Chronos Rose (The Rising Of The Shield Hero x male reader)

A mysterious dungeon

At what I could guess was around 5 am I woke up. It was still a little dark, but I didn't think of that as a problem. I got up and prepared myself to leave. I gave the keys back to the owner of the inn and left. I thought about it before, but I'm very sure that there is a great power gap between me and the other heroes. The most appropriate thing to do right now, would be to fight monsters. Thanks to my ammo generation skill, I'm very prepared in the terms of weaponry.

As I was leaving the capital I realized something,
The last time I was hunting monsters, I forgot to insert the materials into my knife. I suppose it's not that much of a problem though, the balloons aren't very formidable foes.

I quickly killed one of each color and put their remains into the gem in my knife.

*Red knife unlocked - 3 Damage 3 Agility*

*Yellow knife unlocked - 2 Damage 4 Agility*

*Orange knife unlocked - 4 Damage 2 Agility*

I quickly noticed something, according to the guide in my menu, there's a proficiency system, which means if I use these for long enough, I'll get their bonuses permanently. The weird thing is, I instantly got the bonuses permanently.

As I re-read the guide I noticed what I was looking for:

...the Assassin Hero instantly gains proficiency to catch up to the other heroes in terms of power....

I see. That will certainly be useful. Now that I think about it, can I insert other things into it too?

I decided to grab some herbs nearby and put them into my knife.

*Leaf knife unlocked - 3 Damage 2 Agility Harvesting skill +1*

It appears I can also put other things into the gem, not only materials from monsters.

Now since that's out of the way, I decided to hunt monsters to level up.

Timeskip

After an hour I got up to level 10. The difference on how much experience you need to level up now and at first is very visible. Sadly, I didn't unlock any skills.

Just as I was about to rest, I felt weird. I felt as if there was something or someone behind me, yet there was nobody in sight for the past few minutes and I'm not necessarily close to the gates of the capital. I grabbed my handgun and quickly turned around pointing it in the direction I felt someone was.

And yet, nobody was there. I decided to look around a bit just in case. After a while, I decided that I must've imagined it, although once I took a step, I fell down.

The ground below me collapsed and I found myself in some sort of cave. As I looked up, there was no hole in the place I fell through and that means that this is some sort of secret place.

As I looked around I noticed a large gate, with a symbol of a skull carved in the middle of it.

I decided to approach it and suddenly, the gem in my knife shot out two separate beams of light into the eyes of the skull. Moments later the gate started to open on it's own, since my weapon reacted with it, perhaps this is some kind of training area for cardinal heroes?

As I walked through the gate I was in a large area, but before I could react monsters started appearing around me. The monsters here were much stronger than the ones I fought so far, so I relied heavily on my firearms.

After about ten minutes of fighting the monsters stopped appearing. Because of all the fighting, I got up to level 16.

*Swift strike skill unlocked - the user can swing their weapon at blinding speed*