Chapter 43: Stone Monkeys
Zac moved through the forest with determination. He felt that he couldnt look around for information or clues anymore. He simply couldnt find the last Herald, and he was making no headway regarding the General either.
The general was likely holed up in the city, and the last herald either stayed in the cave or in the city as well. He had traversed the whole island while grinding for his quest skills, and hadnt even seen a trace of the alpha beast. The city and the cave were the last two options that he could come up with.
He needed to progress his quests, and the monkey mountain was the only way he could as he saw it. The other option was entering the cave, but he felt it was too risky for now. There was a lot of foot traffic to and from that cave, and it seemed they placed great importance on it. He had no idea of the topography inside either, meaning he might be stuck in a large cave with no other exits.
The mountain was a safer bet. While it was somewhat close to demon activity, the cave was located at the foot of the mountain towards the southeast. If he kept his activities to the western part and the central area of the mountain he should be able to act unconstrained without any demons noticing. That was as long as another war party didnt happen upon him of course.
But the mountain sported a complicated terrain with a multitude of outcroppings, caves, and paths, making it convenient to escape even if he was found out.
He soon arrived at the mountain and stealthily started making his way forward, looking for targets. He was planning on thinning the herd for a few days while looking for the monkey king. Since the stone monkeys had a strong sense of camaraderie he was afraid that the monkey Herald would be able to summon hundreds of monkeys with a shout.
But if those animals were already dead hed be able to fight the boss without any interruptions. He had already seen that no reinforcements came through the crystal, so every monkey he killed was one less to worry about in the future.
There were a lot of monkeys in the mountain, but nowhere near the seemingly endless amount of barghest that were skulking in the forest. He soon found a group of roughly 50 monkeys that sat huddled together and seemed to be sunbathing. They were completely immobile and staring up at the sky. It was a group like this that had almost ended Zacs life just days before.
Zac didn't prepare any tricks or traps for this fight, and after a quick survey to make sure not another group was in the vicinity, he charged into the pack. He charged up [Chop] through the fractal in his hand to the limit of what he could control, and with a great arc decimated three monkeys with one swing. Apart from being a good skill for surprise attacks, it also was excellent when fighting large groups of weaker prey.
Between the haft and the elongated blade of his skill he had a far greater reach compared to a normal axe wielder, and everything within two and a half meters of him was a zone of death. Enraged screams erupted from the pack of monkeys, and they started to frenziedly throw themselves at him.
This time he wasnt in as dire straits as the last. His strength and endurance had increased considerably, and the skills increased his efficiency against large packs of enemies. Last time he often wasnt able to completely kill a monkey with a swing, only managing to hurt or maim it. But with [Axe Mastery] he learned better ways to handle his weapon, and with [Chop] he managed to hit more targets at once.
He was like a harvester cutting down his crops, as with every swing a few monkeys perished. The rock plating on their bodies offered almost no protection against Zacs inhumanly powerful swings, and rock chips and body parts kept flying in all directions.
The battle only lasted for a minute but almost every monkey died. Terrified by the onslaught some of the smarter monkeys had desperately fled when Zac had killed half of the pack. Zac couldnt be bothered with hunting them down, as he was quite exhausted and panting. The fight had been fast, but it also had been furious. Keeping his [Chop] skill active at maximum capacity for a whole minute also drained him of a lot of his cosmic energy.
Exhausting himself had been worth it though, as the fight gave him another level. Of course, he was quite close to leveling up already before the battle. Zac pulled up his status screen to allocate his points while he moved away from the battle.
He quickly allocated 2 points in endurance and 1 in strength, but as he was about to close the status screen he noticed that all his stats improved again after the allocation. He quickly stopped and took another look to see what changed.
Name
Zachary Atwood
Level
29
Class
Hatchetman (F)
Race
Human (F)
Alignment
Human (Earth)
Titles
Born for Carnage, Ultimate Reaper, Luck of the Draw, Giantsbane, Disciple of David, Overpowered, Slayer of Leviathans, Adventurer, Demon Slayer I, Full of Class, Rarified Being, Trailblazer, Child of Dao, The Big 500
Dao
Seed of Heaviness - Early
Strength
145
Dexterity
59
Endurance
84
Vitality
69
Intelligence
49
Wisdom
49
Luck
67
Free Points
0
Nexus Coins
157096
He had once more gained another title, this one called The Big 500. He focused on it and a prompt explaining the title appeared.
[The Big 500: First in world to reach 500 total attributes. All stats +2]
And the strong get stronger Zac thought wryly. It seemed somewhat unfair that the System rewarded those with the most attributes with even more attributes, but no one said that the System was fair.
Just look at how it sent the talented people to some tutorial, deeming the rest as trash and leaving them here to fend for themselves.
It wasnt a large boost, but it did cheer Zac up after the Child of Dao title. It also reminded him of his strong points. He might not be as smart and talented as others, and he might not be able to cultivate. But even if the cultivators came back with a bunch of skills and knowledge he could still beat them up with his pile of attributes if needed.
He found a secluded spot between a mountain wall and some bushes and sat down to recuperate. With the assistance of the mother-daughter array and a Nexus Crystal it only took him 45 minutes to restore his cosmic energy to its peak. He felt the pinch when using a crystal for recuperation instead of cultivation, but he didnt want to waste any time so close to enemy territory. A crystal lasted for roughly 2 hours, so his reserve of crystals would be enough to keep a breakneck grinding pace for weeks if needed.
As soon as he was topped off on energy he kept looking for the next group. He didnt dare look while recuperating, as he never knew when hed be stuck in an avalanche of monkeys. Soon he found another gathering of the beasts, this one slightly larger than the last. He didnt know if these groupings were families or packs, but he was thankful that they were spaced out a bit in this manner.
After another recon of the surroundings, he once again started a slaughter. There was not much of a difference between this fight and the last, and it soon ended. He was a bit worse for the wear, but blunt hits from their stone fists did not impact his body overly much. He had over 80 endurance by now, and he gauged the monkeys strength to be somewhere in the 60s. They still hurt, but it would take some while for him to take actual damage.
The only real dangers the monkeys could muster up was either from their sharp teeth or from simply tiring him to death with numbers. But with the reach of his weapon infused with [Chop] no monkey maw really managed to get close to him, and he carefully checked the surroundings before every fight for hidden backups.
Zac kept this rotation between fighting and resting going, slowly making his way toward the central area of the mountains. Zac figured the Herald should be somewhere on one of the peaks. Unfortunately, the mountain had a number of peaks rather than just one, so he was planning on checking them one by one, and killing the monkeys in-between.
Zac had already known grinding monkeys would be lucrative as each monkey gave almost as much cosmic energy and Nexus Coins as four barghest. But with his improved stats and skills, his grind speed skyrocketed, shocking even himself. As the suns set Zac finished up his last battle for the day, which had actually rewarded him a second level, bringing him to level 30.
Done with the fighting for now he retreated to a small cave he found while traversing the mountain paths. It was secluded and seemed to have once housed a bear or some similar animal from the shed fur in the corners. But from the dust gathered it seemed that no one had been here for weeks.
Zac guessed that this cave was moved here with its inhabitant from wherever this mountain came from, and that the stone monkeys killed the bear when it ventured out for food.
The cave wasnt huge but provided Zac with sufficient space to practice using the [Axe Mastery] guidance system before he finally sat down and rested. He also spent over an hour on trying to gain another Dao seed. He was trying to actualize the other aspect he had sensed the strongest from his Dao vision, sharpness. If he got another Dao Seed he would gain another power-up and speed up his farming even more.
But no matter what he did or how, he couldnt take even one step on the path. When he had tried to imagine the one for heaviness it went very smoothly, and he couldnt quite figure out why the difference in difficulty was so huge. He could only speculate that he either simply had no talent for the Dao of Sharpness, or that the System restricted Dao seeds somehow.
Perhaps the skill could only reward him with one Dao Seed. If he wanted more he had to work on it by himself by arduously practicing and meditating on it. He knew that it would likely have taken him years to figure out the feeling for the Dao of Heaviness if it wasnt for the vision essentially imprinting the Dao in his mind. He more and more realized the value of that vision as he kept trying to meditate on the Dao by himself.
Finally, he gave up and called it a day. But he would dedicate some time every day for meditation as well he decided. At least until someone told him it was a waste of time. It had been a long day, and Zac was exhausted. He wiped his sweat and then crept into a small crevice that secluded him even further, and fell into a deep slumber.
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