Chapter 16
The monster before Eryke was a giant version of a purple-skinned crocodile, able to swallow ten people easily and with four hands.
Eryke felt his life flash right before his eyes. The giant jaws of the monster were like hell descending on him, and he quickly tried to back away.
But he found that his feet were stuck, sinking into the mud.
Quicksand!
Even with his strength now, Eryke was still stuck in the quicksand.
On the brink of death, starlight gathered in his hand, and he struck the monster with all his strength:
Bang!
The giant monster’s canine teeth broke in an instant, and starlight entered its mouth…
Pshh!
Cracks appeared all around its scales, and purple gas leaked out.
When Eryke heard the sound, his expression immediately changed.
“Shit.”
He turned around and ran away, terrified.
Boom!
An explosion followed behind him, easily covering ten meters and burning Eryke’s back.
But Eryke used the momentum of the explosion to leap forward despite the burning pain.
His nerves were burned, and his skin had already disappeared, revealing some of his internal organs in a brutal sight.
He fell to the ground, face-first.
But Eryke didn’t have time to rest!
He heard a rustling sound in the river and barely stood up to find swamp monsters surrounding him, their vertical pupils staring at him.
“I was too arrogant. I grew too complacent with my SSS-Rank talent.”
Eryke took a deep breath, his expression gradually turning calm. Pain only brought a sense of clarity to his mind…
He…
He started to laugh.
Starlight gathered around his arms, and another figure appeared beside him.
“It’s do or die. Let’s fight to the death.”
The two Erykes roared at the same time and they ran forward.
They swung their brutal fists at one of the unlucky swamp monsters.
In the next second, the swamp monster’s head exploded into bits, and this time, its body didn’t explode.
The two Erykes didn’t speak a word but moved fast, leaving afterimages as they swung their brutal fists at the nearest swamp monster.
Bang!
Its head exploded again.
These monsters weren’t just punching bags. They carefully circled the two Erykes in a tight formation, gradually closing in on them like hunters to a prey.
But one doesn’t know in a battlefield when a hunter becomes the prey and the prey hunts the hunter.
Starlight gathered around the two Erykes as they punched and kicked.
One of the swamp monsters attacked from behind, but Eryke (Clone) punched out at the perfect moment, swatting its jaws aside.
“Thanks. Let’s fight this.”
Eryke (Clone) jumped from the ground, while Eryke huffed, taking a deep breath. He grabbed his clone’s leg, positioning him horizontally in the air. Starlight gathered in the clone’s hands as Eryke rotated.
Boom! Boom!
All the swamp monsters in the surrounding area were affected. The starlight was no joke—even a small wisp of it caused irreparable damage to the swamp monsters.
A total of two minutes passed before all the swamp monsters retreated in fear, and finally, Eryke stopped and fell to the ground.
He weakly looked around at the tens of swamp monster corpses, their bodies grounded into pieces by the starlight.
Then, he looked at his clone, which was on the verge of dying. Its skin was cracked just like the swamp monsters’ when they exploded from his Star Strike. Slowly, the clone began to fade, turning into starlight and floating toward the sky.
“Why were there unordinary monsters right at the entrance?” Eryke cursed out loud, looking at his disappearing clone with pity.
Normally, in ordinary gates, most of the monsters would be ordinary, and in rare cases, there would be at most a single unordinary monster, like a boss monster.
It wasn’t that Eryke was unfamiliar with monsters and gates—he knew that this gate was a lower rank because of its small chakra structure.
Even that large green hand was, at most, an unordinary monster.
Eryke might have been a reckless fool, but he wasn’t suicidal.
“They must have lured the monsters,” he gritted his teeth and stood up in pain.
Although Star Strike was an overpowered skill, one still needed to endure its power to use it. Every time it was used, it caused damage to the user because of how powerful it was.
It might not have been apparent when it was in Drayken’s hands, but that was because of his Dragon physique. However, Eryke didn’t have it—nor did his new clone.
Luckily, he had put most of the burden on the clone, so his injuries weren’t too severe, but he was still hurt.
“Can I still respawn it?”
Eryke’s eyes instinctively flicked toward the blue screen in the corner of his vision—then he nearly flipped on the spot.
[Congratulations! You have overcome adversity in an A-Rank gate, and your talent
[You can now summon three clones and have gained a unique skill:
“It took me a hundred thousand destiny points to level up my talent once, but here it levelled up so easily?”
Eryke blankly stared at the screen, bewilderment in his gaze.
Honestly, he still couldn’t believe it. Was this correlation related to the level of danger as well?
If he levelled up through normal means, it would take him half a million destiny points to advance his talent again. But here, inside the gate, it levelled up just by killing unordinary monsters.
“No wonder the guilds are so excited about the gates,” he muttered in his mind as he stood up.
Luckily, his regeneration had kicked in, allowing him to at least walk firmly again, though he was still riddled with internal injuries.
“Synergy, huh.”