My Guardian System: The Trader

"WTH?!" Jem let out a startled utterance at the sudden appearance of claws.

The claws drew scratch marks in the air towards him. A cold sensation meandered on Jem's back. He instinctively pulled the hatchet to block it. A scraping noise resonated in his ears when the claw landed on the stone hatchet's head. Sparks scattered around at the impact. He also noticed a crack on it.

"Dammit! S-so strong…" Jem' gritted his teeth while bracing himself. His hand trembled slightly at the power coming from the beast's attack.

"TSK!" Jem clicked his tongue and made a step back to support his body. "G-get... Away!!!" He used all his accumulated strength and cried out. Then pushed back the monster all of a sudden.

The monster made a black flip before it crashed on the nearest wall. It successfully balanced its body, and its two back limbs perfectly landed on the wall without crashing on it.

Before it fell to the ground, the monster kicked the wall and once again shot itself at him.

Jem wanted to run and hide, but he noticed the monster was already heading towards him. "Not even giving me a chance to run away?!" He whimpered and grimaced. Jem knew that it wasn't good fighting this monster in his current situation because there was a high chance that he would die. If possible, he would rather not fight it. He wanted to proceed without encountering any of these sorts. But it looks like it was impossible to ask it, huh.

Seeing the fast-approaching beast, he knew he had no time to dawdle around.

He increased the strength of his grip on the hatchet handle. "To survive in this place, first, I needed to survive against this one! No. I must kill it!" As he was muttering it, a glint was noticeable in his eyes. Jem knew that he could not run away all the time. His only choice was to face it.

He already experienced running away from those beasts a while ago, however. It only invited more trouble to himself. More and more beasts noticed him. Thus, more and more came chasing after him. Hiding is not an option either. He would only starve to death if he kept on doing that.

"Therefore, I must fight to survive!"

A sky-high determination was on his face as his foot took a huge step forward and summoned on his hand his gleaming energy. It then crawled towards the hatchet. The hatchet gleamed brightly. Then the crack on it had suddenly reformed. It was the effect of his only skill, the Fortification ability.

In truth, it did not merely reform the hatchet; it also fortified, increased durability, and strengthened it. The hatchet gleamed like a new one. No, it was more of an upgrade version than a new one.

Without wasting more seconds, he swung it upward, which luckily connected to the beast's jaw.

GWEK!

It let out a pained utterance before its body flipped backward and collided on the wall in a loud and impactful crash. Dust arises after that, though it was barely noticeable because of the dark. Still, the slight radiance coming from the crystal illuminates it.

After crashing on the wall, the beast fell on the cold, rocky ground. It twitched, hinted that it was alive but hurt. However, Jem did not allow it to recover. He followed up with another attack by smashing the hatchet on it again and again. An ear-piercing wail of agony, together with the heavy smashing and splattering of blood, reverberated the place.

Although the beast already stopped making noise, he didn't stop even after the beast's figure could not be described anymore. After three minutes and a higher of smashing it, Jem finally stopped and took a deep breath. He kneeled in front of what came as scattered meats and blood. The blood tainted his pants. Then he put away the hatchet as he stared below him. Tears were apparent in his eyes.

Though he wasn't lamenting that he killed it, or did he feel guilty? Never!

It was tears of joy. He was happy by the fact that he survived. He had no idea what kind of beast it was or what rank it was, but he didn't care about it. The most important was that he was alive. Yeah, it was the most important.

Ding!

Suddenly, Jem Hansen's attention was taken by surprise. Together with a sound was the appearance of a rectangular box in the air, in front of him. When he looked at it, he saw some text.

[You killed a D-rank Beast Little Brown Swine!]

"This system is kind of weird, mysterious, and magical," he muttered. After saying it, he noticed another notification in a much larger box.

[Obtainable Parts: Swine Fur, Swine Meat, Swine Bone, Swine Claw!]

Although quite surprised, Jem Hansen already figured out what it means. He believed that they were the parts that had value to his guardian system, The Trader.

He wiped the tears in his eyes and looked at the fierce beast that has now turned to mincemeat. If he wanted to loot those parts, he needed to dismantle them. He glanced around, trying to find anything useful to skim the remains of the beast.

He saw some sharp-looking rocks and stones. But he had doubts about them. Although they were sharp, it wasn't enough to slice the flesh and skin of the beast.

On the corner of his eyes, he noticed something gleamed. "Claws?" Jem thought inwardly when he saw it. The claws were sharp enough to resemble a small knife.

Using the hatchet, he broke the fingers of the beast.

[You obtained a Swine Claw!]

Another notification came afterward when he picked it.

The same notifications appeared when he took the rest. There were also the choices of trading it.

Since he obtained six claws, he decided to trade five of them.

However, he learned that each claw was only equivalent to 2 Trade Points.

Jem was so happy after knowing that killing the beast grants him more materials to trade. Now he has more reason to kill them. Meanwhile, he had a total of 60 Trade Points, and more parts were waiting to be lotted.

Next, he took a piece of stone and tore a piece of cloth from his clothes. He tied the remaining claw on it. He made sure that it was firm and not easy to budge.

Excitement was written on Jem Hansen's face as he started skimming the beast's corpse.