Splash!

As I splashed my face with water, the cooling sensation derived from the activity was truly worth it.

I was currently by the side of a river, the same place where I had camped for the night.

It was now my second day in Azuna, though the fights had kept my mind occupied to an extent that made me unable to realize the time—I had spent in the forest.

On the first day, after killing the Gold 1 monsters, I had roamed around for quite a bit of time, searching for suitable prey.

The search wasn’t that easy, as I had to actively avoid stronger monsters, including the Platinum ones, who had their own territories marked.

Using my mana sense and Chroma’s help, I was able to avoid most of them, though we had nearly crashed into the territory of a Platinum 4 monster.

It was due to our luck or maybe because the monster was in its sleep, as it didn’t outright attack us, which was the only reason we were able to retreat without having to fight for our lives.

Though with Chroma by my side, I didn’t really think the monster would have been able to kill me.

Still... It was better to be cautious.

As the evening approached closer, I had stumbled onto the hideout of some ants, all of them being in the Silver rank.

Killing them was an easy task, so I had restricted my mana, fighting the monsters with only my baseline physical strength and combat prowess.

Though I still had to use some mana from time to time, as the monsters were after all in the Silver rank.

Evolving to the Gold core had indeed increased my baseline physical strength, but not to an extent that I could easily defeat the Silver cores without having to even use a drop of my mana.

At the end, the outcome was given, as I won with relative ease.

The fight was refreshing for me, but a lot of time was wasted in the process, so I had to camp by the side of this river.

Haa...

My plans for today had changed a bit after thinking for a while.

At first I had decided to only engage with monsters at Gold 1, but—

Temptation was something that was always hard to control.

Though my logic advised me to fight against monsters at Gold 1, my body reacted otherwise.

Absorbing the mana essence from a monster at Gold 2 was far more satisfying than killing the ones which were at the first tier of the Gold core.

Since coming to Azuna, I had killed quite a few Gold cores, yet there was no sign of my tier increasing.

This just went on to show the difference in tiers at the higher ranks.

As a Silver core, I had to actively restrict my cultivation so as to prevent my core from evolving to the Gold rank without setting a proper foundation.

Sigh.

Though killing Gold 1 monsters would have been the optimum choice, I had now decided to slightly deviate from my logic and focus more on the pleasure that I would get from the battles.

The monsters at the same rank as me were surprisingly easy to kill.

Though the same wasn’t true for all monsters... Still, searching for the stronger ones among Gold 1 monsters was a difficult and time-consuming task.

Having made the decision, I moved through the forest, while Chroma kept the necessary distance from me, so as to not scare the monsters from engaging in a fight with me.

I repeatedly used mana sense to track the movements of every monster in my vicinity.

Right now, the ones at Silver 3 were more dominant in the area, as there were entire packs of them.

As I moved deeper, monsters with the Gold core began to show up, with a mix of those at Gold 1 and Gold 2.

I avoided such groups, as taking on all of them at the same time would be illogical given the fact that I wanted to enjoy my fight.

With more monsters, killing them in the least amount of time became the major priority, which restricted my ability to learn from the battle.

Haa...

Willing more mana through my core, I increased the area under my mana sense.

Hm?

I could faintly sense a monster, probably at Gold 2, in the southwest direction of my current location.

Stopping in my tracks, I changed direction, as there were no other presences around the monster.

This was good.

I wanted to test my skills against the upper ranks bit by bit.

Fighting a Gold 3 without any measure of my skills against the higher ranks would have been a foolish thing, so the monster at Gold 2 would serve as the best training dummy.

With my unique cultivation method, my mana core had received five times the boost in its reserves after evolving to the Gold core compared to the average rank-ups that give individuals twice the boost in their mana reserves.

Having a large pool of mana was always a blessing, as that increased the ways in which I could fight.

With more mana at my disposal, I didn’t have to think of conserving it, and that allowed me to buff up my muscles to their utmost limits without being conservative in my use of mana.

My insane mana reserves were the only reason that I could keep my ability of Mirage clone active for a longer period of time.

Coupled with that was the fact that my mana control was far above my rank, resulting in a very efficient utilization of my existing mana reserves.

In a way, I had the perfect mana core that someone could dream of.

The monster was now just two hundred metres away from me...

The closer I got to the monster, the better I was able to scan its details.

With eight legs and a massive frame, standing at a height of around eleven feet, was a monster that looked similar to a... spider?

Well... as I closed the distance between me and the monster, it did indeed look like a spider, but still there were quite a few deviations in the structure of its body.

The monster had limbs above its body... that could be called the spider’s hands in the simplest words.

So with eight legs and eight hands...

The creature before me could still be called a spider—

At least I thought so.