My Level Zero System

As for why not just level up to mid-class Magus and be done with it?

This is really redundant, because the skill points required for Kain to upgrade to [★★] equivalent to mid-class is too terrifying, that is why Kain has to take a detour.

Don't think that collecting 80 skill points is easy because he earned them. To do that, he literally hollowed out a floor.

And that number of skill points is nothing compared to the number of 1000 skill points, it takes at least 12 to 13 times that 80 skill points to collect enough.

But the number of skill points Kain had collected from the beginning until now was not even half of that.

So, instead of digging for 1000 skill points in vain, where there is a high chance that after upgrading, there will only be a bunch of skills of unusable level 0 magic. Kain chose to optimize his strength, in order to lay the foundation for collecting skill points later.

And he feels he's on the right track.

After defeating the Salamander, Kain collected a total of 8 skill points, quite a lot, it seems magic is the main element.

This time he added these skill points to [Heal] of [Life Magic].

[Heal level 0] 8/20

Entering the third floor of the Dungeon, Kain was greeted by a pile of white bones.

Or rather, there were piles of white bones, arranged and stacked so that the tops were hard to see, like a series of small mountains next to each other.

Kain examines the skeletons, some human, or at least human-like, but mostly monster bones.

Fortunately, there were still gaps between the piles of bones, so Kain's movement didn't encounter too much difficulty.

However, what made him worried was… this place is too quiet.

It was so quiet that it was as if no living creature existed.

But in Dungeon there is no such thing.

And he guessed right.

Just as Kain had moved a short distance, a Skeleton jumped out from a pile of bones nearby. With terrain covered in white bones like this, a hidden Skeleton would be very difficult to detect. And the narrow moving space also creates opportunities for surprise attacks, because the reaction distance will be greatly shortened.

Fortunately, Kain had the magic skill [Seek].

As mentioned before, this magic skill allows Kain to locate the presence of enemies using psychic wavelengths, so simply hiding physically cannot completely fool Kain.

As soon as the Skeleton made a move, a [Thunder Bullet] was quickly fired and caused damage and paralysis to the monster, then Kain arrived, a dagger in his hand broke the protective bone layer, destroying the Skeleton's heart.

In a dangerous place like this, Kain didn't want to use moves that might cause too much commotion, sometimes he didn't know what he might attract.

After that, Kain was attacked a few more times, each time he managed to dodge. As for the skeletons, the shapes became more and more bizarre as they went deeper. Kain even encountered a skeleton that had the skeleton of a Salamander as its main frame, but had many arm bones growing from its mouth and body, looking extremely disgusting.

With this unfavorable terrain, Kain also gave up hunting here and quickly advanced to the fourth floor. Even so, the benefits gained were not small.

[Level]: 0

[Ability]:

-[Thunder Magic ★] 0/1000 (+):

+[Thunder Bullet level Max]

+[Thunder Summon level Max]

+[Thunder Navigation level Max]

-[Enhancement Magic ★]:

+[Enhancement Body level Max]

+[Enhancement Tool level 1] 0/12 (+)

-[Fire Magic ★]:

+[Fire Bullet level Max]

+[Fire Navigation level Max]

-[Spirit Magic ★]:

+[Seek level 3] 1/13

+[Imitative level 3] 0/19

-[Life Magic ★]:

+[Heal level 1] 2/25 (+14)

After upgrading [Heal], Kain exclaimed that this was indeed a type of magic that burned skill points, but in order to increase his survival ability, he had to try.

The only good thing about this floor is that Kain could just walk straight to the guardian monster's room without much thought. As soon as Kain entered, he was greeted by a centipede, snake, or any other long-winded creature that could be described... in short, the Skeleton before Kain looked like a grotesque combination of countless Salamander heads strung together.

"What the hell is this?"

Even Kain was horrified by the monster's hideous, artistic form.

However, appreciating art wasn't Kain's specialty, so Kain gave that thing a [Fire Bullet].

The fireball flew quickly towards the monster's protruding head, which was also the place that was most easily confirmed to contain the Skeleton's heart.

There was a loud bang, and the monster's exploded head fell off. But the next scene makes Kain's face contort.

Only to see the broken, charred skull fall off, and a new head was pushed in the place of the old head, as good as new.

"I should have guessed it..."

Kain looked at the body made from dozens, even hundreds of heads, like this, when will it be destroyed?

While Kain had yet to figure out how to attack its heart, the Skeleton began to counterattack, it crawled around and charged towards Kain with a strange speed rather than simply charging straight, this made Kain realize that this monster had a fighting instinct.

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[Enhancement Body]

Kain used magic, increasing his movement speed for a moment. As the monster circled to the right to attack, Kain jumped sideways to the left to avoid its bite. He changed back, the monster's open mouth was invisible, because it was filled with smaller skulls.

Given that the monster had previously demonstrated the ability to replace its head, it was safe to assume that every part of its body was equally solid and sealed off. This would render the method used against a similarly elongated foe, the Skeleton Centipede, useless.

On top of that, Kain had no way of determining the Skeleton's heart here. So in the worst case scenario, Kain would have to shoot off each head until the monster's heart was destroyed.

"Damn it!"