"You're welcome" responded Axio indifferently as he felt the surge of XP coursing through his body, making him vibrate to his core.
As bad as this dungeon core might have been, it had still been running a highly visited dungeon, a dungeon that was a graveyard to many unfortunate adventurers.
As such, the reward for murderising it was high, enough to know the feeble wretch to his knees as they wobbled uncontrollably, the change to his physical structure was much more pronounced than usual too.
He didn't appear any different but he knew that he had once again grown faster and nimbler amongst other things.
"Mmh, what does that-" he was going to question one of the two new abilites that had come out so soon after the one he used on the core when his brain suddenly ached as the image of being a rock floating through space appeared before him again.
Just a single glance was enough to drain all of his joy and jokey attitude, instantly looking like he was going to tear something apart.
'Danger?' he wondered apathetically as he looked around with a firm gaze, then, after finding nothing of substance, he looked above his head, making his raise an eyebrow and tilthis head at the strange symbol floating a meter above him.
Some sort of round, flat thing with spheres the same color as his eyes just stood there without moving before dissipating in the air.
Without any comments, he promptly went on the move, making it out of the dungeon in record time, stepping right into the city he had blown a good chunk out of not so long ago.
It was still mostly chaotic, uncontollable fires had started, bits and chunks of buildings and people lying around, none of the survivors paid attention to him as they were too busy being panicked and doing nothing to help their situation.
Axiolypito ignored them but soon enough both his and their attention was completely absorbed by a bright light suddenly manifesting in the sky far away, in fact, it seemed like it wasn't a proper distance away as the thing didn't move and change at all even as he moved around.
Like it was moving with him.
Not only that, the light it emitted made his skin sizzle beyond uncomfortably, it felt like he had caught on fire from the inside out.
He was too proud to react to the intense pain and quite pissed off as the people around didn't seem to be experiencing the same thing at all, they had that look of pure bliss on their faces, as if they had had a persistent itch scratched, never to be seen again.
Most of the people still looked quite confused about the while thing however, except for some old, wrinkly man that exclaimed like a maniac at the top of his lungs:
"It's happening! What did I say?! A hero has risen!" the old guy repeated multiple times until Axio silenced him by piercing his neck.
Vanishing from the scene of the crime in the blink of an eye, the wretch was running on all four through some tall grasses and weaving through trees before the corpse could even touch the ground.
'Hero or not, that's none of my business anyways, what are the odds that it could affect me personally? That's only a problem for the obsidian woman' he thought, already planning to not give a single crap about it, feeling like Faceless Lord was bound to show any second to drag him to a meeting.
_____
'At the time the symbol appeared above Axiolypito's head'
"Condense magic... Condense magic... You're nice and all but how am I supposed to figure that out all on my own?!" grumbled Superstes by herself as she tried to make a ball of mana as if she was building an especially powerful snowball.
Just trying to shove mana together with nothing but hope and elbow grease.
She would rather be practicing something more conclusive than this, her fighting style had grown by leaps and bounds after figuring out what was so special about the weapon she had obtained in that dungeon.
'Slaugher Lord's Mastery' was an artefact beyind her imagination, an object capable of shifting into all sort of weapons at a mere thought, doing so very naturally and just the way Superstes wanted it to.
However, to employ it to its maximum capability, she needed to grow more attuned with many weapons which usages could range from similar to completely alien to her.
Sure, she could unga bunga with anything, even a freaking bow could be used as a club if one was determined enough but she wanted complete mastery.
Which would be a goal she would be able to progress quicker toward if it wasn't for the fact that she needed to also study magic.
Her affinities were abysmal for everything but a single element, only that no one seemed to have a clue what it was at all and when they said abysmal, it was an overstatement, if a magic spirit saw her, it would probably flip her off and spit on the ground.
As such, she was stuck trying to practice with neutral mana, mana in its most basic form when in an environment that wasn't oversaturated with a certain element.
The sort of mana pretty much everyone had inside of them was neutral.
Her mana tank wasn't too bad but that didn't matter much since her control was so bad, she failed at the most basic of things and exhausted herself in the process.
Just as she was going to try condensing mana again, feeling like her eyes were going to pop out of their sockets, suddenly, her mana took on a brilliant golden, freaking her out and putting an end to her attempt instantly.
Despite the odd mana being gone, she could still see its brillian, coming from right above her head.
"What. The. Fuck..?" standing a meter above her head, a magnificient golden sun symbol stood for a few moments before disappearing, soon follow by a bright light appearing in the sky.
Seeing the uncanny resemblance with the mana she had just wielded, she stared at her hands like she was a super hero just noticing their powers.
"Surely not..." she told herself as she squinted at the bright light.
"Absolutely no way..."