I think for me the interesting part isn’t just “progress”. The interesting thing that this show has going for it is specifically training.

What I mean by that is that battling monsters is not how the characters in this show get stronger. Yes some battle experience plays a part in confidence building and making less practical mistakes… But the main message being driven home here is that it is generational education that makes each generation progressively stronger than the last.

Fern is unbelievably powerful, having trained under Frieren. She has not been in that many battles but she has been trained relentlessly from childhood by Frieren and she has the skill to demonstrate this. She also has the battle-personality of the person that trained her, she has a poker-face unlike any other and she is exceptional at hiding just how strong she really is.

The same goes for other characters in the show. The whole thing is about how people are trained. Who their educators were. What knowledge was passed to them by those educators.

When something new appears that nobody knows how to beat there is a collective effort to paradigm-shift all methods and find a solution. This paradigm-shift then becomes just totally normal and is educated into the next generation.

I highlight this because the traditional fantasy anime is all about defeating enemies to become stronger. But this is not. These people are all strong because they have been trained well. Their strengths are not from collecting EXP points over time by defeating mobs but by their educational backgrounds.