Evan wasn’t sure how long he had been out before he finally ca to.
He expected to wake up with a pounding headache, dizziness, or sothing along those lines given what had happened before he lost consciousness. Instead, nothing of the sort. Quite the opposite, he felt fine. More than fine.
His breathing was steady, his heartbeat calm, almost unnaturally so, as if his body had never gone through a life-threatening ordeal at all.
’Strange...’ he thought, noting the flow of energy moving through his body. IIt was fluid, rich with life energy, almost instinctively circulating through his veins and ridians, leaving him brimming with vitality as though he had just downed several cans of RedCow in one sitting.
His body felt completely intact. Apart from the dried blood that had co from his five orifices, there really wasn’t much else to show for it.
"That was way too close. Just what the hell was that thing?" he muttered to himself.
The last thing he rembered before passing out was the system telling him he had successfully developed a resistance to the poison, and then nothing.
He did wonder, though, how exactly he had managed it. He had been using life energy to counter the poison, but he could tell it was failing, not because the approach was wrong, but because he didn’t know how to use it effectively.
Then sothing shifted at the very last mont, and by that point he had already been too exhausted from the energy drain and the damage the poison had inflicted to think much of it. He had simply let his mind go.
Now that he was awake, however, he couldn’t help but notice that detail.
He opened his status screen imdiately, and the mont he did, things started to make sense.
---
[Na: Evan]
[Age: 15]
[Rank: D]
[ESS: 15%]
[Bloodline: God of Life (5%)]
[Divine Clone]
> [God Of Death]: 26%
> [God Of War]: 19%
[Skills]: 4
[Storage]
---
’5%?’
He had expected so increase, even a modest one, in his bloodline assimilation. But three full percent above where he had been last ti?
Had he really drawn that much life energy from that place?
He couldn’t help but wonder if that was precisely why the creature had moved against him. Though knowing what he did about it, it probably would have attacked regardless. Just thinking about that thing sent a chill crawling down his spine.
’Yeah, there is absolutely no way I’m setting foot in that place,’ he thought. If a remote connection alone could nearly kill him, what would happen if he actually went there in person? That wasn’t entering a dangerous location. That was walking straight into death’s open arms.
No sane person would do that.
He closed the screen and finally got up to head outside and check the ti.
It was night. When he had sat down to train his void energy it had still been afternoon, clearly he had been unconscious for a while.
With nothing else to do, and given that he had already gotten what amounted to a solid stretch of rest and was feeling full of energy, he recalled his two clones, who had already returned to his soul sea, and headed deeper into the forest to hunt.
His efficiency against D-rank beasts had improved drastically over the past period, to the point where even an Advanced-Stage D-rank would fall without putting up much of a fight. He had actually started seeking out stronger prey, Early-Stage C-rank beasts, for a more challenging fight and better rewards.
[Ding! You have killed a C-Rank (Early-Stage) Barkhorn!]
[You have gained 10,000 ESS.]
One thing had caught his attention, though. Unlike before, when killing an Early-stage C-rank had yielded a certain amount of ESS, he was now receiving twice as much.
He had already run several experints on how ESS gain worked and had co to understand that regardless of whether he had fought the beast to the end himself or worn it down with others before landing the killing blow, the ESS received was the sa, except when his clones were involved, in which case it was split.
For C-rank beasts, back in BranLeaf he had used other adventurers to wear them down before stealing the kill, and received around 5,000 ESS. Technically, the sa should have applied now, yet it hadn’t. He was getting double.
He wondered what exactly had changed since then.
’Well, not that I’m complaining. More ESS ans getting stronger faster, so I’ll take it,’ he thought, deciding not to overthink it.
Whatever the reason, he was getting more, and he was happy about it. His growth in strength was by far superior to that of any other adventurer, or at least any adventurer he knew of.
To achieve the sa progress as him, an average adventurer would need months of hunting and mana core absorption, whereas he was doing it in just a few hours.
If anyone else had witnessed his rate of growth, they would have probably slapped themselves just to check whether they were dreaming or not.
That said, his satisfaction was short-lived, because he imdiately noticed a problem.
The beast he had just killed looked perfectly intact on the outside, but internally it was completely drained. Every drop of mana was gone, including the C-rank mana core.
Evan: "..."
"So much for the extra ESS, this is just robbery," he said, frustrated, turning the slightly transparent white sphere over in his hand.
The core should have been dense with concentrated, refined mana. Instead it was completely empty, no different from a pretty marble, useless for anything beyond its appearance.
Naturally, Evan did not hold back in taking the matter up with Bruce.
At first he had written it off as so kind of system glitch, and as long as it gave him extra ESS, he had been willing to take advantage of it.
But he knew it couldn’t be that simple.
It was clear the situation was quite different from what he had imagined.
"Hey Bruce, what the hell is going on with these mana cores? Why are they all empty?" he said, placing the core into his storage to see how the system classified it.
---
[Storage]:
> Empty Mana Core [C-Rank (Early Stage)]
...
And sure enough, it was listed as empty.
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