Iron rank stage 1

[Ivory Ash Fiend: This monster is iron rank stage 1. Monster of the metal element, this monster is known for having a similar intelligence to a seven-year-old human. Having a body made of metal, it mostly attacks with its ivory horn and can shoot ash through its mouth.]

The monster had a horn on its forehead, silver-coloured fur and blood-red eyes. Walking on two legs and having two arms that reached his knees, it looked like a demon. The hands were enormous and Aurus didn't doubt that with a single hand, he would be able to catch and squeeze his head completely.

"Hum, it should be doable. After all, Zaya should be able to suppress it by herself but anyway, it shouldn't be a very difficult battle."

Taking his sword out, he waited for Zaya to come back. It didn't take more than a minute and Zaya was back and ready. Giving out her low shout, the monster which had begun advancing towards them immediately stopped and started shaking.

Aurus, smiling confidently due to the fact that it stopped moving lost his smile when it roared and sprinted towards them.

Although he didn't understand why it wasn't stopped like those Masked Demon Panther, he didn't hesitate. He had been fighting for almost a week back in the world of Ernia. While those monsters were weaker in terms of the body, they had skills that made them stronger than most monsters at this level.

While the monster sprinted towards them, Zaya took to the skies and inflamed herself completely, preparing herself to strike when she had the opportunity. As for Aurus, he prepared himself, with his sword in front of him, he waited for the monster to approach him.

With the sword mastery skill he possessed, he could easily control his sword and he started to feel like the sword was an extra limb. Of course, although he wasn't at this realm yet, he believed he would be able to reach it soon enough.

When the Ivory Ash Fiend finally appeared in front of him, Aurus took a step to the side and swung his sword avoiding both the horn and the hands of the human-shaped monster. With his sword swinging at its waist, a slash appeared and blood squeezed out of the wound gushing out like a fountain.

As the monster roared from anger and pain, Zaya flew down from its back and released a jet of flame which came out of her mouth. As she flew past it, she didn't forget to give it a hit with her flaming tail and scratching it with her claws.

Aurus looked at the monster and saw it turn around while his wounds were recovering quickly, the monster opened its mouth and a cloud of ash appeared in front of them. The monster while concealing itself turned around and decided to ambush Aurus from the back. After all, it had the mental age of a seven-year-old kid and this was really only the minimum.

Aurus had Zaya create an air current and the ash disappeared quite quickly. However, just as he was waiting to see the monster, he felt a bit of killing intent in his back and he ducked as a big hand passed over his head. Turning around, he stabbed his sword in the arm which had just been extended and retreated right afterwards. It had been too close for his comfort as he, Zaya and the Ivory Ash Fiend separated and looked at each other.

The monster once again opened its mouth to release the ash but this time, Zaya didn't give it the time as she hurled a ball of fire straight to the monster's mouth.

Seeing the fireball appear in front of it, it raised its hands and closed its mouth while trying to avoid the fireball which had started to burn it.

While it had its hands in the air and brought its attention to Zara, he crept up to him by using his shadow step movement skill. The monster finally saw him when he had arrived right at his side but he didn't have time to react as the sword pierced into the wound on its waist which was still recovering.

Shouting out loud due to the pain, Aurus tried to push his sword deeper but had to move back due to the monster swinging its arm at him. If he were to be hit by those arms, while he wouldn't die, it would certainly hurt a lot and put him in a passive situation.

At the same time, Zaya appeared and attacked right at his face. Using the shadow step movement skill, Aurus managed to get out of the field of vision of the monster and arrived behind it and he swung his sword with as much force as he could muster in order to cut his neck.

With Zaya which was distracting it from the front, the monster never saw the sword coming and it completely slashed its neck, making the head fly and the blood flow from the severed neck.

Seeing the monster dying, Aurus looked around and seeing there weren't any monsters nearby had Zaya protect him while he broke through. In reality, to breakthrough, he had to kill a monster but afterwards, he had to absorb the power of the monster in order to breakthrough in ranks.

It was sad to say but while monsters could rank up by themselves by accumulating enough energy, humans were at a disadvantage since they had to kill a beast to 'obtain' their breakthrough which would make them stronger.

Sitting down with his eyes closed, Aurus felt the energy in his body flow all around him and finally with the extra energy which was automatically collected from the body of the dead beast, he managed to breakthrough.

Breaking through in rank was in the opinion of Aurus extremely satisfying as he would feel relaxed as if he was lying in a bathtub of hot water.

After around five minutes, seeing that he was done with his breakthrough, Zaya flew to him and he got up smiling slightly. Feeling even more powerful than before, he went to Laia who was waiting a little further away.

Getting back on the green wolf, they continued to make their way back to the city. Having captured the future contracted beast of Laia and managing to break through to iron rank, he was pretty happy. The last thing remaining was to kill seven monsters before going back to the city to finish the system's task and receiving the reward.

On the way back, they didn't stop and didn't avoid any monsters giving him the possibility to finally complete the system's task.

With Zaya still holding the knocked out baby monster, they still had around half an hour to make their way back to the city. However, at this point, most monsters were purged by the Hunters working for the city. As such, he didn't have anything to worry about and instead he started to look at his reward.

With the monster icon flashing in front of his eyes, he decided to satisfy his curiosity and he looked at it. When he opened the icon, he noticed there were two categories.

The first category was named contracted beast and the second category was named customer monster.

Obviously, he first opened the contracted beast category and inside of it was a single monster name which was Zaya.

Clicking on Zaya's name, he looked at the information and he was surprised by what he found. There was information about the name, age and gender of the beast which wasn't pretty useful but the second part was the most important. It showed the rank of the beast and how far it was to the next rank. There was also a section for injuries that could trouble the monster making it unable to upgrade and finally the most important in his eyes, the mutation task.

The mutation task was the task Zaya had to complete in order to be able to mutate. Aurus had previously heard of some monsters which had managed to mutate and all of them were incredibly strong. Firstly because only strong monsters would normally be able to mutate and secondly because a mutation was the same as increasing the combat power of an entire rank. From the news he had heard since he was in this world, the known beast with the most mutation had a total of four mutations which made it almost impossible to beat in this world.

Feeling excited from it, he also saw that under the information, there was a summoning button that would make the beast be summoned to wherever he was. Indeed wherever he was even if he wasn't in this world. This was a fact that had been confirmed in the small notes of the system right under it.

Happy, he looked at the second category, the customer monster.

Once again, it showed the name, race of the monster and gender along with its rank and how far the beast was from the next rank. Along with that was the recommended resources the beast should take in order to have the best advantage. The icon basically took over the use of his identification skill. However, this was the basic of the category because it also showed a graph of the increase in strength of the monster along with the resources taken and the future paths of evolutions it could take depending on the resource taken. And this was without mentioning the way for the monster to have a mutation. Honestly, this icon was way too useful and it would boost his understanding of the customer's monster and would help him recommend the best resource for a certain monster.

Seeing everything of the new icon, Aurus closed his eyes as he tried to rein down his excitement. Every icon was extremely useful but this one had an incredible use for the shop.

Noticing he liked the shop more and more, he smiled lightly and finally they arrived at the city.