Loots... they were very rare. Rare enough that adventurers would backstab their closest allies just to claim one.
The air grew awkward.
The two girls fell silent. Cassie's mouth hung open, frozen in disbelief. And though Sophie tried to maintain her usual composure beneath the veil, the subtle flicker in her emerald eyes betrayed her surprise.
"Ah... right." Gabriel realized just how casually he had walked from corpse to corpse, harvesting loot after loot while the others watched in disbelief. But it was too late—now he had to cook up a story to convince these girls.
"You..." Cassie's eyes narrowed, her expression darkening. "What was that just now?"
"Loot? Isn't that normal?" he tilted his head in confusion, and this seemed to grate at Cassie's nerves.
She gritted her teeth, looking into his unreadable, empty eyes. The mage could tell he was clearly feigning ignorance.
"That's not the point," Sophie spoke. "You just casually picked up four or five drops from so few monsters. That's almost a monthly yield for some mid-tier adventurers."
"I know you haven't been an adventurer for long, but do you know how abnormal this is?" As stated before, Sophie wasn't the type to meddle in others' business, but this was something she couldn't overlook.
And why was it that only the monsters he had slain dropped loot, while hers dropped only one? It simply made no sense.
"I got lucky," Gabriel replied calmly.
They only stared at him.
He didn't feel any obligation to explain himself to them, but he needed to feed them something—as he wasn't the type to hide his talent.
"Alright." He nodded as he explained. "It's related to my talent. It boosts my chances of loot dropping—to what extent, I don't know."
Cassie crossed her arms and scoffed in a skeptical tone. "Hmph. So you're saying you have a talent that increases your drop rate, and you're not even a thief or a high-level mage? If you don't mind me asking, what rank is your talent?"
"Cassie!" Sophie called out, feeling that her friend was going overboard.
"I'd rather not answer that," Gabriel replied calmly as he walked past the two women, not even sparing them a glance.
"A talent that increases his drop rate..." Sophie mumbled in a daze. It was the first time she had heard something like this.
The world, however, was a vast place. She couldn't claim to know all the types of talents that existed.
She then turned to Cassie beside her and reprimanded, "You shouldn't have pushed him like that."
"I'm not apologizing," Cassie scoffed. "He's suspicious—way too calm, too skilled, and now this talent nonsense? We don't even know if he's telling the truth."
"We also don't know if he's lying," Sophie replied softly, her eyes lingering on Gabriel's back as he walked ahead. "He could've just kept everything to himself, but he still chose to explain—even if vaguely."
Cassie clicked her tongue but didn't say anything.
"Come on, let's go," Sophie said as she turned away and followed after him.
The trio encountered a few more skeleton groups again and, as usual, Sophie and Gabriel quickly went on the offensive, swiftly killing the skeletons.
Gabriel smiled after another round of skeleton slaying. "From the look of things, I might just hit level 20 before the day comes to an end."
From a distance, Sophie observed him quietly.
"He's gotten even stronger." A strange gleam flashed across her emerald eyes as she muttered under her breath. "It's as if he's getting stronger with each monster he kills."
The next moment, Gabriel regretted his words bitterly.
The group searched through the Skeleton Paradise dungeon, but they couldn't find even a single skeleton soldier again.
Because he knew this was normal in dungeons, Gabriel didn't panic.
'It'll probably take a couple of hours before they all respawn again. It should be only the boss left now,' he thought inwardly.
Soon, the group arrived at the deeper paths of the dungeon. Towering black stone pillars littered the path, and a strange violet mist crept along the floor.
"Beyond this path is the true core of the dungeon... and most likely the boss," Sophie announced in a serious voice. "Cassie, buff us up."
Because of the immense mana her skill consumed, Cassie was forced to deactivate it when they weren't fighting or when the enemies were too weak.
Upon hearing the Lady of Bloom's command, she activated it once more—and Gabriel felt that familiar power surge through him.
Although she was annoying and a pain in the ass, he couldn't help but admit that she was pretty useful.
As the trio moved forward along the pathway flanked by pillars, the violet mist thickened, and visibility dropped.
Past the mist, they soon entered a large dome-shaped chamber. The eyes of all three immediately snapped toward the rear of the chamber, where a powerful, crushing presence radiated.
In front of a throne made of bone stood a massive skeletal knight, over three meters tall, adorned in rusted black armor, wielding a jagged greatsword as long as Gabriel was tall.
Its glowing red eyes snapped open.
[Skeleton King – LV.45]