Cosmic Peak

After getting two more pairs of claws and giving 400 gold coins 'protection fees', he left the Grokul Meadow and flew towards the Star-river kingdom's town.

There, he submitted six claws and got 1500 gold coins.

Afterward, he left the town again, but this time, he went around the meadow where there was a mountain and climbed it from behind.

From the top of that mountain, he watched the meadow where people were digging the ground.

"The leader of this company should have the highest wealth. However, I don't know if he is in this area," Aren murmured while watching. The area he was watching right now was also not the one where he first came to the meadow to dig because this mountain was not in that area.

This mountain was a part of a small mountain range that bordered this Grokul meadow.

'Well, let's observe them for a while,' Aren thought as he positioned himself inside some bushes and also used the <World Varnish> skill, making himself invisible and diffusing his presence as he became a part of the bush itself.

...

Twenty minutes later...

Aren observed everything he could observe with his Astral-X eyes and decided to target one of the people who was collecting gold coins.

'I wonder if I can take his loot after killing him like in a game? Hmm...I can only know after trying it once,' Aren thought as he went out of the bush and flew on his sword as he activated his skill <World Varnish> for the 5th time.

After coming out of the bush, he flew up on a tree and positioned himself for the attack. There was a seven hundred meters distance between him and his target.

He waited for two more minutes for his target to separate from his other companion before flying towards his target with full speed.

His hammer was also flying beside him.

*swoosh....boom.*

Everyone heard a loud boom as the Aren broke the sound barrier. Aren's target, a middle-aged man, turned back and saw a giant hammer coming straight towards him.

But before he could defend himself with a skill, the hammer hit him and...

*BOOOOOOOOOOOM...*

A large crate formed and Aren's target was dead.

*swoooooosh...*

Suddenly, Aren felt burning pain before a scream left his mouth. Without thinking twice, he flew in the north direction with his full speed.

'LEVEL UP!' Aren thought fanatically, adding 4 points to his constitution and 1 point to his soul.

-Body Health: [ 4,600/4,600 ]

Ignoring the notifications, Aren saw his right hand regrowing instantly.

However, another sharp pain shot to his left leg.

"Arghh...Kreee," Aren's eyes became bloodshot as he suppressed his scream and gritted his teeth. He looked back and saw a woman with a glowing red and grey bow in her hand.

He also saw two more arrows approaching him after his left leg was gone. Their speed was way faster than his flying speed.

However, Aren hurridly maneuvered as he barely dodged those arrows and continued flying north.

...

"He escaped. His aura indicated that he was just a mortal, but his speed was faster than any of us. Did your tracker arrow hit him?" A man who seemed to be the leader of this company spoke. He had a wolf belt and wore wild clothes.

The bow-woman nodded and then shook her head, "I hit him with my tracker arrow in his left leg, but...he was too weak."

"Uhh...I see. So even though the mark was imprinted, it was imprinted on his left leg, which...blew up."

"Yep. He also dodged my next two arrows nimbly...so we lost him for good now," the woman said with a nod.

"Boss! That bastard killed my brother! I want to take revenge!" A middle-aged man spoke while gritting his teeth, "not even my brother's corpse remained!"

"The power of his attack was really high for a mortal," the leader said with a frown. He then patted the middle-aged man whose brother died before saying, "I want to take revenge as well, but...we lost track of him. None of us are faster than him."

"Sigh, if only brother Junail was here," said the woman as she released a sigh.

"If my big brother was here, he could have caught that rat easily," the leader nodded.

"Leader, I-I want to go look for him," the middle-aged man said with an angry and hesitating expression, "he seems to be an otherworlder, and he is sure to grow faster. Once he reaches supreme or Exceed lifeform, we won't be able to take revenge."

"Fine," the leader nodded.

"Thank you, leader," the middle-aged man excitedly nodded as he started dashing in the same direction as Aren.

...

After flying for ten minutes straight, Aren descended at a waterfall and went behind it.

The waterfall was raging, so nobody could see through the thick waterfall if he hid behind it with naked eyes.

After taking a deep breath, he started sorting out his recent experience and seeing the notifications.

[ "Shatter" effect of Ikaros activated.]

[Supreme-2 human killed. 10,000 exp gained.]

[Inventory chest gained.]

[7450 gold coins gained. (50% of the gold coins in the inventory of the person you killed. ]

"First, the supreme-2 human gave me 10,000 Exp. This was way above a normal supreme-2 creature."

"Also, the "shatter" effect activated for the first time...well, even without it, that supreme-2 human wouldn't have survived my 300 mutant magic energy attack of the <Impact Burst> skill," Aren muttered as he looked at his Armalist Cloak's details.

[Armalist Cloak.]

-Effect 1: While the cloak is activated, Your natural control of Articule gears will be increased.

-Effect 2: You will gain a portion of your Articule Gears' power that will be converted to stats and some special buffs. [ Ikaros: +1 STR +2 CONT], [ Destructo: +13 STR +13 CONT], [ Oberon: +8 STR +9 AGI], [Vyrmend: +22 AGI, +4 CONT].

<Buffs>

-->Ikaros: Heavy weapons will have a chance to proc shatter effect, 0.01% chance of completely ignoring the enemy's physical defense.

-->Oberon: All your attacks will decrease your target's physical defense by 250.

-->Destructo: #$@&#%#$&

-->Vyrmend: Wind-based attacks will deal 10% less damage to you. Your attacks speed and movement speed increase by 10%.

'Well, most of the damage I dealt with the hammer was magic damage, so the "shatter" effect was not that useful,' Aren thought before he moved to the next thing, Gold coins.

He got 7540 gold coins, and in the later notification, he found out that he gained 50% of the gold coins possessed by the person he killed.

"Now, let's see what this Inventory chest is."

Aren took out the Inventory chest.

[Inventory Chest]

-Note 1: open it to get a random thing from the inventory of the person you killed.

-Note 2: Chance to get higher rarity things depends on the level gap between you and the person you killed. If you are higher level than the person you killed, you will get the least valuable thing.

-Note 3: 0 level difference-[ 0.01% chance to get the best thing.], 1-3 level difference-[1%-2% chance to get the best thing.], 4-9 level difference-[5% chance to get the best thing.], 10 level difference-[10% chance to get the best thing.], 11-100 level difference-[ 20% chance to get the best thing.], 111-999 level difference [50% chance to get the best thing.

After reading the details, Aren opened the inventory chest with anticipation.

"W-what the f...."

Aren was dumbfounded at the item he got from the inventory.