Searching for a Stronger Foe

~Puchi~

[You killed F-rank virac spider]

[+10 EXP]

Art pulled out his dagger from the head of the spider-like creature about half his size.

He was currently in another part of the forest filled with these beasts. Even the trail of bodies behind him said it all.

After wiping out the entire black wolf from their territory, he focused his attention on this place and was proud to say that he had almost done the same here. *Cough*

This was just a bus stop to his actual target. It took him some time to do the math but he figured it out.

He wasn’t the best at school back then in his former life but at least he picked up some things.

He could remember three major things that could cause migration and he believed they were also applicable to this world.

So the red-eyed rabbits back then migrated because of either one of these. First, climate change which was obviously not the case. The second was lack of food which he also doubted and lastly, predators.

If this last option was correct, it meant that there was a stronger beast that arrived in their territory, and he believed it was E-ranked.

Their former territory was somewhere around the boundary that they weren’t meant to cross, and he was currently headed there.

He hoped he was right. It usually took several mages of the same rank as a beast to take it down. But Art was much stronger than the period of the ceremony which took place two weeks ago.

Yes, another two weeks had passed since his encounter with his true weapons which were still yet to be accessible.

His level and strength had grown since then. Why wouldn’t it? With him having almost caused the extinction of two species from this area.

When he woke up after his encounter with his true weapons, he found himself lying on his bed in his room.

A few days later, some people arrived to check the level of weapons that they had received along with their health.

The only info that was made public was that three people from the Von family had gotten S-rank true weapons which was the second highest record in history for not just the Vons but the Silvers as several others from other branch families also got one with few being upgradeable.

Upgradable true weapons have high chances of breaking true their normal limit into the next rank or higher. Art had an idea of who the people with these weapons were.

There was a celebration going on within the Silvers and he was sure that other families and people had heard of this.

Well this wasn’t the only piece of news as for the second time in the history of the Silvers, someone who went into the room didn’t come out with a weapon.

Everyone in the Von branch believed it was him except for Iris. Come to think of it, she’s been looking at him strangely for some time now.

The funny part was that they were correct….. in a way.

With one of his core being locked and the second undeveloped he wasn’t able to summon his true weapon and even a forced summoning which was used to help people who didn’t know how to summon their true weapons also failed to work, so he was labelled true weaponless.

If only they knew that he had two with very high self-consciousness, the whole kingdom would be left in shock as they were yet to see a dual-core mage.

You think that’s all the news, well you’re in for more.

[ Auxiliary core formation: 99% complete]

It has been 99% for 28 hours, 36 minutes and…..52 seconds now. So he believed it would be completely formed a few hours from now at most.

Wondering how he knows the exact time?

That was how excited he was, as not only would he be able to use magic, he would also have access to one of his true weapons which was perfectly in line with the second news as the annual contest would be beginning the day after tomorrow. He couldn’t wait to face-slap them.

The dagger he was using now was an E-rank magical weapon given to him out of pity. It didn’t have any form of consciousness but from what he noticed, this weapon wasn’t bad at all.

It came with two perks. The first was his agility stat gets increased by 10 points and his strength stat gets increased by 3 when wielding it but the interesting part was that after 10 consecutive hits with no more than three seconds intervals, his lost HP increased by 1 and there was no cool down time.

He was sure that they were unaware of this because if so, they wouldn’t have given it to him as the best part was that this weapon was upgradeable.

He shook his hand to get rid of the blood from the dagger.

“I shouldn’t be far away now,” he muttered as he continued to run. He wanted to wrap things up in two hours as he needed to start making preparations for the contest.

After some minutes, he got to an area with few trees and high grasses.

This was just before the boundary and also the former habitat of the red-eyed rabbits. The corpse of one which welcomed him was proof.

Due to the mana contained in their bodies, not just beasts but even humans deteriorate slower than that of his former world after death. And the same thing could be said about their aging process.

The stronger they become, the slower they age. An S- rank mage could be 200 years old and still look like someone in their forties. This depended on how long it took them to become an S- rank mage. And he was looking forward to living a long life.

He continued to walk forward through the high grass slowly. He had to be very careful as the deeper he got, the higher the grasses became, and when they began to reach his waist, he couldn’t ignore them as he began to use his dagger to cut those around him down.

This wasn’t the best place to fight a beast and he believed that it must be something comfortable with this vegetation.

Seeing the potential danger, he decided not to head in further. He loved EXP farming but his life was more important.

As he turned back to walk away, he began hearing rustling sounds approaching him. His head kept shifting from place to place following the sound as whatever was producing it wasn’t moving straight towards him.

He started walking backwards quickly to reduce the height of the grasses.

The rustling suddenly stopped not too far away from him and so did he. His eyes and ears were very sensitive to the slightest movement and it seemed like whatever was producing this sound wasn’t patient.

“There!” He said, leaping away from a direction which immediately after had all the grasses severed.

He created some distance now sighting the beast which was going to be his opponent.

“Oi! Oi! Are you kidding me?” He exclaimed in slight surprise, staring at the beast.

The battle for the true alpha of this area was about to begin.