SSS Awakening: All My Clones Have Divine Bloodlines!-Chapter 46: Salamander

[Advancement Mission]

Rank: D

Description: Your shadow has reached the peak of its current rank. It is time to awaken.

Absorb the life essence of hundred E-Rank beasts at the Advanced Stage and ten D-Rank beast at the Early Stage in order to advance.

Mission Status:

> E-Rank (Advanced Stage): 100/100

> D-Rank (Early Stage): 9/10

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Evan had expected the advancement mission to follow a similar pattern to the previous one. What he hadn’t expected was for the mission requirements to be this demanding.

Before, it had been three F-rank beasts at Advanced Stage and one E-rank at Early Stage. Now the numbers had multiplied several times over, and worse, it wasn’t just one D-rank he needed to defeat.

It was ten.

On the surface, that might not sound like much. But the gap between E-rank and D-rank wasn’t simply a matter of Rank. It was a threshold. The boundary between Awakened and Ascendant, two entirely different stages of existence. Which meant that even at the peak of E-rank, he couldn’t simply carve through D-ranks the way he once had with E-ranks when he was still F-rank.

That realization had turned the past two weeks into something close to hell.

Back at the manor, his routine had earned him around 6,400 ESS per day. Out here, with no restrictions on when or how long he hunted, he had pushed that number to 12,000 ESS per day, an almost absurd rate that sent his progression toward the next rank skyrocketing. Within four days of leaving, he had already reached the peak of his current rank.

And that was when the real work began.

Finding the right D-rank targets, closing in on them, surviving long enough to finish the job. He had refined his use of Death Mark until the battles became more manageable, the mark alone wasn’t enough to turn the tide, but it gave him an opening, a window where the creature’s movements dulled just enough for the rest to do their work.

With his clone and summons closing in from multiple directions, overwhelming a single target had become at least feasible. But even then, it was never clean. It was never quick. Each fight dragged on for tens of minutes, grinding through the creature’s endurance until something finally gave.

He had spent two weeks doing exactly that, again and again, until the count finally read 100 E-ranks and 9 D-ranks.

Today was the day he would deal with the last one.

The mission he had taken was straightforward enough: hunt a D-rank Blazing Salamander.

The creature was native to the area but had apparently decided to wander toward the outer edges of the nearby forest, disrupting the local ecosystem in the process. Weaker beasts had scattered. Lower-ranked hunters had stopped going near the area entirely, unwilling to risk ending up as the salamander’s next meal.

Perfect, as far as Evan was concerned.

He left the city and reached the forest’s edge in about ten minutes.

It was smaller than the Greystone Forest, but that didn’t make it any less remarkable. If anything, it was more active, and for a specific reason tied to this place.

The beast waves. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Regular, recurring surges of magical creatures that struck the area multiple times a year, varying in scale and intensity but always aimed at the same target: the enormous stump the city sat on. Evan didn’t know what drew them to it, but he was fairly certain the city’s higher authorities did, and the fact that they had done nothing to stop it, and had in fact built an entire economy around it, said more about this city’s history than any official account ever would.

It was also, Rainer had told him after nearly becoming a casualty of one such wave himself, one of the main reasons BranLeaf was considered an adventurer’s paradise. You didn’t go looking for the beasts. They came to you.

It seemed another of these waves would begin soon, and since Evan was already in the city, he intended to witness this bizarre phenomenon for himself.

But first, the salamander.

In another part of the city, far from the bustle of the central district, tucked between narrow alleys and crumbling walls that the rest of BranLeaf had long since stopped paying attention to, a group of figures had gathered.

There were perhaps a dozen of them. F-ranks and E-ranks, the kind who had long since decided that hunting beasts was less profitable than hunting people who couldn’t fight back. Newcomers, the lost, the unlucky. Easy prey, in other words.

One of them was a familiar face.

Berthold sat with his back against the wall, arms crossed, jaw tight. The humiliation from earlier hadn’t left him. It sat behind his eyes like a splinter he couldn’t reach.

"So?" said one of the others, an E-rank with a scar running from his ear to his chin. "You really got brushed off by some nobody fresh off the road?"

A few of them laughed. Not loudly, but enough.

"I heard he walked in and immediately asked to sell corpses," said another, leaning forward. "Couldn’t get a good look at how much, they took him to the back room. But the butcher looked like he’d seen a ghost coming out."

"So he’s got money."

"Looks like it."

"And you let him walk," the scarred one said, glancing at Berthold again with something that wasn’t quite amusement anymore.

Berthold said nothing. His expression did the talking.

"Doesn’t matter," said a third voice, quieter than the rest, which was precisely why everyone listened. The man it belonged to hadn’t moved from the shadow he was sitting in. E-rank, Advanced Stage, like two or three others in the room. "We know what mission he took."

The laughter faded.

"Then we know where he’s going," the scarred one said.

"And we know it’s not the kind of place where anyone’s going to see what happens next."

The mood in the room shifted. The easy grins hardened into something else.

Berthold finally uncrossed his arms.

"Then let’s go," he said. "Let’s see if he can still keep that attitude once we’re done with him."