Ranking Up

In his bed, Greg was looking at the ceiling above him, while thinking about what just happened with him in the past few hours.

"A dual dimension zone huh? And on the Soul Collector rank to make it more impossible."

As he was thinking, next to him Alice was looking at him with her small black eyes.

Feeling her gaze, Greg sat up and petted her and murmured, "It should be fine. First I need to find a way to rank up."

As he said this, he touched his watch and a screen popped up before him.

• Undiscovered dimensional zones in the vicinity. Want to see the locations? <Y N>

Seeing what appeared before him, Greg thought for a while and touched the Yes.

After choosing the yes option, a few-dimensional zone's information appeared.

Almost all of them were in the Awakened rank, which made Greg a bit disappointed, but there was one, which happened to be a Manifester ranked one.

"This should help me to rank up and who knows, maybe if I'm lucky and nothing happens I can get another Soul Creature."

As he thought about this, he chose to see where the zone was and in an instant a map appeared before him, showing where he should go.

"Then let's get going."

***

Arriving before a blue crack floating in the air, Greg looked at his watch to confirm, if he came to the right place.

"This should be it."

He looked around and watched as he was in the middle of a ruin, outside of the city.

After looking around and seeing no one was near, he nodded and stepped inside the zone.

In an instant, everything changed around him.

The dark sky turned sunny, while the ruins all around him changed into an unusual forest.

The trunk of the trees was floating clouds, while the leaves were small raindrops with different colors. It was really an unusual sight.

While looking around, Greg heard a quiet sound from behind him, so he turned around.

What was there, was a deer. It had huge antlers, deep black eyes, and blue fur. It looked at Greg, like something interesting as it tilted its head from side to side.

"Sacred animals! I'm lucky!"

Sacred animals were a type of creatures, which rarely attacked others, however, after killing them, they leave a high-quality energy crystal.

This is why almost everyone tries to find dimensional zones with sacred animals in them. Weak creatures, but high-quality energy crystals. An easy way to rank up in a short period of time.

However nothing as simple as a free meal.

In such a zone where the creature's type are sacred animals, there's always one creature, which is called the predator. It has bloodlust all the time, while its power is almost every time higher than the zone's.

There was once when a team got totally wiped out in a Manifester ranked zone, where the creatures were sacred animals.

Only later did others find out, that the predator's rank was not Manifester nor Soul Collecter. No, it was a Creator ranked creature with terrifying power.

And after such a creature appeared, there was almost no hope for those humans to escape. Death was inevitable.

"I only need a small number of energy crystals and after that, I will retreat as nothing happened."

Thinking about this, Greg summoned his fairy and his twin daggers and ran toward the deer.

***

[3 hours later]

Greg was crouching next to a white wolf's dead body while holding a fist-sized crystal in his hand.

A while later, it started to melt into his body and a piece of information appeared in his head.

'High-class energy crystal consumed'

With a satisfied smile, Greg raised his wrist and looked at his watch, which showed his adats.

{Name: Greg Hyde}

○ Rank: Manifester

○ Soul Stone: Black

○ Guardian Name: Unknown

○ Guardian's Power: 6 Elements

- Physical power: 4.5/10

- Body Speed: 6.5/10

- Stamina: 8/10

- Agility: 7.2/10

• Soul Creatures: 2 (Information)

• Energy Crystals: 23/500

Seeing as his rank went up by one and his other data grew a bit, Greg was satisfied.

"So with this crystal, I got 10, reaching 23. What I noticed that, while an Awakened ranked creature, which drops a Middle-class crystal gives me 2, till then a Manifester ranked gives me 4. Doubl-"

While he was thinking, his thought suddenly stopped, and looked around with a frown.

All around him were the corpses of the animals he killed, but somehow he felt strange. It was like he was being watched.

"!!"

Feeling a cold chill run down his spine, Greg without any hesitation used his darkness power and disappeared into his shadow.

Just after a millisecond as he sank down, a flash flew across where his body was a moment ago.

Greg was floating in the pure darkness, while cold sweat was flowing down on his face.

"That presence... It's not what I think it is, is it?

As he was waiting, he started to calm down and looked around him, but a second later his eyes widened again.

The small silver lines before last time now were bigger, wider, and also had small things flowing inside them from time to time.

Greg tried to touch one, which was the closest to him, but just as his hand was about to touch it, like an illusion, his hand passed through it.

"Strange..."

As he was thinking what those lines could be, suddenly he heard a scary roar above him, which sent shivers run down his spine again.

*ROOOOAAAAARRRR!!!!*

Feeling the dreadful presence, Greg didn't dare to move, even if he knew that he was safe in his shadow.

After a full 5 minutes, he felt as the terrifying presence started to slowly disappear, making Greg sigh in relief.

"I need to go away from here as soon as possible."

With this thought, Greg came out from his shadow, switched to his light element, and started to accelerate toward the direction he came from.

After ranking up, his powers changed a bit and got much stronger. For example, when he was switching from one element to another, the time he needed got reduced a lot.

As his body shone with white light and his speed got faster and faster, suddenly he felt the same dreadful presence from before, coming toward his direction with mind-blowing speed.

"F*ck!"

Trying to run faster, his speed was as fast as a bullet, however, the distance between him and that thing didn't grow, but only got smaller and smaller.

As time went by, Greg saw a small dot in the distance, which was the exit. It instantly made him happy.

His speed accelerated even further and in no time the exit was only a mile away from him.

900 meters, 700 meters, 500 meters, 200 meters, 50 meters...

When the exit was only a few inches away, Greg felt a cold breath on the back of his neck and his face turned pale.

Using his fairy's wind slash, Greg slashed backward and jumped toward the exit without even looking behind.

*Paff!*

*Boom!*

With a loud sound, he rolled out of the zone and his body only stopped when it hit a huge rock not far away.

Crashing into the rock, Greg got a bit dizzy and almost fainted, but a second later he felt great again and started to stand up.

Pieces of rock fell on his body as he tried to stand up on his feet, however, a second later he fell back onto his butt.

"My legs are numb a bit. I don't know if I have good or bad luck lately...", said Greg with a shocked face as he massaged his legs slowly and looked toward the zone, where he almost lost his life a second ago.