About 15 meters in front of him, and roughly 20 meters up a tree, there sat a small dormant ape-like creature. This didn't sound too bad; the only problem was it wasn't alone.
All in front of him, he started to use the Mirage Realm to sense, and he could feel tons of movement from objects that were clearly large and were not trees.
[Common Quadramon - Dormant]
[Common Quadramon - G-rank - Mid]
[Common Quadramon - G-rank - Entry]
[Elite Quadramon - G-rank - Mid]
[Common Quadramon - G-rank - High]
The good thing was the highest beast only seemed to be an Elite Mid G-rank Quadramon. The bad thing was there were at least 10 Quadramons in his general area.
'Ok, this is fine. This is just your first test. You've killed before, you can do it again.' Xander tried to ready himself.
'Should I test my Mirage Realm?' Xander began to wonder, but he was quick to scrap that idea, deciding to play it safe. If there was only one beast, he would think about it, but he didn't know how long he would be fighting or how much Qi he would be using, so he didn't want to risk it.
He started to ease his way toward the Quadramons, and he finally got a good look at them.
They were tall. One of them was standing up, and it looked to be about 7 or 8 feet tall. It had four muscular arms, each ending with a hand with opposable thumbs and sharp claws.
It had an equally muscular body covered in thick dark fur, with a slightly lighter shade on its chest and face.
It resembled a gorilla if a gorilla was a terrifying four-armed monster.
What scared Xander the most, though, were its eyes. They seemed to be unusually intelligent.
Just as he reached 5 meters away from the closest G-rank, it caught his scent and immediately looked right at him and began to yell.
"Awaaaa!!" "Awaaaa!!" "Awaaaa!!"
"Awaaaa!!" "Awaaaa!!" "Awaaaa!!"
The second Xander heard this, he reared back his spear and launched it, piercing the Quadramon right in the chest, causing it to fall to the ground. He was quick to follow the spear and tear it out of its chest, immediately stabbing it again, this time with 'Wraith's Touch' applied to the spear, killing it.
After this large commotion, every Quadramon in the vicinity was aware of Xander and was yelling at the top of their lungs.
"Awaaaa!!" "Awaaaa!!" "Awaaaa!!"
"Awaaaa!!" "Awaaaa!!" "Awaaaa!!"
"Awaaaa!!" "Awaaaa!!" "Awaaaa!!"
"Awaaaa!!" "Awaaaa!!" "Awaaaa!!"
This annoyed Xander to no end, but there was nothing he could do, so he just focused on his next fight.
He turned to his left, where a dormant Quadramon was rushing toward him.
He was surprised when the branch it was holding morphed slowly into a sharp spear.
Not expecting it to be able to do that stunned him for a moment, but he was brought back to reality when another Quadramon launched an equally sharp wooden spear right at him.
He quickly and easily sidestepped it, but this just brought an entirely new aspect to the fight that wasn't there before. He now had to keep an eye out for ranged attacks.
He charged toward the dormant Quadramon as the other roughly ten Quadramons started to surround him and barrage him with spears, each one thrown with enough speed to do major damage.
Once he was three meters away from the dormant Quadramon, he used a shot of 'Necrotic Blast,' easily piercing a hole in the weaker dormant Quadramon's chest, causing it to drop dead on the jungle floor.
He turned his direction to the next Quadramon, a Common High-ranked one.
It was about 8 meters up a tree with no looks of coming down. It continued to barrage Xander with branches that it could quickly turn into spears.
Xander could easily dodge or block each throw from the Quadramons, so he just waited for them to come to him.
He tried to piss them off by going to the first Quadramon he had killed and digging out its monster core.
This angered three of the Quadramons, who immediately jumped to the jungle floor and charged him all at once.
Xander was quick to stop what he was doing.
He reached down, grabbed one of the wooden spears, applied 'Wraith's Touch' to it, that quickly began to eat through the spear and then threw it at the second closest Quadramon while charging toward the Elite Mid Quadramon that was closest.
He wanted to slow its movements, so he used the 'Necrotic Chain' ability to stop its movements, five chains of Death Qi bursting from the ground, wrapping around its legs.
Xander sliced forward with 'Soul Rend' once he reached four meters and killed the beast without even leaving a scratch on it with his spear.
He turned to his right at the Quadramon he had thrown the wooden spear at and noticed it had just pulled it out of its stomach with an angry and pained look on its face, its stomach looking like it had all the moisture sucked out of it.
"Splat!"
"Ahhh!" Xander yelled as he was hit in the back with one of the sharp wooden spears. He had let his guard down for one second and paid the price.
"Cough!" He coughed up some thick, dark red blood.
He quickly pulled it out and pushed as much Qi to the spot as possible trying to stop the bleeding.
The Quadramons had started to go crazy with their yelling after he got hit so he was ready to end this fight now.
He thought he would try to use 'Death Spike' and summoned two Death Spikes from thin air and stabbed the beast in the back, knocking it to the floor, but he wasn't sure if it was dead or not.
He once again dodged to the left, dodging another thrown wooden spear that hadn't stopped since the fight began.
He now looked to the last Quadramon that was on the ground, a Common High Rank, and once again tied it up with chains of Death Qi.
This time, he made sure to overdo it and tied it down with over 10 chains, it completely unable to do anything. Each time it broke another chain, two more would take its place.
This burned through a ton of Qi, but he had a little to spare.
This had the desired effect, scaring off the remaining Quadramons, each one running off as fast as they could.
Seeing the fight was over, he quickly put the chained Quadramon out of its misery from being drained of its life force, and then walked over to the other fallen Quadramon, killing it as well.
"Phew." Xander let out a wheezing breath, still not fully recovered from his hit to the back.
'That was nerve-wracking but surprisingly thrilling,' Xander didn't want to admit it, but it was kind of fun.
Since the fight was over, he sat down, his back once again against a tree, his senses fully spread out in the Mirage Realm, trying to pick up on any threat, and then started to refill his lost Qi.
About 45 minutes later, he had refilled his reserves and began to dig out each of the monster cores, coming up with a total of five of them. Three Common G-ranks, one Dormant, and one Elite G-rank.
He then decided to look at his Death Charge to see what happened to it with his new kills.
[First Trait: Reaper's Revival] - [Death Charge: 12%]
'It was 7.5%, so it went up 4.5%. I killed four G-ranks and one Dormant, so I'm assuming I get 1% per G-rank I kill and .5% per Dormant I kill. I wonder if it will be more or less for different beasts or even humans?' Xander didn't know but he did have a better idea of how long it would take to charge up his best ability. It would only take him killing about 90 more Quadramons for him to have the broken ability of being able to revive himself after death.
'It shouldn't be too hard to charge up each time. I just need to make sure each time I use the trait and lose the death charge; I find some easy G-rank beast to kill,' xander thought.