The moment that creature retracted its arms and put some distance from Lucius's lifeless body, an apparent change started taking place in Lucius's body.
Slowly his flesh started melting away just like plastic coming into contact with heat.
Plop!! Plop!!
As his mushy flesh slowly fell off of his face and revealed the skeleton underneath, his face became extremely deformed and horrifying to look.
His eyes were still rooted in his eye socket but his flesh was falling down.
Plop!!
After some while, one of his eyes fell out of his eye socket— then another.
Slowly all his flesh and organs fell down, until nothing but his skeleton remained. This scene was extremely horrifying and bone chilling to look at.
Yet that creature remained indifferent as it watched the changes taking place in Lucius's body without a single fear or care.
Even that creature couldn't figure out the reason behind this strange phenomena. And the way it stood there without reacting made it clear that even it hadn't seen such phenomena before.
A putrid smell lingered around the vicinity yet that creature remained unbothered.
Seeing the pile of mushy flesh and organs splattered on the ground, it lost all it's interest on Lucius. Then it rolled it's eyes away from the mess and left.
"Phew!!"
Lucius who was present right at a certain distance away from that mess, heaved a deep sigh as he confirmed about the departure of that creature.
"If not for system, I'd have really died for real this time"
Lucius murmured in a low whisper, grateful for surviving this predicament.
All along, Lucius was present right there at the spot. Hiding his presence, he had used a decoy to die in his stead.
One could even say that all those things that happened was a mere illusion. An illusion created by a creature Lucius had summoned via system.
Right after noticing the presence of that unknown entity, Lucius had summoned a creature of standard class sacrificing 100 blood points.
A creature known as shapeshifter which had the appearance of a fox.
A creature with the ability of creating illusions and disguising itself. Since it could create illusions, it absolutely didn't need to sacrifice it if it were under any normal circumstances.
But at that moment, Lucius was facing an extremely formidable foe. And he couldn't put his confidence on just mere illusion. Thus he had to sacrifice the creature in order to make his death even more convincing.
Still the fear of that creature finding out about the trick was gnawing on him. And only after did the creature leave, he finally heaved a deep sigh of relief.
Thanks to that creature which died in his stead, Lucius was able to survive this ordeal.
But now, once again he was totally helpless. Neither could he summon another creature nor did he have enough mana to fight for his life.
Not to mention about the dangers lurking around him. Who knows if another monster of such caliber wouldn't show up again?
Now Lucius had to make his decision; either to remain seated at his current location to recuperate or move ahead knowing that he may encounter even more dangers ahead.
'No matter if I stay here or move ahead, I'll encounter danger anyway. So, it's better to keep on moving'
Thinking about the pros and cons, Lucius concurred.
Afterall as mentioned by Lucius, even if he stayed there, who knows another monster wouldn't find him in time? Thus, it was more beneficial for him to keep on advancing forward.
Right now, Lucius's utmost priority was to survive this ordeal and exit this ominous forest filled with danger— hopefully to find some human settlement.
As he treaded carefully through this labyrinth of danger, Lucius with the limited information he had gotten from those bunches before tried to figure out his situation, "What were those kids talking about? Invigilators and stuffs? Perhaps is some kind of competition going around?"
"Also that blue-haired girl was quite the schemer, if not for me disrupting her plans, she would have come out of this situation totally clean"
After walking for a while, far in the distance, a flickering light caught his attention. Immediately upon noticing those lights, Lucius put up his guard as he carefully approached the location from where the light was coming from.
Vigilantly treading his way towards the location, a sight of a camp set up in the woods became clear and so did some figures of human exquisitely dressed in some kind of robe and armors.
Although it were humans and not monsters, Lucius still couldn't afford to lower his guard down. Afterall humans can be more dangerous than monsters; given their ability to deceive and think.
Still he couldn't simply return back or take a detour. If he wanted to get out of this forest alive, he'd have to risk his life and collect as much information as he could without alerting them.
Thus, whilst still being unaware of their intentions or identity, Lucius tried to close in towards them to gather more information.
"Who?"
No sooner had he tried to get close to them, those people became alerted about his presence. But they acted completely normal as if they hadn't noticed him in the first place.
Unaware of the fact that he had already been found out, Lucius continued to close in towards them while being as much careful as he could.
Suddenly Lucius felt a presence behind him. And immediately no sooner had he felt this presence, he became extremely startled as he hurriedly took out the dagger he had scavenged from the corpses back then.
Rotating his exhausted body, he swung his dagger— targeting the presence he had felt behind him. Lucius who had encountered many threatening situations in his previous life, knew from his experience that it was better to strike first than to wait for the opponent to strike.
Thus, without even an ounce of hesitation, he attacked first instead of wasting his time, trying to figure out about the identity of that unknown presence behind him.
Kill or die.
So was the situation he found himself.
Who knows, if that presence behind is hostile towards him like those bunches who had come to eradicate him before.
He could only put his trust in himself.
But no sooner had he swung his dagger, he was immediately neutralized by that unknown presence.
Striking his elbow with lightning speed, that anonymous person asked in a suspicious yet intimidating tone, "Who are you?"