"I was wondering how will I return from this place, I guess that solves that." Zaen pocketed the artifact before heading into the darkness once again, "If I want to take care of the Special force, then I need to gain the strength to do so first."
His mind was made up. Survival in the other realm was difficult, but it wasn't impossible. After all, he had already survived for two days in here during his first mission. And he decided that he wasn't going to leave until it was an absolute necessity. For now, he had to level up as much as he possibly could without endangering himself.
"Let's just hunt the ghouls, level up a bit, and then find a building to use the key on."
***
Ten days later. Inside the Other realm...
[Total damage dealt: 1324]
[Tagger Ghoul HP: 0/1000]
[Tagger Ghoul killed! Exp +100]
[You've levelled up! Current level: 20]
[HP has increased by 100 points. Current HP: 3250]
[Your HP has been fully restored. Your wounds have been healed.]
[Total Exp: 50/2100]
[201/500 souls have been collected and stored with the Bloodlust Dagger.]
[Repeatative killing of common monsters has affected the number of souls earned.]
Zaen didn't know how long had it been since he stepped foot into this forsaken realm again. But he had been killing the Ghouls without taking a break. Once he started killing the ghouls, he didn't stop. He had become a possessed slaughterer, he was drenched in the blood of the hundreds of ghouls he had killed. Yet he didn't stop. He kept going even when his body was begging him to rest.
That was when he came across the Taggers. These ghouls were classed higher than the normal ghouls Zaen had been hunting till now. It wasn't difficult to identify these ghouls at all. They had their own distinctive bluish skin colour, compared to the reddish skin of the other ghouls. In place of limbs, Taggers had tentacles which they used as whips to keep their target away while injuring them simultaneously.
It was Zaen's bad luck that he found two Taggers at once and as a result, he had gotten himself stuck within these tentacles quite a few times. Each time the tentacles got a hold of him, he had to scape his skin off of that area to escape from them. He was forced to do that because even if he sliced the tentacles in half, they would simply regenerate. The Hooligan's gear was proved to be utterly useless while fighting these subspecies of ghouls as they peeled the supposed 'armour' off of Zaen's body like a banana.
Also, these ghouls could seemingly control a couple of hunter ghouls or up to six runner ghouls, which made it a bit more challenging to handle the ghouls together. However, they had a pretty bad defence stat, or maybe Zaen was a bit overpowered. Either way, once Zaen got close enough to them, they were dead. All it required was a clean hit on the forehead and that's it.
The experience was painful. But the pain was worth it. As he finally had what he wanted.
__
Item: Bone Chainmail
Type: Armour
Armour: +90
Rarity: Uncommon armour
Provides additional two slots to equip consumables/healing items/accessories.
Durability: 450
Effect(s):
• Grants the user a passive skill
Impenetrable: Reduces deadly damage once by 20%. Has a cooldown period of 4 days.
Crafting requirements:
5 ghoul nails (5/5 available in inventory)
2 Black bone (2/2 available in inventory)
Hunter's claws (10/10 available in inventory)
Craft this item?
Yes or No.
__
"Yes," Zaen said while wiping the contaminated blood off his face on his useless hoodie.
The Hooligan's hoodie had been torn to shreds and thus, wasn't useful for zaen anymore. The rest of the set wasn't in a good shape either, but Zaen didn't have any other choice. He did not have any other craftable armour to replace them, hence he had to keep on using them for a while.
It took a second for the chainmail to be crafted, and the next moment Zaen had equipped the sturdy white chainmail over his jersey. To be honest, the chainmail looked odd on his torso as it didn't go with the rest of his gears, but he wasn't there for a fancy dress competition. The chainmail was a piece of equipment to save his life. As long as it served its purpose, Zaen didn't care even if he had to dress up as a clown.
[You have registered a new monster in the index.]
"Right, I forgot about this..."
When Zaen hit level 15, he unlocked a new feature: The Index. It was basically a record used to store the information regarding the monsters he had killed. It was a useful tool as he would no longer require to remember the weakness of every type of ghoul he met.
The only concerning thing was the overwhelming number of types of monster slots present in the index. There were more than 250 slots in the index and so far Zaen had managed to discover a minuscule number of 7 ghouls only.
Furthermore, these monsters were then divided into eight different tiers based on the level of threat they posed. With each level having another subdivision among them. Namely, these tiers were, SS, S, A, B, C, D, E and F. Each of these tiers was then divided into two parts, major and minor. For example, the Hunter Ghoul and Runner Ghoul both belonged to the F tier, under which Hunter Ghoul was of F-major rank while Runner ghoul belonged to F-minor rank.
Zaen presumed there to be more subdivision or tiers within the pre-existing ones because according to his math, there was no way 259 monsters could be sorted into just 16 levels.
[You've found #5 slot monster, D-tier Minor ghoul: Tagger ghoul.]
"I think it's time to unlock a building." Zaen smiled as five, building keys materialised in his hands.
****
Author's note: I'll be adding another Auxiliary chapter to act as the index. It'll get updated whenever Zaen discovers a new monster.