Mansion of the Damned, 19th Basement Floor
City State of Magic, Kasteblum
10 days had passed since the party of three stepped onto the eleventh floor and the results of their dungeon diving had been nothing more than outstanding.
Evan, Pride and Eliza had totally brutalized every single monster they came across from the eleventh floor to the nineteenth floor.
Of course, Evan had suggested they enter the monster room on the thirteenth floor and Eliza had furiously objected to this decision.
It took Evan half a day to finally convince her to enter the monster room. The young hero felt more exhausted convincing the battle priestess than fighting the nearly hundred rift mages in the monster room.
Initially, their levels were increasing at an average of two to three per day, but within the last four days, the rate of increase dropped to one level in two days.
And this was after the trio spent nearly twenty hours hunting rift mages across the eighteenth floor of the dungeon.
Eventually, they gave up on the eighteenth floor and entered the nineteenth floor where Evan finally realised something was wrong.
"Hey, Pride. Why can't I level up anymore?"
The young hero voiced the question out to the high demon while he casually stabbed the unforged through the chest of an unfortunate ice-type rift mage.
Eliza facepalmed upon seeing him start up a conversation mid-fight again, something he had gotten used to doing since the enemies they had been facing had not been strong enough to give him much of a hard time.
She decided to ignore the high demon who was dragging a six-metre-tall wolf by the tail and use the edge of her staff to bash the head of the goblin lord that just tried to sneak up on her.
While the battle priestess casually murdered a level 137 monster that was almost as powerful as the demon Xakon in his normal state, Pride was answering Evan's question with a serious expression on her face.
"I had not noticed it at first but looking at you now, it seems that you have reached the peak of the inferior stage."
Each existence level had three stages within them.
The inferior stage, the intermediate stage and the superior stage.
The current Evan was nothing more than an inferior stage master-level existence, and although he was capable of dealing with normal intermediate stage existences whose levels were not far off from his own, he would not fare well against stronger intermediate stages with higher levels.
And if Evan did not increase his existence level stage, then he could kiss levelling up goodbye for a while.
It was worth noting that the current Evan was capable of dealing with normal enemies at least ten to fifteen levels above him.
This was due to his high base stats which were then boosted again by his skills and system benefits. He could without a doubt stand a chance of defeating a normal existence around the level 155-160 range despite being level 148.
"So now I'm like a protagonist who can fight those above his levels of power, huh? This feels like one of the cultivation novels I rea-OW!"
"Stop messing with the fourth wall."
The young hero held his head and narrowed his gaze at the high demon who hit him with her sword before replying. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel·fire.net
"With how many people are doing so these days, Isn't it less of a 'Fourth Wall' and more of a 'Fourth Piece of Paper'?"
"What are you guys talking about?"
Eliza who was done dealing with the summoned goblin lord with Kuro's assistance, walked back to the group and asked as she petted the cat in her hands.
"Nothing serious. Just Evan being silly."
"Oh. So, like normal?"
The two females casually ignored the young hero's shout of protest as they concluded on Evan being silly as his default state.
Even I the narrator, agree with them.
Anyway, most people who reached the peak of their existence level stages, and had faced the wall of being unable to level up as Evan had, overcame this with the assistance of the level system.
If the peak of the inferior stage could be likened to some sort of barrier that prevented the person's power from going to the next stage, it could be broken forcefully by absorbing so much power that the barrier would not be able to take it anymore and end up breaking.
Of course, most of the power they absorbed would go towards strengthening their bodies to a level suitable for their new existence level stage and strengthening their stats so their levels would not actually see much of an increase after breaking through but they could always kill some more monsters and level up as the barrier preventing them from levelling up had been broken.
So, people just understood that when levelling up, they would face various 'walls' and these 'walls' could be broken by either killing a lot of enemies or defeating higher levelled enemies and gaining more experience points.
Majority did not know about the existence level stages, with even most of the grandmasters being in the dark.
Of course, the 'living legends' in the world of Aidos, the Epic level and Legendary level existences were more knowledgeable on this.
"Bottom line is I could just casually keep on killing everything from here down to the thirtieth floor and I would eventually break through to the next stage, huh?"
"Exactly. Though it is possible to initiate the breakthrough yourself."
"For the current you, none whatsoever. You have fulfilled the conditions to advance, after all."
'I see, that means if I hadn't done so there would be problems, huh?'
Evan pondered on the demon's words and realised that these 'problems' only occurred in cases where those who knew too much were too impatient to break through without achieving a sufficient level.
Simply put, as far as one continued levelling up, it was almost impossible to not meet the conditions to break through to the next stage.
Evan perused the memories of the previous hero he possessed for confirmation and found this to indeed be the case.
He also ended up discovering that there were methods to maximise the power one possessed in the inferior stage and to increase it to the utmost limit, that way when breaking into the intermediate stage, they would naturally be stronger than normal intermediate stages.