When Benton hadn’t received notification of any advancements, he’d feared the worst, that the village and all the defenders had somehow been killed. Thus, he let out a very relieved breath when he finally received a popup.

Host’s Disciple, Zou Tian, has reached Mastery in Hide Presence.

Host is awarded two Sect Points.

Host has 854 Sect Points Available.

Zou Tian was alive, which meant that the village hadn’t been destroyed. In fact, most if not all of the sect members were probably still alive.

Of course they were. They were all good disciples who followed orders well and worked together and looked out for each other. Benton couldn’t have asked for a better group of youngsters.

He had been worried for nothing.

Over the next couple of hours as he cautiously Quickstepped toward the mountain searching for the tenth wave, more notifications rolled in. Kang Lin advanced to Large Success with her lightning spear attack. Many other guards and villagers advanced their techniques as well, twelve in total. Three sect members moved up a minor realm in cultivation.

The twins didn’t advance further, but that was okay. He was sure they were doing just fine.

The main thing was that it seemed like the defenders had come through whatever it was that they had faced. The sixteen points were just icing on the cake.

He Quickstepped again and extended his senses. And again. And again.

There it was. Finally.

It. Not them. A single beast, a rank ten.

Since there wasn’t a wave, that meant the beast he sensed was almost certainly the Big Boss.

That was good. Benton had been worried about taking on multiple foes a major realm above him. Going against one should be much easier.

Of course, easier didn’t mean easy. From what he’d studied about beast tides, the Big Boss was tougher, stronger, faster, and more intelligent than other beasts of the same rank, usually significantly so.

For one of the few times since his transmigration, Benton was about to walk into a fight and not be the stronger of the combatants.

He was already using his Stealth technique, and even though he doubted its effectiveness considering recent events, he meticulously erased himself from sight, sound, and smell. His next step was to gain elevation to get a look at his opponent, so he Quickstepped up to the limb of a tall tree.

All the beasts he’d seen so far had been enhanced or mutated forms of animals that he could have seen on Earth. Sure, they were much more powerful and aggressive than their mortal counterparts, but at their base, they were the same type of creature.

Not so for the beast ahead of him.

It was a freaking cyclops.

Benton didn’t know why the unexpected revelation surprised him so much. Dragons were definitely a thing here. Real dragons that flew. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure about fire breathing, but there were enough cultivators who were feted for having faced one that he believed they were real.

He also didn’t know a lot about bloodlines, but some families—clans?—drew power from having beasts in their ancestry. Dragons and basilisks were both mythological creatures that were mentioned as bestowing such bloodlines.

If those two could exist, why not cyclops?

Besides, the proof was right there a couple hundred yards in front of him. It had one red eye in the center of its forehead and was eight feet tall if it was an inch. Gray skin outlined chiseled muscles that would make a Mr. Universe contestant weep. And it wore a skirt. Or kilt, maybe.

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Either way, that was definitely a piece of clothing, indicating a level of intelligence and perhaps culture far in excess of any of the beasts Benton had previously faced.

Maybe it could be reasoned with?

He wasn’t stupid enough to jump down and try to talk to it, though. First, he wanted to observe it and to try to think of everything he knew about the creatures from stories on Earth.

If he remembered correctly, Percy Jackson fought one of them. Maybe? Benton had read the series to his son, but that was a while back. The details were sketchy. Even if there was a cyclops in one of those books, he didn’t remember anything about the battle and definitely not any strengths or weaknesses of the beast.

If only he were a protagonist in one of Greg’s stories. He would have perfect knowledge of everything, like he had Google at his fingertips. But he was left with only his imperfect memory.

Honestly, the biggest memory he had of cyclops was from a movie. Was it Krull? Maybe. It was something he watched when he was young, not from watching more recently with his kids or grandkids.

Anyway, in the story he remembered, cyclops were all really sad because they were able to see the future but only the moment of their death. Benton somehow doubted the creature in front of him suffered from that particular malady, though.

So basically, he knew absolutely nothing of use about his potential enemy.

Just great.

As he was thinking about what he knew, the beast was moving. And it moved fast. In seconds, it had crossed half the distance.

Oops.

Caught off guard, Benton wanted to retreat, and since he knew the beast to be the equivalent of a Nascent Soul cultivator that probably possessed an aura, he activated his Aura Defense. He Quickstepped, intending to move a half mile back.

Something went wonky with the technique, though. Instead of stepping through air from one place to another, it felt like he moved through molasses, and he ended up only traveling a scant hundred yards, around ten percent of the distance he had intended.

When he looked at his qi expended, the short trip had taken five times more than moving the entire half mile should have.

Crap. What happened? He’d bought the Aura Defense technique to Mastery. Did it not work? Or was there some other problem?

“System,” he said internally, not wanting to chance drawing any additional attention to himself, “why didn’t the technique work?”

The technique did work. Host was inside the area covered by the overpowering aura of the beast serving as the Boss of a tide. The aura both increased qi expenditure and reduced the technique’s effectiveness as anticipated. Without the Aura Defense technique, Host would have been unable to use any other techniques at all.

Man, that sucked. Even with his cheat skill, he would be at a serious disadvantage. The fight was not going to be easy or simple.

It was definitely best if he could avoid it altogether. Which left him to his favorite tactic—bluffing.

To do that, though, he’d have to engage in a conversation with the beast. Ugh. He wasn’t exactly optimistic about such an endeavor going well.

Feeling more nervous than he had in a long while, he found a clearing ahead of the cyclops in its path of travel, dropped his Stealth technique, and waited.

As he hoped, the creature stopped as soon as it saw him. To any cultivator or beast with a spiritual sense, not being able to sense an opponent was a huge, glaring warning sign that said, “This dude might just be able to curb stomp me.” Thus, the beast had to have found his presence more than a little disconcerting.

“Hi,” Benton said.

“Human!”

“Yes, I’m a human. Should I call you, Cyclops?”

“Human!!”

Maybe the beast wasn’t quite as sharp as Benton had given it credit for being.

“I was wondering if I could perhaps prevail upon you to abandon your attack on my village?”

“Human!!!”

The thing was working itself up into a lather. Its muscles were tensed, and its body literally shook. Clearly, it wanted to do the “Hulk smash!” routine on him and was only being held back by fear of Benton being at a higher level.

“I’d prefer not to have to kill you. So few humans or beasts reach your level. It would be a waste.”

The cyclops snorted, which at least wasn’t another increasingly loud shout identifying Benton’s species, so … progress?

“What do you say? Tell me what you’re after, and maybe I can help.”

“Human weak!”

“Am I? Am I really?” Talk was only going to get Benton so far with the creature. He needed to back up his bluff and had an idea that might just work. “If that’s the case, I’m probably slow, too?”

“Human slow!”

“Then if you try to hit me, there’s no way I’ll be able to dodge, right?”

“Human slow!”

“Try to hit me, then.”

Benton barely had an instant to crank up his Time Manipulation to full dilation, speeding himself to the maximum in comparison to the cyclops. It drained his qi like crazy and still the beast was ridiculously fast. He had to Quickstep out of the way, or he would have been flattened.

“See,” he said from behind the creature. “I not only dodged, but I was able to move to your blindspot. I’m not weak or slow.”

“No aura. Human tries to trick Cyclops. Human weak!”

Well, shoot. Nothing he could do could simulate an aura, and there would be no bluffing the beast without one. It all was going to have to come down to a fight.