Chapter 12

After using Slip three times, I completely ran out of mana.

“The goblins will probably start getting alert around now. Let’s head outside the dungeon for a bit.”

“Understood.”

A magic user who has run out of mana is nothing more than useless dead weight.
Though, to be honest, I was already useless to begin with.

Once we stepped outside the dungeon, I pulled out a glass bottle, drew out a green potion, and drank it down.

A strong, bitter herbal taste lingered heavily in my mouth—it tasted awful.
That couldn’t be helped, considering it was a cheap, low-tier potion with a low mana recovery rate.

There would be no point whatsoever in someone like me drinking a high-grade mana recovery potion right now.

Ah, I want to get stronger… if this had been the kind of character who could easily power up, I would’ve been able to run time-attacks through solo exploration.

Complaining is pointless, so I just had to make do with the cards I was dealt.

I might be weak myself, but if you consider that I hold an ace-tier card named Gina, there’s more than enough hope.

We moved over to the right side of the entrance and leaned our backs against the rock wall.

People were coming and going at a decent frequency, so we had to get out of the way or we’d become a nuisance.

This wasn’t the time to be pointlessly earning the hostility of the people around us.

I took a sip of water afterward and gave Gina her next instructions.

“This time, let’s head down the path where the kobolds spawn.”

“Understood.”

She gave a broad nod.

That was likely because, while kobolds were tougher than goblins, they were still nothing worth worrying about to her.

As we walked down the passage opposite to the one where the goblins appeared, a dog-headed humanoid holding a torch came into view ahead of us.

Its body size was about the same as a goblin’s—it was a kobold.

According to legend, kobolds were originally mischievous fairies who angered a beast deity and had their heads transformed into those of dogs.

Though their appearances changed and they were driven out of the fairy realm, causing their fairy abilities to regress, their manual dexterity and intelligence apparently remained unchanged.

Since kobolds possessed higher intelligence than goblins, I figured landing a Slip on them would be pretty tough, but right as I thought that—

“Hah!”

Gina dispatched it with a speed too fast for my eyes to follow.

She had likely slashed open the kobold’s throat with her dagger in an instant.

As expected, she was strong.

The kobold didn’t drop anything, but well, that couldn’t be helped.

Despite being stronger than goblins, kobolds actually dropped a narrower variety of items.

If it had been a rare variant like a Kobold Mage or a Kobold Warrior, they would have been easier loot drops.

The measurement brooch vibrated, letting me know that I had reached level three.

Things had been going smoothly so far.

Even at level three, I still wouldn’t be able to beat a kobold entirely on my own, so I’d just have to keep letting Gina farm for me.

Once we got back, I’d study another magic book to learn a new spell.

This kind of dull, repetitive routine was my only real path to getting stronger.