After that encounter, I continued deeper into the forest.
Eventually, I spotted an orc leading a horde of goblins.
My eyes lit up.
Perfect.
This was a great opportunity to farm both EXP and points.
I didn’t necessarily want to reach first place, but I definitely needed to stay within the top ten.
I raised my hand and immediately began firing Dark Bullets.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Four goblins fell before they even had a chance to react.
[Congratulations. You have killed a Level 10 Goblin.]
[You have gained 100 EXP.]
[Congratulations. You have killed a Level 10 Goblin.]
[You have gained 100 EXP.]
[Congratulations. You have killed a Level 10 Goblin.]
[You have gained 100 EXP.]
[Congratulations. You have killed a Level 10 Goblin.]
[You have gained 100 EXP.]
I drew both of my swords and charged toward the remaining goblins.
They only had wooden clubs.
Against my swords...
They were practically helpless.
Slash!
Slash!
One after another, the goblins fell.
The orc still didn’t move.
That fat pig just stood there and watched his subordinates get slaughtered.
"You’re really going to let them handle this?"
I glanced at the orc.
"Fine. Just wait."
"I’ll turn you into roast pork later."
I continued cutting through the goblins.
The orc finally seemed to realize that if it didn’t act, there would be nothing left for it to fight.
With a furious roar, it charged toward me.
I immediately turned around and ran.
If someone wanted to play the hero and fight that horrifying thing head-on, they were welcome to do so.
But I wasn’t an idiot.
I used my brain.
While running, I continuously fired Dark Bullets behind me.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
One goblin after another fell.
[Congratulations. You have killed a Level 10 Goblin.]
[You have gained 100 EXP.]
[Congratulations. You have killed a Level 10 Goblin.]
[You have gained 100 EXP.]
[Congratulations. You have killed a Level 10 Goblin.]
[You have gained 100 EXP.]
Eventually...
Only the orc and I remained.
I continued running for a little longer, allowing the orc to chase me.
Then—
I suddenly stopped.
I turned around.
The orc’s eyes widened.
Too late.
I pushed off the ground and jumped straight toward its face.
I drove both swords toward its head and used the momentum of my entire body to force the blades deeper.
THUD!
The orc’s massive body staggered.
I pushed harder.
Then—
It collapsed.
[Congratulations. You have killed a Level 14 High Orc.]
[You have gained 260 EXP.]
My eyes lit up.
"Nice."
I immediately activated my bloodline.
"Devour."
The corpses began to release their remaining essence.
I absorbed everything I could.
The goblins only provided small amounts.
But the High Orc was different.
A large amount of energy surged into my body.
[Absorbed 3 Vitality.]
[Absorbed 2 Agility.]
[Absorbed 2 Mana.]
[Absorbed 2 Strength.]
[Absorbed 1 Spirit.]
[Absorbed 1 Intelligence.]
...
A powerful rush of energy swept through my body.
My muscles tightened.
My senses sharpened.
My mind became clearer.
After absorbing everything from the corpses, I looked at my status.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
STATUS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Asher
Age: 15
Level: 9
EXP: 1200 / 1000
Restriction: Cannot advance until all attributes reach 25.
Race: Human
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ATTRIBUTES
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Strength: 20
Agility: 21
Vitality: 18
Mana: 27
Spirit: 19
Intelligence: 22
Perception: 23
Luck: ???
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
FREE STAT POINTS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Available Points: 0
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ELEMENT
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Darkness
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
BLOODLINE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Primordial Devourer Bloodline
Rank: Unknown
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
BLOODLINE EXCLUSIVE SKILLS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Devour
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I stared at the status window.
Then I frowned.
"What the hell?"
My EXP had already passed the requirement for Level 10.
Yet I couldn’t level up.
Instead, the status panel had given me another condition.
Every attribute had to reach 25.
I stared at it for several seconds.
"So this is what I need to do to reach Level 10?"
I sighed.
"And what happens at Level 99?"
"Do I need every attribute to reach 250?"
My expression became darker.
Then another thought crossed my mind.
"What if I didn’t have Devour?"
I would have to hunt monsters constantly just to obtain monster cores and slowly raise my attributes.
I’d probably go bankrupt buying cores from other people.
I stared at the status screen.
"This thing is a scam."
I looked around as if I might find a hidden button somewhere.
"Is there a report button?"
Nothing.
I glared at the status window.
"You got it easy this time, you bastard."
"If there was a report button, I’d report you until you coughed up all the power I need."
"Hmph."
I turned away from the screen.
Whatever.
Complaining wouldn’t make me stronger.
I still had a forest full of monsters.
So I continued my hunt.
Suddenly, my bracelet began to glow.
I looked down at it in confusion.
The ranking screen appeared.
[No. 1 — Nyx Voidweaver — 11,600 Points]
[No. 2 — Asher — 10,000 Points]
[No. 3 — Lucian Draven — 9,600 Points]
[No. 4 — Cassian Moonvail — 8,100 Points]
[No. 5 — Aurelia Valcrest — 6,700 Points]
[...]
I stared at the ranking.
I had reached second place.
My eyes widened slightly.
"Second?"
I hadn’t even been trying to reach that high.
Then I looked at the name above mine.
Nyx Voidweaver — 11,600 points.
I couldn’t help but feel amazed.
"She already has almost twelve thousand points?"
How the hell was she farming points that quickly?
Then I remembered some of the examinees whose bracelets I’d destroyed.
Apparently, at least one of them had been carrying far more points than I expected.
What a surprise.
Still...
This was troublesome.
I had been trying to stay within the top ten so I could avoid attracting too much attention.
Now I was sitting in second place.
I was becoming a spotlight.
I scratched my head.
"Maybe I should’ve been a little more careful."
Being ninth or tenth would have been much better.
Low profile.
Less attention.
Less trouble.
But there was nothing I could do about it now.
Suddenly, the bracelet emitted another flash of light.
A strange sensation enveloped my body.
The forest around me blurred.
Then—
WHOOSH!
Everything disappeared.
When my vision cleared, I was standing outside the examination grounds once again.
Hundreds of examinees appeared around me as they were teleported out of the battlefield.
I looked ahead.
And once again, my eyes fell upon the enormous structure that towered over the horizon.
The Celestial Academy.
Even after seeing it before, I couldn’t help but be amazed.
So this was the place where I would spend the next part of my life.
And judging from everything I’d seen so far...
It was going to be anything but peaceful.