CHAPTER 133. Hunting Continues

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"Happiness is like glass. It may be all around you, yet be invisible. But if you change your angle of viewing a little, then it will reflect light more beautifully than any other object around you."

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Today's meme is here. [ ]

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As 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 were dragging demons underground killing them and returning back with their corpses.  While Kalaska just choked the demons just like any huge snake.  

Quietly watching around two hundred of his Shadow Soldiers marching forward in perfect order, Jin finally felt like the 'Shadow Sovereign'.

[You killed a Superior-Ranked Demon.]

[You killed a Superior-Ranked Demon.]

The feel-good messages continued on. Jin didn't even lift a finger and used only his Shadow Soldiers to annihilate the monsters. The biggest contributor among them was, of course, all the SS rank shadows the  Veteran Elite Knight Grade soldiers.  

Like Susanō who was in his trump card form Magatama Manifestation using his full speed and power using his Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven which generates a very long, transparent sword from the energy. The sword has immense power, as it slices through hordes of demons like they are made of butter. 

The Speed of Lightning: Susanoo's name was really well suited for him as he killed the demons just that fast with his huge energy sword.  

On the other hand Akame was even faster as with a single scratch of her blade was killing demons like flies.  Or Lubbock was using his thin wires to diced demons into pieces or Mine shooting demons while sitting on the back of an Ice Mammoth or Leone tearing through the demons as they were made of paper.  

Or the Iron who is dicing up the demons with every swing of his axe or the magic casters casting fireballs, wind blades, water bullets.  

Or the Guardian now using his laser beams to mince up demons.  

Then there was the one

'Typhon, you the beauty….'

Jin looked behind him – or, more specifically, way up behind him.

He then saw the gigantified Shadow Magic Soldier, previously nothing as it was his creation, using the six tentacles and his wings to kill demons like it was nothing which was true as he could end this all but the price would be loss of valuable resources.

Sometimes he just claps his hands tougher creating an effect similar to hulk thunderclap which just shatters the demons like a broken glass.  

Jin opened his own Skill Window.

[Number of shadows that can be extracted: 189/1679]

[Number of shadows that can be stored: 189/598]

'Shadow Extraction, Shadow Storage, and Sovereign's Territory.' All three skills were unaffected by the 'Bead of Avarice' whatsoever.

If he wanted to increase the number of slots for either the extraction or storage for his shadows, the sole method available currently was to increase his Intelligence Stat.

Jin closed the Skill Window.

Meanwhile, the soldiers gathered one by one in front of Jin after mopping up their quarries.

Seeing the mountains of demon corpses piled up like that, the corners of Jin's lips arched up considerably.

'With this many demons, I get plenty of loot as a result. Besides the loot, my army already collected'

Ding, Ding, Ding….

This time, an endless stream of item acquisition messages popped up in his view.

'Well, I got everything I can from here….'

Jin smiled deeply as he went about acquiring all the loot and corpses with his shadows, and after finishing that up, he climbed up on the back of 'Tank', his trusty Ice Bear Shadow Beast Soldier.

The so-called 'Entry Permit' allowing him to move to the next floor hadn't come out yet. Which meant, he had to look for it and find the last monsters who were hiding on this floor. And they were outside of the reach of my senses. 

Jin ordered his troops to move out and scatter. 

"Giddy up!"

Tank slowly began trotting forward, as out 189 Shadow Soldiers 180 scattered all over the place while remaining nine followed after Jin in an orderly fashion.

***

'The whole army moving around together is inefficient.'

Jin thought that all 189 Shadow Soldiers acting as one unit was not quite efficient enough. If the individual soldier was weak, fine, this tactic made sense. But, even the regular soldiers had gone up several levels and with most of them getting class promotion some even got twice now and they could more or less hold their own against the demons and still achieve some success.

Not only that, he even had assimilated monsters from rank A dungeons into his Shadow Soldier army, too. Quite obviously, the overall quality of the soldiers had risen up by a lot.

"Kiiieehhk!!"

"Kiiaahk!"

[You killed a High-Ranked….]

[You killed a…..]

With his soldiers boasting such mighty combat prowess, the time taken to move around and search for last alive monsters turned out to be longer than it took to actually kill them.

The thing was, each floor of this Demon's Castle was as wide as a large city. With all its complications and hideouts.  

'This has always taken forever to find the last living demons who survived by hiding ever since I started my experimenting project.'

Even after Jin divided his soldiers into twenty groups of ten. And then, had them scatter around to hunt down monsters.

He gave them four orders.

'One, Find and kill every enemy.'

' Two. Collected all the loot they drop'

'Three. Collected the corpses of the one you killed.'

'Four. If the entry permit for the next floor is found, let me know straight away.'

Still it takes long even after all the speedsters in his army it takes too long.  

It may not be possible to hold a conversation with most of his soldiers, but he could still communicate by using simple hand gestures and mental command but it's only one way conversation.

Since the soldiers could pick up any loot, he didn't have to go there personally which was great from the og story A he doesn't have to go everywhere to collect the loot and could focus on other problems and collecting exp.  

And to acquire the entry permit as soon as possible. 

"Begin."

With his command, all ten groups went their separate ways.

And just like always after a short while later….

[You have earned 1,500 experience points.]

[You have earned 1,575 experience points.]

[You have earned 945 experience points.]

[You have earned 1,155 experience points.]

Experience points began raining down on him from literally everywhere.

'Looks like my shadows have begun hunting.'

Jin watched his experience points climb up and formed a pleased expression. However, he soon discovered that something was off.

'The amount of experience points I get has decreased?'

After arriving on the upper floors, he never once ran into the commonly-found low or mid-ranked demons from the lower floors.

High-Ranked Demons appeared most of the time now, and every now and then, he would find a couple of Exceptional ranked Demons mixed in among them.

To take them down it takes power of twenty mid rank soldiers of his army and a single Elite Knight Grade soldier could take them down alone with minutes.  

The amount of experience points earned after killing a High-Ranked Demon was 1,700. And from the Superior Demon, a creature one rank higher than High-Ranked Demons, he received a fixed amount of 2,200 points without adding the 5% bonus exp he gets.  

And to take down an Exceptional ranked Demon it grants him 3,500 experience points.  

However, the amount he was getting at the moment fell far, far short of those numbers.

And it was due to the first clash with demons reducing their numbers into a few dozen.  

Thankfully he doesn't lose experiences points with the distance between him and shadows and if does he doesn't know how far soldiers have to travel for him to lose exp but what he was sure it should be far from a planet it should be around a few miles.  He doesn't know the distance limit.  

He wasn't sure about the distance affecting the amount of experience points he could earn.

Jin quietly observed the experience points messages popping up non-stop for a while. The amount earned had definitely decreased, albeit by a small margin. 

'I have to find this distance limit if I even had one and if so this could someday be a reason for him to lose a huge amount of experience points.'

He wouldn't have thought about this fact without the unique set-up of the 'Demon's Castle' at least until it was too late.  

He also thought that he did the right thing by not letting his soldiers go out in groups to hunt on the lower floors. Back then in his past, he wanted to refine his combat style even further by personally fighting the monsters, as well as not wanting to miss out on a single 'Demon's Soul', the so-called quest completion 'items'.

Now that much more efficient hunting was taking place over a greater expanse of the hunting area, the overall rate of the experience points earned was actually a lot faster than before. Even now, the experience points messages were raining down on him.

So even if he was losing exp which he is not he still would have done the same thing due the fact that how convenient it is. 

With the situation being like this, his level that had stayed still since the first battle of this floor suddenly gained a lot of momentum.

'Level up and fast clearing speed, then loot the corpses. I shall catch these four birds in one go.'

Jin smiled in satisfaction as he confirmed that will be able to level up after two more floors.  

But now he was thinking of something else.  

Well it's taking longer than I expected and I was thinking something else that is a much faster and much better solution. Yes, using it will cost me valuable loot and stat points but now I am on a tight leash. 

Not finishing the quest in less than 40 days would cost me too much and a lot of damage if the extra reward was a golden ticket.  

Yes I do know it was too far fetched of me to think I could gain a golden ticket. 

But hii a man could dream… 

***

His plan was on the money. He got to climb up to the 81th floor much faster than anticipated.

As after the thought when I was done with the demons and felt like only a few demons are remaining I would use a spell that could completely obliterate a large city like the last one 'Graviton Convergence Burst' so using these cities as canvas I have redrawn some of the most powerful spells in the known multiverse.  

Some of the spells that were created were "Dragon Slave" - Slayers, "Indignation" - Tales of Series, "Megido Flame" - Blue Exorcist, "Giga Slave" - The Slayers, "Last Quake" - Fairy Tail, "Soul Flare" - Naruto, "Grand Cross" - Castlevania, "Black Meteorite" - Black Clover, "Exterminate Ray" - Attack on Titan, "Kamehameha" - Dragon Ball Z, "Gudōdama" - Naruto, "Disintegration Wave" - Star Wars, "Abyssal Cataclysm" - League of Legends, "Crimson Oblivion" - Fullmetal Alchemist, "Voidquake" - Dota 2, "Annihilation Nova" - Mass Effect, Bararāku Saika"  - Magi: Adventure of Sinbad.

And these were spells I was able to recreate without many problems competing in my way. 

And this was due to the fact that even if I failed nothing was going to happen and again if the spell did more than I expected then I don't need to care as these floors became a playground for me to test out these spells.  

And with Arcane Cognizance and a bunch of Titles Skills Perks and Traits that allowed me to remain efficient and faster while creating spells and that around 60%. And with his actual speed and thought acceleration making 1000 times faster and with Perfector making his body precise to minimal detials. 

So creating spells got even easier when I knew I didn't need to think about the devastation it could bring.  

So creating a new spell of mass destruction in hours then secreting for more last demons for several hours was much more convenient.  And they could always be used on a later date so creating spells were much more efficient, effective and future proof.  

As soon as arriving on the new floor, he summoned his soldiers once more.

Shururuk.

189 Shadow Soldiers were summoned simultaneously.

The soldiers and their levels had all climbed up pretty nicely after going on their own groups to hunt monsters and earn a ton of experience points for themselves.

'Oh? Since when did Tank gain over twenty levels?'

Jin's eyes opened wider.

Maybe it felt happy after his owner's interested gaze fell on it, Tank, who had reached level 58 only yesterday, stood on his hind legs and let out a roar of 'Wuuong'. Jin wasn't the only one to enjoy the fruits of the efficient hunting, as it turned out.

He grinned brightly.

"Alright, then. Let's go!"

Just like before, he divided his army into twenty groups and had them set off. He then took off alone, as well. He was familiar with acting alone anyway, and he also didn't really need the soldiers' help, either.

Excluding Typhon', he was pretty confident of fighting the whole Shadow Soldier army and winning.

Of course you can't get tired of someone who doesn't run out of energy and with every blow only drains your mana.  

However….

'If Typhon was included?'

In that case, who knows?

If Typhon was indeed included, then things could get really interesting, that's for sure. In the end, though, it was just him imagining something improbable, anyway.

Regardless of all that….

He knew he can't beat him soldiers as no matter what he does it's only going to drain his mana. 

'How come I can't see any demons?'

After summoning his eight Daggers that circled around him', Jin lightly tossed it over his head and caught it a few times while searching for the presence of monsters.

'I can tell that they are nearby, but….'

Jin took a quick look around. He could definitely sense their presence nearby, but he couldn't spot a single monster.

When was it again?

Didn't he experience something similar to this before?

Is it due to demons becoming even smarter?  

It was then, the ground seemed to undulate violently a couple of times, before the earth suddenly shot up.

"Kek, kek."

"Keeheehee…."

Amidst the eerie silence of the demon-infested landscape, the ground trembled, and the earth split open with a bone-chilling creak. Five massive Superior Demons and three Exceptional Demons emerged from the gaping crevices, their menacing forms casting grotesque shadows on the hellish landscape. 

Their grating cackles echoed in the air, like the deranged laughter of nightmares made flesh.

Jin stood tall amidst the encircling horrors, his expression unflinching despite the overwhelming odds stacked against him. His eyes glinted with an eerie calmness, a fierce determination that sent ripples of unease through the ranks of the demons. 

The malicious delight that danced in their eyes was swiftly replaced by uncertainty.

As the demons lunged forward with gaping maws, eager to devour their perceived prey.

Jin's grin deepened. Their audacity in believing they held the upper hand  With a sudden explosive movement, he leaped high into the air, his lithe form twirling with an almost ethereal grace.

In an instant, Jin's hand blurred with a flicker of movement, and a shimmering, razor-sharp disk of pink mana materialized within his grasp. The Destructo Disc, his own take on a technique from a different realm, hummed with raw power as it caught the light. With a deft twist of his wrist, Jin unleashed the deadly weapon towards the encircling demons.

The Destructo Disc soared through the air, its trajectory unwavering and unerring. Before the demons could react, the deadly disc sliced through the air with a resounding. 

Swiiish! 

The precision of the strike was mesmerizing, each demon's head severed from their bodies in swift succession.

Thud, thud, thud – 

Heads fell to the ground with eerie finality, their grotesque expressions forever frozen in death. Jin's movements were calculated, his execution flawless. As the demonic laughter turned to horrified shrieks, the truth dawned upon them – their prey was anything but terrified.