The Clearing

Oliver Stone has never regretted anything in his entire life or his career as the Leviathan more than his decision to attack the Apex Predator.

How did they underestimate the filthy half-breed so much?! Wasn’t she supposed to have only just reached Class IV a little over a month ago?!

Oliver struggles to fight the blood lycan Princess, but all he ends up managing to do in the end is sit by after being launched across the clearing into a tree where he lands with half of the bones in his body shattered, leaving him to watch the rest of his team get slaughtered.

She’s a monster! Just how! How is someone that powerful?!

He watches on in fear while trying to use his enhanced regeneration skill to speed up his natural healing, but by the time he hears the cracking sounds indicating his bones realigning themselves, the girl has already finished tearing apart his team.

And she’s heading towards him.

As she walks, Oliver finds her transforming back into her human form, her armor magically transforming along with her in a much smoother manner than any man-made magi-tech armor should ever be able to do. Which proves the rumor on the internet about her armor being made by a blood lycan and not a human.

Oliver feels fear freezing every single muscle in his body as his bones continue to heal. But even after they’ve healed enough for him to run, he just sits there frozen, watching as the girl over eight decades his junior casually walks up to him while using the Clean skill to clean herself of his team’s blood.

“So, stalker,” she starts, once more calling him a stalker, “I think this is sufficient enough to prove to your employer that I’m not to be messed with by now. Don’t you?”

Oliver instinctively nods his head frantically in fear, but the girl just continues walking up to him before stopping and kneeling down, sitting on her heels with her head tilted slightly. And Oliver’s fear rises even more as her glowing red eyes lock with his, seemingly staring straight into his soul despite the nonchalant look the girl has on her face.

“Well that’s good then,” she eventually says, flashing him a rare smile that catches him off guard with her beauty. But then she transforms a single arm into the arm of a beast and begins flexing her claws slightly as she continues, “I know your boss will be seeing all of this through a temporal manipulation skill to look into the past, so I won’t be needing any prisoners.”

Oliver blinks once, only to find himself unable to blink ever again, his last sight being that of her clawed hand reaching for his head.

Scarlet

After crushing the guy’s skull, which is easier than I expected, I stand up straight again and stretch my arm a bit.

“Well what did you expect? The guy was over a hundred levels above you and seemed to be a regeneration focused Guardian on top of that,” Tar says, sounding slightly exasperated. “Of course you’d crush him with physical prowess alone when your stats are doubled against him thanks to Apex Predator, not to mention the other boosts from Blood Thirst and his own debuffs from your other skills.”

Hmm, you have a point.

I don’t think anything in Class IV stands a chance against me now.

Although I still don’t stand a chance against a level 1001. But I am hoping to be able to fight one when I get higher in level again. Preferably close to the end of Class IV.

Tar snorts at that before muttering, “I can honestly see that happening…”

I smirk, only to look around and find my smirk vanishing rather quickly.

Okay, so I have no idea where I am right now.

“Check your terminal?” Tar asks, and I do just that. But I soon find my signal blocked. Most likely by some sort of magical barrier the stalkers set up.

So after setting the corpses on fire with a lighter I had in my armor’s spatial pockets, I take a quick run out of the area for several seconds before trying again. And this time it does connect.

Nice.

I quickly maneuver to the tracking app on my terminal, only to frown.

Not so nice. If they were gonna teleport me, couldn’t they have sent me somewhere close to the frontlines? It’s gonna take too long to get there now…

The stalker idiots – my new name for them just because of this annoyance that they caused – sent me all the way to the opposite side of the world from the frontlines. The northern part of the Western continent.

I can’t even just run to the frontlines. Not unless I want to try swimming across an entire ocean.

Why couldn’t they just make my life easier…

“I mean, they were kind of trying to kill you…” Tar mutters, but I only shrug at that comment.

Well, stalkers and murderers or not, they could’ve at least made my trip back to the frontlines easier.

The device I used to teleport was a one-way thing and couldn’t be used more than once. A disposable magi-tech item that probably cost them millions of credits to make. Maybe even a hundred or more million credits.

All wasted because some idiot decided to try killing me with some half-assed job.

Although, I did at least get some EXP out of it.

My eyes widen slightly as a grin stretches across my face.

Hey Tar?

“No,” he answers right away, not even letting me ask my question.

Oh, come on! You haven’t even heard my idea yet!

“I don’t want to hear it,” he says from wherever he is in the in-between.

How rude. I’m sure that luring in more idiots like these would give me more EXP than hunting demons on the frontlines would, so why shouldn’t I?

“Just no,” Tar says, sounding both exasperated and like he wants to be anywhere but here. “Even if you tried that, they’d have to be stupid to send anyone below Class V after you. And I’m pretty sure there aren’t any Class Vs willing to attack you even if they were against your existence. Not with the war going on, and not with your mother. And especially not when it’d be easy enough to track them down considering the limited number of Class Vs in the world.”

I mean, yes, but it would make for good EXP, right? And it’d clean up these stalkers too!

He stops responding, so I just kick a random stone, sending it flying straight through several trees by accident before I start walking.

Well, you’re probably right about the whole ‘no one’s gonna likely go after me again after this’ thing. Doesn’t mean I can’t hope.

Anyways, time to start walking towards the capital.

This might take a while.