After the three groups had come back to Roger’s house, Roy went up to their meeting room along with his usual crew. After waiting for a few minutes, the green light encompassed them and their stats were updated

Status.

Roy raised an eye as he looked at the screen in front of him. Even though the increase in his stats was not high, that was not the reason he was surprised. He understood that without getting an achievement or killing a monster that is several times stronger than him, his increase would be minimal.

“The proficiency went up by a bit,” Roy muttered under his breath. Indeed, it was the increase in his fireball proficiency that surprised him. Yesterday he could barely increase it by a bit more than 5%, but today it shot up by 14%.

Having seen all the information he needed to check, Roy focused back on his friends in front of him. “So, how was it?”

“It’s as expected,” Jack responded. “All my stats went up by more or less a level.”

“Just say them,” Robb urged. “My strength is B+, Constitution B, Agility S-, and Mana A-.”

“Damn, that’s a lot!” Fred let out a whistle. “But we’re getting closer to you. My constitution is B, Strength B-, and my Agility and Mana are at C.”

Alfonse chuckled at Fred’s reaction, “It’s around the same here. My Strength and Constitution are at C, Agility and Mana are B-.”

With Fred and Alfonse saying their stats before him, Jack smiled, “Strength is at B+, Constitution at C+, Agility is B, and Mana is C+.”

With only Roy and Marth left, everyone turned to look at the two. Marth side-eyed Roy and gestured for him to go first.

Roy obliged at Marth’s request, “My Strength is B+, Constitution is B, Agility is at A-, and Mana is at S-.”

Marth chuckled at Roy’s ridiculous stats, “As amazing as always.” He then turned to look at the rest of the group. “Well, my Strength and Constitution are at B-, my Agility is at C+ and my Mana is at C.”

With everyone having said their stat upgrades, Robb looked at Roy and asked, “With these stats and their skills, they could defeat a Blue Ogre, right?”

Roy tilted his head before shrugging, “Yeah, I guess so. Those blue ogres with one necklace are at around Sentinel B+ I would say.”

At the mention of a new challenge, Jack’s eyes lit up, “Oh, where can we find these blue ogres? You got me interested.”

“Well, if we kill this monster, we should get better upgrades tomorrow,” Alfonse said with a chuckle.

With all eyes on him, Roy took a deep breath, “Well, I think you can find them around the village if you look hard enough. But most of the ones we fought were in the forest outside the village entrance.”

Marth clicked his tongue at Roy’s revelation, “So better forget it then. There is too much risk going there.”

“Why is that?” Jack raised an eyebrow at Marth’s comment.

“Because it’s too far, and it’s on John’s side of town,” Alfonse responded instead of Marth.

Hearing his friend’s reasoning, Jack clicked his tongue in disappointment, “Tch, and here I got excited about nothing.”

“If you want to have a challenge, I have two others for you,” Roy smiled wildly.

“Huh, what’s that?” Jack’s interest was piqued once again.

Roy looked around to see all of the group staring at him, “Well, the first one is the dungeon.”

Alfonse tilted his head and raised an eyebrow at Roy’s response, “Really bro? You gotta do better than that.”

“Well, it’s not just that,” Roy gestured to let him finish. “I’m talking about the normal difficulty, I say let’s challenge it with this group.”

“What about our own groups?” Fred immediately retorted. “Yeah, they’re stronger now, but I don’t think they can do the easy difficulty alone.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Roy’s smile grew even wider. “Those words only said that we can challenge each difficulty once per day. That means that we can do the normal one and the easy one.”

“Damn, I didn’t pay attention to that,” Alfonse’s excitement grew through the roof. However, as he counted the people around the room, his chest quickly deflated, “But, we can only challenge the dungeon as five. We are six here.”

As Alfonse pointed out his mistake, Roy’s smile immediately disappeared and a feeling of shame and embarrassment took over him. Dammit it, how could I make such a blunder?!

While Roy was having an existential crisis in his thoughts, Marth let out a chuckle. “Why are you guys saying this stuff and making things awkward? It’s okay, you guys can go and do the dungeon first. After you finish it, tell me how difficult it was so that I can see if I can do it too with my knights.”

Hearing the knight captain’s solution, Fred couldn’t help but admire him, “I knew that you would have a solution, Marth. Damn, having a squad captain with us is truly the best.”

“It’s nothing,” Marth shook his head. “This is just stuff that comes with age.”

Seeing everyone looking at him with admiring eyes, Marth coughed in embarrassment before directing his attention toward Roy, “You said two challenges, what’s the second one?”

Roy raised an eyebrow as he remembered his train of thought, “Oh, yeah. The second challenge is going to be the Red Bear.”

Marth and everyone’s mouths hung open for a second. The knight captain shook his head to regain his focus, “Isn’t that too soon?”

“Well, it’s going to depend on what we see when we go scouting it today,” Roy responded. “But it’s going to be either today or tomorrow. I have a bad feeling about delaying it for any longer.”

Robb nodded his head at Roy’s assessment, “Yeah, I agree with that. We need to see what that quest is gonna give us before those monster ogres move.”

“Monster ogres?” Jack looked with confusion at Robb before remembering what he was talking about, “Oh, you mean those talking ones you guys found.”

“Oh yeah, how strong are they?” Alfonse asked with interest.

Roy took a deep breath before responding, “I don’t know exactly how strong that purple one is. But the only thing I can say is that I felt even more suffocated than when that Red Bear passed next to us, and he was hundreds of meters away.”

A heavy silence descended upon the room as everyone was stuck in their thoughts about this new menace.

After a few seconds, Jack clenched his fist and let out his frustration, “For fuck sake, we’re just this close to not having to worry about the red bear anymore and this shit appears out of nowhere.”

“You’re damn right,” Fred added. “This shit just doesn’t end.”

Seeing the mood turn sour, Roy smiled and said, “Well, it’s alright though. Right now we should just focus on that red bear. Hopefully, it’s not too much stronger than those blue ogres, and it was just the difference in power at the time that made it look so scary.”

“Well, there is only one way to find out,” Marth laughed. “Should we go now and check on this scary beast?”

Roy nodded, “Sure, but before that, I wanna talk about the stuff we got from the dungeon.” He then pointed at Alfonse and Jack, “I think you guys should switch your stuff. Jack will do good with a better sword, and Fred can have a good shield.”

“Oh, you guys got a shield?” Fred looked with excitement at Jack. “That’s gonna be perfect with my skill.”

“Yeah, I left it with Hassan downstairs,” Jack lightly chuckled.

Alfonse took out the longsword that he gained as a reward and gave it to Jack, “Take good care of it.”

Jack smiled as he took the sword, “Don’t worry, I will.”

“Okay then, that’s it for the meeting,” Roy tapped his thigh before standing up from the bed. “Let’s go see how scary that big bear is, shall we?”