As you could see, he is only one equipment away from the promotion.
And that is one tough equipment to get. You need three fragments to create one piece of an equipment.
And that one fragment was only obtained today (see mail time stamp) after 3 or 4 days attempts of attacking the level 7 mysterious cave in the dungeon, spending all 150 stamina per day, which means I have spent at least 450 stamina just to get one piece of fragmented sword blade. The pieces of the fragmented blade could also be obtained from attacking the Royal Chambers but I cannot currently attack any since my city is located too far away from the capital, meaning need millions of food supply just to get the uncertain piece of fragmented sword blade.
So yes, better challenge the dungeon than spend millions of food to obtain that uncertain piece of broken sword blade (did I say that twice already? mahaha!)