Chapter 76 - Exhilarating Battles!
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Noah's group ran towards the next hall after taking a break and eating some snacks, reaching a new hall, with an even bigger pool of water.
The second after joining, monsters began to emerge almost instantly, as if a certain trigger within this place was activated.
Aside from the previous hall monsters, this time there were gigantic lobsters, mantis shrimps with strong punching claws the size of elephants, and walking sharks that walked with legs resembling crocodiles!
The monstrous creatures rushed towards Noah's party, as Noah's party began to unleash their attacks and Skills once more!
Noah confronted a group of Giant Mantis Shrimps, finding out their amazing reaction time the moment he got closer to them, as their punching claws reached his body within milliseconds!
Clash! Clash! Clash!
"Their speed is… way too high… but it is only restricted to their claws…!" thought Noah, jumping high into the air, and simply flying up, generating large blood weapons and raining the mantis shrimps with them!
The mantis shrimp punched some of the weapons apart, but there were way too many for them to resist, being sliced up into pieces not long after!
Slash! Slash! Slash!
Poof!
Dying after being sliced into countless pieces, the sliced corpses exploded into black smoke, leaving cores behind!
Noah recycled the blood used in the blood weapon projectiles and continued to fight, and reaching another group of Mantis Shrimps and Walking Sharks!
This time he coated himself on an even stronger Blood Armor, resembling a crimson night floating in midair while using Crimson Flash to move at fast speeds!
Noah used his eviscerating claws to slash through the monster's bodies, slicing them up into pieces!
The Mantis Shrimps punches were strong, but his Blood Armor barely showed some cracks before Noah sliced and crushed these insolent monsters!
Afterward, the large jaws of the Walking Sharks emerged from his back, trying to bite him with all of their jaw strength, only to receive Noah's claws into their mouths, having their jaws sliced apart, or ending up swallowing a large amount of poisoned blood!
Noah kept firing Blood Arrows everywhere, as more monsters fell from them, while those that survived them began to explode into pieces one by one thanks to Noah's powerful Blood Detonation Skill!
Although Noah needed to be closer to the blood to detonate it, thanks to his amazing defenses, speed, and strength, it was not hard for him to get closer to an enemy he wanted to blow up into pieces!
Only the Mini-Bosses were able to withstand several explosions, however, even the most resilient of armored crabs or lobsters exploded into pieces after three to four explosions!
As Noah led his group and bathed himself in the blood and flesh of these monsters, his group kept using their Skills, assisting Noah and each other, slowing down enemies through Arthur's Erosion, Jon's Evil Eyes, and Timassa's Black Thunder Arrows, falling as a judgment from a dark thunder god over the unfortunate monsters!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
"We are getting through!" said Arthur, cheering with the rest of his group, as Iris and Adamantine covered their backs, slicing up into pieces a group of powerful large eels, as Adamantine jumped over the heads of Mantis Shrimps and crushed their exoskeletons with her powerful shadow claws!
Meanwhile, Sakura froze the giant walking sharks, while Big Sis and Sugar sliced and destroyed them into pieces!
After a few minutes, the army of monsters had been almost completely massacred!
Noah and his party could not help but wonder just how strong they have become to be able to clean through so many E-Rank monsters with so much ease!
This was the power of evolution and their new awakened Skills!
As Noah crushed the last Walking Shark into a bloody paste and drank the blood out of it before it turned into black smoke, the pool once more exploded, another Mini-Boss had emerged right after!
Unlike the previous Mini-Boss, this creature was covered in a hard, chitinous exoskeleton covered in spikes, with enormous claws and glowing crimson eyes, a giant crab!
The creature's exoskeleton was gray and metallic, and it seemed to move quite fast despite that, jumping out of the pool with a monstrous leap, generating a loud earthquake!
BOOM!
Clank, clank!
The sound of its claws closing and opening resonated through the entire hall, as Noah and his group felt chills run through their spines!
However, Noah smiled greedily, glancing at his next prey, this one would surely net a nice amount of Attribute Value Cores and Ability Cores!
Noah flew towards it directly, as the crab's claws were directed towards him!
The enormous metallic claws reached him, as he generated a large shield of crystallized blood, mitigating the impact and leaping higher into the sky, his Soul Weapon suddenly shapeshifted into a long bony blade, as he descended towards its eyes, slicing them off!
Slash! Slash!
Without the monster's eyes, it would have an even harder time catching others!
The monstrous creature groaned in agony as its eyes were torn off, unleashing a deadly aura, and trying to slice and crush Noah's small body with its claws, but now that it could not see him, it was having a hard time finding him, until it suddenly felt him near its back, as he began to quickly crush the exoskeleton with his long eviscerating claws!
Clash! Clash! Clash!
The metallic claws of the monstrous Crab Mini-Boss reached Noah, as he jumped and evaded one, however, the other managed to reach him, as he had to take the hit!
Noah gritted his teeth as he made sure to protect himself with a hard Blood Armor, however, the power of the claw was strong enough to send him away into the air!
BOOM!
"Noah-sama!" said Iris, reaching Noah's side with Adamantine and stopping him from falling into the ground, as they carried him through the air, Noah took their help and immediately jumped back into the air, using his Flight Skill to reach the giant crab with Iris and Adamantine!
Meanwhile, the rest of the group, such as Arthur, Timassa, Jon, Sakura, Sugar, and Big Sis combined their long-ranged attacks, abusing the large wounds all across the monster's body!
Arthur began to slowly corrode the large wounds that Noah made, while Jon started to absorb the HP and Mana from it, and transfer them to his companions!
Timassa dug deeper into the wounds of the monster while extending her black thunder attacks all around the monster's body, electrifying it!
The monster began to become slower and more lethargic, as Sakura started to freeze its legs, making it move slowly, only for Big Sis and Sugar to cut off three of its gigantic legs, making it fall into the ground and lose its momentum completely!
The entire party then began to gang on the monster from afar, showering it with long-ranged attacks!
The crab could only groan in anger and agony, giving its last breath as its entire body was engulfed in black smoke, turning into Attribute Value Cores and Ability Cores right after!
Poof!
"Phew… that was intense…" sighed Arthur.
"Thanks to Master, we managed to pull through…" said Jon.
"Indeed. Although I think that your ability to transfer Mana and Life to us is also very useful, especially because you can drain it out monsters," said Timassa.
"Yeah, you're better healer than me now…" sighed Arthur.
"Not at all… Arthur's healing is faster… and transferring Life increases physical capabilities a bit and more regeneration, but the regeneration itself is not… instantaneous," said Jon.
"Hm. I wish these monsters could leave their corpses. If we could sell such an enormous corpse, we would have made quite a fortune…" sighed Noah.
"Noah-sama, you were awesome there!" said Iris.
"No need to flatter me, Iris, now collect the Cores, we need to keep moving, we have cannot waste much time, let's treasure every hour of this day!" said Noah, as his entire party nodded, looking for the Attribute Value Cores and Ability Cores spread around, while Noah brought back yet another Treasure Chests, which was also filled with even more Cores of both types!
"Cores… Cores… Cores…" sighed Arthur.
"This is the life of a Hunter after all…" said Timassa.
"Y-Yes, it is already fun and adventurous to explore such a beautiful place, but when we can only go around slaughtering monsters… You get a bit tired of always everything being the same…" sighed Arthur.
"Hmph. Perhaps increasing your morale with some kind of entertainment aside from Hunting might be a good choice, but after we manage to gather enough Cores for D-Rank," said Noah.
"E-Enter… Entertainment?" asked Arthur in disbelief.
It seems that Noah wanted to increase the morale of his party by doing something that humans found fun after work.
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If you are enjoying this novel please make sure to check my other novel: "My World Traveling System: The Harbinger of Death"!
It has similar genres than Vampire Overlord but it is more about personal growth, the main character changes a lot over time until becoming a ruthless anti-hero! Check it out!