Achil charged forward upon its hindlegs, before crashing into the behemoth, causing the malformed thing to stumble backwards.

Richard almost considered using his molten claws to try attacking the beast but decided against it. He'd already seen that the beast was stronger than him. How foolish would it be then, to get close and risk being hit with recoil damage from the physical fight between the two, when physical was not his specialty?

Better to seek out a weakness to exploit.

Richard already saw that his lightning didn't do much but given that this was more a side effect of the thick hide more than the lack of elemental effectiveness, there was no reason to stop using it.

Given this opportunity, Richard instead decided to use the time to seek out any weak spots.

Gathering the energy into the air, an array of lightning spears appeared behind him, before flying at the behemoth.

Dozens of shots hit the beast, each hitting before dissipating against the beast's black hide, causing Richard to frown.

Until Panda noted something.

"Look at the fur!!" he shouted, shortly before Richard noted it too.

A tear appeared in the behemoth's flesh, in the part which had remained wolf fur, one of the larger patches. It wasn't a large tear, but still, it was real damage.

Richard thought quickly, before remembering the behemoth's situation.

It was changing, evolving, casting off a false form in order to reach its true form, but the vestiges of that old form served as a weakness.

However.

It was just a shallow scratch. Weakness it may be, it was not weakness enough to be exploited.

"Panda, erode!"

"MOTHER- Fine!" He shouted as the cursing squirrel bound towards the behemoth.

The behemoth, seeing a tiny morsel charging towards it, opened it's salivating mouth, clearly distracted by the snack.

Pow!

It was reminded to focus by a hard slug across the face that Achil had done, stunning the beast with his blow.

Panda hesitated not, as he quickly found one furry spot, baring his glowing fangs before taking a huge bite.

TOUGH!

Instead, the teeth dented the flesh, leaving nothing more than a slight impression that the teeth were in.

The squirrel cursed mentally, as he used his erode to chip away at the beast's flank.

The flesh loosened as it faded, eroded by the saliva trickling out of Panda's mouth, slowly but surely.

In spite of its delirious hunger, the beast felt the pain, and thrashed as it tried to break free from Achil's grip, but Achil held firm large enough to weather the thrashing.

The strength was too much for Pandemonium, however, as he's tossed off the mammoth of a beast, colliding against a tree.

"You alright Panda!" Richard called concerned.

"GET FUCKED!"

"Did it work!?"

"YES!"

"Well, if you could..."

Richard called as he prowled around the fight, looking for the results of Panda's effort.

He found the flesh wound, and indeed, the patch of fur had given way to the dark velvet flesh of the beast.

zZZAP!

A voltage of lightning was let loose from one of the clouds surrounding Richard, containing condensed violent lightning. Unlike the first shot in this battle, it was lightning that he had made beforehand when he had time to rest and condense the bolts, resulting in shocks ten times stronger than the initial concentrated one.

This time the sizzling of flesh could be heard, and the behemoth finally threw off Achil, turning its gaze upon Richard, lunging at the dragon.

Richard flapped his wings as he jumped back, narrowly avoiding the beast, before taking to the air, above the beasts reach.

The beast lunged in the air, forcing Richard to veer barely to the side to avoid the beast.

The beast dropped to the ground, hitting it hard, but got up without much effort.

It continued staring at Richard before being forced into combat by Achil once more.

Knowing what to do, Panda jumped into the fray once more aiming for the patches of fur, seeking to erode them slowly.

At this point, the three of them knew what to do, now that they had grasped the solution.

----------------------------------------

The next few hours were spent chipping away at the behemoth.

Apparently, behemoths weren't very intelligent creatures, and as a result, the beast never acted out of character, allowing them to repeat the same method.

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Achill continued to lead the attack head on, while Panda took bites out of the fur patches, lowering the beasts defense, and then finally Richard followed up using lightning attacks to fry those spots, with occasionally Achil digging his hands into those spots, earning a scream of pain from the behemoth.

However, the beast made up for sports with durability, forcing the assault to last this long.

The behemoth didn't tire either, constantly fighting back throughout the whole battle, occasionally managing to grab hold of Richard or Panda, ripping or brutally swinging at them.

By the time the battle finally ended, both Richard and Panda were basically out of mana, and were now just relying on physical attacks.

And finally, the beast fell.

Whoooong

Bam!

With a thud, the beast fell backwards, causing the area to tremble as it crashed into the floor.

[Congratulations! You have slain the behemoth(youth)! You have reached level 7!]

That was proof enough that the monster, and it was satisfying after fighting the beast for the countless hours.

Richard was limping, and yet, the joy of finally increasing his level was gratifying.

Four levels!

Four!

"Whooo! Stick a fork in me, I'm done!" announced Panda as he plopped onto the ground, clearly tired from all the running, and Richard had to agree. Achil was quiet, and yet had a small smile on face, clearly happy about the outcome.

"Very well done you three. You could've done better admittedly, but it was an effort well made." Sister Alexandria announced as she slithered into the area after the battle.

Achil in particular, crooned in response to the compliment, his expression indicating he was indulging in the compliment.

"Whatever, ya old hag." said Panda as he waived it off, and Richard merely thanked sister Alexandria for the compliment.

"I see you've grown quite a bit from the behemoth. Do you know why?" asked sister Alexandria as she casually grabbed a chunk out of the behemoth to eat.

"Because it was stronger than anything else around here?" An obvious answer, yet the best one he could give, based off circumstances.

Sister Alexandria nodded. "Indeed. This place wasn't meant to nurture my strength nor that of a hatchling; merely a place I could rest without competition. Unfortunately, this means will not be an apt place for you to grow anymore."

Richard frowned. "Did I really outgrow it with just 1 evolution? I've seen B-ranks and even weaker A-rank monsters around here, am I really that much stronger now?"

Sister Alexandria rolled her eyes. "If you're talking about the adventurer system, I have to warn you that the adventurer's guild is not nearly as well informed as they should be to rank monsters. To call A-rank monsters as such is laughable to me. If you were to use me, for instance, I'm sure they have some unique title, like "disaster class" which proves that their system is not aptly made to compare ranks."

[Correct] The system beeped out of nowhere, clearly feeling the need to bring up this point.

[The adventurer's guild mostly exists for the public, and people of SS-"disaster class" rank exist throughout the empire, hiding their true level, mostly to keep out of the eyes of the citizens.

This is accentuated by the fact that there are places that are too dangerous for mortals to head to, and thus humans and other races can never truly expand into these locations to properly rank monsters]

"So basically, the guild does not rank these creatures within their own settings since as far as civilization is concerned they're beyond our comprehension, and our scale?

"Yup"

[Correct]

"So I'm basically an A-rank monster then?

"When you're working with others, yes. This young behemoth, for instance, could count as a mid A-rank due to it's endurance. Otherwise, it'd be B-rank monster in terms of strength, especially since behemoths aren't known for magic, but their endless hunger."

"Then alone I'm more of a B-rank monster?"

"That would be the best estimate I could provide, yes. Panda is probably a C-rank, and Achil is probably a B-rank as well, by merit of pure strength and durability, much like the behemoth."

Richard thought about the battle before he had entered.

Indeed, neither the behemoth nor Achil had actually been making promising progress.

But she was rating the behemoth as an A, while Achil was a B.

"Who would've won then sister? You say Achil is B and the behemoth is an A, but from what I can tell, neither was advancing."

She answered quickly, waving her tail. "The hatchling, without question. The behemoth may be a ferocious beast, but it is no more than a beast, devoid of most intelligence. Older behemoths can be quite smart, but in their youth they are easily seized by hunger, their rationality nonexistent. It may have been stronger than Achil, but it was by no means as competent."

Achil nodded at this, showing off a proud smile, before tearing off a piece of meat by wing, before offering it to her with both wings.

"Ohh, for me?! You're so nice" she cooed as she took the piece. "Behemoth meat is quite delicious, something even behemoths agree with." she said as she happily chewed.

"Well, if you don't mind me." said Panda as he ripped off one of the horns, alongside a part of the wolf's face. "Mmmph! Best part is always the face, let no one else tell you otherwise."

Richard also chose to oblige, taking a cut of the stomach, roasting it with fire.

It tasted less gamey than he had expected, and more like beef, quite weird, considering it was a wolf.

Whatever. It was a good day, with a good meal. It was nice, gathered like this, eating meat.

----------------------------------------

"Paladin Scave, it has been a while since we last seen one another." Copernicus warmly greeted the man who approached him and Galileo, though Galileo looked more uncomfortable with the approaching man.

Paladin Save hardly looked the title, wearing ragged leather armor, with the buckle on his chest bearing the medallion of the scale, the mask of the jackal present on his hip. The only signs Scave was a paladin.

The man in question was a lithe man, and he looked to be in his late 40s, the age present on his face.

He had bags under his eyes, accentuated by the pale tone of his face, tipped off with a small goatee on his chin.

"It is good to see you as well, Copernicus. The last time we saw each other, was what? 2 decades ago? "

"Indeed!" chuckled Copernicus. "I've been busy as of late, in fact, I was going to go investigate one paladin Peter, before this more pressing situation appeared."

Scave nodded slowly. "Indeed, as a hunter of Anubis, I'd say this concerns us as well."

Galileo kept quiet yet felt uncomfortable all the same. When he had been told, he hadn't realized they would be heading out to seek Richard with other paladins in tow.

Of course, he wasn't sure what he'd expected. Perhaps paladins from the temple? He hadn't expected this to reach the ears of other temples, though perhaps he was the fool here.

Scave turned his eyes over to Galileo, his eyes scanning the young man subtly, but surely. "And this is your new cadet?" he asked Copernicus, his lazy smile still present. "He looks disappointed." joked the man.

Copernicus scratched his neck awkwardly. "Well, I forgot to mention that this would be a cross temple investigation."

Scave rolled his eyes and sighed. "You should've informed him much earlier. He's lucky only 2 other temples are involved in this case. You know how invested all the temples are."

Galileo's eyes widened in surprise?

What! All the temples?!

He turned around to glare at his teacher, who had forgotten to tell him that.

His teacher only turned away awkwardly. Coward.

What did Richard have to do with all the temples?

Seeing the confused look on the kids face, Scave chuckled. "Isis is not the only one up to funny business."

Oh.

Scave chuckled at the surprised look on the kids face, the change amusing to him. "So you understand now?"

"Yes." Galileo said dumbly, as he digested the point made.

"might want to fix that face soon." said Scave. "The paladin coming to represent Jorvus Mars is a strict asshole with a stick up his ass." and to this Copernicus merely nodded solemnly.

Uh oh.

'Sorry, Richard. I seem to be bringing trouble with me'