Chapter 40：Trust The Silver (1/2)

Sensing his presence, the monster screeched again while dashing toward Arthur. With his increased perception and agility, Arthur found it a lot slower than before. He avoided the monster with ease as he made his mana cover his sword.

A rock came flying like last time and Arthur slashed it easily because he was prepared. The monster jumped on him again with its scythes threateningly slashing at Arthur. He wanted to test his mana technique against this monster, so Arthur made a swing of his own.

The scythe and sword collided as mana sparked everywhere. Even though the hit was a bit on the heavy side, it was nothing Arthur couldn't take. After he parried the monster, he used the runes on his sword and the skill Poison Strike.

The poison found its target on the monster's face and it screeched in agony. However, that wasn't enough to stop its attacks. The monster began attacking again and again while Arthur deflected the strikes with his sword.

After a while, Arthur felt he could go on the offense. With another activation of his new protection rune, he dashed forward and began hacking at the monster's neck. The monster attacked his double protection rune but it was impossible to break through it. Arthur focused his mana on his blade as he struck with all of his strength, cutting the monster's neck. The monster rolled to the side and never got up.

Arthur felt the satisfying feeling of growing. Only two weeks ago, he couldn't kill this monster because of his lacking preparations. Now, he didn't even get hurt. He walked to the monster and absorbed its essence.

[Perception increased by 1.]

[Perception increased by 1.]

[Necessary types of essence have been absorbed. Skill gained: Earth Manipulation (E)]

Arthur was thrilled by the last line. Judging by the contents, it seems that he needed to absorb the three kinds of goblin ants to get this skill. Furthermore, it was an E-rank skill.

Arthur took the mana core and stashed it away. He then went toward the tunnel's wall and placed his hand. He urged his mana to follow the new 'link' he felt and the wall crumbled down in a one-meter diameter circle exactly as he imagined. The hardened structure of the compressed soil broke down by thought and hardened by another.

This overwhelming feeling thrilled him greatly. He hardened the soil he had grinned into fine dirt and made it condense into a rock. As he willed it, the rock began to circle him.

However, the mana drainage was huge. The whole experiment took almost half of his mana. After the earlier fight and mana usage, his current mana was almost empty. He decided to withhold this skill for now and replenish his mana.

After his earlier fight, Arthur began a killing spree of the underground monsters. He kept moving through the tunnels looking for prey but they kept getting less and less. After several hours, Arthur found a passage that went deeper underground. He went down while keeping his radar active, but soon turned tails and fled for his life.

Unexpectedly, the deeper tunnels had the life-forces of mid-tier monsters. Arthur had no way of currently killing them, so he had to go back for now. As he was walking back home, he mulled over his plans for the next couple of days.

Currently, he could hunt primitive monsters with ease. However, mid-level monsters were too powerful for him. He might be able to hunt one if he gave it his all, but he didn't want to risk it. He was a neo-ranker by The Union's standards at the moment. Neo-rankers weren't all of an equal power level, as some can only hunt primitive monsters and others could hunt mid-tier monsters. The general guideline stated that neo-rankers challenging anything above mid-tier were suicidal.

High-tier monsters and True Monsters were things only rei-rankers or parties full of them could hunt. That was the reason Arthur didn't want to hunt the Dark Queen as Solomon asked him since he would undoubtedly die.

If the Dark Queen was still recovering as Solomon said, then that would be Arthur's ticket to the outside. He had no hope of conquering the tower or hunting the High-tier monsters to get out. If he wanted to get out of here, then he needs to use the teleportation circle Solomon mentioned.

For this plan to succeed, he needs to get stronger as soon as possible. Furthermore, he needs allies. As he thought about this, he reached the pub to find Kira and the girl, the latter now awake, glaring at each other.