Dean's eyes flashed coldly, and he grabbed the Shadow Hunter's carapace.
Crack!
The carapace was ruptured, seemingly loose, and spurted green blood, getting on Dean's hand.
His gloves were corroded, and there was a searing, burning sensation, like touching fire sparks, in his hand.
He flicked his hand quickly, shaking the blood off from his gloves, and simultaneously kicked the Shadow Hunter's back, so it fell down.
Before it got up, Dean attacked once again. His leg raised high and then, like a giant ax, dropped and struck on its neck. The heel of the alloy boots hit hard on the dagger hilt.
Bang!
The dagger had completely penetrated into its neck, and the Shadow Hunter crashed to the ground.
The Shadow Hunter squeaked miserably and struggled to crawl up.
Seeing it was so tenacious, Dean's eyes flashed coldly. He raised his leg once again and trampled on the head.
Bang!
The Shadow Hunter's head had completely sunk into the ground, making a football-sized hole.
Both the head, which slightly severed from the neck, and the body twitched slightly, but the tail twisted around Dean's feet like a snake, tightening as if wanting to strangle his leg.
Dean felt that the strength of the twist was not strong, so he was relieved. He knew that it would die soon. He immediately broke away from the tail and then fluttered his wings, ascending to the top of the rocky wall. Arrived at the top, he kicked the ceiling and used the force to accelerate down, then slammed his foot on the Shadow Hunter's back.
Crack!
There was a sound of bone shattering.
The head and the lower body rose slightly, and the whole body was twitching.
The Shadow Hunter kept squeaking miserably and stopped struggling.
Dean saw that the Shadow Hunter was dying, so he immediately moved aside. He looked at his gloves that were slowly corroded by the blood. The metal piece on the back of the gloves was almost corroded completely.
He sighed and took off the gloves. He thought that this Shadow Hunter should be the most troublesome monster. The battle was not over yet, but his weapon and armor were already destroyed. If its vitality was more tenacious, no one would dare to provoke this monster.
"This little monster... If I didn't know how it hid, I would have been eaten by it." Dean was paying close attention to the surroundings, quietly waiting while recovering his strength. He was previously chased by the Wing Family's youth, and now fighting with this Shadow Hunter, more than half of his physical strength was already consumed.
While waiting, Dean noticed a backpack on the ground not far away, and he was startled. It was where Eugene's corpse was previously. Although his corpse was now gone, this backpack was his backpack.
"Has the corpse been eaten by this monster?" Dean picked up and opened the backpack. There were some food and clean water; there were also rope, hook, fire starter, foldable bag, and other survival items. Besides these things, he also saw several empty bottles that were used to store the Parasitic Soul Worms. There was something in one of the bottles.
Dean's eyes were glistening. He took the bottle and saw the small Parasitic Soul Worm inside. It was from the Cytoplasmic Monkey that Eugene killed.
"Almost missed you." Dean lifted the bottle up and looked at it with a smile on his face.
The Parasitic Soul Worm in the bottle seemed to notice Dean and suddenly stretched out from the curled up state, wriggling against the bottle. Its soft and tender feet softly patted the bottle, seemingly wanting to come out.
Dean smiled softly and said, "When the things here are solved, I will let you out."
He put the bottle away, then ate and drank to restore some strength.
He was always paying attention to his surroundings while eating, guarding against possible sneak attacks. When he finished eating, the Shadow Hunter had stopped twitching, completely stiff.
Dean wiped Martin's sword clean with the bag that used to store the food, then used the sword to poke at the Shadow hunter's wound. There was no reaction, and he felt relieved. He inserted the blunt tip of the corroded sword along the wound in the neck and cut it until the entire head was severed.
After separating the body and the head, Dean looked at the flowing blood on the ground, then he squatted down and gently stirred the blood with the sword to find the Parasitic Soul Worm.
"Considering the strength of this Shadow Hunter, it should have reached the growth stage. I hope that the Parasitic Soul Worm has been born." Dean was nervous but had some expectations. He searched carefully while keeping most of his attention to his surroundings.
More than ten minutes passed, Dean had searched through all of the blood and corpse, but he did not see even the shadow of the Parasitic Soul Worm. He was more and more disappointed. Just as he was about to give up, he suddenly saw a strange vein on the corpse's head. This strange S-shaped vein was much thicker than the other veins around it.
Dean stared and cautiously touched it using the tip of his sword. He discovered that this was the Parasitic Soul Worm.
However, this Parasitic Soul Worm was motionless, as if it was dead.
Dean wanted to observe closer, but he was afraid that if he was closer, the Parasitic Soul Worm would suddenly come alive and jump into his eyes, so he was still observing from the distance.
After observing it for a while, he could not figure it out if it was dead. He thought for a while, then he put a bottle cap under the vein and gently poked it with the tip of his sword.
The tension was killing him.
The Parasitic Soul Worm was still unresponsive.
Dean frowned, and he suddenly thought of the thing that he heard when he lived together with Ian and others. "Is it a parasite egg?"
The parasite eggs were equivalent to the young eggs of the Parasitic Soul Worm. When rare monsters entered the growth stage, the eggs would hatch and grow into Parasitic Soul Worms. This thing in front of him was similar to the parasite eggs that Ian and others had told him. If the host was killed before the parasite egg had hatched, the parasite egg would stop growing, and any other ordinary monsters could become the new host, providing the eggs with nutrients and continuing the incubation.
Once hatched, the Parasitic Soul Worm would inherit some of the rare monster's abilities and some of the ordinary monster's abilities. This ordinary monster would also become a monster with a Parasitic Soul Worm, but it would not be recorded into the Monster Atlas. This kind of monster was privately called by the Hunters as the "Reincarnated Beast".