"Okay, let's go!" declared Alex, lifting Cedrix and placing him on his shoulder.
"M-My lord?!"
"I'd prefer that over you slowing us down," replied Alex.
Although he was talking about Cedrix slowing them down, Alex didn't take off immediately.
Before leaving, he infused his smoke into the corpses of the fallen monsters until it reached the cores, then began extracting the cores from the bodies.
"What are you doing?! Let's go," urged Anna.
"Go ahead without me; I will catch up," Alex answered.
"Don't be greedy!" chided Amelia.
"I said I will catch up with you, so go."
"Humph!"
The girls harrumphed and departed, leaping from branch to branch.
Alex, on the other hand, was busy collecting the monsters' cores. What he was doing might be considered greedy, but there was no way he would abandon so many monsters' cores!
'They should be worth a fortune!' he thought with shining eyes while extracting the monsters' cores.
For Alex, who was determined to gain money at all costs, there was no way he would abandon such a fortune and run away. He had to at least take some of the cores with him.
Cedrix on his shoulder just stared wide-eyed as the tide of monsters was nearing, while Alex was busy collecting monsters' cores.
"M-My lord, they are upon us!" shouted Cedrix in panic.
Alex glanced behind his back and clicked his tongue, seeing that the old man was right. The monsters were hundreds of meters from them, but with their levels, covering such a distance wouldn't take long.
Alex glanced at the monsters' corpses with a dejected face and turned to leave. If he had time, he would have taken both the corpses and cores, but alas...
He stored the cores he managed to extract inside his space ring and set out to leave. Before departing, he expanded the smoke for fifty meters around him and made it as thick as possible. All around him, there was nothing but a dense, multicolored smoke.
The beasts charging towards him all came to a stop as their sight was obstructed by the smoke.
Taking advantage of their brief inaction, Alex left, moving at his fastest speed, knowing that the monsters wouldn't remain inactive for long. Such a trick could only last a few seconds because the instant the creatures understood they couldn't see with their eyes, they would shift to using mana to locate his position. Alex knew that, but he did it anyway to give himself a head start.
As he jumped from tree to tree while following the trail of the girls, he felt a slight pang of regret for having taken Cedrix with him. If he hadn't, the monsters wouldn't have been able to locate his position at all since he can't be detected in a smokey environment, and they also couldn't locate his position by using their sense of smell because of the smoke.
Alex could have passed the old man to one of the girls to carry him and had all the time he wanted to harvest the cores. However, he decided against it for two reasons. First, the one tasked to carry the old man would be slower than the others, which would slow the pace of the whole group. Cedrix may be old, but he was still very heavy.
The second reason, on the other hand, was simple: he just didn't want another man so close to his wives. Yeah, it was a little...
But he didn't care! As long as there was another way, he would rather take it than allow another man to be close to his wives.
Was he a bit too possessive? Hell yes! Would he change that about himself? Hell no!
Anyway, as he thought, it didn't take even a minute for the monsters to realize that trying to locate their prey using eyes or smell was futile. They chose to locate Alex through mana.
It didn't take them long to find his position since he wasn't very far. The instant they got his position, they began tracking him. A few moments later, the monsters emerged from the thick smoke, spotted Alex jumping from tree to tree, and immediately gave chase.
Alex glanced behind him only to see the monsters quickly closing the gap.
"Sh*t! They are fast," he cursed under his breath.
'Status,' he called in his mind, and a second later, the usual transparent blue screen appeared before his eyes.
[Name: Alexandre Eswald
Age: 60
Level: 4
Strength: 130
Agility: 80
Stamina: 160
Defense: 80
Mana Points: 75
Harem: Lilia Eswald, Annaline Maxwell, Amelia Eswald;
Abilities: Soul Linkage, Smoke Sovereign;
Soul Points: 120]
Witnessing the number of soul points he had, Alex whistled in appreciation.
Alex rarely summoned the system interface to check his status, only doing it when he was about to enhance one of his stats, which he didn't do for a while.
'The last time I had seventy points, which means that there is an increase of fifty points, cool,' Alex smiled.
Besides the time he spent with both Amelia and Anna in the carriage, Alex didn't manage to do anything naughty with either of his wives the last two days. That means the fifth point increase came from the double blowjob he got from Anna and Amelia.
'Now I'm certain, I definitely need to bring Lilia next time,' Alex decided.
The prospect of having his three wives at the same time and the potential points he might gain due to that was enough to make Alex salivate, but he quickly composed himself. 'It's neither the time nor the moment to think about that, focus,' he told himself.
'Raise my agility until it equals my strength,' Alex addressed the system.
[Are you-]
'Yes.'
[Starting the process...]
The instant the enhancement process began, Alex felt the usual cool energy rush inside his body, but today he couldn't waste time enjoying it while a horde of frenzied beasts was chasing him.
[Process finished]
Alex nodded in appreciation, feeling that he could run faster than his current speed. He glanced behind him to see that the beasts were swiftly closing the gap between them.
Alex thought of something, then suddenly took a sharp turn to his right, deviating from his direction. The creatures behind him also did the same to continue chasing him. 'Good, keep following me,' he sneered.
Instead of running in the same direction as the girls and risk catching up to them while the monsters were still behind him, he judged that it would be better to make a detour, lose the monsters before rejoining with them.
Alex increased the speed at which he jumped from tree to tree. Despite that, the monsters kept up with him, but Alex was counting on it. He wanted to take them as far as possible from the path Lilia and the other two had taken before losing them. It was also done to give him time to get adjusted to his new speed.
'That should be enough.' Alex stopped for a second. "Old man, grit your teeth," he warned Cedrix.
"Wha-"
Before Cedrix could respond, Alex crouched down and catapulted himself off the tree branch with such force that it shattered into splinters!
Cedrix, perched on his shoulder, could only see a blur as the surroundings swiftly passed by.
Alex himself was no different from a blur as his speed was so astonishingly fast, it seemed as if the surroundings struggled to keep pace with his movements.
It wasn't just the surroundings that struggled to keep up with his speed; the monsters behind him were also left eating dust, and it didn't get better with time. In fact, it was the contrary; with each passing second, the distance between Alex and the horde of monsters kept increasing.
However, three monsters managed to keep up with him. There was a monkey who possessed four long arms that it used to swing itself from branch to branch, a wild boar with a back covered in spines, making it resemble a porcupine, and a white fox with three yellow tails.
Despite Alex going at the top of his speed, these three managed to keep up with him, while all the other monsters completely disappeared from sight.
'Let's see how you are going to catch up now.' With this thought, Alex briefly stopped, exhaled smoke, expanded it, and ordered the smoke to become elastic, similar to the time he battled Talia. The smoke wrapped around him, and then a tentacle-like extension detached and shot to attach itself to the branch of the next tree. Using his speed and the smoky tentacle as a link, Alex began to swing from branch to branch.
The way Alex kept balancing from branch to branch was very similar to how a superhero of Earth comic books moved, the difference being that Alex used smoke instead of webs.
Thanks to that and his insane strength and speed, Alex began widening the gap between himself and his pursuers.
After some time, Alex finally stopped to look behind him and noticed that none of the monsters were behind him anymore.
"Finally," he sighed in relief.
"I should rejoi-"
Before he could finish his sentence, Alex frowned in dissatisfaction.
"What an annoying bastard"