[Mhingseng] (1)

I woke up, once again only to see darkness, and just like yesterday, I used a fireball to light up the room. Alicia was still asleep, I woke her up and we finally left the cave.

Once we reach finally reached the outside world, it was the middle of the night.

I scratched my cheeks and said.

"Well we did wake up early in the morning, and only spent like 4 hours inside the dungeon"

Alicia nodded her head and asked me what we should do for now.

"I think we should go looking around for the [Mhingseng] dungeon, while we could go to town and return tomorrow, it would take us 4 hours to get there and 4 more to come back"

And with that, we headed more into the south of the mountain in search of the dungeon. We encountered some F-ranked monsters that I was able to kill thanks to Alicia pulling their attention towards herself.

I checked my gloves and was able to see some improvement.

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[16% ///////------------------------------------- 100%]

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The experience bar was finally increasing.

Then I checked my status, but I was surprised to see my great improvement.

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[Name: Keith Devans]

[Overall Rank: G]

[Strength: G- to G(Potential: C)]

[Agility: G- to G(Potential: C)]

[Endurance: G- to G (Potential: C)]

[Magic: E- to E+ (Potential: A+)]

[Inteligence: C- to B- (Potential: S+)]

[Luck: C+ (Potential: Unchangeable)]

[Charm: D (Potential: Unknown)]

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Finally, after so much time, my physical stats finally went up.

...

I and Keith were now searching for the dungeon of [Mhingseng], or something, that's what he calls it.

I was looking at Keith from behind but it is still hard to understand how strong he was.

He has numerous talents which is something almost unheard of, and he also has multiple skills, even having an appraisal skill that is capable of analyzing SS ranked artifacts which would not be possible without years of training.

I thought that maybe he was a demon or someone who was hiding their identity but that thought quickly disappeared.

Keith who was now looking at his gloves suddenly smiled so brightly that it made my heart skip a beat.

He looked so cute, even though I liked his white hair and red eyes more than this black hair and golden eyes, it was still super cute.

He then muttered some words, and his smile got even cuter, it was almost as if he had conquered his biggest challenge.

He turned around to look at me while smiling, then he ran up to me and hugged me. Which made my heart go ballistic. I then looked down and saw his cute smiling face looking at me.

I regained my calm and asked, "What happened?"

"My physical stats all increased by one subrank, they went from G- to G!", He said while being super excited.

Now that I thought about it, Keith never really did any exercise and even on our way here, we were always taking breaks because of him.

I left out a chuckled and patted him on the head, but I guess I should say hat.

After a couple of seconds, Keith seemed to have snapped out of it as his head became red.

He stopped hugging me and turned around. He is surprisingly cute, isn't he?

Keith who was embarrassed then said.

"S-sorry, anyways we should continue searching for the dungeon"

I smiled and followed him from behind.

But thinking about it, my stats might have also increased.

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[Name: Alicia Drajar]

[Overall Rank: A-]

[Strength: A-]

[Agility: A+]

[Endurance: B+]

[Magic: B+]

[Inteligence: B]

[Luck: B+]

[Charm: C+]

[Talents]

-[Spearman]

[Martial Arts]

-None

[Skills]

-[Charge]

[Artifacts]

-[(A+)Leonidas's Spear]

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It would seem like my stats, have remained the same.

...

An hour passed after that embarrassing incident, and I was finally able to spot a cave on the side of the mountain.

I told Alicia and we headed inside, unlike the other cave this one wasn't as deep and it only took 10 seconds to reach the portal.

Weirdly enough the cave entrance wasn't covered by vines and after thinking about it, it wouldn't make sense for the other dungeon not to be discovered.

But thinking about it, the other dungeon was almost fully covered in vines and this one wasn't, making me think that the reason as to why that is, is because of the timeline. The other dungeon in 2 years would probably be covered under so much vegetation that it would be impossible to spot, while this one would barely even be covered.

Snapping me out of my thought was Alicia tapping me on my shoulder.

"Are we going in or not?", She asked.

"Ah, sorry, yes let's go inside right away", I said with a smile.

After taking the portal we arrived not in a cave, but in a forest, which was extremely weird considering that most dungeons took shape from what was around its portal. That's why the Elixir of Growth dungeon was in a tunnel and the other dungeon was in a cave.

Alicia took a stance and I took out Baggy from his dimensional space, and he immediately summoned his 8 undead warriors, he didn't summon the undead lord because I told him not to use it inside dungeons.

We decided to move through a path that was laid out in front of us but still kept wary of any surprise attacks.

I used my appraisal on everything along the road but like every other dungeon, there wasn't anything worth picking.

After an hour of walking, I was finally able to spot 2 monsters that were hanging on some trees.

[(F)Blood Ape]

I surround 5 of my knives with mana and then launched them toward the 2 apes, they couldn't react and were instantly pierced through the neck.

Since this time, Baggy wouldn't be making the into summons, using my knives I opened up their stomachs but there were no mana crystals inside of them.

We continued and similarly to before I killed the monster using the knives and desecrated their bodies to find nothing.

The road then turned upwards and we started to go up into a mountain it would seem, the surrounding trees soon disappeared and we were now high enough to be able to see a huge forest below us.

The road was spirling around the mountain and after encountering a few more apes, and me killing them, we were finally able to reach the top.

There we saw a sort of humanoid tree-like monster.

[(C-)Cursed Tree]

It was then that it raised its arm and swung it down.

*Thud

But before he could do anything, Alicia had already cut his head off.

I walked up to the corpse of the monster and once again dismantled it, and like the apes, there was nothing to find.

"Keith, there is something here", Alicia said while pointing toward the floor.

[Mhingseng]

"Ah, here it is!"

I immediately pulled it out of the ground and looked at its description.

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[Mhingseng]

(Description): Increases the consumer's potential by 1 rank, and then increases all current stats by 1 to 3 ranks, depending on how high someone is ranked,

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Potential increase? This was never mentioned in the novel. It was said that Aso had achieved growth thanks to this item but it never really said anything about an increase in potential.

But thinking about it now, others can't really check their potential and the only time they do is during the evaluation after the entrance ceremony. So there is no way of truly knowing the increase in potential.

In items, you could probably tell about the increase from having them appraised and finding out their functions but even that wasn't possible as Aso, just ate it without getting it appraised because he was hungry.

Without giving it much thought, I ate the [Mhingseng].

Suddenly I felt a surge of energy coming from inside my body and I felt an immense pain coming from my muscles, that made me fall down to the ground and pass out.

...

I opened my eyes slowly to see a beautiful face, in front of me.

I sensed something on my forehead and after a couple of minutes, I finally came to my senses. I don't know if it was because of my hat but I instantly started to analyze the situation and came to a conclusion.

The sudden increase in power and muscle in my body caused me to sense a large amount of pain that then made me pass out.

Just by looking at the face in front of me, I can guess that I'm currently my head is resting on Alicia's thighs, she is currently checking my condition by putting her hand on my forehead to check my temperature.

Snapping me out of my thoughts was Alicia asking a question.

"Are you finally awake?", She said in a worried tone.

"Yes, sorry about that", I said while standing up

"I'm probably guessing that your increase in powered made you pass out"

I nodded my head and checked my status full of expectation.

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[Name: Keith Devans]

[Overall Rank: G to E]

[Strength: G to E (Potential: B)]

[Agility: G to E (Potential: B)]

[Endurance: G to F (Potential: B)]

[Magic: E+ to C+ (Potential: S+)]

[Inteligence: B- to A- (Potential: SS+)]

[Luck: C+ (Potential: Unchangeable)]

[Charm: D to C (Potential: Unknown)]

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My jaws dropped and I was able to finally understand how broken this item was.

Not only did my stats increase by 1 to 2 ranks, which is 3 or 6 sub ranks but my charm also increased.

But what caught my attention the most was the increase in potential. Not only did it increase every single one of my stats but it also increased my potential to a higher level.

I was wondering how throughout the whole story, Aso, who was 1 overall potential rank below Arthur was always able to match him but I can finally understand why.

Aso was probably the second SS-ranked human thanks to this item.

But I don't really care if I stole it from him, as he was nothing more than dead weight throughout the whole story. He was pretty much a villain that always failed against the hero, and the only time he is actually useful is when he finally beats the hero but only motivates him to get stronger and stronger.

And also I have to get stronger and stronger.

But in the end, I couldn't help but smile and my incredible new potential and stats.

I then looked around and found another thing that caught my attention, it was a small marble on the ground.

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[Orb of Growth]

(Description): Increases the growth rate of plants, that are within a 5-meter radius of it.

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That is kind of useless, but I still took it, maybe we could start a farm or something, I thought to myself.

I looked at Alicia who was still sitting on the floor and gave her a hand.

We then left the dungeon.