You have defeated a Level 230 Whiptailed Boar!

You have gained 400 Mastery Points (E Grade).

Level 230? 400 Mastery Points?

Xavier blinked. He couldn’t help being a bit disappointed by how many Mastery Points he’d received. And, considering how much energy he’d just put into that fight, he’d been hoping the beast that he’d faced had been the highest-level opponent he’d ever faced.

It wasn’t. It was equal in level to an opponent he’d faced in the past.

Maybe D Grades are stronger than I thought.

And maybe the ones that he’d been facing back in his sector had had been weak. At least in regards to the grand scheme.

It made him wonder just how strong a C Grade was. A true C Grade, one that hadn’t gotten there using any shortcuts.

One like the Empress Larona.

Or the father of that man I killed… the one that has a grudge against me.

He put that out of his mind. He’d done well in that fight. Better than the last one. He’d actually come up with a new way for him to deal damage to his enemies. Something that would help him in the longer term.

He looked down at the corpse of the dead boar. He could cast Soul Puppet on the boar. Create another soldier for his little army. Having the wolven as a distraction had been an advantage, though he could see that some of those wolven had been badly injured when the Whiptailed Boar had thrown them off to slam into trees.

They couldn’t heal their wounds, and the souls were surely degrading. Xavier bit his lip and considered if he should keep pushing on, or head back to the tavern.

He looked backward through the trees, tilted his head to the side. The forest was quiet. He sighed. He couldn’t go back—not yet. He hadn’t achieved anything out here.

Xavier had to remember that though time moved differently on this floor, and barely any time was passing back on his own world, that didn’t mean he didn’t have a deadline—he needed to defeat that Magma Bull within the week.

And he was getting the feeling that the monsters he’d been facing out here in the forest, despite his initial assessment, would be nothing compared with the ones from the board. The Hunt Quests would likely take a lot more effort for him to complete.

Xavier cast Soul Puppet on the Whiptailed Boar. As he did, he wondered if he’d injured one of its legs too much. That was something he’d never really had to worry about in the past—if he hurt the beasts too much when he killed them, they would be less effective puppets for his little army.

I think that’s the least of my worries.

Xavier looked at the different Soul Puppets he had gathered with a thrown. Some of the wolven were walking on unsteady legs. The Whiptailed Boar had taken a nasty hit from Xavier’s Midnight Scythe to one of its legs, too, and it hadn’t had a chance to fully heal it.

Are these things going to be able to keep up with me?

That was the problem, he supposed, with undead armies. An army only moved as fast as its slowest member…

Xavier kept heading through the forest. He moved at a sprint, commanding the puppets to keep up with him. He heard them trailing behind him. They were surprisingly fast for corpses. At least they weren’t shambling messes.

Not yet.

Xavier looked again at the number of Mastery Points he’d received and tilted his head to the side. At one point, he’d thought that the number Mastery Points he’d received from D Grade enemies was incredibly good. Now, he was wondering if that was truly the case.

If I were D Grade myself, around Level 230, facing these things, how much would this really be? 40 D Grade Mastery Points? How many hundreds or thousands of these things would I need to kill?

And these beasts were more powerful than other D Grades he’d faced…

How do those D Grades gain levels if they aren’t strong enough to mow down thousands of beasts?

He shook his head. The way other people levelled wasn’t a concern to him. Maybe the System was still nerfing the number of Mastery Points he received, and it had simply seemed otherwise because of how many levels he’d gained from killing D Grades when he was in the low 100s. Or maybe he was thinking from a completely privileged position, and gaining levels for the average Denizen in the Greater Universe took months or years—considering their lifespans, he supposed the latter was probably closest to the truth.

He didn’t know, and he didn’t really care. Not for his purposes, at least.

It didn’t change what he needed to do.

As Xavier kept travelling through the forest, he quickly came upon another wolven pack. He grinned. Though he still couldn’t use identify on these enemies, to him this wolven pack almost looked identical to the first he’d encountered.

It would be a good test of his skills.

He was a little surprised he’d gotten the drop on the wolven pack. Last time, one of the wolven had sensed him long before he’d sensed it.

Maybe they have sensed me and deemed that I’m not a threat.

Either way, they weren’t paying attention to him. The alpha was another silver furred, grizzled looking beast of a thing, and he counted a total of six members of the pack—just like the last one. Xavier wondered how he was going to play this fight, now that he’d discovered a thing or two about fighting with Heavy Telekinesis.

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There hadn’t been enough time between fights for his Time Alteration spell to have reached the end of its cooldown. As the enemy beasts hadn’t noticed him, Xavier slowly stalked them, waiting a few more minutes until he could use the spell again. He didn’t want to come up against these enemies without it, even if he did think it wouldn’t end up being necessary, he didn’t wish to take another stupid risk and get killed.

Once the spell had reached the end of its cooldown, Xavier prepared himself and his puppets for the fight.

He tilted his head to the side as he came up with a plan.

Time Alteration…

More than anything, he wanted to test out his new melee abilities. But he also wanted to do it safely. He rethought the fight he was about to have.

I think I know what to do.

Xavier burst through the clearing where the wolven pack were sniffing around. Whether they’d known he was nearby before or not, they were definitely paying attention to him now. Every single one of their heads turned to face him. Each of the beasts begin to growl low in their throat, their hackles rising.

Xavier’s puppets joined behind him, surrounding him.

The clearing was quite large, almost like it was purpose built for a fight on open ground. Maybe it had been—maybe the System had had something to do with that—or maybe a boar had come through and knocked down all the trees.

He supposed it didn’t really matter.

Xavier had judged the distance before stepping into this clearing. He waited a split second, hoping the enemy would make the first move.

The moment they started bounding toward him, he cast Time Alteration. He’d been sure to keep his puppets within the radius of the time barrier. Xavier stepped right over to the edge of the bubble—he’d cast the spell while the silver Alpha Wolven had been mid leap.

I’ve got all the time in the world.

He wanted to soften up the enemies. Every single one of them.

He’d definitely been underutilising this Time Alteration spell.

One by one, Xavier would cast four different spells on the enemy beasts—Spirit Break, Soul Shatter, Core Burn, and Heavy Telekinesis.

It wouldn’t be enough to kill any one of them—he knew that from the first time he’d faced these beasts.

But it should be enough to weaken them all.

Xavier paused. Could he remain where he was and cast as many spells as he could until the barrier dropped? And, when he did, would dozens, maybe hundreds, of spells slam into his enemies all at once?

But then Xavier realised it wasn’t that easy.

Cooldowns.

They worked differently in his time bubble.

How could he not have noticed this before?

He felt a bit foolish—no, he felt very foolish. He’d experimented with this spell, hadn’t he? Yet how had he missed this drawback?

The cooldowns worked on normal time, which meant he couldn’t simply keep casting his spells for as long as possible until the time bubble burst.

Xavier frowned.

I guess weakening the alpha will have to be enough.

Once he realised this, he didn’t cast the last of the four spells. He would need that an instant after the barrier dropped. Heavy Telekinesis had an incredibly short cooldown period—under a second—but he would need it even faster than that.

He could have cast Willpower Infusion on the alpha as well—it would have been the smarter thing to do—but he wanted to push himself harder in this fight.

He wanted a little taste of danger.

Let’s do this.

Xavier prepared himself. He set his puppets charging toward the other wolven. He wanted them distracted while he took on the alpha.

That was the biggest threat, after all.

Xavier was acutely aware that the last time he’d faced these wolven his melee attacks hadn’t done a damned thing. They had just… glanced right off. This plan of his could very well blow up in his face.

But in that case, he had a backup plan.

Xavier hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.

Xavier backed up to the edge of the time barrier, then he sprinted forward and leapt at the last moment before the barrier’s front edge.

The time barrier dropped. the wolven all around him started moving again. He saw a slight look of shock in the alpha’s eyes as it must have noticed things change, and as the four different spells slammed into it.

The alpha didn’t even get a chance to howl out in pain before Xavier slammed his Midnight Scythe straight into its head. He used all the strength that he possessed, and backed that strength up with Heavy Telekinesis.

Xavier half expected his blade to glance straight off the beast like it had the first time he’d tried to strike a wolven with his scythe-staff

But that wasn’t what happened.

The blade sunk straight through the bastard’s skull and into its brain—just as his last attack on the Whiptailed Boar had.

This attack was even stronger than that one had been, as he’d gained several relevant ranks since then.

Whatever defences the wolven had, Xavier was able to break through them.

Blood spurted from the wound. Up this close, and with his Farscope ability, Xavier could see every detail of the attack. The wolven’s eyes rolled back in its head. Its whole body spasmed. Xavier ripped his Midnight Scythe out of the beast’s head and more blood poured out before it slammed into the ground.

A kill notification popped up in his vision.

You have defeated a Level 225 Alpha Wolven!

You have gained 350 Mastery Points (E Grade).

Xavier, blood on his face, grinned at the notification.

More came in—rank in his skills and spells that he pushed aside to look at after the fight.

He felt a pulse of adrenaline through his entire body, and a thrill of excitement. This… this was nothing like the last fight had been.

In the last fight, he’d come here feeling like an amateur. Feeling like he was way over his head. Maybe he still was.

But he was starting to find his feet.

Snarls and howls and growls surrounded him as his puppets attacked the wolven. He heard a horrible snapping sound. With his Farscope ability he saw that one of his puppets had its neck snapped and could barely move.

The others were weakening, too—they weren’t up to this fight.

The Whiptailed Boar, however, was trampling over one of the enemy wolven like it was nothing, crushing it beneath its powerful hooves.

With his enemies thoroughly distracted, Xavier entered the fight. He left the corpse of the Alpha Wolven and rushed to the next nearest enemy. All of his spells had reached the ends of their cooldowns. When time wasn’t stopped, their cooldowns were insignificantly short to the point where he barely noticed them anymore.

He softened his next target with two spells before he reached it—Soul Shatter and Core Burn. Soul Shatter didn’t only damage the enemy he targeted. Shards of the wolven’s soul shot out in every direction, hitting everything that wasn’t an ally.

Xavier slammed his Midnight Scythe through the wolven’s neck, pushing down on the back of the blade with his Heavy Telekinesis spell.

The blade cut straight through the wolven’s neck, decapitating it.

Guess I won’t be using Soul Puppet on that one.

Xavier was breathing hard. Not from exertion, but from excitement.

Maybe he was still overpowered here. The strength of his body mixing with the strength of his magic… it seemed that was the recipe for his enemies’ swift demise.

He dealt with the other wolven with ease. There was nothing graceful about his attacks. Big swings, hard hits. They weren’t perfect technique.

But they were deadly.

He hacked and slashed his way to victory, until every wolven in the clearing was dead and Xavier was covered in their blood.

His robes disappeared the blood with their self-cleaning feature, and he took a cloth from his Storage Ring and wiped it off his face.

Like it never happened…

Looking at the carnage, Xavier couldn’t help but feel proud of himself. He hadn’t even been struck by one of these bastards. Stopping time and distracting them with soul puppets had been more than enough.

Xavier inspected the dead wolven, wondering which would be good for him to use as puppets.

Only two seemed like they would still be intact enough for him to get much use from them. Which was good, because he’d left three of his current puppets in the fight.

Xavier put the other corpses into his Storage Ring and wondered if it was about time he look into using his Assimilate Properties skill again.

It had been changing him, and that was the reason he’d stopped using it. But maybe being changed was exactly the thing he needed…

That was when he started looking at the notifications. He skimmed through them, just to see if there was anything of particular interest.

And that’s when he saw that he’d gained a Spell Quest.

He tilted his head to the side and read out what spell the quest was for.

“Telekinetic Enhanced Strike?”