It only took me four more hours to find another first-tier opponent. Sneaking up on it using stealth I was able to get a critical attack which allowed me to end the fight quite fast. The monsters are usually a lot larger and stronger than their beast counterparts, so the first-tier fire salamander beast was a lot smaller and weaker than the monster I fought previously. It was like an oversized crocodile but with a lot more capability to move on land. Its scales were quite tough, but my abilities and weapon are strong enough to overcome the beast's defences.

I still need it to attack four more times in its weak spot behind the neck to finish the fight but beasts not being able to control fire just breathe it out made it easy to dodge. Moving deeper into the swamp I continue to find more and more first-rank beasts who were generally easy to kill until I found a pack of four. I was hoping that they had just met each other by accident and were going to separate but it seems that then being together in a group still carried forward into the first tier.

I followed them for two hours until they reached land that was more solid. Not wanting to waste an opportunity I broke my stealth and used my movement ability to quickly rush the closest fire salamander. This time I used my core energy so my weapon would be able to finish the beast with one strike. Even with core energy, I wasn't able to chop the head off the beast but halfway through the neck was still good enough to kill it.

Even before I was able to pull my sword out three plumes of fire rushed towards me. Since I wasn’t directly attacking my opponents, I was able to use homesteader’s mile to move sideways out of the way from the fire. I then rushed in having to dodge one tail attack before I could reach one of the fire salamanders, giving it a serious wound on one of its front legs. They seem to have more fire in them than I was expecting, and I had to dodge multiple streams of fire five more times before I was able to end another beast.

Cutting off their tails while they were doing their tail attack seemed to be quite a good strategy. They need a few moments to adjust to losing that body weight giving me an opening. With a big overhead swing, I was able to split one of the fire salamander’s heads leaving me only one opponent.

Then something happened that I was not expecting. The last one turned around and tried to escape but I had already wounded it a few times in its legs making its attempt to escape slow and painful. For a moment I felt bad, but I quickly finished it off and took a moment to rest.

I hunted throughout the night and by the next evening I had levelled up all my classes. The first to level up was my homesteader class but the others quickly followed. My heroic commander class reached the tenth level milestone giving me three times the stat points and a skill called Two hand mastery.

As I continued to travel there were more and more first-tier fire salamander beasts the closer I moved to the dungeon, but I hadn’t encountered another monster. This was a good thing as monsters were a lot tougher to kill while giving basically the same amount of experience. The only thing they offer were their cores.

During the next morning, I came across a large lake which I carefully approached. I decided to monitor it and it didn’t take long for two fire salamanders to approach it to start drinking the water that was there. The water in the lake was a lot clearer than in the surrounding swamp and looked very inviting.

As soon as the two of them started to drink a larger salamander attacked out of the water swallowing them both down in one gulp. This salamander was almost as big as the other huge fires salamander monster I fought but there were a few crucial differences.

Its species wasn't the fire salamander. I guess it was a monster of a more regular salamander. It didn't have the scales but the normal skin a salamander should have, and it seemed to have water elemental control instead of the fire one. There was a choice to be made.

This fight was probably going to be a really hard one as you really don’t want to fight elemental users in their own environment especially if it’s a water user. Then there was the problem of it killing fire salamanders. It was the first predator for the fire salamanders I had seen and taking it out would be even worse for the environment, so I decided to leave it alive and move on.

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Not soon after that, I found another monster, this one being smaller but faster and it was a fire salamander. This time I wasn’t able to sneak up on it as its senses seemed even better than I expected. Its fire control was also a lot better than I had experienced before. As soon as it noticed me it started to spew fire into the air. I was at first puzzled by it, but I soon figured out why it expelled all the fire it had. It was able to take control of it and manipulate it expertly.

I had to constantly dodge and even then, I was hit by fire multiple times. My armour was barely able to keep up, but my abilities were strong enough to endure. After 10 minutes of dodging fire, I was able to get closer and finally landed a solid hit.

It was the first time during a fight that I chose to move into a more wet area. It slowed me down a bit but being able to dive underwater to escape the fire attacks helped keep me safe and the water also helped reduce the amount of fire the monster was able to control.

Still keeping up my armour was taking a lot of energy, so I decided to use my core energy to finish the fight faster. It took five hits to finish the monster and a considerable amount of my core energy while desperately trying to get closer to the monster. After I retrieved its core, I checked over my energy reserves.

My normal energy was half gone while I still had 3/4 of my core energy. The constant fighting had really started to drain my resources so I started to look for a place where I could sleep. Finding a nice patch of trees, I settled in and slept for the rest of the day.

After I woke up, I spent the night continuing to hunt and moving towards the dungeon. There were even more beasts here and I was getting more proficient at killing them even when they were in groups.

My biggest time sink was still searching out opponents, but it was getting better this deep into the swamp. Towards evening I stumbled upon a strange scene. The swamp ahead of me was frozen solid. Something that shouldn’t be possible during the summer.

There was only one explanation that made sense and after following the trail for two hours I found the culprit. It was a salamander that looked like a fire salamander but its scales were shades of blue instead of red. Around it was a constant area where everything froze. The freezing effect was decently fast, but it wasn't instant which was good news. I was about to start sneaking closer when I noticed a group of fire salamander beasts closing in for an attack.

I decided to watch and learn. The ice salamander did have a breath weapon and whatever was caught in it was frozen solid almost instantly. With the first attack, the monster took out two of the five attacking fire salamanders. There was also ice that started to slowly cover the fire salamander scales but that effect would not have significant results for some time. The fire that the fire salamanders used didn't have any effect on the ice salamander, but the opposite wasn't true.

The fight lasted for about 20 minutes and while the ice salamander did get hurt it wasn't anything serious. The most important thing was that it seemed to have used up all of its breath capability for the moment.

Once again sneaking didn’t work. As soon as I entered its freezing range it immediately noticed me. The ice effect felt like you were in an arctic blizzard and without my ability to resist elemental effect with my armour, it would have been a lot worse.

I was also mistaken by it not having a breath attack, but I wasn’t stupid enough to let my guard down. Still, I was barely able to jump away from the ice breath having only one of my feet getting caught. I used the pummel of my sword to break the ice and then dodged the tail attack before it hit me. The fight after that was a lot more standard but I still needed three core energy-powered attacks before the fight was finally over.

Retrieving the core, I could instantly feel the elemental seed inside of it. Turns out that it wasn’t ice but frost which was curious. Was there also an ice elemental seed and if so if I had both would they overlap or will I only be able to incorporate only one of them? I took a few moments to think about it but in the end, who knows how long it will take until I find a monster with an ice element. Absorbing the elemental seed, I now had five different ones growing in me.

The only disappointing thing was that it would take many years for the seeds to start giving any benefits but as a person who is willing to plant trees so I can harvest them when they are fully grown waiting around 20 years isn't the worst.

With a smile on my face, I moved forward towards the dungeon which was now quite close. Unfortunately, I had to make a detour during the night. I saw huge fire plumes towards the east. It was possible that two huge monsters had fought there so I wanted to go check it out.