74 Slaughter

Jim didn't know why his cultivation had gone down an abnormal route. Thinking over it, there were a few too many reasons why it could be, he had too many spirit roots, had already stepped on the path of divinity before reaching godhood via cultivation, he had died before and come back to life and even been three different species. There was also the system, it could have done something to alter his path for some reason.

Sighing, he decided to just accept it and keep circulating Eternal Heavenly Art. His status showed his cultivation to be "Early Second Core Realm". The second Core was being refined like the first had. Making small breakthroughs one after another, he reached Peak again. 'If my guess is right, then...Yeah.'

A third Core formed. 'Crap, when am I going to reach Sage realm?' His Qi had been thoroughly consumed by this point, but his capacity had increased explosively. Jim felt it was more than enough to create one clone per day now, he went to bed to fill his Qi back up. 'Crap, it feels weird not to have Celes laying next to me.' Jim forced himself not to teleport to the capital, he needed to focus on raising his power right now.

Waking up later in the middle of the night, Jim immediately began creating a clone. It went smoothly, sending the clone to the capital to help out, he went back to sleep. Waking in the morning, another clone was created. 'Three of me should be fine right now.'

Jim headed to the capital and absorbed the clone he had originally sent over, it was time to take down the horde to the east.

Using Lightning Drive, it didn't take long to approach the massive crowd of monsters. 'Appraise'

[Name: Apostle Krin]

[Race: Goblin]

[Strength: 1000]

[Dexterity: 600]

[Vitality: 900]

[Agility: 800]

[Dark Lord's Apostle, Kin Eater]

'He's grown considerably stronger in such a short time...is it his apostle status?' Some time ago, many goblins came in from the north and joined the horde, Jim recognized many of them as coming from the small village he was born in.

Additionally, there were 6 Liches among the crowd. They had been tirelessly creating undead minions for some time now, boosting the horde's numbers to terrifying heights. Jim felt that he couldn't put off this problem anymore, he couldn't tell how large they planned to balloon their size, it seemed almost like they wanted to overrun the entire world in a single rush.

Pulling out a staff, Jim decided to begin with multiple casts of fire storm, a massive amount of mana was quickly consumed to fuel the attacks. Destruction rained down across a huge swath of land, thousands of monsters quickly died.

[Level Up]

A wry smile spread on Jim's face. 'I've always loved gaining levels in rpgs, but isn't the required experience way too high? If I didn't have supporting skills and cultivation I'd likely die of old age before reaching level 30. Wait, how did Gaius get to such a high level then?'

Lost in thought, Jim didn't really care about the attacks being thrown towards him from below. Now that he had regained his former power, the rocks being thrown and magic attacks flying towards him couldn't even leave a slight bruise. He could comfortably sit around as his enemies died around him, the feeling was almost intoxicating.

As the fires died out, Jim pulled more mana from his storage and cast several more area spells. Another round of painful shrieks sounded out. 'The power of my spells is a bit low, too many of the weak monsters end up living through my area attacks. If my defense and speed was worse they'd be able to overwhelm me with numbers.'

Jim separated his two clones from himself. All three pulled out bows and began firing volleys of arrows. The increased arm strength from his recovered power caused each arrow to be like a shot from a cannon. After piercing through a monster, each arrow would slam into the ground and kick up a load of dirt from the impact.

Jim's bow ended up snapping from the repeated stress, he frowned after seeing the bows his clones were holding also breaking down. 'I need better materials to make weapons. Something that breaks down after just a minute of combat can't be called practical.'

Jim descended to the ground along with his clones, they split up and began assaulting monsters in melee combat. Krin wasn't far ahead, Jim dashed over to take care of him quickly. A fist smashed through Krin's torso before he could react, an expression of shock was written over his ugly face and he fell to the ground.

Jim's divine senses allowed him to spot a heavy concentration of chaos energy emerging from Krin's corpse, it seemed to begin moving towards the east. Smirking, Jim directed his flames towards it and burnt the cloud of chaos until it was eradicated.

Next, he turned his sights to the Liches, his senses showed they had some sort of energy link to another location. Tracing the link, Jim checked the location with detection. 'I see, so that's how it is.'