Chapter 43 - Hunting Festival

With blinding speed, a black streak of light darted through the swarm of stingers that surrounded it. It skillfully and effortlessly evaded the deadly blows from the creatures, slipping through the smallest gaps and taking advantage of the tiniest opportunities. What's most intriguing is that as it passed through, numerous stingers from the swarm constantly fell, their bodies hollowed out by the passage of something quite sharp.

During this process, the stingers that were left behind would start their deadly pursuit again, but they didn't stand a chance. With a giant mouth swallowing at least a few hundred of them at once, it only needed to close once for all of them to be dead and the process to start over. And to make matters worse for them, there were two mouths doing this. The large dragons were the biggest threats to these small enemies.

"ROOOAAR!!" A roar echoed in the Dark Swamp and soon a massive panther was seen jumping from tree to tree, killing any stingers in its path. Its fierce claws were capable of cutting through without getting hurt with the stings, and yet it was impossible to do so due to its resilient skin.

Accompanied by two fierce dragons and a powerful black panther, Han Sen made his way through all the stingers, eliminating each one of them. The ground of the Dark Swamp was already covered with the corpses of these creatures, so many that it would be impossible to count.

Still at an impressive speed, he continued his path on top of the Stormbird, attracting even more stingers, killing them, and repeating the process. At some point, they started getting closer to a huge tree, much bigger than any other there. On the tree, there was a nest the size of a castle, with several scarlet Black Stingers, which would be their mutant versions. With tens of thousands of them inside, Han Sen kept moving quickly.

The Black Stingers who were outside quickly realized that there was an intruder approaching, and a swarm of thousands went to attack him.

At a distance of about 500 meters, he jumped from the Stormbird towards the nest, his figure moving in that direction, relying on the force of acceleration. He summoned Drako, Nhil, and Bastet back to the Sea of Souls, along with his mount. Still in the air, he spun his body and the force of acceleration caused him to rotate quickly, and soon two streaks of light shot towards the center of the nest.

Summoning Stormbird once again after controlling his movement, he guided it upwards at a monstrous speed, leaving all the mutant Black Stingers in the nest confused about what had just happened. But not for long.

BOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!

A strong explosion force powerful enough to engulf the entire nest in flames occurred the moment the two knives met about 50 meters from the nest. The radius of the explosion was about 500 meters, causing the stinger castle to start burning with a bright red fire.

As if a fire explosion, the castle was not destroyed and only transformed into fuel for the resulting fire. The Black Stingers trying to escape from there were consumed by the red fire, so powerless that they lasted a short time in the flames. The more creatures came out of the nest, the more fuel was offered to the fire, and thus it spread faster. At some point, a Black Stinger with a red crystal-like color came out of the nest, still confused about what was happening.

Slash! Bang!

But it was a shame that there was no time to understand what happened when a spear separated the head from the body and its death was instantaneous.

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• Sacred-Blood Black Stinger Killed •

• Sacred-Blood Black Stinger Beast Soul Gained •

• Eat Sacred-Blood Black Stinger meat to randomly gain zero to ten Sacred-Blood Gene Points •

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Getting the body of Queen Stinger, Han Sen flew back and called Drako, Nhil, and Bastet to continue the hunt for EXP.

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A few days later, Han Sen saw his Pets returning from battle after eliminating all the Black Stingers they encountered. He instructed them to leave some remaining to allow the environment to eventually regenerate. However, it wasn't as if he cared about what would happen to the Sanctuary's conditions.

"You guys are amazing, huh. It's a shame that I didn't establish a salary in your contract, otherwise I would be bankrupt to pay the commission." Han Sen was already having a headache with the amount of death notifications that the system told him every day. He could make the EXP notification disappear, but not the one that he killed and gained the Beast Soul.

"Roar~!" After roaring softly at him, they simply lay on the ground with their bellies full and wanted to sleep. After Han Sen left, they had a feast of fried Mutant Black Stinger. It was delicious and rewarding, to say the least.

Han Sen didn't continue playing and decided to let them sleep. He started counting his earnings during this whole half-month of hunting that he spent here, and it was very rewarding.

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⌠Upgrade System⌡

˃ ∫Hyper-Gene Art Upgrade ∫

˃ ∫Beast Soul Upgrade ∫

˃ ∫Skills Upgrade ∫

˃ ∫Equipment Upgrade ∫

˃ ∫Martial Art Upgrade ∫

Total EXP: 100.762 Points

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It may seem like it was little, but that was what was left after a series of improvements he decided to make while earning points, and now he had nothing else to spend them on.

His Bloody Night Alligator armor, as well as the Black-Striped Razor Eagle cloak, have been upgraded to the Sacred-Blood tier, and their levels have been raised to the maximum (Level 8). He didn't care that his appearance with these two powerful Beast Souls would be a outstanding revelation in the Shelter, as he was tired of pretending to be weak.

The two daggers that he has had since the beginning, the Ant Dagger and the Scorpion Dagger, have only been improved in Level and were at Level 6, unlike all the other Sacred-Blood items, which have a limit of Level 8. So there are limitations imposed by the tier. There was also another Mutant dagger that he obtained from a beast they killed in the Dark Swamp, belonging to a Ghost-Toothed Snake King, and its shape resembled that of a snake fang, very deadly and poisonous. He upgraded it to Full Mutant tier and increased the Level to 6.

For the Gran Finale that was the extermination of the Giant Nest, he upgraded the Red Salamander and the Blue Mouth Snake throwing knives to Sacred-Blood and raised both to Level 8. As he had spare points, he also raised the Sharp-Tailed Otter to Level 6 along with another knife, which came from a Steel Claw Crab that Bastet killed. While he was in the middle of the hunt, he also decided to upgrade his two Crossbows to Level 6 as well.

One change he decided to adopt was to start using more melee weapons in addition to the usual daggers or firearms. Therefore, since he already had something for both close and long-range combat, he chose a spear for medium-range, the Mutant Sawfish. He enjoyed using spears and even had Level 3 in the Spear Skill, but hadn't used it in a long time.

And last but not least, were his three wonderful slav- pets that were raised to Level 8 and became wild beasts in their category. Stormbird was also upgraded to Full Sacred-Blood and, besides its more imposing disposition and supernatural beauty that sincerely made it one of the most beautiful birds Han Sen has ever seen, its top speed at Level 8 seemed nothing less than traveling at the speed of light. Of course, it was just a sensation, but flying at Mach 1 was very satisfying.

Han Sen finally understood the purpose of Level Ups after going through everything, improving his weapons and pets. The Tier Up was very good and could enhance the beast and its strength in an integral way, basically functioning as an evolution for them. But this was something he had not yet proven for certain. On the other hand, the Level Up had the same functionality as how it improved his Skills and made him more proficient in them.

This was best seen in Pets, who after leveling up, were able to do new things that were not possible before and had better control over their powers, as well as better utilization of strength. So they went through nothing more than a brief strengthening process and a wave of knowledge on how to use all their power. In this way, they would naturally increase their power level and become peak creatures.

For this reason, he needed to unlock the potential of the Beast Soul first through Tier Up, and only after that would be able to safely Level Up. It was organic, to say the least.

After resting well, Han Sen summoned the souls of the three sluggards back to the Sea of Souls and boarded the Stormbird. With its incredible speed, he had no doubt he would be there in no time.

"I am interested in knowing what Lin Beifeng managed to accomplish during this period..." Han Sen was talking to himself and remembered that he had given a task to the money man.

And from what he knows about that generous human being, he must have already bought half of the Shelter with bribes.