17 The holy water

At the end of their second day of the hunt, Lucifer's reached level 10, while Michael and Luna reached level 8 and 19, respectively.

Luna needed almost five times the experience points Lucifer needed, so it was only natural that her level only increased by one. And as for Michael, it was because his overall contribution was considerably low compared to others.

Even though they were working as a party, there was one general rule when it came to these battles— 'you only keep what you kill.'

Lucifer gained a new subclass, 'Hunter' and a title of the same name. He also received a skill called 'Aim.' Its description mentioned that it would allow him to target the enemy precisely.

Lucifer put the sword back into his arsenal and pulled the spear out of the queen spider's dead body. It was covered in sticky fluid, so he cleaned it using a piece of cloth he had and put it back into his arsenal.

While he was doing that, Michael climbed down from the tree and started stretching his back. As for Luna, she seemed exhausted, so she sat down on the ground and tried catching her breath.

Luna let out a small sigh of relief. "Finally… it's over."

"Nah, we are just starting. We will keep going further inside until we hunt down the king of this forest."

"Yeah, yeah, you are the one to talk, old man. If you keep on running out of gas in the middle of a fight, we won't even be able to cross the middle layer."

The old man walked to the now-dead queen spider's body and started collecting her venom from the tip of her fangs. He used a bottle instead of a vial because the queen's poison was precious and useful. So, the more he could collect, the better.

"Well, I didn't actually run out. I was certain that you could defeat the queen, so I only prepared the right amount of holy water. We don't wanna waste a bottle worth thousands of gold coins here, do we? Let's stick to the diluted cheap ones for now."

"Oh, is that so? I know how it became diluted. I saw you drinking it all last night. You probably finished more than half yourself."

"What! I wasn't drinking it. I was just checking the concentration. Boy, you don't know how much experiment one needs to perform to find the optimum concentration."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say. It seemed like you were having too much fun for it to be a mere experiment. But we have plenty left, so it should be alright."

Once the bottle was full, the old man put a cork on it and gave it to lucifer.

"You don't know science, boy. One of these days, you will realize how great of a thing it is."

"Whatever, old man. Now let's make something; I am getting hungry."

Lucifer put the vile into his Arsenal.

One specialty about Arsenal was it prevented things from aging. For example, a sword that would ordinarily rust if kept out wouldn't rust in his arsenal even after hundreds and thousands of years.

This made this feature of his system very handy. However, along with this advantage, there were several disadvantages of this ability.

Firstly, the range was limited to Lucifer's reach, and even though space inside was unlimited, the size of the object he could put in was limited to the things that both of his arms could hold. Furthermore, he could only put in solid items and liquid inside a container with an airtight cover. Like in this case, the bottle with the venom.

After putting the vile in his arsenal, Lucifer checked to see if there was anything to hunt nearby.

Considering they were in the middle of wood spiders' nest, it was as he expected— there was nothing. However, he could smell a pond a little further from where they were.

It could be because of the new hunter class that he just gained, but he could feel that his senses had sharpened. He felt that his vision was keener than before as he could notice the motion of things around him better.

"Old man, there is a pond a bit ahead. We might find some fishes there if we are lucky."

"Hmm… I don't think the water here is safe, but let's go and check."

The three of them traveled a little westward from where they were. The pond was further inside but not too far from them. It was big, about twelve meters wide and fifteen meters long.

Once it came into sight, the old man stopped, picked up a stone, and threw it at the pond. There was no reaction, just the ripples the stone caused.

"Kiddo, give me some rum; the new one there."

Lucifer did as he said and handed him a bottle of rum. The old man opened the cork and threw it on the pond.

As the alcohol mixed with the water, the movement of something huge underwater was observed. However, it was hard to identify what it was as nothing surfaced.

Lucifer gave the old man another bottle of rum once he realized that whatever was inside didn't submerge because the concentration of alcohol in the water was too less.

As soon as the second bottle touched the water, a large hippo-like creature with three big red eyes and two gigantic tusks appeared out of the water.

Even though it was big, it was only level fifteen. The alcohol concentration was too high for its sensitive skin, so it was moving around in the pond in discomfort.

"What do you say, kid, can you take that thing on?"

"In water, no. But it's a different story if we can lure it outside into the forest."

"Alright then, let's bring it out with the third bottle."

Lucifer gave him the third bottle, of which the old man did the same as the two before. And upon doing so, the gigantic hippo jumped out of the water with a huge splash and rushed towards the land on their opposite side.

It looked even bigger now that it had completely surfaced out of water. Its jaws, along with the canine tusks, seemed massive, and his head was at least one-fifth of the size of its body.