For two and a half relentless days, Ali had been hunting without rest. From dawn until deep into the black of night, he stalked and slaughtered beasts and monsters, scouring every corner of the wild lands that bordered his territory. Entire monster tribes were driven to extinction under his blade; only a handful of smaller clans were spared, deliberately left for his knights to cull later as training, and a few young beasts were kept alive to preserve the delicate balance of the forest's ecosystem. Miles, ever watchful, guided his hunts with precision, ensuring no misstep, no wasted time.
'After getting serious, let's see what the fruit of training is…' Ali thought as he opened his interface. The familiar panels unfolded before his eyes in clean, crisp text.
PC: 41,102
Free AP: 0
Strength: 0.6 → 1.1
Body: 0.3
Speed: 0.6
Spirit: 5.1 → 5.6
Intelligence: 0
Luck: 0
'These were my attributes three days ago. That boost of half a point in Strength and Spirit came from conquering Obidos and taking Castle Nolan,' Ali recalled, before looking at his current status.
PC: 41,102
Free AP: 0.3
Strength: 1.1 → 1.5
Body: 0.3 → 1
Speed: 0.6 → 1
Spirit: 5.6 → 5.9
Intelligence: 0
Luck: 0
'In total, I've gained 1.9 points across my attributes, with 0.3 still unassigned. Spirit rose by 0.8 — a huge increase. My Spirit pool is noticeably larger now,' Ali assessed.
He stepped toward a towering giant of a tree, easily a hundred meters high and with a trunk as thick as a castle tower — nearly twenty meters across. Without drawing upon aura or Spirit, without even tensing his body for maximum output, Ali drove his fist into it with his raw, unenhanced strength. The impact split the massive trunk like rotted bark, his knuckles sinking deep, shattering dense wood into jagged fragments that cracked outward from the point of contact.
'I don't mind keeping Intelligence at zero,' Ali thought coldly, 'but Luck… I've learned my lesson.' The memory returned unbidden — the bone-deep chill of the cavern he'd once been teleported into, the unseen dread in the darkness. It had been a miracle he had walked out alive.
Luck: 0 → 0.3
'Now, onto the last thing… it won't help in the fight ahead, but it might be crucial in the future,' he decided.
Ali closed his eyes, his breathing steady, and the physical world dissolved. He opened them again to find himself within his Spirit Realm.
Here, the black Spirit energy lay heavy and dense in his pool, curling and swirling with slow movements, as though savouring the expanded boundaries of its container. Droplets of it shimmering in the void before sinking back into the inky surface, only to rise again.
He lifted his head and turned, and the silver-white mist that shrouded much of the realm drew back like parting curtains, revealing a sight as imposing as it was ominous.
Suspended in the air was a sword as tall as Ali himself, its shape simple, its blade drowning in writhing black energy. The darkness bled from it in heavy sheets, cascading downward like thick fire before defying gravity to coil back up toward the blade's tip, completing a ceaseless, almost ritualistic cycle.
'This is my aura…' Ali thought, stepping closer. With each pace, the weapon began to hum — a deep, resonant vibration that seemed to echo not in the air but in his very bones. The oppressive energy pressed against him like the weight of an ocean. It was alive in its own way, not with sentience but with hunger.
'I can feel it wants to break through…' The instinct that flared in his mind was sharp and undeniable, the same primal pull he feels from Shadow's hunger. This, however, was different. Where Shadow's craving was endless consumption, this was explosive — a caged power straining to burst free.
He stepped back, turning away from the aura-forged blade, and walked in the opposite direction. Past the surface of the Spirit pool, the mist peeled open once more, unveiling something that made even the sword seem crude in comparison.
Before him floated a single, small point of light. It burned so brightly that it resembled a captured star, pure and blinding, but the light spilling from it fractured into countless colours, scattering like a prism's refraction. From that miniature sun, a single narrow beam of pure light stretched outward, twisting and zigzagging through the air before vanishing into the veiled distance of the mist.
But the beam of light did not simply vanish into the mist.
It passed cleanly through a single red magical circle suspended vertically in the air, its intricate lines shifting faintly like living ink. Ali recognised it instantly — his fireball spell.
'From what Miles gathered,' Ali thought, his eyes following the circle's faint rotations, 'mages meditate to draw mana from the air — an invisible power that saturates this world. They channel that mana into their magic circles to activate spells. And like aura users, mages are classified by tiers… though in their case, the measure is the number of stars they hold.'
He lowered his gaze slightly to the small, solitary star hovering at the edge of his awareness.
'Miles couldn't uncover much about their upper limits, but he did confirm this — the first star can hold a maximum of five spells. To add more, the mage must break through to the next star. Naturally, their spells also grow stronger with each tier, and the higher the star, the more advanced the magic they can command.'
His eyes returned to the crimson ring in the air. The one spell he possessed.
'I'm never using this thing. It's slow, obvious, and costly… a terrible match for me.' His lip curled faintly.
Ali closed his eyes, and the Spirit Realm faded. He opened them again in the real world.
[Ali, the Spider Queen is out. You can hunt your first Beast King now.]
The message from Miles appeared in his interface.
'Good.' Ali's thought was short, decisive. In the next instant, his form blurred and vanished, leaving only a faint ripple in the air where he had stood.
[Personal Mission: Kill the Mutated Jumping Spider Queen — (0/1)]
[Reward: 1 Attribute Point in Speed
Active Skill: Venomous Breath — Once every two hours, the player can exhale a cloud of venom that paralyses the target and causes slow tissue death over time.]
'I got this mission the first time I saw that thing,' Ali remembered. The image burned in his mind — a grotesque, unnatural body unlike any beast he had encountered before. The "mutated" label in its name wasn't just for show.
Miles had pinpointed her last location, and soon Ali was standing high above the forest floor, balanced on a tree branch seventy meters up. Below him, the canopy stretched like an endless ocean of green. A baby rabbit — though here "baby" meant three meters tall — gnawed lazily at thick, broad leaves. In this forest of titans, it was considered small.
But Ali's Force Sense told him exactly where his real target was. His presence dissolved as he entered stealth mode, masking his aura completely. Slowly, his gaze drifted upward.
On a massive tree ahead, a single strand of spider silk gleamed faintly in the light, stretched between two trunks. It was only one of thousands of threads he'd passed on his way here — the entire territory was a labyrinth of webs, each strand acting as a tripwire to alert the queen of intruders.
Ali's sharp eyes followed that lone filament until it merged with a dense, thick web about fifty meters away. At first glance, there was nothing unusual there — just bark, leaves, and shadow.
Then, a droplet of green liquid appeared out of thin air. It slid down through the air in lazy silence before landing on a patch of foliage below. The moment it touched the leaves, they hissed violently, curling inward as thin trails of smoke drifted upward from the burning leaves.
The baby rabbit froze, its crimson eyes instantly locking on the disturbance. It stopped chewing, rose onto its hind legs, and scanned its surroundings with twitching ears. A heartbeat later, instinct took over.
KEKEKE!
The squeal tore through the forest like a knife, high-pitched and urgent.
From deep in the foliage came a thunderous thudding sound — and then, bursting through the undergrowth, a massive brown-furred rabbit, fifteen meters tall, landed heavily beside its young. Its posture was rigid, head sweeping side to side, every muscle tight. Both rabbits stood upright, staring into the greenery, searching for the source of the threat.
They saw nothing. The queen's camouflage was perfect.
'So it waits for the bigger prey to come,' Ali thought, eyes narrowing at the seemingly empty space where that drop of venom had fallen.
He whispered in his mind: 'Bahamut's Eyes.'
Spirit surged, and his vision shifted violently. His pupils elongated, his irises flaring into a deep, luminous violet — the gaze of a dragon.
The veil shattered. Now he saw her clearly.
High in the tree, balanced effortlessly on the thinnest of webs, the Spider Queen loomed. Eight colossal, ten-meter-long legs extended from her body, each a dark metallic purple that gleamed like forged steel. The edges of her limbs tapered to impossibly fine points — points sharp enough to shear stone cleanly.
Her central body was just as monstrous: a hardened, purple metallic exoskeleton glistening faintly beneath the shifting shadows of the canopy. And from that arachnid bulk rose something far worse — a humanoid upper torso.
It was female in shape, though not in any way that suggested humanity. Her skin was the same unnatural shade of deep violet, her hair a darker, almost black purple that flowed in heavy strands down her back. A segmented chest plate of hardened exoskeleton covered her large breasts like natural armor.
Her face was a nightmare of distortions — a jaw that split open far wider than human anatomy allowed, revealing a double row of curved, needle-like fangs. Thick venom oozed constantly from between them, dripping onto her own armour in sizzling drops. Her forehead stretched higher than it should have, lined with ten small, glinting black eyes that scanned in every direction at once.
Two long, clawed hands extended from her human torso, each palm marked with a small, circular opening. Ali didn't yet know whether they secreted venom, wove silk, or something worse entirely.
And yet even with how monstrous it was, Miles reported that she had the smallest territory amongst the beast kings, signifying that she was the weakest beast king around.
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