearly afternoon by the time I got here, but sometimes I lost track of time.

  Clarissa had just messaged me that she was almost done with her affairs when I heard a sharp gasp behind me.

  “Alex? Is that you?”

  I turned around to find Juliana staring back at me, her eyes wide in shock, as if she doubted I was here.

  “Oh, hey Juliana,” I said, getting up. “Been a while, hasn’t it?”

  “Ah, yes,” she stammered. “I had wished to see you sooner, but I wasn’t sure where you lived… May I join you?”

  I nodded to the seat across from me and once we were both settled, I smiled at her. Even in her academy attire, she was a breathtakingly beautiful woman. Clarissa may have had her beat when it came to overall bust size, but hers looked far more firm and perky.

  Relatively speaking, of course.

  “What have you been doing all this time? Since… you know…” she faltered, thinking about the last time we had seen each other, after I’d punched out Daiver.

  “Dungeon diving, as you would expect,” I said. “Managed to clear the fourth floor recently, so I’m heading to the fifth today.”

  “The fifth today? That’s… incredible progress,” Juliana beamed at me, then suddenly sighed and frowned.

  I raised an eyebrow at that. Was she feeling a bit down today?

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing of any note, just the reminder that our own Dungeon progress has been… rather lackluster. You could even say it’s been inadequate.”

  There was silence for a moment, before I chuckled. She looked up sharply, tilting her head to the side with one eyebrow raised.

  “Inadequate? Pretty sure that can’t be right. With what I saw in the Dungeon and how powerful your retinue is, I can’t imagine anyone calling your party inadequate.”

  “It’s true,” she said, her face turning stern. “And I’m at my wits’ end on what to do about it.”

  “What’s the issue?”

  I figured it must be one of the previous floors’ monsters giving the party a hard time. If that turned out to be the case, then I could give her some pointers to help her along.

  “I’m not sure if you would know this, but the Academy prides itself on excellence,” she explained. “They encourage our competitive nature by dividing us up by our nations.”

  I nodded, remembering how the red, green, and blue uniforms had all clumped together.

  “The nation with the most progress, academically or in the Dungeon, is regarded as the standard all of us must strive for. I had fully expected that we would be the gold standard and set the pace for our peers, but another nation’s group has surpassed us in every way.”

  “Oh?” I asked, slightly curious. I knew from the small talk that Clarissa regularly dished out with me, especially through the Clan Messages, that she shared a class with Juliana. I figured that maybe the third nation that I rarely heard about had surpassed both of them.

  If that was the case, then I wondered how strong they must be.

  “Is it the… uhh… what was their name again? The Yunissa Republic, right?” I asked, pleased that I’d managed to remember the name at all.

  “Sadly no,” she replied, and I did a double take. What?

  That only left…

  “The Hoganna Federation with insufferable Clarissa Vos Hoganna has surpassed the previous Academy records and I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong,” Juliana huffed, crossing her arms.

  “Clarissa? Really?” I asked, not really believing what I was hearing.

  “Indeed. Not only has she impressed all of the teachers, but she regularly rubs it in at every turn.”

  Was Juliana even talking about the same person I had come to know so well? Clarissa had been a great healer for me. I enjoyed her flirty nature too, but this was strange to hear.

  “Just to be clear,” I said. “Clarissa… as in, blond hair, blue eyes and as bold and flirty as Kesara? That Clarissa?”

  “Ha!” Juliana barked, rolling her eyes.

  I was glad to have pulled her out of her serious mood, at least.

  “Kesara doesn’t hold a candle to that minx. Although, come to think of it, she has been a lot less flirty in class these past few weeks, compared to at the start of our lessons.”

  The pretty brunette frowned. “She hasn’t stopped being the most brash person I have ever had the displeasure of associating with, though.”

  “Wow,” I said, surprised at this news. “What has she done to surpass you anyway?”

  Juliana became serious again and almost huffed in distaste.

  “Of all the people… the past few days have been tests to demonstrate our learning in the Dungeon and while my party did well, clearing the third floor, she did the fourth floor and boasted about being able to clear the fifth a few days from now. The nerve!”

  “A one floor difference doesn’t seem too hard to overcome,” I suggested. “Plus, I’m pretty sure every single person in your retinue is over leveled for these floors.”

  “True, but you misunderstand, Alex,” Juliana said. “While most of our class is powerful, the Academy isn’t testing us on how many floors we can complete, or who completes them the quickest, it’s how efficient you are. Clarissa and her party clear out far more monsters on each floor than the rest of us, and that has impressed the whole academy.”
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br />   Juliana scoffed and rolled her eyes.

  “And they are calling her a prodigy of all things! Clarissa Vos Hoganna, a prodigy? That smirk of hers when she cleared the fourth floor still burns me.”

  She scowled darkly. “Even her own retinue seemed surprised at her results, for some reason.”

  Clarissa must have clued her retinue in on how we’d dispatched each monster we had faced thus far. I guessed that if she had her full retinue on her side and used my methods, she could blow past packs of monster with ease.

  Even the Spiders would be easier with a party. You could have one or two party members kite them around a corner and have someone ready to kill them with a single blow. Much quicker than trying to fight them directly.

  “Whoa, this is news to me. Never realized she’d surpassed everyone else at the Academy.”

  Juliana’s brows knit together, and she pursed her lips. “Speaking of which, how do you know of Clarissa? You described her quite accurately.”

  “I… uhh… Well…” I stammered.

  It was a long story and after she had clearly expressed her distaste for the woman, I wasn’t looking forward to having to explain why Clarissa had excelled.

  “There you are!” a familiar voice sang out, and I looked up to see Clarissa approaching from behind me, that evidently famous smirk on her lips.

  “Sorry for interrupting, handsome, but I got bored when you didn’t reply to my messages, so I used the Clan member location finder to track you down.”

  Clarissa turned to Juliana as she sat down next to me, laying a hand possessively on my arm.

  “And if it isn’t Juliana Vos Tasberg. Are you having a private dinner with my man? I don’t think your father would approve of you fraternizing with men, with your academy scores as low as they are.”

  Juliana looked at the hand clutching my arm, and I swear an aura the likes of which I had only seen in light novels erupted around her. The very air in her vicinity seemed to darken, shot through with hints of red and black fire. Her face remained serene and calm, but her eyes burned with a similarly hot fire.

  “You know nothing of my father’s wants, given how yours is still reeling from your dismissal of his Clan. And what do you mean, your man? I’m sure Alex is immune to your wiles.”