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“Ha!”

Using a move from Secret Extreme Sword Technique he’d just acquired, Ruin defeated the four robots in the hidden room in an instant. Together with the message, the treasure chest appeared. Karua collected the contents.

“…This was… the last round, right?” Ruin asked in a mutter after verifying that Karua had stored the reward in her magic bag.
“For the time being. Shall we return to the magic room?”

My proposal was accepted, so we left the dungeon.

It had been eight rounds since Ruin learned the dungeon exclusive S-Rank skill. Although they became equivalent in level and stats to SSS-Rankers after finishing the seventh round, they all were completely exhausted.

“Is it that hard?”
“You can’t compare them with yourself, Darling. You’re the level-up fiend,” Mika snapped back when I whispered that comment.

Hey, I’m not the funny man in our duo!
Well… she’s not wrong. Realistically, it would be absurd to do close to 5000 rounds.

Incidentally… we got two SS-Rank magic cores from each key box. In all the rounds I did, there was only a handful of times when I got two of those at once from those boxes, but Karua managed that eight times in a row. It wasn’t a bad thing, seeing we could use those to create SS-Rank and 5-star skills, but it was only further evidence of her insane luck.

On that note, we hadn’t used any of them, yet. My prediction was that the next box would contain another dungeon exclusive skill.

“Oh… right, Alim, can we check our status screens?” Lilo asked.
“Of course, go ahead.”

Karua, Ruin, Orgo, Lilo, Myuri, and Tuhl simultaneously started to peer at their screens. After a longer time than before during those days, they looked up, seemingly deeply moved.

“Level… 255…” Ruin stammered.
“This is the maximum level, is it not…?” Myuri wondered.
“Wow… incredible. Is this for real?” Lilo exclaimed.
“Come on. This gotta be a dream, y’know?” Orgo said. “After all, just a few days ago, we all were ’round level 35.”

They weren’t wrong. A few days ago, they had been level 35. Normal people likely wouldn’t believe that. Still, it looked like Tuhl was diligently keeping notes, and with Karuna there was another person who could see the status screens of others, so the king and the rest would likely trust what we said.

“What shall we do… about our skills?” Myuri asked.

This was the important part. No matter how high your stats were, they wouldn’t mean a thing if your skills were shabby.

“I barely touched my skill points since yesterday, so I have more than 10’000 left,” Tuhl announced. “From what I can see, it’s the same for everyone.”

“Ah… uhm, Alim! Erm… I would love to ask you to help me figure that out, but…”

When Karua said that, all the others also looked to me for assistance.
Heh-heh, it can’t be helped.

“Understood! I have lots of SS-Rank skills! Let me teach you how it’s done!”

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“…”

Well, the result was obvious… We spent the whole rest of the day just pondering those skills. Most of our fourth day! Indeed, there were six people making skills! It was a forgone conclusion!

“Somehow… this is insane,” Ruin commented, as if he had realized something.

He was right, it went against all common sense¹.

First, all the sword users – be they pure swordsmen or spellswords – acquired Secret Sword God Technique. Including the skills used as materials, this consumed five SS-Rank magic cores.

Next, Lilo and Myuri learned two SS-Rank skills each. This required five more of those magic cores.

Then, back to the four sword users, they all learned an SS-Rank version of their aura skill.

This left us with a single core. After gathering everyone’s opinions, this last core was used to create an offensive light-elemental SS-Rank spell for Ruin. This used them up cleanly.

Also, thanks to my dexterity, I updated their equipment with national treasure grade or higher stuff made from A- and S-Rank magic beast materials (deteriorated S-Rank specimens only dropped A-Rank cores, but you still could harvest S-Rank materials from them), while telling them how to synthesize their skills.

They were now at a point where they could call themselves SSS-Rankers anywhere without feeling ashamed.

“Congratulations! With this, you are at the level of SSS-Rankers! And among the best of them!”
“Well… I guess that’s true,” Ruin commented, looking as if he was pondering something.
“What’s wrong?”
“Well, this Reincarnation… what is that?”

Such a simple question. Indeed, Reincarnation! They had reached the level cap, after all! That meant they could now use it!

“Right, I’ve seen it before with Alim and Mika. I also thought about asking the sages Alim brought with her about it,” Tuhl, who was able to see status screens, commented.
“…Do you want me to tell you?” I asked them while showing an exaggerated grin.
“Y-Yeah.”
“In that case… let me teach you. It goes like this… oh, Mr. Tuhl, don’t forget to take notes.”

TL notes:
While I could understand Rir being lost when faced with Reincarnation, there are several people in this group who should have a good head on their shoulders, so you’d expect them to figure out how it works (if they’d use it would be a different question). Of course, it’s possible that this is another mental block on the natives to keep them from growing overly strong, but it still seems weird.

1. I’m not sure if this is how this part is meant. The original is more like “(it) should be completely different”.

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