The Quater:node had little to no moment, so she considered leaving the bubbles alone. She can also use those stored resources and play with her prey a little longer, but if this human can sense and control those bubbles... “No! There’s no way it made or can sense them, that’s a higher level of mana control which requires any creature to cross the first threshold. The human must just have a skill to move the bubbles around.”

Tetsu’s eyes widen, seeing the root struggle to penetrate RJ’s lower body.

The mold emanates heat as she mixes it back and forth, burning the root away.

“This is bad.” Tetsu glares at the unfazed Dandralith, expecting its attack to fail on the tank. “It’s smart.” He grits his teeth. “Too smart.”

Stop, step, and throw. Tetsu releases more charcoal shards and activates ‘leech on’ under the cover of smoke, masking his presence even more.

[Ding! Skill: Leech Over. Warrior. Uncommon.]

Dandralith already spotted the charcoal shards and raised a tendril as a countermeasure.

‘To the left.’ Tetsu guesses the angle and splits his focus between the skill and the runes.

With a single swipe of a tendril, the smoke scatters to the left.

Tetsu followed the smoke and stayed inside its cover. Already having a Headstart, he stayed underneath the smoke cloud and slipped behind the mind tree. “Hope your veil is active, bud.” He taps the tree and slides behind its veil.

With a quick peek, Tetsu finds no elephant grass in sight. Even half of the grasslings were missing. “Of fucking course.” He activates two bubbles and starts digging. The ‘Plough on’ skill upgraded to epic, making him move the soil around with ease.

By dodging harder rocks and assessing the surrounding soil, Tetsu gained the Earth's affinity; MUD. After accepting and implanting the ‘Mud’ affinity into the skill, Tetsu swam across the terrain.

The soil didn’t move around Tetsu, letting him through. The Earth's affinity helped reduce the gap between sand particles, pushing them within themselves, and creating extra space.

When Tetsu realizes this, the skill upgraded to legendary rarity.

[Ding! Mud affinity affected skill ‘plough-on’ to ‘Earth meld’ Initiate. Legendary.]

With RR guiding him to move underground, Tetsu made four escape tunnels, interconnecting all of them and placing their openings farther away. He couldn’t mark any of the entrances, so he used the general direction of bubbles, which hadn’t been claimed yet, and hoped hopping in and out a few times should make it familiar.

He took quick breaks to retrieve more charcoal shards and booger meat hidden around the safe house.

Every ten seconds, Tetsu would return and throw a charcoal shard from behind the veil. This kept the Dandralith confused. After all, even the smartest enemies wouldn’t expect a veil that could separate two worlds.

By consuming meat at regular intervals, Tetsu kept his fatigue levels low and fueled the body to work faster.

‘Time for phase two.’

Tetsu throws his smoke orb from behind the veil and uses a tunnel to emerge deeper into the forest. He surfaces like a swimmer coming out of a pool of mud.

He imagined the scene repeatedly, giggling to himself. A Dandralith cut his amusement short, when he turned around and found it in his blind spot, maintained a stoic presence, focused on the battle that mattered.

Fear took over and froze Tetsu on the spot, while his hunger freed him, demanding one good bite.

‘Thanks but no,’ Tetsu denies the fangs’ request.

He circled the transformed Dandralith, aiming for its blind spot. Tetsu sprinted faster than ever, hopping over and digging under the pillar of flames. On his way, he spots another Dandralith, standing still between the blazing forest, giving a new definition for the word stoic.

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‘Definitely the boss.’ Tetsu tells himself. ‘Why aren’t they attacking? Overconfident or some kind of messed up strategy?’

Tetsu throws the artifact away, grabbing Boss Dandralith’s attention. ‘So you are watching.’ He acknowledges and boosts his speed with a sole focus on the running runes.

At a point, Tetsu jumps over a branch and leaps further up into the sky with the help of his new skill. Shifting his focus onto the rune ‘pluck’ Tetsu pulls and flings the artifact straight up, over the transformed Dandralith.

“Whew!” Tetsu whistles. “A normal throw wouldn’t have sent it that far.” He lands, rolls, and dashes away, underneath the Dandralith. “Come.” He commands with his entire force, fueling the rune etched on his palm with mana.

The artifact descends like a mighty spear with the tooth over its head facing down. The tooth digs into Dandralith’s head and she lets out a painful screech.

Its sibling, still present inside Tetsu’s mouth, reacts to the foaming white bubbles spewing out. “So, you do bleed.” The tooth slides out, forcing a smirk. “Come.” Tetsu pulls on the rune etched over the artifact. Judging by how little force he used, Tetsu assumed that only the tooth could penetrate the Dandralith’s head.

The Spiky artifact head idea was back on the table if he grew his second tooth out.

‘Should I pluck my first tooth or my second?’

A weird question for another weird day.

Furious, Dandralith sends several tendrils toward Tetsu. He activates a rune over his back and another on the rhino’s mold, flying backward and dodging the tendrils.

The Dandralith lets out more tendrils. These flew much slower but had more precise control as they curved and followed him. Tetsu cuts a few with the artifact by using the skill ‘Razor edge’ over the tooth and transforming it into a tiny blade. The rest he dodges by commanding each body part to escape in a peculiar direction.

Dandralith aimed for the human's blind spots and curved her tendrils to sever its limbs. She wanted the human to suffer before killing it. But Tetsu manipulated his arms and body in weird patterns, dodging every fatal wound.

Tetsu suffered several cuts but dodged every fatal wound. He could stay one step ahead with his mind, but the pull force lacked before the tendril’s speed.

‘Power.’ Tetsu complains. He lacked the power to pull himself faster. ‘I’m still one step ahead, yet...’ Tetsu grunts as two other tendrils draw blood. ‘If it wasn’t aiming to cripple him, he would’ve been long dead.’

Arm to the left, leg to the right, and torso to the back. Tetsu activates and deactivates runes to dodge two other tendrils.

‘That should work.’ Tetsu shifts static and activates a rune over a tree and on his chest. He bends like a book and zaps at an impossible angle, with his limbs flailing behind.

Tetsu heads straight toward the upcoming barrage of tendrils, then bends at an impossible angle. The sudden shift in pattern threw the Dandralith’s perception into a loop as Tetsu glid past her tendril but failed to cut it through.

An acute pain lingered over her limbs, but a quick redirection of vital force fixes the lacerations caused by the human.

She didn’t understand the human tricks. Their entire species always had a dirty hand behind their victories. That’s the reason she kept her distance from the unidentifiable smoke shards. Zeel to one, it’s poisonous. Like the trickery used over the artifact, a clear trick of deception.

Dandralith didn’t take the human seriously until now, and when she did, none of her attacks landed. Before her tendril established contact and drew blood. A couple more strikes later, the human would die of blood loss. Not wanting to wait that long and see the imp dance, she chose to end this game of tag.

With sole focus on the despicable human, she manipulated her strongest tendril to finish the job. Two minutes in and yet her tendrils had to make contact. Now more than ever, the human bent, dove, and glided across the terrain, with impossible speeds and improbable movements.

‘Sever, one tendril and its grows two.’ Tetsu’s mind ran a marathon of its own. ‘Growth takes a lot of mana. It should take a lot... So if I keep cutting its limbs...? No. Yes. Maybe... What about health? Bait. Yes, let’s bait it. I’m about to die, so it shall slip up.’ Tetsu takes a few graces on purpose and spreads the blood around, masking the original wound.

Now, by a glance, he looked critical.

The plan pays off as the Dandralith sends its main body. Or its strongest roots, which covered its head until now.

‘Fast and precise, that’s the main body. Now.’ Tetsu blasts forward, shocking the Dandralith and forcing an opening. In a zap, he creates several runes across the tendrils. All of them were the rune ‘pluck.’

With a semi-condition of acting against the ‘FP’ rune, Tetsu created a strong magnetic force between him and the tendril, both adorning the same pole.

Tetsu tapped into his unique fighting skill while utilizing two unique runes, an unshakable will, and topped it all off with his mind predicting, activating, and using the ‘mimic skill’ to iron off a technique.

[Ding! Runes/skill/ with help from TT. Upgrade/combine/to form racial skill of the Lumindroids: magnetic field. Warrior. Mythical.]

A moment’s hesitation, one tiny wink, an unlucky misstep, or a sudden level-up can lead to sudden death.

Tetsu received an option to lose two runes, one skill, and his unique fight technique for a racial gift.

On a trail run, he activates a magnetic field, marking the tendril and himself as north poles. True to its name and with the power of being a racial skill, the marked tendrils either pushed Tetsu away or got pushed away when Tetsu marked the floor beneath him as the South Pole.

With a mere thought and by changing the Dandralith’s pole, Tetsu swung her around like a Piñata, striking with an imaginary magnetic pole.

Racial skills were a tier above normal system skills. One had to draw mana from the atmosphere for a spell or condense vital energy into their wrist for an explosive punch, while racial skills are simply using what you have.

If you are a magma beast, your punch can cause an explosive by simply punching. This meant you needed fewer resources, time, and power to get the same result as a veteran human who trained for centuries. It’s the difference between swinging a hammer and making a hammer before you swing.

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