James immediately instructed the wild crane to proceed to the centipede's location.
Upon arrival, James saw a large centipede lying under a huge, fallen dead tree.
The tree had a circumference of about 5 meters, and beneath it was a large centipede with a body length of around 10 meters and a width of about 75 cm.
Its body was coated in black scales, and its legs were as sharp as needles that could definitely pierce someone's body easily, as well as the orange color of its legs, which added to its ferocious appearance. On its head were two crimson antennas, twice as long as its legs.
As the wind crane approached, the centipede opened its eyes, sensing that someone was entering his territory.
Realizing that the centipede had already noticed his presence, James hopped down from the wind crane while instructing it to prepare itself to kill the centipede on his signal, just in case he couldn't kill it himself.
As James landed 25 meters away from the centipede, he unsheathed his sword and prepared to use his strongest martial sword skill [Flame Splitting Slash].
At the same time, when James landed on the ground, the centipede was ready to attack James and made a hissing sound using its legs while elevating its front body, mimicking a king cobra before charging at James with alarming speed while using its skill [Hardening Scales].
As the centipede charged at him, James had already prepared and unleashed his skill without hesitation, aiming directly for its head.
"Whoosh!"
The centipede underestimated James too much, as it had never encountered a human capable of using long range skills except for beasts at their level.
Expecting a close range battle, the centipede was caught off guard.
As a result, the sword qi immediately cut through its head and part of its body, continuing to fly forward and strike the fallen tree, leaving a slight cut and burn marks.
[Ding! You have killed the High-level Gold rank beast.]
[Ding! The experience at peak rank 1 has increased to 35%.]
James was amazed that he could actually kill it with one move, he thought that at least he needed to use it a few times to kill it.
However, considering his 450% damage boost from his perfect fire attribute level, along with a few items, plus his peak rank 7 skill, and 40% strength boost from peak rank 3, all of them combined together were extremely helpful at his current rank.
Subsequently, he stored the corpse in his inventory, and decided to continue his journey.
However, this time he instructed the wind crane to fly directly to Nagabourne City.
He chose not to continue testing his current combat limit because he had already guessed his combat power limit.
In his opinion, he should be able to kill a peak rank 4 beast by using his peak rank 7 sword skill, because he saw that the remaining power of his skill could only leave a slight cut on the fallen tree.
However, that was also a big problem for him, if James couldn't kill it in one go, the beast would undoubtedly attack him, and it wouldn't just let him attack it a few times while remaining motionless, that would be impossible.
That was why, if he couldn't kill the beast in one shot and the beast attacked James, he would definitely die in a one-vs-one situation, as their difference in strength was so big that James would be unable to escape.
Knowing this, James decided not to waste time testing his combat limits any further.
He planned to hunt again later after upgrading his beast's ranks, which would make it easier to kill higher ranking beasts rather than relying solely on his cultivation rank while testing his combat limit.
…
After nearly 2 hours of flying at the wind crane's top speed, James finally saw Nagabourne City from his position high above. He immediately instructed the wind crane to slow down and fly at a lower altitude.
After flying slowly at a lower altitude for a while, James finally heard the system notification.
[Ding! Detected a Low Rank 6 Elite Martial Warrior 200 meters ahead.]
[Ding! Detected a Mid Rank 6 Elite Martial Warrior 200 meters ahead.]
[Ding! Detected a Mid Rank 6 Elite Martial Warrior 200 meters ahead.]
[Ding! Detected a Peak Rank 6 Elite Martial Warrior 200 meters ahead.]
…
James was astonished to see that a Peak Rank 6 Elite Martial Warrior was working as a guard, guarding the city gate.
When the wind crane landed near the gate, James finally saw the sight of the city wall looming overhead, about 25 meters tall.
Above the city gate, there was a statue of a majestic beast, resembling an Eastern Dragon.
James assumed it was the Archduke's contracted beast, the famed Water Flood Dragon.
James immediately jumped to the ground, put the wind crane into his beast space, and joined other people lining up to enter the city, since there were already a lot of people lining up patiently to enter the city.
Even the people lining up were filled with strong individuals ranging from rank 4 to peak rank 6.
A few minutes later,
"What is your name? Where are you from? And what is your purpose for coming here?" One of the guards questioned James.
"My name is James, and I'm from Mortos City. I'm here to sell and buy some things." James responded.
"Okay then, the entry fee is a beast core of peak rank 3 or something of equal value." the guard said.
"Here." James tossed the beast core of the Brown Bear that he had previously killed to the guard.
"This is your token. Don't lose it, as you will be fined if you do." The guard reminded him kindly.
"Okay, thank you." James nodded and immediately entered the city, holding a special piece of wood engraved with his name.
After inspecting it for a while, he tossed it into his inventory.
As James walked through the city, he noticed hundreds of people walking everywhere on the street, which was approximately 25 meters wide.
A continuous stream of notifications flooded his mind, as there were many things above rank 4 in the area.
James instantly instructed Little Fluffy to adjust the scan to detect everything of rank 6 and above.
Even after he adjusted it, he still occasionally received notifications.