Chapter 110: A Possible Bottleneck….

Kazui using Aura Mail was in a state of wrapping his whole body in a thin membrane of Aura, so to speak.

In other words Kazui’s strikes were effective on the slime.

Even a slime with the ability to dissolve not only humans but even the metal parts of a truck could not dissolve Kazui’s body wrapped in Aura.

On the contrary, the parts that took strikes from limbs wrapped in Aura vanished as if vaporized, like water evaporating from high heat.

If it were a small slime, you could shave away its body with strikes wrapped in Aura and defeat it.

But it was a fairly large slime, so shaving away its body with strikes to defeat it would take time.

That was why Kazui intended to defeat the slime with a different way of defeating it.

While driving a rush of strikes into the slime, he calmly observed the slime’s form and was searching for a certain thing.

(There! The core!)

Inside the slime’s body... from Kazui’s view, around the far lower right, he found a transparent sphere about the size of a softball.

The color was similar to the body, but the sphere had one sun mark marked on it, so finding it was possible.

Monsters had a sun mark somewhere on their body.

In the case of slimes, there was no sun mark on the mucus-like part, but it existed on the sphere part called the core.

This core was the part that could be called the slime’s weak point.

If you tried to shave away the slime’s mucus-like body and defeat it, you had to shave away ninety percent of the body.

But if you destroyed the core, that alone could defeat the slime.

When defeating a large slime, finding the core and destroying it was the common-sense way of defeating it.

Aiming around where the core was, Kazui drove in a palm strike with his right hand.

Until now strikes with his hands had been driven in with fists, but there was a reason he drove in a strike with his palm this time.

To release Aura Shot he had gathered Aura in his right hand.

But until now he had not released a second Aura Shot.

In the state of landing a palm strike on the slime, he at last released the second Aura Shot he had kept in a state where he could release it anytime.

Aiming at the core inside the slime’s body.

The torrent of Aura light that blasted out like a jet evaporated the slime’s mucus-like body as it went straight toward the core.

In a single blow it smashed the core to pieces.

Then, from having its core destroyed, the slime became unable to maintain its body.

The entire mucus-like body evaporated in an instant and the slime vanished... leaving a black magic stone as small as a bean.

Cheers rose from the truck.

Seeing Kazui defeat the slime, the workers and contractors raised voices of joy.

(I defeated it in one shot. Looks like my Aura has gotten a little stronger.)

Aura Shot was basically an attack used on a distant opponent, but like this time it was also used as an additional attack after landing a palm strike in close contact.

Landing it in close contact made Aura Shot’s power higher.

Kazui had defeated a slime about the same size as this one before.

That time too, while driving in strikes, he had aimed at the core he found, released Aura Shot in close contact, and defeated the slime.

But before he had needed to land two Aura Shots in close contact to destroy the core.

This time he had been able to destroy the core in one shot, so he thought his Aura had gotten stronger.

Watching his surroundings, after confirming for form’s sake that there were no other monsters, he picked up the magic stone that had fallen on the ground.

Then while still watching his surroundings he returned toward the truck.

Passing through the entrance and exit Yuri had opened in the defensive barrier, Kazui boarded the truck bed.

The entrance and exit that had finished its role immediately closed.

Through the window connecting the cabin and the truck bed, Kazui called out to the young contractor in the driver’s seat.

"You can start now!"

"Understood!"

The young man continued.

"Big bro, are you really a trainee? That was impressive work!"

"If I weren’t a trainee you couldn’t have hired me for seven thousand Dale!"

With joking banter, Kazui answered the young man.

"That’s true! A regular adventurer would be ten thousand at minimum."

Just as the young man who started the truck said, when hiring a regular adventurer through the Guild, for work that finished in a day you needed at least ten thousand Dale.

But in the case of a trainee adventurer, the minimum daily wage was five thousand Dale.

This time Kazui and Yuri had taken the escort job at seven thousand Dale each.

The system was set up so that relatively safe work easily went to cheaply working trainee adventurers.

—-

"...Well, that handling just now was certainly good. The power of your Aura Shot had gone up quite a bit too."

On the swaying truck bed of the truck that had started running, while watching the rear the same as before they stopped, Yuri spoke to Kazui beside him.

"Before, even at zero range you released two Aura Shots to defeat a slime that size, right?"

The "zero range" Yuri said meant a state of close contact.

"My level jumped up three at once. Of course Aura gets stronger too."

Kazui added.

"Even if it got stronger I’m still level 4, so I’m still way too weak."

It was not humility. It was Kazui’s honest true feeling.

Even if he had gotten stronger than before, the state of being at the very bottom among adventurers had not changed.

"In your case, Kazu, from here on is the problem."

So the other people would not hear, Yuri continued in a low voice.

"If you don’t use Leonization, your level became hard to raise."

Because it was fact, Kazui put on a sour expression.

"I’m not threatening you, but your level really is hard to raise when Leonization is unused."

Kazui knew Yuri’s talk was fact.

"Compared to your Replication when you didn’t know the activation condition and didn’t go up even one level in half a year, it was better, but I only went up one too."

"Unlike you, in my case if I increase skills with Replication my level might go up."

That being the case was Kazui’s wish.