Sometime later, they encountered a large boar with red skin and massive tusks that could lift a bus with ease.
"This Enraged Tusks is all yours, Leon." Sarah said to him as she and the others came to a complete halt.
Leo stepped forward and calmly approached the monster.
When the monster noticed him, it started pawing the ground with its feet, looking like a bull right before it charged at its target.
Right as the monster charged forward, Leo calmly pointed his palm at it in one smooth motion before casting over a dozen Black Bullets without uttering a single word.
The Black Bullets soared through the air and reached the monster almost instantly before riddling holes all over its body.
The monster fell to the ground the next moment, causing dirt to scatter all over the place.
"..." Sarah and the others were speechless.
'Silent cast and multicasting…? Something is different about him compared to before…' Sarah thought to herself, as it felt like Leo had suddenly become many times stronger.
Seeing their expressions, Leo smiled and said, "I would like to apologize to all of you. Due to special reasons, I've been holding my strength back."
Oscar swallowed nervously before asking, "How much have you been holding back?"
"Not much. About 90 percent." Leo responded with a calm smile on his face.
"N-Ninety percent…?" His teammates were utterly speechless.
"Anyways, let's continue, shall we?"
Leo continued moving shortly after. The others exchanged glances with each other before following him.
As they walked, they asked Lia, "Are you also holding back?"
"Maybe." She responded in a nonchalant manner.
"But why are you two hiding your true power?"
"Who knows." She shrugged.
The others stopped asking any more questions at that point as they could tell that Lia wasn't going to tell them anything.
Over the next several hours, Leo would kill over 50 monsters, and he would kill all of them with ease.
"Are we supposed to just keep walking in one direction? What if the staircase to the next floor is somewhere in the middle of this vast floor?" Leo suddenly asked.
"That's possible, but it's not likely, as most stairs to the next floor exist closer to the edge." Sarah said.
"And there's really nothing we can do except wander around aimlessly until we find the staircase. Fortunately, most floors with this kind of layout are usually smaller than usual."
"Is that so…" Leo mumbled.
A few minutes later, Leo suddenly noticed the ground trembling, and he asked, "Is it just me or is there an earthquake?"
The others stopped moving upon hearing his words.
"Don't tell me…" Sarah suddenly fell to her knees and pressed her ear against the ground.
"T-This is—! It's a monster stampede!" She said with a panicked look on her face.
"Monster stampede?" Leo raised an eyebrow, as this is his first encounter with such a term.
"A monster stampede is when a large group of monsters are all traveling in one direction. It's incredibly dangerous. We need to avoid it."
"It's just a bunch of monsters grouped up together, right? It's fine. I can handle it." Leo calmly said.
"You don't understand. A stampede usually consists of over 100 monsters! There's no way we can fight all of them at once! We'll immediately be overwhelmed!"
Leo smiled and said, "Don't worry, I got this. If you don't trust me, you can watch from a safe distance."
"Say no more…" Oliver immediately began running away.
"Good luck." Jasper and Oscar said to Leo before following Oliver.
"You… Whatever." Sarah also left his side shortly after without saying much.
"I guess it's too much to ask a group of strangers to entrust their lives to me." A bittersweet smile appeared on Leo's face after seeing his teammates leave his side, not that he blamed them, as he would've done the same if he was in their shoes.
He turned to look at Lia and said, "You should also go with them."
"I trust you," she responded without hesitation.
He shook his head and explained, "It's not about that. I'm going to use a pretty powerful magic spell and I don't want you to get caught up in it by accident."
"What are you going to do?" She couldn't help but ask.
"I'm going to kill all of the monsters in one go." He said with a confident smile.
Lia nodded and left his side shortly after.
Meanwhile, Leo could feel the earthquake growing stronger and stronger.
He could eventually see many black dots in the distance, and they were all rushing towards his direction.
"Wow, that's a lot of monsters. Reminds me of the monster nest." Leo mumbled out loud after seeing the scene.
"There's at least 200 monsters." Lilith said from the sky.
"Good. I've been wanting to let loose my dark magic for a while now." An excited smile appeared on Leo's face.
After taking a deep breath, Leo's body suddenly began emanating a dark aura, and the space around him became distorted.
'I can feel my magic power soaring…' Leo thought to himself as he prepared to cast his next magic spell.
Once the monster stampede was close enough, Leo released his magic spell, Plague of Destruction.
A thick fog that was pitch black suddenly appeared, meeting with the monster stampede a moment later.
Almost as though it was a tsunami, the black fog submerged the whole monster stampede within seconds, and all of the monsters within the Plague of Destruction had their mana eroded every second and their health being drained.
Moreover, the fog stripped away half of the monsters' defenses.
Leo secretly used the Elder's Orb of Restraint while the monsters were hidden within the fog, restricting all of the monsters' movement.
He entered the fog the following moment and summoned the Devourer of Gods.
"It's a feast! Go ahead and consume all of them!" Leo said to the black slime with a somewhat sinister smile on his face, and the slime happily obeyed to his command.
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