Three of the rabbits closest to him moved first, their horns glowed in blue colour. Vaelen had no doubt that if they hit their mark, he would have three new holes in his body.
The speed of the rabbits was fast too, they arrived in front of him in 2 seconds. Since Vaelen didn't have any plan to use his essence, he wasn't going to pull any extreme moves right now.
So when those rabbits came close enough but not extremely close, he took a step back—it was enough to disrupt the original attack target for the rabbits, who had just jumped to pierce him.
Since they were already airborne, they couldn't even change their direction. Vaelen smiled and threw his dagger at the middle one, which was the closest to him.
He took another step back while moving both of his hands forward and catching the horns of the other two rabbits.
The throw of the dagger was enough to slow down the middle rabbit while piercing it, so it didn't even reach him.
As for the other two, he spun in place and banged them on the ground as hard as he could.
BUMMPPPP!
That was enough to rupture their internal organs and end their lives.
Although he had used no essence, his strength at rank 1 was still enough to kill rank 1 rabbits.
The strength of monsters also depended on their physique, a rank 1 lion would be far more powerful than a rank 1 human in physical strength. That's why it was advisable to form a team while hunting beasts.
But these rabbits were just one of the weakest bunch in the beast kingdom, so it was easy to hunt them. The only danger here would be if you were unable to react to their group attacks, which newbies with no experience in fighting always struggled with, so they were advised to make teams.
Vaelen looked at the three dead rabbits calmly—this wasn't his first kill. As a descendant of a hidden lineage, he had killed many small beasts just to gain experience in killing.
So he didn't feel anything right now. He wanted to immediately remove the cores and absorb them, but it looked like it wouldn't be possible as more rabbits were coming toward him. He smiled and took out his dagger.
These rabbits were too easy for him to kill. This time, he moved proactively—instead of waiting for them to come, he kept killing them one after another, and when the other rabbits saw that, they ran away.
Since he was alone, it was hard to block them, so in the end, he managed to kill only 8 of them before the others fled. So the total number of rabbits he killed was 11.
There were only 21 horned rabbits in this area. He could force them to come out of their burrows if he had known how to use his element, but right now, it wasn't possible.
Vaelen sighed and gathered all the dead bodies in a corner, but just as he was about to remove the beast cores, he heard footsteps.
He looked toward them and, as expected, it was the same team that had tried to recruit him, they finally seemed to have recruited one more member.
The members were a little surprised seeing Vaelen. Most of them knew he was the guy they had tried to recruit and they also knew he was a newbie. The reason was simple because he was alone.
Only newbies came here alone, veterans had already formed their teams.
When their eyes went to the dead bodies of the horned rabbits, they were shocked.
Killing 11 horned rabbits while being alone as a newbie was unbelievable for them.
Vaelen didn't pay attention to them and picked one of the rabbits, separated its front legs with his fingers, stabbed his dagger into it, and after moving it around, he found the core he was looking for and pulled it out with a flick of his dagger.
A small bead-like sphere came out of the rabbit—it was red in color, not because of blood, but because it was its natural color for beasts that have fire elemental properties.
Vaelen wasn't afraid of these people looting him, he could easily kill them. Not to mention, they wouldn't even try to rob someone this close to the city wall. Most newbies had beacons that could immediately alert the guards on the wall.
As expected, they all moved further and didn't disturb him. The way Vaelen had ignored them, they all knew he wasn't interested in talking to them.
Vaelen held the beast core and looked at it closely.
He was never able to understand one thing—although they were small, they held quite a lot of essence.
Second, if you reached the peak of rank one—that is, you had reached the limit of how much essence your core could handle, and suddenly you decided to use all of it and empty your lineage core, then all you needed was your affinity by 10 beast cores of the same rank to again fill your essence completely. In his case, where his affinity was 100, he would need 10 cores.
But if you were still in the process of reaching the peak by absorbing the cores, then you needed a multiple of 10 to your affinity in beast cores of the same rank. In his case, that would be 1000 beast cores. It was quite an intriguing process, no one was able to completely explain it.
Oh well, thinking about it wouldn't change anything, so he should just get over it.
Vaelen knew the process of absorbing the core, so he began. All he needed to do was hold the core in his fist and try to squeeze it. He immediately felt essence moving through his hand to his lineage core.
He also felt the beast core in his hand getting smaller until it vanished completely.
He had absorbed his first core—999 more to reach the peak of rank 1. He sighed and continued the process until he absorbed all 11 of them.
He had to find another area now, so he moved further along the wall.
Vaelen met the party again, they were fighting some horned rabbits too, and because of this, he had to move further down.
The horns of horned rabbits were sellable, but since he wasn't interested in money and didn't have any storage container, he didn't take them.
Some time later, he found another area with rabbits, but there were fewer than before.
He was only able to get 6 cores from here.
This was also why he didn't want to team with anyone, the amount of cores gained would be divided, leaving only a few per person. It wasn't effective.
Vaelen continued his hunt for almost the whole day, finally coming back toward his first location.
It was already evening, so he decided to go home. The rabbits he had killed in the morning had their horns removed, it might have been done by one of the parties. There were already a lot of them here right now.
He was only able to get 58 beast cores today. It seemed low, but if others found out, they would be shocked.
…
He entered the city and took the bus in a similar way. At least Vaelen was happy that not many people suspected him of being Ashenveil.
It was expected too, not many cared about newbie fights. They preferred watching higher-ranked fights instead.
Vaelen came back quietly and entered his room from the other side to avoid others.
It was a good hunt overall. With these cores, he had made some progress. There was still time until dinner, so he logged into the parallel world to see if anything had changed.
After arriving, the first thing he opened was the forums.
The first thread he saw was again related to Lysara, but for a different reason—she had won 15 consecutive battles.
He was surprised and opened her matches.
He never thought that she had trained herself in fighting this much, looks could be deceiving, huh.
After watching her matches, he was stunned.
Her fighting style was similar to House Luminara but wasn't the same—it was just like his, taking it to the extreme.
After closing the forums, his mind went to all the moves he had created. They were more like on-the-spot realizations—was it also something related to their element? If yes, then it explained how they had their own fighting style.
It looked like there was more to this elemental sovereign thing, not to mention the skill he had gotten. Now he was sure it was something exclusive to Sovereigns too.
Vaelen sighed, if this really was the case, then he would definitely know everything about this elemental sovereign thing in his realistic dreams, maybe.
Maybe darkness was guiding him. Was this what it meant to say that he was darkness himself?
Oh well, he might find out the truth tonight himself.
He closed the forums and decided to have 5 matches again.
He entered the queue and got matched quite easily.
[PlayMe (rank 1)(18/3), Element - Lightning, Affinity - 73%] vs [Ashenveil (rank 1)(13/0), Element - Darkness, Affinity - Hidden]
What the hell was that name? He was really quite amused by it.
He looked around and saw that some spectators did come, but not many—it was good for him.