The Wrong Hero

Chapter 11 - To Take a Life

It was time for them to start preparing for the waves, and whatever else anyone could throw at them. Dante already felt like they lost a lot of time, but circumstances as they were, it couldn't be helped. Besides, at the rate they were going before, they would surpass what Naofumi accomplished many times over.

The problem was people who were going to make thing difficult for them. On the smaller side, it was slavers, bandits, greedy merchants, and monsters that were actually able to cause damage that required healing. Dante could make plenty of healing salves, but that was to be one of their main sources of income. On the larger side, the church and their knights and shadows.

Piecing together the vague recollections he had from the books—which were not worth much anymore—and what he was told by that knight he tortured, Dante had a general idea about the levels of their enemies. The knights that guy mentioned were mostly around level 30, though the man who led them, Davon Mallory, was apparently around 60. Dante sort of recalled those two numbers for knight levels, standard and elite. Shadows were likely higher, but also probably much less plentiful.

Speaking of, the shadows were much slower than Dante thought they'd be. Sure, they had ridden in a carriage driven by a filolial queen, but they had to go slower to avoid heavy motion sickness. Were Mirellia's shadows dealing with them? If so, he'd have to thank them for being so on top of the situation.

Other than outside influence, the biggest concern was the level cap. Since he knew the church wouldn't let him class upgrade his party, and any attempt to cross any border would be met with church knights, the Whip was his way to circumvent that hurdle. And now, it was time to test that method out.

"Keel." Dante said, gaining the boy's attention. "You will be the first to go through a special power up technique."

"Okay!" He said, standing ready. Everyone watched in anticipation.

"Now, I will lower your level. In doing so, your potential will increase. However, I don't know how this will affect your age. Are you prepared to be a little smaller?"

"I can handle it!" He shouted. Whether that was bravado or resolve, Dante wasn't sure, but he had his answer.

"Alright then." Dante opened his status and looked over the power up method. He selected Keel and a popup showed itself.

Keel: LV 21
Levels to sacrifice: _

He entered '20' into the box and confirmed.

Levels sacrificed!
Keel: LV 1

It worked. He looked Keel over. "How do you feel?" He asked.

"Strange..." Keel checked out his arms, flexing them and moving them around. His body didn't seem to shrink at all. Dante waited a few moments for any change, but nothing happened.

"Alright, it looks like your age won't decrease from using this method." It was a nice bonus. He brought up Keel's stats to see if there was any visible bonuses that would tell him what he got from the Whip. Everything looked the same as it was before, minus his reduced stats.

Wait...his stats look off.

Dante pulled out his notebook and flipped through it, bringing up the page that had Keel's stats at level 1. It was precisely for this sort of thing he bought the notebook, and now it was paying off. Keel's stats were indeed quite a bit higher than they were before, and there was no indication he was affected by the trust power.

The increases for each stat looked different. He checked Keel's stats at his other levels, except the one Dante missed while at Idol's. The increases in any particular stat was pretty consistent, seeing a bump when he started using the Slave User Shield II, but the gains increased slightly after he reached level 10, and again after level 20.