Chapter 10: Qualitative Change

Now, Kenne wondered whether they should stay here and lure monsters in or go out and explore the surroundings.

It would be safer if they stayed but they would be able to get more intel in the surroundings and hunt more monsters if they explored around.

He consulted with his friends and in the end decided to go explore.

Kennen remembered that there was some beverage shop down the road along with some company, something solution and then another two hotels nearby.

They stepped out of the hotel and saw the empty streets with abandoned cars.

There were a bits of corpses here and there along with some blood but otherwise, the streets were pretty calm.

Kennen and the others slowly made their way toward the beverage shop while staying vigilant for any threat.

The beverage shop wasn't that far and they arrived without a hitch in a couple of minutes with their slow pace.

There was a single orc loitering in the messy stores filled with cans of drinks on the ground.

The pig orc immediately spotted them the moment they stepped into the shop and roared.

However, the orc was quickly taken care of with a bind and psych attack followed with a knife stab deep into his brain.

Nonetheless, the roar attracted the monster at the back of the shop as they all barged from the little door.

Enzo and the goblins indiscriminately shot everything that came out of that door with Evan and James standing at the front, ready to take care of anything that would get too close.

Brandi was… protecting Jordan at the back, but her stance was quite shaky.

The first thing that came out of the door was a demonic wolf and it came crashing down the floor after taking an arrow to the face and some javelins to the torso.

Next, was two pig orcs with Rafael binding one and with Amelia giving some headache to the other.

The orc with the headache would generally slow down, growl and shake head for a couple seconds before it was back to normal. The one being binded didn't get his movement completed stopped either as the binding would only wrap a couple times around his body and restrict his movement to a certain point but it would be broken through after two or three seconds.

However, it was all it needed for a second wave of attacks to come on them. It wasn't enough to kill the two pig orcs but it was enough to buy enough time for Evan and James to get into position and for Rafael and Amelia to come back with their crowd control again.

Evan quickly took care of one by stabbing on the orc neck while James was instructed to do the same.

James roared as he charged forward, probably to calm his nerves, however, he stabbed on the pig orc's upper torso. It was the general area where the heart would be, at least for a human, as for an orc, who knew?

Kennen wasn't a monster encyclopedia or did an autopsy of a pig orc's corpse.

The blow by James didn't finish the orc but instead allowed it to overcome the headache. James was very close to the pig orc so its first instinct was to push James away.

James stood in front of the orc without moving as he breathed heavily so didn't see the shove coming, which sent him sprawling to the ground. Then he saw the orc lifting his club high, ready to crush him.

But before the orc could do so, Enzo fired an arrow to the orc's head and three javelins stabbed into the pig orc's chest. That orc had now five javelins sticking into his body but he was still not dead, showing an amazing feat of vitality.

However, the injuries weren't light and the orc couldn't muster any strength anymore.

"God… he's tough!"

James quickly got up and put some distance between him and the orc.

Evan came over to finish the orc since he was done with his and was close by.

Kennen thought this was all of it but then saw two mini cyclops with fully conjured spears light coming out of that door.

"Careful!"

Everyone saw the mini cyclops and immediately went down to the ground to dodge the moment the cyclops launched the spears in their direction.

The spears all went over their heads and lodged on the wall behind them as it was aimed toward their torso initially, except Brandi who stayed on her feet.

Even Jordan went down.

But she didn't, she was fine though, no spears were even close to them.

Maybe she froze up, or maybe she knew the spears would come nowhere near her.

Kennen thought it was probably the former.

He didn't dawdle on that thought as they had monsters to take care of.

Without the surprise initiative they had, the mini cyclops were actually very easy monsters to hunt thanks to Amelia who could disrupt their casting.

That was how the first cyclop fell to the arrow from Enzo.

The second mini cyclop was being harassed by Evan and the goblins but the shield was just impenetrable for them. The only good out of this was this allowed to buy enough time for Amelia to disrupt his spells so Evan could crack his skull.

"That was crazy…" James plopped down the ground in tiredness.

Brandi's knees gave down as she fell on her ass.

"Guys, you just have to stay calm and react accordingly." Evan advised the two new additions to the team.

Kennen heard James chuckled a bit. He knew that everyone wasn't wired like that, even him froze up in hesitation and didn't know what to do during a fight. It wasn't easy to be calm when humongous monsters were charging at you or being thrown magic spears at.

Hopefully, they would start to learn that those monsters weren't as much of a threat as they thought and that their fear would subside when they learned that they could fight back and win against those monsters.

Kennen could only hope they would get better with time and more experiences, otherwise they may end up dying.

"Alright guys, let's split the five stones." Kennen said to the rest.

There were five stones and eight of them in the team.

"Brandi and Frank already got one last time so you'll pass this time. Also priority to the fighter, sorry Jordan."

Kennen made some flimsy excuses to split the loot since he couldn't come up with any reasons.

After all, he wasn't among his friends where they would all be willingly give up crystals to each other.

He also couldn' say that the two of them were useless in the fight, hence shouldn't get shit.

Jordan deserved one and more, Kennen would make sure to give him some too, just not this one.

Luckily, none of them were against that decision.

"Ah…this would be my tenth one." Evan sighed as Kennen went to the wolf and took his crystal.

It was as usual for him, he didn't feel anything and it would be his goblins that would notice the difference.

"Oh!" Evan was sounding weird, as if he was moaning, "Damn, I feel strong!"

He flexed his biceps and Kennen saw that both of his arms turned onyx black, the color that his arm would turn when he was using his power.

"Holy… I can harden both limbs now! My rank is also F now!"

Kennen completely forgot that they had that. Most of them forgot about it when they saw their ranks were not budging after absorbing more crystals.

"The description of my skill has also changed now!"

"Maybe there's a qualitative change after absorbing ten crystals?" Enzo put forward his guess.

"Oh, certainly! There's a big gap between the ninth and tenth crystal!"

Evan tried his power by punching the ground with his hardened arm.

The ground cracked, just only a little bit. He packed quite a punch, but it was more due to how tough his arms were and not because of much power behind it.

"If that's the case, we should rush to ten crystals!" Rafael said, quite perked up.

"Good idea, pool the crystals in the next hunt and have someone quickly reach ten." Kennen agreed since it seemed they would get quite the power up when reaching ten crystals.

Everyone was visibly excited by this new discovery.

"Let's go beat some more monsters!" Enzo declared as if he was an explorer in an uncharted land.

They left with renewed vigor but not without grabbing a few drinks, some took alcohols such whisky, tequila or beer, others like Kennen took some local juices.

Now, there were two paths for them.

The road forward brought them to some small local company or they continued on the beverage shop's right, toward another hotel, not a fancy one this time.

"Hey, there's four pigs coming from there."

Enzo pointed to their right.

The pig orcs were a bit further away than the hotel they intended to raid.

"Hehe, should we give it a try?"

Evan was quite eager to try out his improved power.

Kennen thought this was probably not a wise decision. They practically had two non-combattent here and James couldn't be trusted alone with a pig orc as the probability of him dying was quite high.

Rafael and Amelia couldn't restrict the other three orcs and Enzo and he lacked the fire power to prevent three orcs from rushing them and transforming them into paste.

"Nah, let's not risk it."

"Alright."

Evan didn't fight it and they took the road in front of them, which was empty.

They entered the local business and found nothing inside so they continued down the path to find a Victorian church in a very bad state on one side and apartments on the other side.

"Let's go to the church." Evan proposed.

"Dude, that church looks eerie as f*ck, we'll probably find ghosts in there." Rafael tried to dissuade him.

"Ghost doesn't…" Evan stopped for a second, "Yeah, let's go to the apartments."

Kennen started to wonder how they would be able to deal with ghost-type monsters now that topic was brought up.

They searched the apartment and found no survivors, not that it was their main goal. Their main goal was to hunt monsters and they only saw one pig orc munching on some corpse.

Rafael wanted to be the next person that went through a 'qualitative change' so that stone went to him.

They continued on their journey and there was another church on the same road. It was weird that two churches were so close to each other but at least this one was in a better state.

Kennen and the others actually entered this church and found two mini cyclops.

One of the crystals went to Rafael, which brought him to ten crystals.

There was nothing exceptional about his upgrade, it became stronger and bigger. He could probably bind two pig orcs together for longer now.

The other crystals went to Enzo. He called in dibs.

Kennen was a patient man and he would get his upgrade today so didn't mind it.

They continued forward on the crossroad and the streets were still empty but they found a massage parlor and went into some homes along the way.

There was absolutely nothing until they went into a clothing store where three demonic wolves were sniffing around.

Right there was Enzo and Kennen's ticket to their ten crystals milestone.