10 | Overwhelmed

The lake beast displays its two hundred meters long, cone-shaped shell armored with pieces of metal and other materials from various weapons and equipment. The collection seems to be a trophy of some sort from previous guilds who tried to claim its Release but failed.

Tentacles slowly start to crawl out of its base, with the extremities resembling giant worms with circular mouths. The teeth are like several layers of conveyor belts with half-meter spikes. These same protrusions also seem to pulsate from the tip towards the core inside the shell.

Vi's body subconsciously shake in a mixture of disgust and fear as she witnesses almost a hundred of these tentacle worms. She is feeling hopeless, even doubting whether Keen can survive this hideous creature.

"This creature…" he manifests his <Blood Strings> on both hands in whip form. "It's surely the alpha of the Northern Forest. I've even seen these tentacles in a cunning disguise right outside the northern gate."

"What?" Vi's panic attack increases. Her breathing becomes erratic and she can feel her body turning cold while sweating despite her defensive posture. Her eyes passively drift towards the HP bar on top of the hard shell. Her fear intensifies. "Level…thirty five?!"

She can hardly hear Keen's deep, coarse voice as he calls out her name.

"Snap out of it." He taps her shoulder. His face has a fixed smug look and never looking away from his target. The System gives a notification.

[ Mission: Consume the Beast of the Lake ]

[ Time Limit: 1hr ]

[ Reward: 5,000 EXP ]

[ Reward: 100,000 Gold Coins ]

[ Reward: Item (Blood Vial) ]

[ Accept? YES | NO ]

His current level is 12. Simply speaking, the enemy's level is thrice his. Even with his high Stats, defeating this enemy with such a gap in level is looking like a nightmare. His Eye of the Adjudicator's special effect may not even work against it.

"Let's retreat." His voice maintains its eagerness. "For now. While it's not showing any signs of hostility yet."

A pale red square blinks over [ YES ] in the System console. As he carries Vi in his arms like usual, Keen wonders whether there is any consequence if he declines the System's mission notification.

"I'm scared," Vi has her eyes shut. She has no intention of seeing the monstrosity again.

"You may be right about calling for back up." He presses her arm gently. "Elise is still part of our party, right?"

With eyes still closed, she nods.

"Where are you going?" Vi holds the sleeve of Keen's long coat with two leather buckles near the wrist. She is sitting with legs covering her sweaty shirt, resting her chin on her knees while breathing heavily. Her other hand still wields the bone lance. Meanwhile, her vampire companion is crouching and eyeing the perimeter for monster presence.

The caving at the base of a large acacia tree where they are staying in makes a unique hiding place from monsters. It has an item description that says any creature under its protection are not detected by roaming monsters. However, by Vi's refusal to stay without him earlier, he figured he is the only one seeing the tree's unique ability description.

He gives her a gentle glance before putting a hand over hers. "I'll go scout around the lake."

Her eyes show concern but she admits to herself that Esprit replicates the exact body language of Transfers and even NPCs as with the real world humans using complicated brainwave translation for the former and high quality artificial intelligence programming for the latter.

Right now, she can see in the expression of his face that he will not be facing the boss monster on his own. That is, unless he has a sort of poker face or cunning ability.

Before he leaves their hideout, Keen repeats his request for Vi to contact Elise after an hour.

"Keep your vigilance." He takes his step outside without looking back. "This caving may be a hideout of yet another monster."

He looks at her avatar image in the Party menu. Beside it are three indicators: HP, MP and EXP.

Keen remembers her telling him that she just turned level four tonight, but it cannot be verified by anyone unless they belong to the same guild. The health and mana exact values are equally undisclosed. For Party members, they can at least see the percentage remaining through the color-coded bar indicators. Her HP in red and MP in purple are both full, while the yellow-colored EXP bar below the two is half-full.

He then takes a quick glance at Elise's avatar image below Vi's. Her HP and MP are also full, but her EXP bar is less than a quarter full.

After hearing Vi's soft murmur of affirmation, he vanishes as a shadow.

From the confines of the little hideout, Vi cannot hear the faint explosions and enraged monster roars as Keen dismembers monsters with his skill <Entropy>. Even with a full enemy health bar, this skill can consume indiscriminately as long as he can penetrate the skin and armor of the enemy.

"Maybe I should find an equipment that ignores armor or has a high penetration." He stands atop a fifty-meter pine tree looking at his palm.

A large, twin-headed centipede constricts the tree with its body while attempting to strangle him. However, he conjures two bone lances from his Inventory and throws those to puncture the monster's heads between the eyes.

They did not even have time to let out a defeated shriek as his left hand follows up to the wound and activates <Entropy>. The monster's blood gathers to his hand like undone bandages suspended in the air. It then seeps through his gauntlet and into his hand while the monster's life instantly turns to zero.

Keen catches the core with his other hand; his bone lances morph into black smoke and returns to his Inventory. Item loots drop to the bottom of the pine tree. He gestures for the items to be put into his item storage, but to no avail.

"Tsk. It seems I can't get loots from over this distance," he clenches his teeth in disappointment. He then begins experimenting the maximum distance he can have to acquire the item loots before other monsters reach him.

Upon reaching five meters, he successfully transfers the loot to his Inventory.

He studies the sky and sees no sign of flying monster. Sooner or later, he expects to see dragons, wyverns, and other flying creatures categorized as monsters and beasts. Or perhaps these legends are in fact supposed to be ability classes or tamed beasts of Transfers.

Another batch of humanoid crawlers, twin-headed centipedes, and bone throwing little monsters approach him. Instead of panicking, he stomps at the ground and goes for the multiple kill with his <Sneak> activated.

After half an hour of doing this routine all around the lake, a System notification appears over his right shoulder.

[ System Message: You have leveled up! ]

[ Level: 25 ]

[ New Skill (Passive) acquired! ]

He quickly navigates through his system interface using his consciousness. His Stats have definitely gone up. Additionally, a new passive skill has been unlocked.

[ Passive Skill <Blood Ritual> unlocked! ]

[ Description: Recovers 2 HP per second when <Sneak> is active; removes all debuffs ]

He then switches to the Missions Tab. Aside from training Vi to level ten and surviving the night at the northern forest which he accepted, the mission to consume the beast of the lake still prompts for his decision.

[ ACCEPT? Yes | No ]

He realizes two additional problems he currently faces. His system interface lacks a navigational map and a clock or calendar. If not for the sharp senses and natural great retention of his vampire ability class, he would have noticed this problem earlier. Without the need for sleep and his sole time reference being the countdown for his six-month tenure in Esprit, he also forgot to consider the time of the day.

Having no navigational map will pose a great deal of problems when he sets out to travel further around Esprit. The importance of knowing the time of the day is equally important in that it may significantly affect his daily goals.

A horde of bone-throwing monsters surrounds him. One among the hundred is significantly bigger and has a necklace made of human skulls. It bears no bone lance, but its large eye is definitely enraged and fixed to his direction. With a deep grumbling, it commands a strategic attack of multiple troops. Some approach his front at a very fast pace while some proceed to his side in a slower tempo. The rear and remaining outermost troops remain still but with their lance on offensive standby. The leader then growls and throws around ten more little monsters above Keen to avoid his possible air maneuver.

"Isn't this kind of an overkill?" he takes a deep breath. "Well then — "

A large explosion occurs in the area where he left Vi. Hi eyes flare and his breath produces steam while fangs protrude between his lips. With the horde having no time to process what happened, every one of them starts disintegrating into pixels after having been pierced by <Blood Strings>.

Keen is gone from the scene, leaving only one hundred cores and a lot of item loots as the only trace of the one-sided encounter.

When Keen arrives at the acacia's vicinity, he sees Elise and Jerud fighting a horde of fifty level 15 Humanoid Crawlers encircling the tree. A third person stands at the top of the tree, as if floating. It is a man in a bluish armor with a right pauldron having protrusions resembling the visual representation of the sun's rays. His reddish hair is delicately combed to the right and his face bares no emotion. His weapon of choice is the golden sword-and-shield combination.

Elise recognizes Keen's arrival. However, there is no time to interrogate him yet about leaving Vi alone in the middle of Northern Forest as five more crawlers leap to her direction.

Jerud intervenes, dissolving two enemies in a single jab of his flaming fist. Elise gives him an agility buff so he is able to deal with the three others, using a martial art that resembles Muay Thai.

Keen appears before the two with hands in his side pockets, arriving like a ghost whilst landing on a tiptoed foot at first before the other foot touches the ground on its soles. Once again, his face and especially his fangs are hidden.

"That's a fancy entrance 'ya got 'ere!" Jerud looks over his shoulders to see him, grinning while three humanoid crawlers disintegrate into pixels in front of him. He has a green aura which is Elise's <Wind Blessing>, a buff skill that increases his evasion and agility.

"Why did you leave her alone?" Elise frowns at him. However, a drop of sweat suddenly accumulates on her chin upon realizing that the man before her has become even stronger. She cannot see his level. But with her elf ability class's sensitive link with nature, a chill being sent by Keen's presence feel more than the sum of the monsters before them.

Even the man on full armor atop the acacia tree shifts his gaze towards the man in blood-red hooded long coat.

"She was safe on the tree's caving until you arrived." Keen heads towards the tree. He can see a silhouette of Vi peeping out of the caving upon seeing his return. "The tree has a monster aversion enchantment."

Elise's eyes widen in surprise. She can easily see the characteristics of trees and other forms of nature because of her ability class. However, Keen has an assassin-type ability class that doesn't possess such skill. But that can wait. He is about to enter the range of the barrier that Sir Isidore put up ten meters from the tree in all directions. It prohibits all kinds of passage, even Transfers or skills. His HP will be siphoned relentlessly if he tries to overcome the barrier.

"Wait, dude. That's not a good idea —" Jerud takes two heavy steps and pummels three humanoid crawlers to the ground.

Effortlessly, Keen passes through what is supposedly a strong invisible barrier that will prohibit even them from entering. Sir Isidore shows a suddenly overwhelmed facial expression that almost makes Keen chuckle.

"Jump six feet above the ground if you want to live." Keen says in a calm voice before vanishing. A few seconds later, he heads out of the caving with Vi behind him.

With a single nod from him, Elise casts a levitation spell for herself and Jerud. The humanoid crawlers try to jump at their feet, but a single wave of unknown dark aura flashes over the horde and instantly disintegrates them. All thirty five cores and item loots drop to the ground at the same time.

"Is it really true that it is that man's first day on Esprit?" Sir Isidore's eyes narrow on Keen's direction, his grip tightening on the golden sword.