Chapter 90 Reaping the spoils
Four monsters seemed to be fighting in the deeper parts of the cavern entrance.
They had yet to go inside one of the numerous tunnels that could be seen at the end of the cavern entrance, but the distance between the four monsters and Dilan was still more than three hundred meters.
The entrance of the cave was massive and more than four hundred meters tall, over twenty meters in height, and almost a hundred meters in width.
If the valley’s hall wouldn’t be much broader, and the ceiling several times higher, Dilan would have thought that the cavern entrance was, in fact, one of the valley’s halls.
However, that was not the case simply because the size of the halls was manifold more than the cavern entrance.
‘Why does a valley even have a hall, to begin with. This entire place makes no sense.’
Dilan sighed before shaking his head, dispelling this thought.
After taking a good look around, Dilan took his first steps in the entrance.
He stayed close to the walls so as to hide from being discovered by anyone, and used the darkness to his advantage.
However, that trick wasn’t going to work against the earthworms and bats because they didn’t rely on their sight to detect other beings.
But that was not something Dilan was truly worried about.
After all, the only monsters that could endanger his life were the four fighting beasts ahead of him.
They were either ordinary Tier-1 monsters or Silver monsters similar to the Lightning Shiroa rat.
Approaching them slowly while taking cover behind the small areas that were shrouded in darkness, or behind large rocks, Dilan reduced the huge distance and was now in the range of 50 meters to the closest of the four monsters.
While the weaker monsters seemed rather unbothered about the fight that occurred in the corner of the cavern entrance, some of the more powerful Bronze monsters eyed everything with great interest.
They hoped to be able to jump in at the right opportunity and to reap numerous benefits if they were to be able to procure even one Essence crystal of the four monsters.-.
But even if they gazed at them for several days, nothing serious was about to happen.
The four monsters were fighting to claim the territory of the tunnel on the farthest left.
Either, there was something special about the said tunnel, or the four monsters wanted to expand their territory.
In the end, Dilan didn’t really care about their reasons for fighting.
What was more important was that the four monsters injured each other. Some injuries were, in fact, quite serious as they restricted the monster’s movement.
The noises the monsters made were quite loud. As such, Dilan didn’t really have to be that silent as he kept looking at the four monsters.
The more than 15-meter-long Earthworm was coiled around the Armadillo that had curled up to protect itself from the attacks.
Meanwhile, an ear-piercing soundwave reverberated through the cave, bouncing off the cave walls that amplified its sound even further. It was the three-meter-long bat that had attacked a silver-scaled Lizard with a soundwave.
Unable to block the attack, the Lizard’s ears ruptured and began to bleed while it lost its footing and swayed dangerously.
However, instead of attacking the bat, the Silver scale lizard turned its attention to the Earthworm and Armadillo.
Approaching them with staggering steps, it let out a hiss. The silver eyes of the Silver scale lizard began to gleam, just for it to turn its head towards the bat all of a sudden.
From its previous indifference to the large-winged bat despite its attack, the Silver scale lizard’s thirst for the bat’s blood filled the entire room as its silver pupils enlarged.
A moment later even Dilan could sense that something big was happening.
The bat suddenly froze in place.
And it was only then that Dilan realized that he had mistaken something.
‘How the hell could I think that they were just fighting to expand their territory?! They’re obviously out for each other’s Essence!!’
Dilan had expected mere monsters to display too much intelligence.
Thus, he mistook their intentions as he believed that they would leave each other alive so as to safeguard their territory.
After all, a known enemy is better than not knowing who lives next to you, how strong your neighbor is, and what intentions your neighbor has!
But that didn’t seem important to the four monsters because they would rather strengthen themselves than to think strategically.
Yet, when he gave it some more thought, Dilan couldn’t help but feel that this was also a decent tactic.
As long as your strength exceeds everyone else’s you would be fine, after all!
However, there was one big downside to the current battle, which was someone’s interference!
While the Armadillo suddenly erupted in blazing flames that emerged on its armor-like bone plates, the Earthworm screeched in pain.
This sound was ear-piercing, but Dilan couldn’t care about it at all.
He activated the [Thunder Step] ability by utilizing three units of mana at once. His agility had now reached a level that was 26 times that of the average human before the Primordial Ascension while his Strength was close to 22 units owing to the enhancement he received thanks to his equipment.
In a single second, Dilan crossed the distance of 50 meters as he used every last ounce of strength within his body.
The thunderous noise his ability caused was directly noticed, followed by his dominating presence.
However, as the Earthworm and Armadillo were currently tightly intertwined, the Silver scale lizard tore apart one of the large-winged bat’s wings.
On the other hand, the large-winged bat emitted another shockwave straight into the ear of the Silver scale lizard, severely injuring it.
As such, not even a single beast was willing to pay attention to him- the real threat that appeared out of the shadows!
With three monsters that had rather strong defenses, Dilan knew that he had to kill them in a single strike each by attacking their vital spots.
This was something he was never good at because his combat style was anything but refined.
Fortunately, brute force and his combat experience were everything he required against the monsters ahead.
The closest beast to him was the large-winged bat and the Silver scale lizard.
When Dilan had catapulted himself 50 meters ahead, he emerged right in front of the Silver scale lizard.
It looked at him threateningly and was ready to activate the same ability it had used against the large-winged bat.
However, it was unable to keep up with Dilan’s terrifically high speed, and the fact that its brain had suffered an injury owing to the soundwave the bat had fired right in his eyes.
Being severely injured, the Silver scale lizard could only try its best to activate its ability.
To its misery, a gray flash slashed its left eye with a speed it was unable to evade.
Dilan had lunged out with the Captain’s Sword using his tremendous momentum to pierce straight through the Silver scale Lizard’s eye and skull.
At the same moment, the large-winged bat flapped both of its wings, while opening its mouth.
It tried to escape using the moment of distraction to its benefit.
However, Dilan was not distracted, at all.
He was ready to kill both of his opponents in the same instant, which was why his free hand reached for the larged-winged bat’s head.
His Clawed Gloves sunk into the bat’s throat before it could utter a sound.
Their sharpness and toughness were increased owing to the mana he inserted into the left Clawed Glove.
And this was more than enough to kill the large-winged bat in an instant.
His Strength multiplied with his high Agility was simply too terrifying!
But even if he killed two of the powerful monsters in an instant, Dilan was not yet done.
Due to the short interference of the two monsters his speed had slowed down quite a bit.
However, that was not a problem because the Earthworm and Armadillo were currently at each other’s throat already.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t simply watch them continue fighting. After all, he wanted to absorb every single trace of their Essence, which meant that he had to kill them by himself!
In a smooth motion, he tore both his left hand and the Captain’s Sword out of the monsters he had just killed before he advanced.
A single push with all his might was enough to cross a distance of several meters.
Clearly understanding his strength, he pounced at the huge Earthworm, whose entire body was flaring up like a firecracker.
Dilan’s clothes caught on some of the flames as well, but instead of minding this, he reached the Earthworm’s upper body which he pierced with the Clawed Gloves.
The Earthworm had a dirt-like layer covering its entire body.
As such, only its mouth which acted as a shredder was easy to injure.
And this was exactly the fact Dilan made use of.
It was dangerous for his hand to pierce inside the Earthworm. However, owing to its distracted and injured state it was just getting to know that he even existed.
After sensing his presence, it was about to turn his hand into shreds of skin, flesh, and bone fragments but before it could do so Dilan had finally twisted the Captain’s longsword.
Twisting his longsword while being on the back of the Earthworm had been rather difficult.
That was why he took a moment to finish his preparations.
But the moment the Captain’s Sword pierced into the huge mouth of the Earthworm, it began to thrash harder than before.
The pain it felt was unbearable, and it didn’t last that long…after all once one was dead, pain lost all its meaning!
Letting go of the Captain’s Sword, Dilan staggered back a bit as he felt flames licking his skin after burning through his clothes.
In reaction to this, he activated [Regeneration] just to fall to the ground while grasping the body of the armadillo.
It was thrice the size of an ordinary armadillo with blazing flames that shrouded its bony plates, and it looked as if it was ready to fight now that the Earthworm died.
However, the moment it saw that Dilan held on to it tightly while gritting his teeth as he endured the pain of the flames eating away at his skin, the armadillo knew that it hadn’t been saved.
Instead, it was about to die, which happened just a few seconds later as its entire body was being pulled apart in two opposite directions.
Not even coiling up helped anymore because Dilan grasped its bony plates before ripping them out of the armadillo’s body.
A moment later, he pierced through the armadillo, reaching its intestines, and heart which he squashed without hesitation.
Taking deep breaths, when the fourth monster died, he barely sensed that the flames lost their vigor after their creator met its death. They dispersed into thin air as if they had never existed.
Dilan was quite happy about this, as he could breathe freely while activating his Origin ability over and over again.
At the same time, he could look at the corpses around him, just to sense that several dozen Bronze monsters were greedily staring at him and the corpses.
“If you want to come at me, don’t stop…it’s now or never!”