The Villainous Noble Tried His Hardest to Break the Original Storyline, and Now the Heroines Are Acting Weird - 16

Chapter 16

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If it were just up to around level 10, I could probably grind my way through by fighting like my life depended on it—but that was just too inefficient.

…Well, it’d be fine if I were just playing it like I had done in a game, but I wouldn’t want to do that with my real body. That was why I needed a different method for leveling up. The era of leveling by hunting monsters was already over.

Yes… Most people who played Final Quest leveled up by hitting their party members and healing them. In Final Quest, you gained experience when you healed allies with items or magic.

The amount of experience gained increased depending on how much HP you restored, though under normal circumstances, it wasn’t enough to pay much attention to. But in Final Quest, there was no upper limit to maximum HP. So if you healed a character who had, say, 1/100,000,000 of their max HP left, all at once using an item—you’d get a ridiculous amount of experience points.

So, if you wanted to quickly raise a level 1 character, this method was the easiest. As usual, I went out into the peaceful garden of my home and immediately addressed the Goddess.

『Right now, Rubest-san’s HP is at 1015』

『That’s more than I expected.』

At this point, it was already higher than the maximum HP of Dragonic Fantasy’s inhabitants.

『You’ve been growing little by little everyday after all.』

『For now, I’m going to cast Thunder on myself to reduce my HP. Let me know how much it goes down.』

『Understood.』

…I was a little nervous. In games, attacking allies was something you ended up doing fairly often. In some games, experience points were split among party members, so if you wanted to funnel EXP into a specific character, you’d have them commit suicide or take hits intentionally. I’d seen a few RTA (speedrun) videos that used that technique. It was an essential skill for giving experience to the character you wanted to grow.

…So, even if it looked horrifying from an enemy’s perspective to see allies attacking each other, from a player’s point of view, it was fairly normal. But that was only because it was a game.

Knowing that I was about to cast magic on my real body… I was experiencing a different kind of fear entirely.

Game characters really went through all this without hesitation, huh…? Well, we players were the ones giving the orders. Maybe, deep down, they were screaming in agony while being forced to obey those commands, unable to resist.

…I couldn’t afford to keep being scared forever. I raised one hand toward myself, hesitated briefly, and cast Thunder.

“Gah!?”

The impact was stronger than I expected. It knocked me back. I rolled along the ground and picked myself up.

…It hurt, but in terms of taking a lightning strike, it didn’t hurt that much. I thought my whole body would go numb or something, but that didn’t happen. It might have just been lightning-element magic—not the same as actual lightning.

『Your HP is now at 725.』

『..It looks like I can take one more hit.』

『..A-Are you sure you’re okay?』

Well, magic doesn’t have a critical hit after all.

There might be some fluctuations of damage from random factors or how much MP I put into it, but technically speaking, magic didn’t have a critical hit. I cast Thunder on myself again.

『Your HP is at 458.』

In that case, it was time to use a healing spell. I could’ve pushed it further, but honestly, it was getting scary. And maybe because my HP had dropped, my whole body felt as heavy as lead.

My legs didn’t have any visible injuries, but they felt like I’d suffered some kind of massive wound. I quickly cast Heal on myself, and the pain throughout my body vanished like it had never been there.

『Ah! Your health is fully restored! You even leveled up twice! Tet-tet-te~!』

『You don’t need to sing.』

I told her that, but the goddess kept singing anyway.

…Fine, she could sing. But that didn’t mean she had to show up as a hologram and start dancing around happily too! Anyway, now I knew for sure that gaining experience through self-inflicted damage and healing worked without any problems. The only issue was that my clothes had ended up in tatters.

…Next time I used this method for leveling, I’d probably need to go shirtless beforehand. I kept casting Thunder and Heal repeatedly, inflicting damage on myself over and over.

…This was also good training for building resistance to pain—and for magic defense, too. I figured I might as well do some running along with it. Basic training like running increases HP. Combining that with this method would make everything more efficient.

So I started running, blasted myself with Thunder and got blown away, jumped back up and cast Heal while running again—and then another Thunder. It felt like I was doing some kind of high-intensity interval training designed to spike my heart rate in a short period.

I kept up this cycle until I ran out of breath, rested briefly, and then started moving again for the next interval. Some of the servants looked at me like they were witnessing something completely beyond belief, but whatever.

This was the most efficient training for leveling up and boosting my base status. I didn’t have the luxury to care about what anyone else thought!

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