Ah... Level 10

(CHAPTER UPDATED)

Just like that, a month hastily flew by.

Cool winds howled throughout Jorgamount, encircling the life within midst a swift breeze.

Amid the dark oak trees and the thick green brush could be deemed a shallow but wide cave in the wall of a large mountainside.

The outside of the cave had green moss and vines growing on it, and inside could be seen an almost unfamiliar looking boy.

He sat on a log as he stared at a blazing campfire which crackled and popped.

Zenith's torso was adorned with a small layer of thick and durable brown hide, which was strapped from his shoulders down to his waist in an X shape and guarded his chest.

His lower body looked to have on a defensive skirt of leather strips worn dependent from the waist, defending the hips and thighs.

It looked similar to one which gladiator would wear.

His body had clearly changed quite a bit, as his frame was now much more defined with a coat of muscle immediately visible.

As Zenith stared at the fire, a shadowy figure could be seen nearing him from the distance, a couple hundred meters away from the cavern entrance.

The shadowy figure was of a bulky animal which walked on all four legs, and it also looked to be carrying something in its mouth.

Eventually, the bear - who had also grown significantly along with Zenith throughout the month - entered the cavern.

"Bjorn, your back." Zenith said, noticing the sudden and loud, familiar footsteps sound inside of the echoey cavern.

The bear cub, now no longer a cub, growled slightly to acknowledge Zenith's words before dropping a fresh corpse from its blood-drenched mouth onto the floor next to him.

"Oh ho, an Iron-Jawed Leopard this time? And an adult male at that. Those are usually quite aggressive. You're getting quite brave aren't you buddy?" Zenith said in slight surprise before ruffling Bjorn's fur.

Bjorn gratefully expected his master's praise.

"Lets see, how are your stats looking now? Its been a while since I last checked."

'System, show me Bjorn's stats.' Zenith said in his head.

[ Stats:

Name: Bjorn

Race: Red-Ringed Bear (Hidden Genome Mutation)

Current Rank: Upper Echelon Pure Beast Rank

Rank Potential: Upper Echelon Rampage Rank

Age: 3

Exp: 11/75

Level: 9

Health: 36/36

Strength: 25

Stamina: 18/18

Mana: None

Stat Points: None

Skills:

| Boulder Gene | (Passive) The defense ability in your soul is always fortified, causing you to take 5% less damage to your health.

| Defensive Stance | (Active) A defense skill which causes user and ally defense to fortify by 10% for 30 seconds. Also increases moral during this time period. Has a 3 hour cool down. (Can be Improved)

Overall: Evolving Red-Ringed Bear, Good Potential. ]

Zenith inspected the stats closely. Throughout the month, Bjorn had leveled up alongside Zenith just fine, so everything looked as it should have except of course for the "Hidden Genome" thing appearing next to Bjorns race.

This still confused Zenith, who had yet to figure out exactly what it meant. Maybe when the time was right, the system would reveal the meaning behind the message on its own.

"Our progress has been quite good Bjorn." Zenith said before pausing and looking back at the campfire.

"However... it is not enough." Zenith stood up and slowly stomped out the fire to a pile light fizzling charcoal.

"If I want to complete my goal, my current rate is progress is just not enough. I need something different than what I am doing." Zenith said before walking over to the Iron-Jawed leopard corpse.

'Inventory' he said as he hovered his hand over the dead body.

On saying this, the body of the animal was suddenly sucked into his hand, only leaving behind some blood and a small glowing red orb the size of a grape.

"These monster cores..." Zenith said as he picked up the orb and wiped the blood off of it before popping it into his mouth.

[ 8 Exp Gained! ]

Monster cores, or beast cores were small orbs of energy found inside pretty much every creature alive.

Zenith quickly found this out on his first ever hunt with Bjorn. He had not figured it out with the Razor-Hopper before because he didn't bother salvaging its body, however from there on out salvaging was all he did.

The first ever creature Zenith and Bjorn ever hunted was a female deer. It had no antlers to fight back and was only a timid and innocent creature.

Once Zenith himself took the life of the deer, real tears of sorrow feel down his cheeks. At the time, he was traumatized by the experience.

However, as time went on, he quickly became accustomed to hunting and killing. He learned that if he didn't have any emotional connection to the creature, he was taking the life of, he didn't mind killing it, although, he didn't like either.

Once Zenith found out about monster cores from that deer, he learned that these cores would actually give more exp than the kill itself, and also that monster cores could not be stored in the inventory.

Once learning this, Bjorn and Zenith slowly became monsters themselves, as they eventually wiped out several packs of deer in their area and constantly had to relocate.

Zenith never enjoyed killing anything, however, he enjoyed... really enjoyed, gaining power. He learned that it was the most fulfilling and exhilarating thing he had ever done in his life.

The more powerful he got, the greater he felt.

And so, up until now Zenith and Bjorn had been going on mass killing sprees. However, these were still not enough.

'Nowhere near enough' Zenith thought to himself.

'If I continue this growth path, I'm afraid I will probably be even weaker than a high-ranking soldier in the Valhalla kingdoms cavalry, let alone be powerful enough to take down the entire empire. It seems from now on, I will have to start hunting formation ranked beasts.'

A Formation ranked beast was one rank above the weakest rank that Zenith had come across so far, the Pure beast rank.

Throughout the month, Zenith quickly learned from the system that there were three tiers in each of these ranks.

Lower tier, Median tier, and Upper Echelon. Although Zenith had only seen these three tiers within those two ranks, he had to assume that it was how all tiers worked.

By now, Zenith had yet to take on a single Formation ranked beast, his highest ranked kill only being an Upper Echelon Pure beast.

However, Zenith imagined that the amount of exp he would gain from Formation ranked beast cores and from the kill would be far greater than the amount gained from killing Pure ranked beasts, and so, Zenith knew he had no other choice to fight Formation ranked beasts if he wanted to get stronger.

"Bjorn! Let's go!"

On hearing this, Bjorn immediately straightened up and began following Zenith, who had already begun running in a certain direction.

'I know exactly what beast I will have to take down. That bastard Wolf...'

After running for a while, the duo came across an area of the forest where the trees were a good bit more spread out.

'This is its domain.' Zenith thought to himself as he stopped running and began scanning the area.

Out of nowhere, Zenith heard a brush against the bushes nearby, followed by several other suspicious sounds. He didn't know from which direction the sounds were coming from no matter how hard he tried to follow them.

Eventually, a large wolf jumped out from the bushes behind them with a gaping mouth with rows of serrated teeth.

Thankfully, both Bjorn and Zenith were able to move out of the way just quick enough to not get torn to pieces.

"There you are!" Zenith yelled at the wolf now in front of him as he prepared himself to attack or be attacked.

The wolf standing in front of him was over 10 feet in height and looked absolutely menacing. Just from a glance, one could see the muscles bulging out of its legs, almost ready to pop. They had visible veins as large as snakes.

Its fur was thick and gray, having killer eyes and a menacing expression on its face. This wolf truly was the definition of a savage animal.

Before Zenith and Bjorn could attack, the wolf took a loud step towards them before roaring at full might.

The roar made Zenith's ears ring, and almost made him lose balance from the sheer force of the airwaves the roar created.

This wolf was clearly not messing around, and it was most definitely of the Formation rank, however, Zenith did not know which tier it full under.

For a moment, Zenith felt a little bit of fear in his mind. He was still human after all, and right now he was staring into the eyes of a ferocious beast nearly ten times his size.

However, Zenith suddenly felt power rejuvenate his limbs and mind, and his confidence grew considerably out of nowhere, making the wolf in front of him not look so challenging after all.

He looked back over his shoulder. Bjorn was using his Defensive Stance skill.

"Good job buddy." Zenith said with a grin as he turned to face the wolf once again.

"Show me what you got!"

Zenith immediately pulled his wooden sword out of back sheath and rushed towards the wolf.

As he got close enough, he pulled back on the sword before thrusting it forward towards the wolfs torso.

Just before the sword reached, the wolf leapt to the side before tackling Zenith to the ground.

Zenith rolled on the floor for a couple of meters before slamming his back against a tree.

It felt as though all of the air was immediately driven out of his lungs as he struck his back.

Seeing this, Bjorn stormed towards the wolf in a fury of rage.

Bjorn roared loudly before biting down on the wolfs shoulder.

As Bjorn struggled to tear off the wolfs shoulder, the wolf simply stood there as though unimpressed before shrugging off Bjorn and tackling him into the ground as well.

'Damn it... is this going to turn out like the last time we faced this bastard?' Zenith thought to himself. 'No! I cannot waste time thinking, I only have 20 seconds left to use this defense and moral boost!'

"I said show me what you got damn it!" Zenith yelled again as he ran at the wolf, sword in hand.

This time, the wolf also ran at Zenith. It seemed that it had played enough and was now getting serious.

The wolf was considerably faster than Zenith, and seemingly appeared in front of him out of nowhere before lunging at Zenith with its mouth wide open.

'Is it planning to swallow me in one go!?'

Zenith didn't know what to do. Bjorn was still on the ground from the blow he had just faced, and the wolf was in mid-air, closing in on him as he struggled to think in this millisecond of time.

'Damn it!' Zenith yelled in his mind.

The wolf's mouth finally landed over Zenith, who was too slow to react.

Zenith tried to push the two sides of the wolfs mouth apart by holding onto its teeth, however, it felt as though he was trying to push apart two mountains. It was simply not going to happen.

After a second, Zenith's palms were sliced open from the teeth of the wolf, and excruciating pain jolted throughout his entire body, which was being crushed by the instant.

"ARGHH!"

Zenith did not give up, he used all the strength in his limbs, not caring for his hand was getting cut, because his life was more important.

[ Extremely life-threatening emergency has appeared! ]

[ The system will be forced to use life force energy. Process initiated. ]

[ Alert! The life force energy has been intercepted by another energy! ]

[ Wrath energy entering meridian stream. ]

Suddenly, Zenith felt no pain. He felt no pressure, nor did he feel any weakness. His eyes became fully black, as black light even erupted from them.

In an instant, Zenith used all the force he could muster and ripped the wolf's skull apart in a gory blood shower.

As he fell back down to the ground below, a black colored flame covered all of his injured parts, such as his hands, and he was knocked unconscious.

Just then, a large monster core the size of a baby's fist fell next to Zenith.

[ Dire Wolf Gamma (Transformation Rank Upper Echelon) slain! ]

[ Exp: 240/80 You leveled up! ]

[ Exp: 160/100 You leveled up! ]

[ Congratulations! Achievement Unlocked: Ah... Level 10 ]

[ Reward Obtained! Skill: Scan ]