The sound of its clanking steps became louder and louder in his ears before the creature finally outlined itself in his eyes.

This one was smaller than the Quaraxi Soldier. Almost half its size. It’s exoskeleton brown in colour, camouflaging with the walls. Mandible like small daggers that seemed more attuned to carrying stuff rather than cutting. It’s stinger though seemed just as deadly, dripping with poison.

Ragnar sensed more danger coming from this smaller creature than he had felt from the previous one.

But it couldn’t be because this Quaraxi was stronger, no. Rather, it was Ragnar who was considerably weaker than he was in his Shifted form.

Even though this situation was more dangerous than the previous one, it did not mean it was deadly. It wasn’t even close.

Ragnar leaped at the creature, again, from his hiding spot. This time utilizing his shockwaves to get a boost as he channelled them through his legs into the ground.

*Boom*

His body shot like an arrow at the unassuming creature. Maybe even faster than last time. He sent his palm forward to meet the skull of this brown ant.

But things did not go as smoothly as he had envisioned.

The Quaraxi moved its head in the last moment meeting his palm with its mandibles.

Although interrupted, the palm shattered right through the mandibles as it lodged itself into the head of the creature.

Ragnar could feel something squishy around his palm inside the skull.

But then he sensed the head moving. The Quaraxi gave its last push. It raised its leg to try and pierce Ragnar where ever it could reach but he wasn’t going to let it.

He sent another blast inside the skull, this time completely destroying the head from the inside out.

The Quaraxi finally stopped moving as a voice was followed by symbols in his mind.

“You have disposed of a Shifted Menace of the Mutant Rank, Quaraxi Worker.”

So, it was a Mutant.

The Essence flowed into him just like last time but it was also followed with another familiar sensation.

Ragnar leaked some of his humanity again, while he was in his human form. However, it only lasted for a moment while the essence was being coagulated in his core, after which it disappeared again.

Well, that wasn’t good news. But it was also not anything major. It appears that when he kills a creature, his bloodlust is triggered resulting in him leaking a burst of humanity from the bubble. It means that the more he kills the more of it will be lost.

*Sigh* It didn’t really bother him that much at this point. He still stood by the fact that he didn’t really need it in his life anymore, and he wasn’t going to stop killing anyways… Soo…

Ragnar decided to ignore it. It shouldn’t hinder his abilities in anyway, even when he will have to kill multiple targets at once, it shouldn’t be a problem.

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That said, he still had a frown on his face.

Although that seemed like it went smoothly, Ragnar seemed disappointed. That became a lot harder than it needed to be.

“Next time I just need to attack from the back”

If he did that then it would have been over before the creature had the time to react. He could also gain a much stronger boost at the start if he was willing to create a bit more noise.

Using shockwaves to gain a speed boost was another cool aspect of his ability that he had discovered. He could run very fast if he used it at its full potential. Maybe even faster than what he would be able to achieve in his Shifted form. Well, he hadn’t tested his best speed in either forms yet.

Although he could gain such speed while in human form, it was not feasible in this place. That was because of two reasons.

Firstly, he would create noise that would be loud enough to notify the whole network. He deduced that he could work on that aspect. Once he gained better control over his ability than he would be able to reduce the noise produced by minimizing the amount of waves he used to gain the maximum speed.

And that maximum speed might be the speed of sound. Maybe even faster in the future.

But that was only theoretical because that would devour his Essence like a vacuum. So, going that fast would completely empty his essence reserves in less than 5 seconds.

That was the second reason, it consumed a lot of essence to gain high speed in this way because he had very less control over the waves.

His prospects however, looked brilliant. He could only imagine what all he would be able to do once he learned to control it better.

Although he wasn’t overly loud this time, noise was still created so he couldn’t stay here for long.

He observed the new corpse and decided to carry it back as well.

***

Ragnar sat on a makeshift throne that he had made using the carcases of the Quaraxis.

He was munching on a piece of meat as he lamented about how good it would be if he could cook it.

A wall of dead Quaraxis barricaded one entrance of his hideout.

He had been in these caves for around 3 days now. Ragnar was not perfect in keeping up with the time but he wasn’t very poor at it either. He should only be a few hours off the real time he had spent here.

During this time, he had been busy.

The Corpses of Quaraxis had turned into a barricade now that protected him from one direction completely. He could still jump over it or pass through it in his Shifted form.

Well, if he really thought about it, then the Quaraxis could climb over it just as easily. But what does it matter, he needed something to do when he got bored of killing, eating and sleeping.

He had been doing a lot of them, especially killing. He should have killed around 50 Quaraxis by now. Out of which around 9 were Soldiers and the rest were Workers.

He had just woken up from his sleep and was now preparing to go on today’s hunt. Before that, he checked his status.

Name: Ragnar Drakorian

Species: Human

Rank: Mutant

Lineage: Drakorian

Lineage Ability: ???

Lineage Perk: Shifted Transformation

Ability: Wave Surge (S Tier)

Wave Surge: The enigmatic manipulation of waves that ripple through existence.

Core Saturation: 95/5000

Looking at his Saturation made him scowl, which might have been the 50th time since he had been checking this level after almost every creature he killed. But it didn’t fail to anger him even once. Like needing 5 times the charges as compared to others was not enough. The number of charges he received from Shifted creatures was also substantially fewer than what other humans get.

It was common knowledge that killing a creature that is a Rank lower would give them 1 charge, and this number increases by 1 as we move up the classes within a Rank. So, a Rogue would give 1, Menace would give 2, Dread would give 3, and so on.

Following that trend, if someone kills a creature who is of the same Rank as them, they receive 3 for a Rogue, 6 for a Menace, 12 for a Dread, and so on. So, it is multiplied by 3 at every Rank.

Going by that logic, Ragnar’s points should have been around 250 right now.

But he was stuck below 100.

Ragnar had been frustrated ever since he calculated how much each kill gave him.

It was not good.

The Number of Essence charges he received from killing a Creature that is the same Rank as him, was what a normal human would have received from killing a creature one Rank higher than them.

That means his progress was going to be 3 times slower than the rest of the world.

*Sigh*

He sighed for the Nth time as he stood up. Lunch break was over. It was time to continue his killing Streak. He was going to take it out on those Six-legged Shits.