After Nia left, the forest quickly fell silent again.
Kyle didn’t set off immediately.
He first cleaned up the temporary campsite from the night before.
But once he was finished, he soon noticed something strange.
An entire night had passed, yet not a single new goblin had appeared in the area.
Before evening yesterday, there had clearly been far more goblins here than near the outer edge of the forest.
The later groups in particular had not only been higher level, but had also been roaming across an increasingly wide area.
Based on Kyle’s original estimate, even though his skeleton warriors had killed quite a few yesterday, at least some should have returned overnight.
But now the surroundings were unusually quiet.
There were no goblins.
Even the number of other low-level monsters had dropped considerably compared to yesterday.
Kyle stood where he was and observed the area for a while.
Then he sent several Black-Iron Skeleton Warriors farther out to search.
The result remained the same.
No goblins nearby.
They had suddenly increased yesterday.
Then suddenly disappeared today.
Two completely opposite situations happening one after another only made Kyle more certain that something was wrong with the goblins in this forest.
He didn’t stay to investigate further.
Blackstone Mine wasn’t far from here anymore.
If the abnormalities he’d discovered yesterday really were connected to that place, then seeing it for himself would tell him far more.
Before leaving, however, Kyle still had one thing to deal with.
His gaze shifted toward a nearby part of the clearing.
The bodies of the three class holders from last night were still there.
After lying in the open for an entire night, the smell of blood had become obvious in the air.
Kyle’s attention settled on one of the corpses.
The skill he’d acquired yesterday immediately came to mind.
[Corpse Explosion] After being enhanced by Level 2 [Total Amplification], the original one-meter explosion radius had expanded to twenty meters.
Its damage had also increased from ten percent of the corpse’s health to two hundred percent.
On paper, the skill was already extremely powerful.
But numbers were still only numbers.
Kyle hadn’t actually seen what it could do yet.
He didn’t activate it immediately.
First, he ordered all the nearby skeleton warriors to retreat.
Then he positioned a Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warrior in front of himself before putting enough distance between himself and the corpse.
Once he confirmed there were no other class holders nearby, Kyle locked his Spirit onto the body.
“Corpse Explosion.” The skill activated.
There was no complicated magic formation.
No lengthy chant.
The corpse simply swelled for an instant.
Then— BOOM!
A deep explosion tore through the forest.
Violent force erupted outward from the corpse.
The dead leaves covering the ground were the first to be thrown into the air, followed by large amounts of dirt and shattered stone.
Several trees closest to the explosion shook violently.
Two thinner ones snapped in the middle.
Branches, dirt, and fragments of rock were hurled outward together.
The shock wave continued spreading.
The Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warrior in front of Kyle lowered its body slightly and planted its feet firmly against the ground, blocking the broken branches and stones flying toward him.
Only after several seconds did the surroundings become quiet again.
Kyle looked ahead.
A noticeable crater had appeared where the corpse had been.
The area within twenty meters was a mess.
The ground had been torn apart.
Plants had been flattened.
Several nearby trees had suffered varying degrees of damage.
As for the corpse used to activate the skill— it was completely gone.
Kyle observed the aftermath for a while.
He finally had a much clearer idea of what [Corpse Explosion] could actually do.
The power was indeed considerable.
However, the twenty-meter radius referred to the area in which the skill could deal effective damage.
It didn’t mean the entire twenty-meter area would be blasted into one equally large crater.
What interested Kyle more was the skill’s damage mechanic.
The damage dealt by [Corpse Explosion] depended on the corpse’s original health.
In other words, the higher the level of the corpse and the greater its Constitution had been while alive, the more destructive the resulting explosion would become.
More importantly— this had only been one corpse.
If dozens of bodies were scattered throughout the same area, the situation would be completely different.
The first corpse exploded.
Nearby monsters died.
Those dead monsters became new corpses.
As long as Kyle continued using [Corpse Explosion], the blasts could spread one after another.
At that point, the truly frightening part wouldn’t be the power of any single explosion.
It would be the chain reaction that followed.
Kyle looked toward the remaining two bodies.
He didn’t test the skill again.
Once was enough to understand its approximate power.
There was no reason to waste more Spirit.
He ordered two Black-Iron Skeleton Warriors to drag the remaining corpses into the crater, then covered them with nearby dirt and broken stone.
Once that was done, Kyle began preparing for the journey ahead.
After meditating through the night, his Spirit had completely recovered.
Naturally, he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity to increase the number of summons under his command.
With a thought, [Summon Skeleton Warrior] activated again.
His Spirit rapidly decreased.
The first Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warrior gradually took shape inside his summoning space.
Then the second.
The third.
The fourth.
After four consecutive summons, Kyle stopped.
Summoning a Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warrior now cost seventy Spirit.
Kyle currently had only three hundred Spirit.
Even at full recovery, four consecutive summons were his limit.
But four was enough.
The forty-four skeleton warriors he’d had yesterday had now become forty-eight.
Forty were still the Black-Iron Skeleton Warriors he’d summoned before reaching Level 10.
The other eight were Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warriors summoned after his advancement.
[Summoning Space: 48/100] He was still a long way from the limit of one hundred.
Kyle wasn’t in a hurry.
As long as he continued summoning whenever his Spirit recovered, it wouldn’t take too long to gradually fill the entire summoning space.
After cleaning up the remaining traces around the campsite, Kyle headed north.
His destination— Blackstone Mine.
As he continued north, the terrain gradually began to change.
The dense forest became increasingly sparse.
More and more gray-black stones appeared among the dark brown soil beneath his feet.
The heavy scent of vegetation in the air gradually faded as well, replaced by the faint smell of minerals.
Kyle continued without stopping.
Forty Black-Iron Skeleton Warriors were spread across the front and both sides, scouting and maintaining watch.
The eight Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warriors stayed closer to Kyle in case any higher-level monsters suddenly appeared.
There were still goblins along the way.
Level 12 Goblin Warriors.
Level 13 Goblin Archers.
Occasionally, small patrols of five or six appeared together.
With Kyle’s current strength, monsters at this level no longer posed much of a threat.
Whenever a target was discovered, the skeleton warriors scouting ahead would quickly close in.
The Bronze-Rank Skeleton Warriors dealt with the higher-level monsters among them.
Most fights ended within moments.
But this time, Kyle wasn’t paying attention only to the experience.
After every group of goblins was killed, he deliberately inspected their bodies and bones for the strange black marks he’d discovered yesterday.
The first few showed nothing unusual.
But as he drew closer to Blackstone Mine, one freshly killed goblin finally caught his attention.
“Stop.” At Kyle’s command, the advancing skeleton warriors stopped at once.
He walked over to the corpse and crouched beside it.
It was a Level 12 Goblin Warrior.
At first glance, it didn’t look particularly different from an ordinary goblin.
Its skin was only slightly darker than the others.
Kyle lifted one of its eyelids.
His hand paused.
Along the edge of the white of its eye— there was an extremely thin black line.
Without deliberately checking for it, it would have been almost impossible to notice.
Kyle lifted the goblin’s arm next.
Just as expected.
Several faint black lines were visible beneath the skin.
He took out the Goblin Bone Fragment he’d kept yesterday and placed it beside the corpse for comparison.
One had already spread into the bone.
The other was still beneath the skin.
Yet the color and strange texture were almost identical.
Kyle’s expression grew more serious.
Nia had been right.
Whatever this change was, it wasn’t limited to the group of goblins he’d encountered yesterday.
And— the closer he got to Blackstone Mine, the more obvious it seemed to become.
Kyle stood again.
He didn’t remain there for long.
For the rest of the journey, his skeleton warriors continued killing whatever monsters blocked the way while Kyle inspected the goblin corpses.
Before long, he noticed an even clearer pattern.
At first, perhaps only one goblin out of more than a dozen showed any black marks.
But as the distance to Blackstone Mine decreased, that proportion steadily increased.
The marks themselves also became more noticeable.
On some goblins, they appeared only around the eyes.
On others, they had already spread from the arms toward the shoulders.
One Goblin Archer even had several thin black lines clearly visible across its neck.
Strangely, their levels hadn’t changed.
Detection still identified them as ordinary Level 12 and Level 13 goblins.
Even their attributes showed no obvious increase.
That only made Kyle more cautious.
If the black marks were simply strengthening the monsters, the situation would actually be easier to understand.
But whatever was happening was clearly changing their bodies.
It might even be affecting their normal behavior.
Yet none of those changes were directly reflected in their levels or attributes.
For now, there was no way to determine the cause.
Kyle didn’t stop to study them further.
Since the abnormalities were becoming more severe the closer he got, the real answer was likely waiting inside Blackstone Mine.
More than half an hour later, the forest ahead finally disappeared completely.
A wide stretch of exposed black-gray rock came into view.
At the far end of the rocky ground stood a massive cliff at the foot of the mountain.
In the center of that cliff— a black vortex slowly rotated.
Blackstone Mine.
He had arrived.
The area around the dungeon entrance was far from deserted.
Quite a few class holders h