Maybe, I should’ve thought twice

He entered the gate, not really caring about the mana fog outside, his stats were now otherworldly compared to the old ones.

[^stats

Body:(high rank 8)——(low rank 17)

Mana: (high rank 17)—(mid rank 32)

Mind: (low rank 24)——(high rank 33)

Awakened: (rank 4)——(rank 13)]

He was really confident in his skill.

That day he went on a rampage and killed almost fifty of them, he happened to cross eyes with them a couple of times, but with his upgraded body it didn't deal as much damage as it did the day before.

He returned home with his load of mana stones and, aside from sparring with Elsa and cooking, he passed all the day meditating upping his mana rank by another two small ranks, the next morning he woke up, and he had only advanced a single awakened rank, he was quite sad, but he knew there was nothing he could do about it.

He repeated the same actions as yesterday, and then headed for the gate yet again.

The mana around the gate had become even more dense, maybe double the amount of the day before, he just hurried up thinking the break was about to happen and went inside.

…

He walked for ten minutes not sighting any crows,~I must've killed too many yesterday, maybe I should've contained myself a little~ he thought with a demoralised face.

Suddenly however, a crow way bigger than the others appeared before him, "here you are, the boss"

it was around the size of an eagle, no maybe even bigger.

Bruno tried bringing it down from it's flight with telekinesis, but with a few flap of his wings the crow escaped his grip.

Not having any safe way to get up there, he threw his dagger controlling it with telekinesis, and manoeuvring it in the air while he was still on the ground, he soon threw his other dagger and managed to keep them both in the air at the same time.

The daggers rank's weren't high at all, if taken alone, they would've broken at the first touch with the crow's sturdy feathers, however, coupled with Bruno high rank mana, they normally tore right through the monsters in this gate.

This time seemed to be an exception…

The daggers bounced right back when attacking leaving only a small cut or scratch, Bruno was actually only trying to stall for time, everyone knows that crows don't have high endurance and can't flight for long, so he tried to tire it faster and make it land before attacking.

It was working, slowly but surely, the crows movements were becoming clumsy and in a bit, it would've been forced to come down to rest.

It was going perfectly and Bruno was already thinking about hunting the most he could after defeating the boss.

While he was trying to fasten the process, impatient, he accidentally crossed gaze with the blind crow.

There was a brief moment of realisation before the hit came in.

He had been too greedy, had he just played it safe this wouldn't have happened, there was nothing he could do now, just hope his body would endure the blow without completely collapsing.

Before he could think about anything else, the blow arrived, this time, all his body hurt like hell and blood came flowing out of his mouth while he fell on his knees.

The crow saw it, and sensed his fear, so it attacked diving right down on him.

As the crow's beak was rapidly closing in on him, he activated the skill: Superhuman motion.

To let his body rest at least an extra millisecond.

The attack was now really close to him, he gathered all the energy and willpower he had in body and tried to move, the monster was about to pierce right through his heart when he managed to slightly rotate his body.

The bird's dive had now ended in the mud and Bruno got away with a long cut on his waist, not pleasant, but better than dying.

the bird was stunned on the floor unable to move from the damage received from the fall.

Bruno crawled to it and cut right through it's neck with his mana-imbued dagger, he then laid on the floor, getting dirty, was the last of his problems.

He managed to catch his breath a bit but his body was still on the verge of collapse from the blow he received by the abyssal eyes of the crow.

His consciously was slowly slipping away from his fading grip. He couldn't faint there, he had to get out.

He defeated the boss and if he wasn't able to make it to the gate in time than he would be stuck here foreve…

His mind fell and his body remained unguarded in those dangerous woods.

….

"Caw,caw","caw,caw,caw,caw"

The unpleasant sound of the birds woke up Bruno who was sleeping on the ground.

He opened his eyes and remained blinded by the little light that came through the clouds in the sky, slowly regaining his vision he saw about a dozen black little dots floating around in above him, the dots slowly enlarged, soon becoming big enough to cover most of his view, he wasn't moving anything apart from his pupils

that were desperately trying to assess the situation.

When the crows came even closer and he could clearly see, he realised what was happening, his mind was still trying to grab onto the hope he was just dreaming while the body had already started swearing:"f*ck, that big *ss bird wasn't the boss, these b*astards are evolving…"