Chapter 8 - Madness
The hunter carried Wayne on his shoulder and ran as fast as possible. Wayne looked behind him and saw many crazy looking blue pythons chasing after them. There were only forty to fifty of them at the beginning but a few minutes later, there were hundreds of them.
Wayne was paled looking at that many blue pythons. They were not a normal blue python too. From that only encounter Wayne had earlier, he knew he stood zero chance of winning against the blue python.
"Madness… is it some kind of form for the monsters or are they going mad?" Wayne thought. He never heard of that term before and when he heard the hunter talking in his comms, he knew that it did not sound like good news.
Wayne glanced at the massive group of crazy blue python chasing after them. Suddenly, a few of them disappeared. Wayne knew what had happened!
"Sir! Some of them are coming! Fast!" Wayne shouted at the hunter carrying him. Even so, the hunter's arm carrying the big blade had already raised in the air and the blade turned massive as earlier.
"I know!" The hunter replied. Without waiting the blue pythons appeared, the hunter swung the massive blade horizontally 360 degrees. Suddenly, the blue pythons appeared but they were cut by the blade and died.
"Whoa!" Wayne was shocked. "Is this the strength of the real hunter? I wonder if he has completed the first layer?" Wayne thought. He thought that the hunter guarding the examinees would be slightly stronger than the examinees but he was wrong.
The hunter that was carrying him was strong. He did not even look when he killed that many blue pythons as if he knew where they would appear which might be true.
Even so, something else happened after the blue python was killed that perplexed Wayne. Rather than dying normally like normal monsters, the 'madness' monsters turned to dust when they were killed. "Is it because of the 'madness'? or because of the skill used by the hunter?" Wayne wondered.
The blue python kept disappearing and then, the hunter swung his blade and killed many of them. The situations continued for a few minutes before Wayne asked, "Sir, I thought that we can teleport directly back to base?"
"We need to reach the checkpoint first before we can use the teleportation. The first location you were teleported to on the first day. Other than that, it is useless to use teleport when madness is nearby. If they teleport together with us, it will cause a huge problem. You see yourself how crazy they are," the hunter explained while his hand was busy killing the 'vanishing' blue python.
Wayne nodded. He understood what the hunter meant. He looked towards the blue pythons and he felt fear. "It looks like soldiers of giant ants chasing after us," thought Wayne because there were too many of them.
They were not in the hundreds anymore. Possibly thousands of them. "Can we escape from here?" Wayne was worried. Wayne looked above and he was shocked to see many winged blue pythons chasing after them too.
Wayne finally met a mutant blue python but he saw them not in peace. With the ground and air filled with the crazy monsters, there was nowhere else they could go.
"Damn it!" The hunter shouted. He also knew the severity of the situation. The hunter activated his comms immediately to call for help. With that much madness after him and Wayne, there was no way they could escape.
"SOS! We urgently need help now! Thousands of madness are chasing after us. Ground and air!" The hunter shouted through his comms and his hands got busier swinging the blade because more and more of the blue pythons were 'vanishing' and appearing to kill them.
"Helps on the way," said a voice through the comms, and in a second, a man appeared a kilometer away from them floating in the air. Wayne could not see the floating man because his face was at the back of the running hunter.
The hunter saw the man floating in the air and he was happy. "Use your fastest speed. I am going to blast all these things to oblivion," a voice appeared through the comms. "Got it," said the hunter, and suddenly, his body was filled with mana and he dashed like a mad man.
Wayne was shocked at the sudden speed. Both of them passed the floating man and Wayne finally saw that hunter. The floating hunter emitted massive energy and it attracted the attention of the blue pythons.
They stopped chasing after Wayne and the hunter and focused on the floating hunter. The floating hunter looked serious and three layers of the massive ring appeared behind his back and in the middle of the ring was a cultivation map with a shape of a dragon.
Wayne was shocked and he stared at the floating hunter attentively. "A hunter at the third layer," mumbled Wayne. He never once met a hunter or explorer at the first layer and now, he met someone far above that.
"ROAR!!!!" The floating man roared and a massive shockwave blasted all the blue pythons to smithereens. Wayne was extremely shocked when all the crazy blue pythons disappeared in one attack of the floating hunter.
"Line clear. Use the teleporter now," a voice came through the comms. The hunter replied, "Roger," he dashed towards the checkpoint and used the teleporter.
The floating hunter stared far into the horizon. He activated the comms and said, "I am going to kill the dungeon boss. Hurry up with the evacuation. We need to close this dungeon."
"Roger!"
"There has been a lot of 'madness' recently," said the floating man and he flew somewhere and killed all the blue pythons he met on the way without sparing them once.
The hunter and Wayne arrived at the entrance of the dungeon. "Get out of this dungeon. Monica is waiting outside," said the hunter. Wayne nodded and passed through the gate. Before he went through the gate, he saw the small town in the dungeon was in chaos as everyone seemed to rush to flee the dungeon.
"The 'madness' must be bad news," thought Wayne and he got out of the dungeon. Once he got out, a hunter led him to the examinees' group and it looked like not all of them were there yet. They waited for half an hour until everyone arrived.
From the look of them, Wayne knew they had gone through a lot of things. Wayne was not sure if they encountered the 'madness' but their haggard look made him know that they encountered difficulties.
"Well, everyone is here. I am sure some of you already know what has happened and because of that, we need to end the first part of the test early. As for the second part, we will change location," said Monica and she asked, "Any questions?"
Wayne raised his hand and asked, "What is 'madness'?" He had no idea what was 'madness' but he got the general idea of what they were. Just by the name called by the hunter, he knew the monsters were going crazy.
"Madness is a phenomenon where monsters become bloodthirsty and crazy. They will not care about their lives and attack anything with energy in their bodies except against other madness monsters. They will always attack non-madness creatures, us includes," explained Monica.
"Once a monster becomes madness, their power will rise to another rank and in this situation, the madness blue python is as strong as iron rank monsters… peak iron rank monsters" said Monica shocking many of the examinees including Wayne.
Wayne finally knew he stood no chance against the madness blue python. "I will die if not because of the hunter guarding me," Wayne gulped and he knew the severity of the situation.
"Not only that, once a monster becomes madness, like a virus, but other monsters in the dungeon will also become madness too. The madness phenomenon happened so fast. Research has said that one madness can give birth to 100 madness in one second," said Monica with a serious face.
Everyone gasped. Wayne was not the only one who encountered the madness but he was the first person to encounter one. Others met the madness too and fear could be seen on their faces because they went through a similar situation as Wayne.
"They rarely appear so you don't need to worry much about it. You guys are slightly unlucky to meet them today," said Monica. "Anyway, we will continue with the next part of the test in another dungeon. Let's move on."
After that, they were teleported to another dungeon and started the second part of the test.
67th Winter Year 2500.
The second part of the test went smoothly without much problem and Wayne and the group he was in passed through the test with flying color. He did not absorb more of the cultivation gem but collected them for later use.
He was grouped with four other examinees and in the group, he was undoubtedly the strongest. The others had absorbed a lot of cultivation gems during the first part of the test but they were far weaker compared to Wayne who only absorbed five normal rank cultivation gems.
Wayne knew that they must have learned inferior cultivation techniques and considering the situation with the madness, Wayne was worried about them. Not only the group members but the whole of humanity.
According to Monica, the madness was a rare phenomenon. Even so, Wayne got a tingling that what she said was not the truth. She concealed some information probably because she did not want the examinees to fill with fear and also, they were yet a full-fledged hunter.
"Maybe, I need to find someone trustable and spread the fixed cultivation technique," thought Wayne. "If they can get the written techniques, with human creativity, we can create stronger cultivation techniques. Relying on the technique dropped by the monsters is not reliable."
Wayne was not greedy or anything. Due to how he was raised, he was a kind guy. Sometimes naïve too but he was not stupid. He knew that even if his intention was good, others might not.
Even if he wanted to spread the knowledge, he would need someone he could trust and powerful enough to not be threatened by others. Be that as it may, Wayne had no one like that around him. He could ask his real family but he had yet to reveal his identity.
Wayne wanted humanity to become strong. There were many things humans had yet to achieve since the appearance of monsters. The most glaring reason for the late development was due to power.
The human was still weak. How strong would one need to be was unknown to Wayne but from what he had gone through, he had a feeling that humans were far from the real peak power. Wayne's Precious Touch might be one of the answers to this.
As the tests ended, Wayne got his hunter license and he was happy that he was in the top 100 examinees. Though he used superior cultivation techniques and skills, he was not the best in the exam.
He knew that a hunter and explorer power did not rely only on cultivation techniques and skills. Many other factors contributed to the power of a hunter and explorer.
Wayne was now officially a G rank hunter. If he wanted to raise the rank of his hunter, he would need to do a lot of missions issued by the Hunter Association. Once he completed many missions, he would be able to raise the rank.
With his status as G rank hunter, Wayne could now enter any dungeon he wanted. There were no restrictions as to what dungeon he could enter but if he entered a dungeon far above what he could afford, the risk was him to bear.
Wayne was not that stupid to enter the silver rank dungeon when his overall power was normal rank. That was stupidity and he knew his limitations. Wayne decided to rest for a day and went to a dungeon before the high academy started.
The high academy entrance exam day would be on the 90th of Winter every year. Wayne had less than thirty days to strengthen himself before the start of the high academy. He decided to train in the dungeon before the start of the entrance exam.
Once he got home, Wayne started cleaning as he had left the house for more than 20 days. It was dusty and he was not a fan of dusty homes. He was fine in the dungeon because that was not his house.
After he finished cleaning, he went for a shower and had his dinner. After that, he skimmed through his harvest from the two dungeons he entered for the hunter exam. He got a lot of things and he was happy for the harvest.
The second part of the test was done in the iron scorpion dungeon. Though the scorpion was iron, they were not iron rank monsters. The dungeon was a normal rank similar to the Blue Python dungeon.
Wayne harvested a lot of things from the iron scorpion dungeon. He collected a lot of cultivation gems. Due to the test being in a group, he hunted more than when he was alone. Thus, Wayne gets more cultivation gems than in the blue python dungeon.
He got 35 cultivation gems in the blue python dungeon but in the iron scorpion dungeon, he got 60 normal rank cultivation gems. Wayne used 20 of those crystals to upgrade his storage and for the rest of the cultivation gems, he had his plan.
Wayne wanted to combine the gems to increase its rank. He had this plan since inside the blue python dungeon. The knowledge was in his head but he could not execute it because he needed to slightly increase his power so that he could hunt more monsters.
With Multiplication, he could fuse ten normal rank cultivation gems to create an iron rank cultivation gem. If he wanted to create a bronze rank cultivation gem, he would need to fuse ten iron rank cultivation gems.
Since Wayne had forty normal rank cultivation gems, he could create four iron rank cultivation gems. Wayne did not waste his time and used Precious Touch, Multiplication on the forty normal rank cultivation gems.
The fusion went on without a hitch and Wayne obtained four iron rank cultivation gems. Since the gem was one rank higher than the normal rank gem, the time it took to absorb it was higher too. Wayne planned to absorb it later. He put away the four iron rank cultivation gems and took out the skill books, technique books, and essences.
Wayne fixed all the skill books and technique books. Scanned them and stored the data on his laptop. After that, he did nothing else to the skill books and technique books. He had no use of them at the moment and decided to keep it for later.
Wayne could not sell them because he had fixed the skills and techniques. He made a dumb mistake there. Nothing he could do as the thing had happened.
After that, his focus fell on the essences. The most precious things he got during the test. Yes, the essence was rare and the one sold on the market was super expensive. The essence was not an item drop. It was something produced by the monsters manually. Essence could be considered a treasure because of its rarity and function.
Humans could produce the essence too by using high technology and squishing everything they could from the monster body. The cost of producing low-grade essence was expensive and the high-grade essence was astronomical.
Due to the cost of producing them, the price of them in the market was sky high too. Most hunters and explorers opted to find one in the dungeons and special dimension.
Be that as it may, Wayne's Precious Touch made it easy for him to obtain essence. The essence he could produce was based on the power of the monsters. Since he was in normal rank dungeons, all the essences he extracted were G- to E grades.
They were low grades but that was not a problem with Wayne because with Addition he could raise the grade of the essences.
From the blue python dungeon, Wayne got three different essences. They were the snake essence, blue python essence, and water essence. From the iron scorpion dungeon, Wayne got another three essences. They were the scorpion essence, iron essence, and iron scorpion essence.
From Wayne's observation, one species of monsters could only have three different types of essences. He had extracted tens of them and all of them yielded the same essences.
Without wasting much time, Wayne used Addition and created SSS+ grade essences. Even so, Wayne decided to use the snake and scorpion essence giving him two new talents at SSS+ grade. Wayne wanted to use the water essence but stopped because he had a better idea which might need some time to achieve.
Wayne chose the snake and scorpion talent because they were general similar to body talent. With the two talents, if Wayne decided to cultivate them, he could learn any snake and scorpion skills without any restrictions.
As for the blue python and iron scorpion essence, they were too specific and his skill range would be restricted. He did not want that. Specific and more focused skills had its advantage but Wayne did not want that. He could still use them and get the talent without using them but he did not want his talent list to get overcrowded with things he did not want.
Wayne planned to auction the SSS+ iron scorpion and blue python essence once he entered the high academy. He could get a lot of money from selling them because their quality was at the peak.
As for the iron essence and water essence, Wayne had another plan for them. The water essence would not take long before Wayne reached his target but the iron essence would take much longer time or Wayne might not even need it in the future.
With all of that out of the way, Wayne decided to absorb the iron rank cultivation gem. If one normal rank would need one hour to absorb, the iron rank would need two hours to absorb. So, with four iron rank cultivation gems, Wayne would need eight hours to finish absorbing them.
Wayne stored all the books and essences in his storage and started absorbing the gems. Eight hours later, four more points in his cultivation map shone and his status increased by 48 grades. All his status leveled up to 4.
"It is late," said Wayne and he went to sleep.