CHAPTER 13.

Adrian POV

The darkness that surrounded them despite it being near midday made the whole place quite eerie, the occasional howls and loud screeches did not help matters, the fact that the forest swallowed up the sound of their footsteps made it even worse.

Adrian loved it. He had always liked being in the wilds, but normally the preparations and caution he had been forced to take had prevented him from fully enjoying himself, but here with his enhanced physical and sensory capabilities thanks to the Sword and the levels he had gained, he could see in the dark effortlessly and easily navigate the relatively difficult terrain. It was amazing and was probably the first unequivocally positive thing that had occurred since he had arrived in this world.

Not even the monsters could disrupt his joy, mainly because they were weak enough that using a skill or two was more than enough to defeat them, but also because they were the source of power that let him enjoy his environment. Truthfully Adrian still found it very, very odd that killing a monster and absorbing it somehow allowed him to enhance himself, but it worked and worked spectacularly at that and as it was his only means of survival in this world he would have to embrace it whole-heartedly. No matter his doubts or concerns.

Adrian currently had a small handful of skills active. Blade Projection for attack and defence and Blindsight for a sensory boost. Both powers were ones that he had gained during his first day in the fields and were incredibly useful ones.

Blade Projection was the ability to create copies of his swords that he had mastered and control them telekinetically, it had limits in that the copies were fragile, cost a fair bit of SP, and didn't have any of the special abilities of the original sword. But it was useful in that it had the attack rating of the original and he could control up to four of them effortlessly as if they were his limbs. This power was the main one he had been using to defeat his enemies for the past three days, it let him attack from range with finesse to test out an opponent and the cost wasn't so high as to be prohibitive.

Blindsight, on the other hand, was without question the most useful power he had obtained, it allowed him the ability to perceive everything made out of matter or magic in a large radius around him and process the information flawlessly. He could expand and reduce the range and even get some fine details about the target, he had other extrasensory powers, one that boosted his sense of smell, another that let him see in the ultraviolet range and even a mana sight power, but they all had significant drawbacks, Blindsight had no such thing, save for the SP consumption.

With these two powers, he had dominated everything in the forest. Blindsight let him navigate towards enemies with no effort and hundred per cent accuracy and Blade Projection let him test their defences from safety, and in most cases kill them. Even as they tracked his current prey, he was occasionally killing a monster or two that he wished to absorb. It was a little difficult to describe just how easy it was, but Adrian was beginning to understand why the original Sword, Spear and Bow Heroes had been convinced that this was all a game, it was becoming increasingly effortless for him to fight his enemies, for those three who had intelligence on their enemies and the world, it must truly have felt game-like. Real-life was never easy after all and certainly did not have Exp, levels or magic.

Adrian's party had been mostly useless, to be certain Adrian had taken some risks he would not normally have taken without their presence but in the end, nothing would have changed beyond the level of caution and the number of SP potions he would have consumed. It was the first time that he had realized just how weak his party members were, no doubt he had been impressed by them initially because he was using his world as a standard. Naturally, someone pathetic in a world where it is possible to enhance themselves by merely killing monsters would be far more powerful than even the best in a world where such a mechanic didn't exist. Adrian was starting to rethink his initial idea of them being assassins, they were probably just people who were here to use him to get stronger or gain influence, or feed information about him to the various factions of Melromarc.

Currently, he was using a combination of his Blindsight and Mana Sense to keep track of an Insect Drone, the same type of monster that had sent Andrea into flashbacks before.

Adrian and his party had found a small force of about fifteen insects and had crushed most of them, leaving a few to retreat. They had then had followed them. His goal? To test Andrea, possibly help her should she prove trustworthy and useful and if not then to potentially find an excuse to remove her from the party at his convenience.

It was quite cruel to throw a teenager face-first into her recent trauma, and there was a part of him that felt immensely guilty about it. He had seen traumatized people never recover from the horrors they faced and here he was potentially making it worse. Plus the trauma had been during the First Wave, so it had been about fifteen days or so since then, a very recent event, which was probably even worse.

He was definitely going to hell for this, but he had few other options, he couldn't trust her or her backers, and he was not willing to condemn himself for a girl that was almost certainly spying on him or using him for some purpose or the other and getting her emotional could be very helpful in uncovering one of the reasons for her to join him.

She had made him very suspicious when she had mentioned that she wanted to join the party with the least number of people, the most obvious interpretation was that she wanted to level up faster, but as far as he could tell she had not known about the Exp boost, so he wasn't certain about the precise reasoning she followed. This trauma she had could be the first chink in her armour for Adrian to exploit until he either knew enough to trust her or remove her from the picture.

Adrian signalled for caution when he observed the target finally stop near a massive honeycomb-like structure that was embedded into a tree, nearly five meters off the forest floor. It was truly massive and looked like it was infesting the whole tree, he could see nearly 300 insects of various types and more than a thousand eggs and a huge insect with a swollen abdomen that was currently in the process of making another ten or so eggs. It was quite a disgusting sight even though the lens of his Blindsight.

Their number was a bit of a surprise but not too much of one. It would simply take him more SP to kill them in comparison to most of the monsters in the forest.

He stopped and turned towards his party members after they got into visual range of the hive, Bellamy and Malty looked quite normal, with the fanatic turning his full attention to Adrian and Malty giving him a smile which was offset by her clear fatigue, but Andrea was tense, she was shaking a little and gripping her sword tightly enough that he could see that her knuckles had gone white.

His guilt made a resurgence here, and for a moment he was tempted to just call this off, but he killed that feeling, now was not the time for sentiment. He would try to help her after this if she proved somewhat trustworthy but he could allow pity to shape his actions.

" I have noted a fairly large hive of the insects about five hundred or so meters from here." he said, "I think you can all see it well enough. It seems to have an estimated 300 or so drones and a significantly larger insect that I suspect is the Queen of the hive that is laying eggs. The Queen doesn't seem to have any combat capabilities but to avoid any surprises that thing is going to be my first target." he stopped her for a moment but when he received no reaction beyond Andrea getting even tenser, he went on.

"Malty, your role here is critical. I need you to use your strongest fire spell on the hive first to thin their numbers as much as possible. Your spell will likely determine if we shall succeed or fail here, I shall have a skill prepared to support you if need be, but the main role is yours."

She smiled widely at that," I shall not fail you Sir Adrian, rest assured my Hellfire Storm shall be more than enough for these pests."

Adrian immediately noted to have hisSword Beams ready in case she was making an empty boast, but just said," I shall look forward to it then." with a small smile, before turning to Bellamy.

"Your duty shall be primarily to protect myself and Andrea who shall be on the front line and ensure that if a second casting is needed from Malty, she has the time to do so."

"Yes, Sir!" he exclaimed," It shall be done." Adrian nodded in response, feeling a little exhausted and wondering just how the man had this much energy after nearly three days of hunting with limited rest.

"Andrea, frontline as usual. I shall back up you up as much as possible but this is your fight first."

Andrea nodded stiffly, a determined expression appearing on her face, as she relaxed just a little. Adrian was a little shocked by her sudden change and couldn't help but feel a burst of admiration for this girl, she was truly facing up to her trauma, he didn't know for certain if this head-on charge was wise but her bravery was making him feel like scum. He crushed the feeling swiftly.

"Excellent. Let's begin," he said with a smile and shifted his sword from the one he was working on mastering to a more useful form for this assault.

Pyramid Tortoise Sword (Mastered)(7/40): Lv 7 5.83%

Energy Level 7/100

Rarity: Uncommon

Enchantments: Flying enemies +65% Damage

Status Enchantments : -30% SP Cost

Status Rating

Attack: 75

Magic Attack:121

Defence: 30

Magic Defence: 60

Speed: 20

SP : +32

MP: +67

Stamina: 40

Damage Increase: +65% to Flying Type Enemies

Equip Boosts : Attack +7; Defense +3; Magic Power +10

Equip Skills: Sword Beam (medium); Sword Beam Barrage;

Special Ability: SP Drain(medium)

The sword was an odd-looking one, it was like the shell of the Pyramid Tortoise had been twisted into a helical structure, flattened and then attached to a hilt that looked like the head of the tortoise but the weird looks did not detract from the fact that it was easily one of the best swords he could use and the SP drain power combined with the SP preservation status effect made it perfect for using theSword Beam skill.