Monster Hunt 2

The monster nest Rudeus decided to challenge belonged to a group of monsters known as Copper Lizards. They were salamander like beasts that were the size of Direwolves. The 'Copper' in their name only referred to the colour of the metallic sheen of their scales, not that they were actually covered in copper.

They were also D-ranked monsters, similar to Direwolves, but since Rudeus was headed towards an entire nest of Copper Lizards, their danger rating was bumped up significantly to high C-rank.

Nonetheless, Rudeus felt himself well prepared for such a challenge. These lizards were slightly stronger than Direwolves and had tougher scales, but were instead significantly slower. If the Direwolf was well balanced between strength, agility and durability, the Copper Lizard leaned more towards toughness and strength.

With Rudeus' speed and spells, he was only a little worried for his safety.

"According to the map, their nest should be past this grove and next to a lake…" Rudeus muttered to himself while reading Laws' beasthide map.

He was wearing the fur coat Lilia had gifted him on his fifth birthday while Blue Fang was strapped diagonally across his back. The sword looked too big for his small body, even though it was already considered a short sword.

Rudeus cautiously tread through the grove, his senses focused to the maximum while searching for any traces left behind by monsters. Various small animals also chittered or skittered across the forest floor, so the forest was filled with the ambient noise of wildlife. Deep in the forest, vegetation was considerably thick so visibility was also affected.

As the boy pushed passed a patch of lush ferns, a scenic sight came into his view.

A small pool of azure blue water that gleamed invitingly from the sunlight met his eyes while verdant green grass surrounded the lake like it was a scene from a painting. Rather than a lake, it would have been more accurate to call it a large pond.

Rudeus felt his breath hitch for a moment at the absolute beauty of the sight. He would have been tempted to tear off his clothes and jump into the lake for a swim had it not been for the other inhabitants of the body of water.

On the other side of the lake, there were a dozen or so large lizards that were sunbathing or striding in the vicinity of the lake. These Copper Lizards looked more like Komodo dragons from Earth, with four stumpy legs and a long tail that seemed to be filled with power.

True to their name, they had shiny scales that resembled the reddish brown colour of copper. Their scales also had bumps and grooves that looked familiar to Rudeus. It reminded him of the hide and armour of crocodiles from Earth.

Their size was definitely impressive as well. And between their serpentine tongue that occasionally slithered out of their mouth were rows of teeth – the biggest of them were as long as his own hands! Albeit, they were just the hands of a six year old, but still it was a sight to behold.

Rudeus felt like it would only take them one or two bites to completely tear apart his child-like body with ease. Not that they would ever have the chance to do so of course.

The Greyrat boy unsheathed Blue Fang after rolling up and putting away the beasthide map.

Inwardly, he had already put down some restrictions on himself.

Firstly, he was not going to use magic at all in this battle.

He had come with the express purpose of challenging himself and tempering his swordsmanship in life-and-death battles. It would be pointless to throw out Advanced rank magic spells that could completely annihilate the Copper Lizards from afar.

In fact, he wasn't even going to use his Magic Sword style techniques. He would be fighting using only the three sword styles he had achieved Advanced rank in.

With this resolve in mind, Rudeus stepped out of the tree line and walked slowly into the clearing. His right hand held on to Blue Fang tightly as he layered his body with Mana Reinforcement.

Almost immediately, the Copper Lizards that had been minding their own business just a few moments ago sensed the presence of a foreign life form that had trespassed into their territory. The monsters that had been idling tensed their bodies while eyeing the tiny human with barely disguised hunger and killing intent.

Rudeus felt a bead of sweat sliding down his temple. The pressure emanating from an entire nest of monsters felt completely different from what he had experienced before from the direwolf that had been his first kill.

He summoned his courage and resolved his heart and took the next step forward. Unknowingly, this one step felt like he had broken through a barrier that separated the ranks of warriors and inexperienced civilians.

His following footsteps were now firmer and a lot more steady than before, with confidence building with every step he took and every breath he exhaled.

From the monsters' perspective, they were actually quite perplexed at the sight of a tiny human approaching them with seemingly no fear. Regardless, their primordial instincts and bestial hunger overrode any hint of caution or curiosity.

The Copper Lizards strode forward, while the members of their flanks started to spread out in an attempt to surround Rudeus. Their pack hunting mentality was put fully on display here, even though Rudeus was so tiny that eating him would not fill up the belly of a single Copper Lizard.

After a few more moments, Rudeus already found himself surrounded by the Copper Lizards who eyed him with unrestrained malice.

Despite being surrounded, Rudeus did not panic. He even let a small smile grace his face upon seeing this. This was exactly what had come here for – to test himself against monster that would not hesitate to tear him limb from limb.

The first to move was a Copper Lizard behind him. The monster, despite having short, stubby legs that seemed disproportionate to its long, reptilian body, moved with surprising alacrity and stealth.

However, Rudeus had already been prepared for such an outcome. The rustling of the grass beneath the lizard's footsteps betrayed its intentions, allowing Rudeus to immediately react by swinging backwards and intercepting the monster with a swift stroke of his blade.

Water God Style: Flow. The most basic counter-attack technique belonging to the Water God school.

Blue Fang, empowered by Rudeus' mana reinforcement, carved through the Copper Lizard's scales like a hot knife through butter. The short sword entered the monster's head at eye level, directly bisecting its head as the blade exited from the back of the lizard's skull.

The top half of the Copper Lizard's reptilian cranium flew into the air while its body, as though still unaware that its brain had been cut in half, continued its advance before collapsing a few metres away from Rudeus.

The bloody lizard head fell on to the grass with a wet plop, while Rudeus held his stance for a moment longer than necessary.

The shockingly brutal sight would have been enough to faze even grown adult humans, yet for the Copper Lizards, it only served as the signal for their assault to commence.

All at once, the monsters rushed towards Rudeus. Not out of any desire to avenge their fallen comrade or any other more human sentiment like that. Instead, their motivations were purely tied to their intrinsic savagery and bestial hunger to consume.

Rudeus smirked, transitioning to another Water God stance in preparation for the incoming animalistic brawl. Bring it on.

The first Copper Lizard arrived next to Rudeus, its maw widened and flying towards his face. The Greyrat child reacted by going low before ramming Blue Fang up into the monster's jaw, piercing through its head as the tip of the blade exited the top of the lizard's skull.

He then quickly removed it in order to leap away from a powerful tail swipe sent his way from another Copper Lizard. With mana pumping through his muscles, Rudeus was able to jump high up in the air.

While in the air, Rudeus rotated his body and pointed his sword downwards as he fell.

The blade, pulled down by gravity and Rudeus' own direction, stabbed into the scaly body of one of the remaining Copper Lizards as the child landed. The monster immediately thrashed about in response to the sudden sharp pain that rocked its body.

Rudeus shifted his grip on Blue Fang before proceeding to drag the short sword towards the monster's head while the blade was still in its body. He managed to carve through a decent layer of tough meat, bone and hide before being forced to retrieve his sword and leap off in another direction as a powerful tail landed on the body of the lizard, where he had been standing just a moment before.

"Ha! Friendly fire." Rudeus cheekily commented as he saw the tail crash into the lizard, further exacerbating the already fatal injury Rudeus had left on it.

When he was up in the air, he counted thirteen Copper Lizards that were there to tear him apart. Twelve now, after the previous kill.

After landing, he was flanked by three different Copper Lizards who had been able to predict where he was going to land. The three monsters immediately attacked, causing Rudeus to briefly panic for a moment.

He managed to evade the first one by spinning his toes while using one hand to deliver a powerful punch a second lizard's nose and the other hand that held his sword was used to cut through the tail of the third lizard which it had swung at him.

The second lizard was blown back from the force of his punch, an extremely strange sight, seeing that the punch had come from the body of a six year old child while the Copper Lizard was easily ten times the size of the boy.

The third lizard shrieked in pain and agony from the loss of its tail. For these creatures, their tail was their most prized appendage.

Rudeus was unharmed from the three-pronged attack but suddenly felt a massive blow crushing into his back.

Because of the thick layer of mana Rudeus had layered on his body, he did not receive heavy injuries. But the force of the blow was still enough to knock out the wind in his lungs.

He had been too focused on the attacks of the three Copper Lizards, allowing a fourth to stealthily launch a sneak attack with its powerful tail even with Rudeus' talents in spatial awareness.

This was the danger of being besieged by a group of enemies. Even if they were not individually threatening; in a group, they posed some danger to the still inexperienced Rudeus.

Rudeus' tiny body was sent flying, though he managed to catch himself with an acrobatic flip. Immediately after, he was forced to duck from another tail swipe from another Copper Lizard. But he managed to capitalize on the momentum of his flip to launch himself at the monster that was now caught off balance.

He brandished his blade and moved to slice into the monster, but was interrupted yet again by another Copper Lizard. He abandoned his plan of attack to block the furious charge from the lizard, lowering his body and centre of gravity to fend off the immense strength behind the lizard.

The force of the charge pushed Rudeus back several steps, however he managed to maintain his defensive stance and hold his ground.

Rudeus had short arms and legs with a proportionately small torso. He could only display this level of martial might by relying on Mana Reinforcement enhancing his muscles to the point of being able to surpass the strength of D-rank monsters.

"HYAH!" Rudeus bellowed in his high-pitched, childish voice, and counter attacked with Blue Fang after raising it high up in the air. He swung down vertically, and the blade sliced through the mass of scales, muscle and bones.

The Copper Lizard that had charged in and interrupted Rudeus was cut in half as an expression of furious savagery replaced Rudeus' normally handsome and delicate features.

This one swing contained the limits of his strength, with as much mana as he was willing to safely channel into his muscles. The force of the blade was so heavy that a wave of mana had even been emitted from the tip of the blade, wounding a second Copper Lizard that had unfortunately found itself in a wrong place at the wrong time – almost directly behind the lizard Rudeus had cut down.

With another one down, there was only eleven more to do, Rudeus summed up, his fighting spirit rising as an excitement filled his bones.

Though Rudeus had been hit once during the furious and many attacks from the Copper Lizards, he could feel himself being tempered from the experience. Despite it being only a short time since the fight started, Rudeus felt enlightened.

An appropriate analogy to illustrate this enlightenment would be that if the various techniques he had grasped belonging to Sword God, North God and Water God were puzzle pieces, it was only through actual battles did he understand how to fit them together to see a complete picture.

It didn't matter if he had learnt Advanced rank sword techniques if he didn't know how to use them in battles. Rudeus would only ever be someone who knew how to perform fancy sword arts that was all flash with no substance.

This was precisely the reason why he could never win against Paul, despite all of his advantages in magic and silent spell casting. Experience and honed killer instincts which he desperately lacked was not something he could ever learn in a greenhouse environment from friendly spars.

This first battle was only the tip of the iceberg. Rudeus had only pieced together the first corner of this incomplete puzzle. Paul's words that had pointed out his inexperience rang true. It would undoubtedly take years and dozens or even hundreds of life-and-death battles before Rudeus could slowly fill in the rest of the puzzle, and eventually piece together the complete picture of that revealed the path of his swordsmanship.

Rudeus tightened his grip on Blue Fang, grinning viciously at the remaining Copper Lizards. He no longer saw them as monsters. In his eyes, Rudeus now saw them as stepping stones that would help him piece together the puzzle pieces.

With a roar, Rudeus charged towards the Copper Lizards, his short sword pulsating with mana and filled with the intent to kill.

Today, Rudeus grasped killing intent.

…

"What the hell were you thinking going out to hunt monsters!? Are you crazy!?"

"This brat! Do you want to worry your mother to death, is that it!?"

Rudeus father and mother respectively yelled at him after seeing the carcass of a Copper Lizard he had dragged back from the forest while the boy sheepishly grinned.

When he previously slew the Direwolf, Rudeus had foolishly left its body in the forest, too shaken to have thought of bringing back its corpse. Only after returning home did he remember that monster bodies sold for a far larger sum than even the most pristine animal carcass.

Even though there weren't many merchants that travelled to Buena village, much less merchants that dealt with monster parts, it was still better than leaving them to rot in the wilds.

Since the Copper Lizards were so heavy, he could only comfortably carry one back. So he chose the one with the least damage to its body, which incidentally was the one that died instantly when he stabbed his sword up through its skull.

The consequence of doing so, however, was being reamed by his parents since he had not told either of them his intentions to challenge a monster nest by himself.

Even though he had to endure being scolded by his parents for the rest of the evening, he still felt that the excursion was a major success. Rudeus could finally once again see a tangible, qualitative growth in his swordsmanship, and he was ecstatic.

After slaying all of the Copper Lizards at their nest, he felt like his swordsmanship had gone up a level. As a result, Rudeus did not regret going out to challenge himself, even if he had to get chewed out by his parents afterwards.

There were other monster nests in the vicinity of Buena village, some of them contained monsters that were even more dangerous than Copper Lizards. While Rudeus was forced to kneel on the floor of the kitchen while getting lectured by Paul and Zenith, he was already planning which one he would visit next.