The battle continued for another half an hour before finally reaching its conclusion. And the victors were undoubtedly the gang, who had massacred the monsters as if they were pile of dirt. Looking at the lifeless monster remains, Dhruv turned his attention to the group and said, "you guys go and rest. Once we’ve taken a short break, we will be gathering the monster cores. And this ti bring all of them to , every single one of them. Is that clear?" "Absolutely, Master. All that’s here is yours to begin with. Just give the word, and everything will be in your palms in an instant." "Alright, take a break for a while. The number of monsters we have fought today was truly nurous. Rest well as it’ll require so ti to extract all the cores," Dhruv stated, making his way to his bed to rest briefly. As Dhruv walked towards his bed to relax. Despite the mood to rest there was no trace of relief in his eyes. With all the free ti at hand, his thoughts raced, ’We managed to overpower the monster this ti, but what about the next wave, when all the monsters will also be Tier 2? What about the wave after that when there will be monsters of Tier 3, not to ntion the last day when we have to face Tier 4?’ With all the problems at hand the only solution he could find is, ’We need to evolve even faster than this if we want to survive.’ If he had the sa ntality as the Dhruv before the apocalypse, he would have probably thought like this, ’ we would see, when that happens, there is no need to panic now.’ And he wouldn’t be entirely wrong either. But that’s not how Dhruv thought nowadays, he wanted to plan at least one step ahead of the enemy. With that thought in mind, he accessed his status and was surprised to find that he had already reached level 10. It ca as a surprise because this ti most of the monsters were killed by the trio. ’That ans the monsters are giving more exp than the past waves.’ he thought, trying to find the reason behind the cause. Reaching level 10 ant he could evolve his class sooner than expected. And this would have been very good news, as he could evolve as soon as possible. But now he wasn’t so sure about it, rembering the rewards he would get and what his guardians were getting in their evolution. ’Sotis I think I should’ve been born as a monster all along,’ Dhruv contemplated. 1 This is the very thought that had planted a seed of a truly horrifying idea in his mind. And it was nothing to scoff at either as he wanted to know what would happen if he were to fuse himself with a monster core. ’I an, what’s the worst that could happen? I might either perish, or I could beco incredibly powerful,’ he mused. He tried really hard to convince himself that there was nothing bad going to happen. After all, the fusion skill’s rank was truly high— So high that he didn’t even know its levels— aning that there was a minimum... no almost non-existent, chance of anything bad happening. But, no matter how much he convinces himself there is a small part of him that remains deeply uneasy. It was screaming at him saying ’this is a truly horrifying idea and that nothing positive could arise from a fusion between a human and a monster core.’ Yet, when has a re sliver of doubt ever managed to convince soone to not do sothing really stupid? Never. And, this is exactly what was happening this ti. The larger and bigger part of him had won the debate. By only highlighting the potential benefits of the fusion, even though it wasn’t entirely certain about them either. After about ten minutes, Dhruv found it difficult to relax so he decided to get up and help in extracting the cores. The process of extracting the cores proved to be exceptionally laborious, due to it being situated in various locations within the monsters, making it challenging to pinpoint a specific spot to search. Adding to the complexity were their weird shapes and sizes, which only complicated the situation. As the clock reached the one-hour mark from the start of the fourth wave, the extraction of monster cores had finally drawn to an end. Even though Dhruv was well aware of the fact that the quantity would be substantial, despite knowing that he couldn’t help but gulp down a mouthful of saliva upon seeing the pile of cores. They shimred with an unfathomable brightness amidst the darkness of the night, leaving him montarily awestruck. "So... beautiful," he whispered, almost abandoning his idea of fusing them to create a massive core from these small ones. He was just too captivated by the sheer radiance of the pile before him. With yet another gulp, he turned his gaze towards the gang, who were also fixated on the cores with greedy eyes. It was only natural for them to regard the cores with such greedy glances, considering that the value these cores held for them far surpassed even Dhruv’s standard. Before he could talk himself out of it, he shouldn’t do the fusion and keep the core intact. He quickly divided the thousand crores into nearly equal parts of ten, and began the fusion almost instantly, with one part at a ti. The outco of that fusion yielded a core of even greater intensity than the one within Alaric and Vexar’s body. ’Could these be the cores of Tier 3? And this is only one-tenth of the total core stash I have.’ Dhruv pondered. ’Then how strong would the core beco after the complete fusion of them all?’ A small bead of sweat trickled down his forehead as he contemplated the idea of that massive core getting inside of him. "Ge...Get inside ? No, that doesn’t sound right. Fuse, yes! I’ll fuse with that monstrosity. But isn’t it still too much?" Before he could dwell further on these thoughts, he was interrupted by the sound of soone’s stomach growling. Raising an eyebrow, he turned his gaze towards Vexar and inquired, "What!?" Wiping the drool off his face, Vexar responded, "Nothing, Master. I was just thinking about eating... Not eating the core of course... but the monster remains, should probably go eat. That way, I can start the mutation as quickly as possible." Nodding in acknowledgent, he permitted Vexar to proceed. Vexar promptly hastened towards the monster corpses to satiate his hunger, while Azarex also excused himself. With only Alaric and Dhruv remaining, he exchanged a nod with Alaric before resuming the fusion process. During the fusion, He found that he had to take a break after almost each fusion. After the tenth fusion and last fusion. He was left with ten remarkably powerful cores, radiating a powerful intensity equivalent to that of the first one. He cast his gaze upon the ten cores and let out a sigh before initiating the fusion process. However, the mont fusion began, he sensed an opposing force acting against the fusing process. The opposing force was small, but it was there. This being the first ti anything like this happened, so it caught him off guard. Which in return cancelled the fusion. With a worried expression, he directed his gaze towards the pile where the cores were placed. Relief washed over him as he thought, ’Thank goodness, the cores are undamaged.’ But unfortunately, he is wrong this ti around. If he were to look at those cores with the help of his [Mana sensitivity], he would have discovered a change. The change was that the saturation of each core had reduced by 2%. Unaware of this revelation, he resud the process once more, only to fail again. This cycle repeated itself a few more tis—failure after failure. Even after attempting for the fifth ti, he couldn’t achieve success.
’
What on earth is happening... Why aren’t they fusing?’
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