Straying Instead of Slaying

I've been playing Demonslayer when I have spare moments. As I predicted, it's a neat little filler game when I don't want to set up something formal.

I like that the rules are simple and straightforward. Encounters are incredibly easy to adjudicate. I can usually complete one in a minute or so.

My First Campaign (So Far)

I created a hero named Roderick. He has Intelligence 9, Dexterity 8, Might and Will 7, and 4 Charisma (on 2D6).

Here is Roderick's progress so far.

I started at the red star and have visited the locations marked with a black X. The shield represents Roderick's current position.

Here is the log of his encounters. You can see it's quite a varied list.

But I Have A Quibble

When don't I? I have completed a lot of encounters, but I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. I'm straying but not slaying.

As you can see, I've gotten over 30 encounters under my belt, 25 of which are set encounters. That means that I have finished about a quarter of the set encounters. Yet I am not any stronger than I was to start. In fact, I'm weaker because I've lost a lot of hit points. Sure, I have some healing, but I want to save that until I meet a demon lord. In the interim, I can't find a town to heal and sell some of my spoils. I recently managed to find a slightly stronger weapon. It doesn't seem enough.

Given that there are 6 demon lords, I figured I'd level up enough to confront one after exploring about 1/6th of the map. That hasn't happened. Perhaps I haven't hit the right places yet. I'll keep going but I am getting a little frustrated.