The thing that everyone needed to clean was the dead body. All the new explorers joining the group helped clean the campsite.
Cade managed to kill many Boarman but the Boarman also managed to kill many explorers. It was a huge loss to both sides. However, explorers lose more than Boarman.
Rico told Cade to rest while he would handle the cleaning job because Cade had gone through a rough day.
With the healing skills from Viola, Cade's injuries healed fast. He only needed to rest to restore his stamina. Looking at all the people he knew was safe, Cade felt relieved.
Cade was the most surprised by Shihoon. Shihoon said that he did not want to enter the world dungeon but he ended up inside the dungeon after he saw that there was a chance for them to close the world dungeon.
However, Shihoon also said that he was surprised to find that there were many explorers who died for everyone to reach this point.
Most of the explorers did not die during the fight of destroying the accompanying core but it was during the normal fight. It can be said that those that survived the normal fight were elites among the explorers.
***
"Now, all we need to do is wait for the last accompanying core to be destroyed," thought Cade while he sat under a tree. With the arrival of Aera and Jonathan's group, there were more people in the camp now.
Looking at the view of so many humans moving around in the camp, Cade felt calm and relieved. He was happy that many people were still alive though he only knew a few of them.
Cade checked his stats and he smiled when he saw that he had leveled up. From level 14 to level 17. His level increased by 3.
"Finally, I can learn another bloodline skill," thought Cade excitedly. He had been waiting to reach level 15 for a while because he wanted to learn the slime soul bloodline skill.
Before he learned the slime soul skill, Cade used the stat points he got from leveling up to increase his dexterity stat.
He finally decided to balance his stat a bit. He would still give priorities to vitality and endurance but he decided to make sure that other stats were not too low.
In the current situation, Cade needed to make sure that he did not have a glaring weakness. Other than his lack of experience and skills and low speed, Cade was fine in other areas.
After distributing the stat points, Cade upgraded his linked equipment with the remaining magic crystals he had.
Due to the appearance of the variant Boarman with magic skills, Cade wanted to increase his equipment with magic defense stat. However, due to insufficient magic crystals, he decided to not do that.
Even without high protection against the magic attack, Cade calculated that he will be fine. At the moment, Cade had only met one Boarman variant with magic skills.
That meant that there were not many of them. The possibility of Cade meeting one was low and he concluded that it was fine to upgrade the other linked equipment.
After Cade had finished upgrading everything, he took out a bloodline skill book from his storage. He held the skill book of the bloodline skill – slime soul.
Bloodline soul skill was a support skill. When used, a few of the user's stat would increase to strengthen the user.
Due to the skill not producing any backlash to the user, many explorers preferred to use the soul skill compared to the transform skill. The only disadvantage of the soul skill was the time limit.
However, even with the time limit, the soul skill was considered to be more superior compared to the transform skill.
Cade told the system he wanted to learn the slime soul skill but to Cade's surprise, [Without the body of the slime, the soul cannot be used. Unable to learn the bloodline skill – slime soul] the system sent out a notification.
"What? Then, how can I learn the soul skill? I am not a slime and-" Cade suddenly stopped talking as he realized something.
He wanted to protest to the system that he was a human and he did not have the body of the slime but he refrained from doing that. Cade wanted to ask the system too how in the world other people with bloodline skills learned the soul skill when they were humans but he already knew the answer to that.
"Do I need to learn the transform skill first?" asked Cade. According to the notification from the system, he needed to have the body of the slime to learn the soul skill. If Cade learned the transform skill, he would be able to transform into slime and that meant he gained the body of slime.
[Yes. Without the right vessel, the soul cannot be retained. The human body is different compared to the slime body and thus it cannot hold the slime soul.] said the system.
"Sigh~" Cade sighed as he felt that the transform skill was useless to him at the moment.
Transforming into a slime during a fight was not a good strategy because slime was weak. Other than that, the debuff after the transformation was bad too.
If Cade was to transform into a slime, he would need to bear the consequence of lowered stat point after the transformation for 24 hours and that would be extremely bad especially when he was currently in a fight.
"If I need to use the transform skill, it needed to be as a last resort," thought Cade while he looked at the skill book in his hand. Cade sighed again and looked at the camp.
Cade took a deep breath and learned the slime bloodline skill – slime transformation. His skill list updated and he could see what the skill could do.
According to the skill description, he would transform to slime and some of his stat would increase during the transformation and the mastery of related slime skill would also increase faster upon use during transformation.
"Oh~ the skill mastery effect is quite good but since I have my link growth skill, this is not that good to me," thought Cade. Even if his mastery would increase faster, he could increase them much faster with magic crystals.
So, in other words, the transform skill was not something usable to Cade at the moment. If he used the skill, he would become the weakest monster in the universe and after he ended the transformation, he would get 24 hours debuff on all of his stats.
"Even with the new skill, there is not much change in me. I am still weak and I cannot do much either," Cade was disappointed with this new development.
He thought that he would be able to learn the soul skill which would increase his fighting power but he was unable to do so.
Cade had already imagined how much stronger he would become with the soul skill and he was extremely disappointed that he could not learn the skill.
With nothing else to do, Cade decided to help the others cleaning the camp. While cleaning the camp, the system suddenly sent out a notification.
[The last accompanying core destroyed] said the system. [The main core will appear now]
Everyone looked at each other and they all smiled. The same with Cade. He also sighed in relief that they successfully completed their mission.
"Now, we just need to find the main core…" thought Cade but suddenly, the ground lightly shook. "An earthquake?!" said Cade while he looked around.
At first, Cade and everyone in the camp thought that the earthquake would stop soon but the shaking became stronger and stronger.
The ground shook too much. The trees around them swaying heavily like they were hit with the typhoon.
Everyone tried to take cover but they were unable to move due to the shake. Those that could fly decided to rise from the ground to escape from the earthquake.
"Damn it!" said Cade as he tried to stand up but he could not do that. Every time he tried to stand, he fell to the ground. There was nothing he could do and Cade summoned his linked equipment to protect himself.
Cade looked around and he saw the ground breaking and splitting. Some people fell into the fissure but no one could save them because no one could move.
Suddenly, Cade saw from afar that there was some ground that started leaving the ground and rose to the sky. "What the?" Cade was shocked to see that and the ground that he was on also suddenly rose to the sky.
The process went on for 30 minutes before everything calmed down. Cade looked around but all he saw was the blue sky and some other explorers nearby.
Cade made sure that the ground was stable before he stood up. When Cade stood, he could see that islands were floating around and the ground he stood on was a small floating island.
Cade ran to the edge of the island and gasped at the view. "This is like a fantasy world!"