Kill Him
Lu Yuan opened the product page. The price was the first thing he saw.
One Superior Speed Serum: 50,000 Spirit Crystals.
His mouth twitched.
*Fifty thousand.*
"These Alchemists make an absolute killing," he muttered. "Fifty thousand for a single bottle — does drinking it grant immortality?"
He scrolled down and read the description anyway. His eyes lit up a little. *The boost isn't small.*
For Trainee Rank Gene Warriors, a Common Grade speed serum boosted speed by roughly twenty percent, though exact results varied slightly depending on each warrior's natural specialization. A Superior Speed Serum boosted by around fifty percent.
He thought about it. His current Black Iron Body already provided a modest speed increase — in practice, not dramatically worse than encoding a Common Grade speed-type gene. Stack another twenty percent on top and he'd be competitive with ordinary speed-type Gene Warriors at the same rank, possibly a step ahead.
Not that ordinary speed-type warriors posed any real threat to him, but still.
With a fifty-percent boost from a Superior Serum, his speed would be genuinely solid.
He pulled up the cart and winced again at the number. *50,000. Is this thing really worth it?*
He agonized, then added it to the cart anyway.
After that, he pulled up the Superior Treatment Serum at 30,000, the Common Treatment Serum at 8,000, and made his selections. Three serums, 88,000 Spirit Crystals.
*That was almost everything.* He checked his remaining funds. Just over thirty thousand Spirit Crystals left in his pocket.
He needed to keep ten thousand aside for the Sandy Rock Underground Palace map. That left him barely twenty thousand to work with.
He looked over at the Superior Defense Serum. Price: 35,000.
*Still too expensive.*
He clicked over to the Common Defense Serum page instead. Price: 10,000 — cheaper than the speed serums.
He read the description. His eyes brightened. *The boost isn't bad.*
Defense was already his strongest point. If he ran into a formidable beast and buffed his defense on top of that, maybe the creature flat-out wouldn't be able to break through — and then he might stand a real chance even against something that outclassed him.
He thought it through. He bought two Common Defense Serums.
All five serums came packaged in small crystal bottles — treatment serums in pale red, defense serums in pale black, speed serums in pale cyan. They looked good, actually.
In total, he'd spent 108,000 Spirit Crystals on five serums. That was practically his entire savings, and he knew it. He grimaced.
Afterward, he spent another 10,000 on the Sandy Rock Underground Palace map.
Not long after confirming the order, the notification came through:
*"Payment confirmed. Your order will be delivered today."*
He stared at that for a moment. *What if it doesn't actually arrive, though? This is the slum district. Nobody out here signs for packages.*
By evening, the delivery arrived without issue.
He stored all three types of serums solemnly in his Battle-mark Space, ready to pull out whenever he needed them.
During the day, he hadn't gone to the Daming Martial Arts Gym to train Body Techniques. Instead he'd stayed home and absorbed Spirit Crystals at a slow, steady pace — hour after hour, gentle and unhurried. By the time evening rolled around, his tempering had climbed another one percent.
Current tempering: eleven percent.
Time moved quickly.
By eight o'clock that night, the Land of Origin's Light Gate had fully repaired itself.
Lu Yuan let his consciousness touch the Gate. His body dissolved from the plain little room and stepped into the Land of Origin.
Sandy Rock Underground Palace. Lu Yuan materialized out of thin air.
He appeared exactly where he had been when he logged out yesterday. Candles burned in the corridor, their amber glow thin and dim against the dark.
He'd cleared the nearby creatures before leaving yesterday — but the Land of Origin was strange that way. No matter how many you killed, you could never empty a place. Countless races from across the universe hunted here, and the beasts kept coming.
Sure enough.
Stone Men and Black Scorpions.
Stones flew the moment he appeared. Lu Yuan's silhouette flickered. He sidestepped, drew his sword in the same motion, and cut through the Black Scorpions as they lunged.
Even the Black Scorpions' venom-tipped stingers couldn't pierce his skin. The Stone Men's fists landed like they were hitting an iron wall. The whole encounter was barely an inconvenience.
He finished off the last of the Stone Men that had solidified, collected the Spirit Crystals and materials from the ground, and moved on deeper into the palace.
Not far from Lu Yuan's corridor, another fight was already underway.
Cat-kin swordsman Xiye was engaged with two Elf Assault Type warriors. His footwork was fluid — like leaves spinning on the wind — and he moved with noticeably more grace than either of his opponents. The sweeping force of his greatsword carried tremendous pressure, the sword wind alone steadily pushing both Elf warriors back, step by step.
On the other side, cat-kin elemental warrior Nanqi stood with staff raised. Fireballs condensed at its tip one after another and launched in rapid sequence toward an Elf Guardian Type warrior.
*Boom. Boom. Boom.*
Each fireball detonated against the Elf Guardian's massive square shield. The Guardian grunted with each impact, stumbling backward, struggling to hold his ground. The barrage also kept a bow-wielding Elf archer pinned behind him.
A short distance back, Moli watched the battlefield.
She let out a quiet hum, pinched two arrows between her fingers, and drew her longbow to its full pull.
An elf man clutched his throat, eyes blown wide, staring fixedly at the cat-kin woman. Blood poured from the wound at his neck, drenching his body.
The elf archer standing behind him was now exposed.
The Guardian Type warrior's pupils shrank. He locked his whole body rigid and heaved his shield up to block.
The delicate-featured elf archer had been loosing shots at Nanqi when the sound of splitting air reached her. Her pupils shrank. She threw herself sideways — but not fast enough.
*Archer's Body Technique: Twin Arrow Shot.*
Two arrows shot past the Guardian warrior and streaked toward her. One skimmed over her head. The other punched clean through her chest.
"Aah!!"
She screamed, crumpled to the ground, blood gushing. She went still.
"Bailier!"
The surviving Elf warriors saw their companion fall. Four voices erupted at once in furious grief.
"Damn Hunters!"
The rage rolling off the elves meant nothing to Xiye, Nanqi, and Moli. The three of them stood stone-faced. They were Hunters. The fury of prey had never once moved them.
The end came quickly. One Elf swordsman took Moli's arrow through the chest. Another had his throat opened by Xiye's blade, blood fountaining scarlet across his body. The Elf Guardian fell last, his internal organs ruptured by a point-blank fireball from Nanqi.
The three cat-kin Hunters exhaled.
Xiye and Nanqi quietly gathered the loot from the ground.
"Not bad luck this time," Xiye said, faintly smiling.
Nanqi gave his staff a satisfied wave. "They even had Gene Armament? Two sets of leather armor — looks like this squad came with some gains." He grinned. "In the end, it all just falls into our hands. Fifteen thousand!"
"Their strength was just average. We barely spent any resources." Xiye glanced around. "Let's move on and find better prey."
The three exchanged a look. They'd worked together long enough that a single glance held a full conversation.
They packed up the spoils and set off.
It wasn't long before sounds of battle drifted toward them from a distant corridor.
They softened their footsteps and moved in that direction.
When they arrived, they found it: a human warrior besieged by three Stone Men and two Black Scorpions at once.
Even surrounded, the human warrior looked completely at ease.
His entire skin had taken on the color of black iron. He wore simple armor over it, but the defensive capability was extraordinary — the Stone Men's fists couldn't dent him, and the Black Scorpions' venom needles simply bounced off his skin, unable to pierce through.
Moli's gaze locked onto the figure. Her pupils contracted. A cold thread of killing intent rose in her eyes.
*Is that him?!*
The moment she saw that human, a dull throb of pain stirred in her stomach.
She remembered him. How could she not?
*That's the one who stabbed her there yesterday.*
Her hands curled into fists. Her jaw tightened.
Xiye and Nanqi caught the shift in her at once. They exchanged a quick glance. Xiye reached over and lightly touched her shoulder.
Moli pressed a finger to her lips — quiet — then looked past the corner.
Xiye asked softly, "Is he alone?"
"Yes. Just him."
"That's the Guardian Type human warrior from yesterday," Nanqi murmured.
The three looked at one another.
Three pairs of eyes said everything.
Moli's gaze was ice. She said quietly:
"Then kill him."
A cold, savage smile spread across Nanqi's face.
Xiye's grip tightened on his sword.