Chapter 777: Stats Farming

After recovering from her old scars, Ai looked like a maiden from heaven. Layla and Haro stared at her with gaping mouths as she returned to them, leaving Arthur standing on the cliff. His smile was wide as he witnessed their reaction to her real face.

It wasn"t without cause that Ai was a.s.saulted as a child and had her face disfigured. From what Arthur heard, bandits raided her village and took her as a slave to be sold. A n.o.bleman was the one who bought her, and a jealous wife disfigured her face.

After that, Ai was released from the curse of her beauty and was discarded aside by the couple. This story was told to him by none other than Oriole, his aid at that time. It happened before Arthur decided to rescue her from imprisonment after realizing how the Ancient One desired her.

As the gangster hugged Ai and the knight stood aside, Arthur gestured for them to leave. The three women left using the wagon Arthur gave them, which Commander Barbora gave him.

Arthur smiled as he turned toward the Anodyne Gulf and jumped down. He rolled in the air several times before landing on the sand, feet down, causing a dust cloud around him. Then, he walked through the dust cloud toward the ocean.

A rune appeared on his hand, and it was called Lure. It was a wide-range illusion that tempted monsters to come rushing toward him instead of Arthur looking for them. As he infused the rune with mana, it started to pulsate to alert the nearby monsters in the ocean.

Countless beastly howls echoed through Anodyne Gulf, sounding like a melody of destruction. Currents appeared on the water as the monsters rushed toward him.

Arthur ceased using the Lure rune and created a different rune instead. It was one that he had never used before or learned from Gaia. However, the battle against Erin Voldor inspired him to create an explosion rather than a fire rune.

Thus, Arthur condensed tremendous amounts of mana in a small s.p.a.ce before turning them into flames. The pressure inside would result in an incredible explosion that destroys everything in the vacancy.

The rune, Explosion, was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with mana that threatened to demolish everything. Arthur raised his leg and arched his body before throwing the rune into the ocean like a baseball. It bolted through the waters, splitting it in two because of the great powers in it.

Arthur watched it zoom toward the distance as he spread his arms. The monsters were still incoming, and the rune rushed past them. Arthur waited for the rune to be in the middle of the horde. Then, when it was, he clapped his hands, and the rune ignited.

Clap!

BOOOOOM!

The water m.u.f.fled the explosion, but the beach shook as a result. Then, the loud explosive sound arrived with the wind, slamming themselves onto the cliff. Arthur"s robes fluttered as he watched the water explode into the sky, accompanied by countless monster corpses inside it.

[Absorb!]

Arthur used his rune, and the notifications filled his view. His rune absorbed every corpse in the ocean killed by him. As strength seeped in him, Arthur thought that Suyin would freak out if she saw these many hologram panels pop out.

[+2 Strength Stats]

[+2 Agility Stats]

[+2 Agility Stats]

[+2 Mana Stats]

[+2 Perception Stats]

…

…

…

Arthur watched the countless notification appear and disappear in front of him, creating blue after blue panels. Then, as the cries of the dying monster filled the once-peaceful beach, strength seeped into his body like a flowing river.

It almost seemed bugged. Arthur watched his stats reach their maximum limits before he cannot grow any stronger than that. A giant wave came rushing toward him due to the explosion, but Arthur had no intentions of running. After all, he wanted to test his newfound strength.

Once before, in Shades City, Arthur used his spiritual arm with his Release rune. The effect even surprised him. This augmentation came as an accidental result of Arthur losing his arm.

Arthur wanted to test that strength once again. His spiritual energy was released from his body, but using it caused a significant toll on his mind. Unlike his once-free use of this energy, his soul hasn"t been reshaped in this timeline.

His head was struck by extreme pain as incredible spiritual energy left his body and coiled around his arm. Arthur focused on fortifying his arm with spiritual power before using the Release Rune.

Golden mana intertwined with the blue energy, appearing like crackling thunder in a blue sky. Arthur swung his fist as the giant wave, almost a hundred meters tall, rushed toward him. Then, he struck the tsunami, and the resulting explosion was bigger than the earlier one.

BOOOOOOM!

Arthur was sent flying backward because of his punch, and the coast got sent in the opposite direction. His body slammed into the cliff before falling, and Arthur witnessed the ocean receding.

Arthur expected to push the tsunami back, but his attack even reversed it into the ocean. The beach turned into nothingness because of his strike, even though it was just the exploding spiritual energy.

Although his head was throbbing with pain, Arthur felt horrified and relieved about the destruction he brought. His safety would be more guaranteed through this, but the destruction he was capable of made him seem inhuman.

"This attack rivals the strength of an Astra-ranker," said Arthur as he gulped down and stared at his arm. Golden lightning was still crackling, and Arthur realized he couldn"t move it. It was tense like a block of hardwood.

His muscles have been overstimulated and can no longer relax or contract. This made this attack a trump card he needed to hide until all other measures failed. After that, Arthur left the ocean through a portal connected to the Shadow Meadow.

***

The Anodyne Gulf was one of the few places connected to the Great Blood Ocean, but it was safe. Its name stemmed from the legend that the G.o.ds watched this place, protecting it from monsters. Therefore, the empire paid no attention since no monsters dared to venture from it.

"The energy came from here," said a man standing on the cliff separating the beach from the wilderness. He stared at the coast and gulped down since the peaceful beach had turned into another cliff. An abyss formed beneath the beach, stretching deep into the ocean. "What in the world happened to this place?"

A disaster struck the once beautiful beach. Hartman was sent on a mission by the Light Emperor after the incident with Arthur Silvera, making him miss the last events in the capital. However, two days after the execution, Hartman was sitting in a forest when he felt the aura of Arthur Silvera explode from this direction.

"I rushed here as soon as possible, but no one is here. Did Arthur Silvera do this?" asked Hartman with a frown. Even as the Commander of Executors, it was the first time he had encountered such a scene.

Hartman was once a hunter that was picked up by the army. He lived half his life as a tracker in the great forests of Ilios, so he knew how to find his target. That was why the Light Emperor sent him to find that person.

After descending from the cliff, Hartman walked toward the beginning of the gash. It was a gap in the ground, at least fifty meters tell, starting from the beach. Whoever split the gulf like this did it from this spot.

There was a residue of mana and something else. Hartman could feel an astral blessing in this place, which might have been used in combination with the attack. This made him a bit relieved, but his fears couldn"t disappear.

As he looked around, Hartman found another anomaly. There were different mana residues in this place that belonged to someone else. He could tell through their concertation since other people used mana differently. It was like a fingerprint.

This meant that Arthur Silvera had allies. Hartman guessed them to be the women who appeared in the capital. If he was preparing for something like this, Hartman needed to rush his mission to find that person.

His doubts about the mission disappeared. Although the emperor was summoning a demon to handle a devil, it was better to befriend this man rather than fall to Arthur Silvera. As he was about to leave, Hartman paused.

Some mana moved in a particular spot, which he saw in the corner of his eye. Hartman walked toward the site and found that the s.p.a.ce seemed wrapped, although nothing was there. It took him a moment to realize that Arthur Silvera had teleported from this place.

"A rookie mistake," said Hartman with a smile before taking out a runic card. "Teleporting leaves unerasable tracks, which can pinpoint your location."

The runic card lit up as Hartman activated it in the distorted s.p.a.ce. After a few seconds, it revealed a set of coordinates, which was the current location of Arthur Silvera.

"The demon and I should pay him a visit."