If another tree sprite dies, the humans would then have a breather and start counter attacking. Caizher vanished from everyone's sight again causing the tree sprites to be irritated
The remaining tree sprites joined hands and from the middle of them, intense green light condensed causing Sheena and the other's faces to change
"Scatter!!" Sheena shouted on her team. They have a certain level of teamwork and immediately did as what they were told. As Sheena's voice was so loud, even Caizher managed to hear it
The man used a little bit of his darkness to spy above ground and saw the tree spirits condensing huge amounts of mana. However, this just made him smirk
A single darkness tentacle came out from the ground and attacked one of the tree sprites. The tree sprites were shocked and didn't thought that someone will attack them this time
The death of one of the sprites made the condensed mana unstable and it exploded!
Caizher's darkness was destroyed and the explosion also affected the ground. The man was forced to sink deeper but more of his darkness was still destroyed
Fortunately, after cultivating for weeks, he's much bigger than his previous self now. Even then, Caizher still lose a huge chunk of darkness
After some time, Caizher finally emerged from the ground and saw cracks around him and even the trees were obliterated. A testimony at how powerful the tree sprites' combine attack were
Caizher finally has the time to check the 'drops' and picked up one of the green stones. Caizher can feel mana on it but not the usual mana stones. The mana on the green stones undergo a change in nature giving it attributes
Caizher tried devouring it but his stomach rejected it. His mastery on "Devour" is still weak and only pure mana stones without any attributes can be devour
This made the man disappointed as he didn't have any use for the drops this time
"Oy! Come here!" Caizher called out to Sheena and the woman grumbled before walking towards the man
"What is it?"
"I'll sell these stones to you. You have a research department or, whatsoever right? Since we don't know what their uses are, I'll sell it to you for only ten mana stones each!" Caizher offered
He's the one who was mostly responsible for killing the tree spirits while the humans just defended themselves. This is just fair
"You know if you become the base's leader you will have access to a lot of resources" Sheena said while rolling her eyes. Being a base's leader has a lot of benefits!
If Caizher is the leader, he won't need to barter with this little mana stones
"Nah, I don't like too much responsibilities! I love being a free man" Freedom is important to Caizher. That is one of the reasons why he stayed at a small village before without joining any base
"Whatever, but trust me, the citizens will always think of you as their leader!" Sheena said and took the small mana stones from her and her team's backpack. It has all of their loots for this "dungeon dive"
Caizher happily accepted the mana stones and devour it on the spot to be converted into dark energies. The mana stones entering his body creeped out Sheena but with all her interactions with the man, she wasn't that surprise anymore
"We'll head back outside the dungeon to let the research team examine these stones. Do you want to come with us?" Sheena offered as being with Caizher will keep them safer in this dangerous dungeon
"No thanks, I still want to explore here" Caizher called out for his dark wolf and used it as a mount again before heading deeper inside the dungeon and it made Sheena quite helpless
Caizher continued on his way and can't believe how big the forest is. He tried climbing the trees to see the end of it but only saw endless trees
As he continued on his way, although the enemies are mostly of the same species but they became stronger and stronger. Caizher even come to the point that even he, needed to flee while abandoning his weapon and mount
"I'm still too weak. I need to continue cultivating!"
-----
February 1 Year 2021
Caizher was back at 'his' little village that was previously owned by the goblins. Or rather, the goblins still owned it as they respawned every day but Caizher and his minions will kill all of them as soon as they arrived
The man is currently inside the small hut on his original form. Caizher condensed his body to his human appearance and sighed
"The more I trained, the harder it is to advance!" Caizher complained. Even after a whole month, he only advanced to the mid-Tier 2 of Servant Rank
But of course, in the surface he's only at that Rank but just like the more powerful monsters in the Dungeon, his power is above his level
After all, at Servant Rank, it was hard to judge one's power just base on their level. Different races will have different amounts of mana, body strength, magical talent, and etc.
Caizher exited the hut and saw his growing army of dark goblins. He currently has sixty dark goblins including the ones that explored the dungeon. Their numbers would be higher if not for Caizher being lazy
Every time that the goblins respawned he will mostly let his dark goblins kill the normal goblins causing a lot of casualties as the difference in power wasn't that high. Normal goblins are too weak now for Caizher and he's lazy to even kill them
Caizher was in time as a group of goblins walk towards him. Some of them were holding bags that they gave to Caizher
The man happily swallowed the mana stones to be devour and be converted to dark energies. These goblins become his workers/slave and even when he was training on his own, Caizher had a steady supply of mana stones and even corpse
Caizher exited the goblin village to train his skills now. If he's just cultivating, the hut is enough but testing skills are different
He went to the area where he always trained and although this happened a lot of times now, he's still amazed that the trees he destroyed before are good as new now
Caizher readied himself and looked at the trees with seriousness on his eyes. "[Darkness Style: Breath of Death!]" Caizher aggressively inhaled and his chest expanded as if it was about to burst
When the man opened his mouth, dark breath came out from his mouth that advanced on the trees in front of him. Any trees that was hit looks as if their life was drained on them and turned into ashes
However, Caizher's expression changed as a hole appeared on his chest and some of the dark colored breath leaked out from it
Caizher stopped his attack and dispersed the air and mana on his chest. In anger, Caizher kicked the tree on his side
"I still cannot master it!" Caizher complained to himself and gave the tree another kick again
Breath of Death is one of the skills inside his manual. It was one of the stronger skills but it was also hard to master it
It's a skill that made the users to inhale the surrounding air and when it is inside their body, the user will then infuse it with mana that has undergo a change in nature and become darkness attributed mana. The user will fuse air and darkness mana in a specific rhythm and manner to have the effect of giving death to the enemies
Humans can also use this skill but the risk is very high to them. If they are not careful, it was easy to damage their lungs or they might even explode. Even if they don't explode, darkness attributed mana might still corrupt their lungs
Caizher has an easier time in this skill as his whole body is composed of darkness, he doesn't have any fragile inner organs. However, to master it is still very hard!
At first mana doesn't have any attributes but then you will change its nature. Most humans and even Caizher only changed mana's nature when it was already outside their bodies. But to use the Breath of Death, the change must occur inside the body
Caizher doesn't have much problem on that area now after lots of practice. But the hard part is infusing the air with darkness mana as it needed to be done in a specific manner. Even after he fused the two, he still needs to control it so that it won't rampage inside his body
Just like always, a hole appeared on his chest where the breath of darkness leaked out. If he was still a human, he would no doubt die because of that
"One more time!" Caizher shouted. He may have been given a cheat but this is still reality! Everything you wants to have, needed you to work very hard on it!
Caizher is fortunate to have a powerful body and manual, but everything else required his talent and effort!
Caizher inhaled a sharp breath again causing his chest to bulge. "[Darkness Style: Breath of Death!]" Caizher shouted on his mind and the darkness attributed mana fused with the air in a certain manner
The air turned black and Caizher opened his mouth to finally exhaled the air. The trees were once again taking the brunt of his attack and their life was taken away from them and they turned into ashes
However, although he was very determined, reality is still a cruel. A hole appeared on Caizher's chest again and the breath leaked out from it once more. But there was at least some improvement as the hole is smaller than before
Caizher gritted his teeth "Again!" He shouted before trying the skill again
He did this repeatedly and made the hole smaller. He only stopped when his dark goblins gave him a mental message
Caizher immediately run to his little village with a dark face. When he arrived, he saw a group of humans nonchalantly killing his goblins
"STOP!" Caizher shouted causing the humans to look at his direction
However, it seems like the humans doesn't recognized him and didn't listened to him
"Are you deaf?!" Caizher said angrily and a black dagger made from mana formed on his hand that he threw towards one of the humans
The dagger penetrated a man's shoulder causing him to scream in pain. Of all the elements, darkness is one of the tops in giving pain!
The humans were angered for being attacked by Caizher and their eyes turned to look at the man
"What do you want? How dare you hurt one of us?" The what it looks like their leader said angrily while staring daggers at Caizher
"I told you to stop, why didn't you listen?!" Caizher asked back with a cold voice
"And why should we listen to you?!" The man didn't back down much to Caizher's annoyance
"Because those goblins are my slaves! They are not a part of this dungeon!" After becoming dark goblins, they are not under the dungeon anymore and Caizher has full control over them
"Oh? Then that explains why they didn't drop any mana stones. I thought they are special"
"Whatever, just pay me mana stones for my loss and get away from here" For Caizher, them, only paying him mana stones is still a loss to him
The mana stones needed to be converted by his soul first before becoming dark energies. Even after the conversion, Caizher still needs goblin corpse and turn them into dark goblins one by one
However, his words angered this group of people "Why should we give you mana stones? We earned these because of our hard work!"
Caizher doesn't like much nonsense and made a sword from his mana. "It seems like you don't know me. But anyone in the base who recognize me knows how merciless I can be" Caizher said while playing with the sword on his hand
"Oh? We are quite new to the base. Care to explain to us how merciless you can be?" The man ridiculed and his team readied their weapons to kill in moments' notice