Zach continued his search for the stairs in this odd forest, he found even more corpses of those tigers and every now and then he stumbled upon living ones.
Like he thought the first living one he encountered was one of the most powereful, he encountered another 6 of them and each of these were at the high rank 1, their speed gave him a bit of trouble but nothing more, he collected their souls and got 600 EXP from them which made him level up.
Zach looked through his status wondering about how he would use his System points. After thinking for a while Zach finally decided to put 10 System points in Intelligence in oreder to make his dantian cultivation break through the low rank 2. When he looked at his stats Zach was worried about his physical cultivation being behind and wanted to improve it as soon as possible.
[Host status:
Level : 17 (physique : mid rank 1 soul : low rank 2 dantian : low rank 2)
EXP : 100/1300
Title : The one who cheats Death (Cooldown : 3 months)
HP : 300/300
Mana : 500/500
Strengh : 20
Speed : 20
Stamina : 20
Spirit : 50
Intelligence : 50
Charisma : 15
System points : 2
Skills : |Death from the shadows| lvl 1
Hell fire| lvl 2 : 2-50 mana per minute
Death gaze| lvl 2 : A quarter of host's mana; minimum 20
Souls : 73]
'I am gaining power quickly and I know I won't be able to keep up this pace in the future but I can't have any aspect of my cultivation lagging behind.' Zach knew that even if his physical stats weren't up to the others he had an absurd power for someone in the mid rank 1.
However in this dungeon he realized that his physique even while being very powerful for its rank would eventually be a problem as he was already encountering peak rank 1 beast on the third floor and only god knew how many floor this dungeon had. All of this without talking about the mysterious person ahead of him.
Zach started to doubt his luck, he was searching for the stairs for 25 minutes already and he still didn't find them. His doubts about his luck grew even more and he started to curse when he found himself in front of a tiger whose level of danger it was giving off was greater than the peak rank 1 he encountered first.
Zach readied himself like the first one he fought, he flexed his knees, scythe in hand and ready if it decided to rush him. Zach saw the tiger opening his maw and thought that it was about to rush but out of his expectations the tiger didn't rush but launched an air blade from its maw.
Zach was taken aback from this as it was the first tiger he saw that could do this. He reacted as fast as he could and jumped on the side but because this attack was out of his expectation he got a deep cut on his left arm.
A great deal of his blood was continually flowing out from the cut and it seemed to put the tiger in an excited state, Zach could see the eagerness in its eyes.
He thought about why could this tiger launch air blade and suddenly he had a revelation 'If they are all extremely quick it's because they are beast of the wind element. This one should just have a better handling of its element and be even more quick, it will be far from easy but I can do it.'
Seeing with how much ease it manipulated the wind Zach now understood why he felt a greater threat coming from that tiger.
Zach had an injury which won't trouble him too much but he had to reduce the hemorrhage, he tore the left sleeve of his shirt and started to tie it on the wound. While he was doing, this he never let the tiger out of his eyes and as he expected at the instant he started to tie his wound the tiger started to rush towards him.
Zach stopped it in his tracks launching a death gaze on it, it worked and the tiger stopped but Zach got quickly disappointed when he saw that the tiger was once again ready to fight without any fear after only an instant, even shorter than the bear he encoutered a day ago.
'Fuck ! Because of my blood it entered a sort of crazed state and don't even fear death. Now I have to do without this precious trump card'
Unfortunately for Zach, Death gaze became less and less efficient on each use and this use would have been the only usefull one because if he used it again Zach doubted that the tiger would even stop. The positive side was that Zach had the time to finish tying his sleeve on the wound before it started running towards him again.
He saw it was coming and like he had guessed the tiger was faster than any other he saw in this forest.
This time, to dodge the incoming tiger he jumped high in the air and the top of the tiger head brushed Zach's feet, Zach while in the air slashed down with his scythe and managed to make a deep cut in the tiger back. 'An eye for an eye.' Zah thought, a wide grin on his face.
The tiger let out a loud roar, while the excitation could be seen on the tiger a few moments ago it was no more, now the only thing that could be seen was rage and anger. It jumped back and launched 3 air blade one aftere another, this time Zach was ready after seeing it jump back he knew what it would do, he dodged the first 2 and block the third with his scythe.
'It's my time now.' Zach summoned a few balls of hell fire putting 2 mana points in each and launched them on the tiger.
The tiger was confused as it never imagined that this weak being could summon an element like him, after all it was one of the most powerful of its kin but a few days ago a being like the one he had before him slaughtered most of them and it was now the most powerful.
After this short confusion the tiger made use of its speed to avoid all the fireballs but what it didn't see was that Zach was coming closer, his scythe also covered in flames, once it dodged the last fireball it realized that Zach was only a few meters in front of it and slightly panicked.
It saw the incoming slash of Zach's scythe and the first thing he thought about to defend itself was to launch an air blade, but this time it would put even more power in this one.
It waited the last moment to release the air blade it had loaded, it collided with the scythe, Zach felt the great power behind the air blade as when the two collided his scythe almost flew off his hands.
However eventually Zach sliced through this air blade and made a cut on the tiger head ripping off one of its eyes. The air blade saved its life, otherwise Zach would have sliced his skull in two pieces however it was now an one-eyed tiger.
After getting wounded the tiger jumped back and launched hastily a few air blades, Zach blocked most of them with his scythe and the ones who hit him only left small cuts, it was clear that the tiger was exhausted. Zach could hear the frequent and low howl of pain, he approached it slowly and beheaded it, it was too exhausted to fight back.
Zach got the usual notifications, this tiger was a peak rank 1 being, he collected its souls and he decided to take a break in order for his wounds to heal a bit, he would return on the search for the stairs when his deep cut would stop bleeding.
He sat on lotus position and started to meditate and calm himself, he was almost certain that this one was the most powerful still alive.
He doubted that without searching every nook and cranny of this forest another tiger would stumble upon him and even if there was one he was still paying attention to his environment.
After half an hour Zach's wounds stopped bleeding and he had replenished all his mana, he untied the piece of clothe he tied to his arm and threw it on the ground, it was stuffed in his blood and wouldn't be anymore useful.
His cut was still of a beatiful red color and he knew he had to be careful as it could open again in another fight of high intensity.
He looked around him, he hadn't searched in front of him and on his left, eventually he went forward still seeking the stairs.
After a few minutes of walking he ended in front of what could be descirbed as a bloodshed, Zach was shocked and started to get nervous, there was at least 50 corpses of tiger and the odd yellow grass of this forest was no more, instead the grass became dark red.
'The soil absorded so much blood that this part of the forest is poluted and may never go back to its odd looking color. More importantly who the fuck could do something like this.' Zach was thinking about this and had a grave look, he hoped that whoever did this would be either dead or wouldn't choose to fight him because he was certain that he couldn't do the same.
Zach put those thoughts at the back of his head because not far away from this slaughter he could see a rectangular hole, he approached it and indeed it was the stairs, he could now proceed towards the fourth floor of this dungeon.
Zach would enter another floor and he didn't know if the being in this floor would be even more powerful than those of the third floor, for now Zach was walking towards the unknown.