There was a rumor among the mercenaries of Rockwell City.

Within the past month, one lone person had been dominating all of the subjugation missions.

In a place like Rockwell, these types of postings were common. It was located near one of the largest and most perilous desert plains in the entire Feram Empire--the Red Sun Desert--and beasts constantly threatened its safety. Plenty of mercenaries came to this dangerous zone to make a killing.

But it had to be known that subjugation jobs were meant for groups. It wasn’t against the rules for a single person to do it, but it wasn’t realistic. After all, the amount of magical beasts they had to kill within the allotted time was too much for one person to handle. Not only that, but looting their corpses was time-consuming as well--and dangerous--because the scent of blood would draw in more monsters.

But, someone managed to complete it. Not only that, but he finished multiple of these cleansing jobs well within the given time period. And whenever he came back, he showed no signs of wounds of exhaustion.

They aptly started calling this freak of nature Monster.

A tall, thin figure sauntered into the guild. He was dressed in leather, hunter attire with a bow and quiver of arrows strapped to his back and carried a bulging sack. The man’s hood was pulled up and cast a strange, dark fog over his face that could not be seen through. No one had tried to pry through it despite their curiosity in case it caused an issue. After all, who wanted to fight with the lunatic who fought swarms of monsters on his own? He was at least a B or A-ranked mercenary, and everyone that hung out around the guild was lower ranked than that.

The surroundings grew quiet as he silently threaded across the floor to the receptionist.

“There he is… Monster,” someone whispered to the person seated next to them.

“He gives me the chills,” came the response.

Of course, this so-called Monster was Emil, who did not care about what was said about him. He had come to this city as a way to train his strength and gain more money. He felt that he did not have enough time to relax and set out for somewhere that would aid him in growing quickly. With Rockwell’s condition, it was pretty prime place for Emil.

For the past couple of months, he had been pushing his limits here, not wanting to wind up in a situation like he had with Ilya. If Emil wanted to accomplish the goal he had set for himself, he would have to train relentlessly.

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Rockwell was far from the capital and on the outskirts of the Feram Empire and--most importantly--far from Alma City.

But he still had no way of knowing if the Primrose Musician would come after him! A decent amount of time had passed, but there was no knowing what the possibilities were. If Emil encountered him, there was no guarantee that he would go free again.

This necessity to survive pushed him even further.

He set out into the desert on a near daily basis without breaks, challenging hordes of monsters and dancing along the line of death. Unlike the impression that the mercenaries had formed of him, it wasn’t very easy for Emil to kill these beasts.

The Red Sun Desert had three rings with different danger levels:

First was the outskirts. This was the area were most mercenaries below B-rank gathered. The amount of regular monsters here was pretty high, but magical beasts here were a bit rarer. After that came the second ring, which was the inverse of the outskirts. Only B-ranked mercenaries with the corresponding strength would dare enter this place. Magical beasts had a certain degree of intelligence, the higher tiered ones even being as smart as humans.

In the core ring, if someone wasn’t at the Adamantem rank, they’d wind up dead. Every magical beasts there occupied their own territory and would rarely leave it. But they were highly aggressive and each had human intellect. They sent out their own subordinates that tended to patrol the second ring and core as the outskirts were irrelevant in their eyes. As long as someone didn’t cause too much trouble, they didn’t move.

The place that Emil stayed in was, of course, the second ring. The missions posted by the government to cleanse this area to keep monster populations down paid well and provided Emil with the perfect training zone. He didn’t even think about entering the core. After all, his strength placed him in the middle ranks of the Argenti tier. He was capable of punching above his weight and could take on Aurum leveled beasts, but the ones that had reached the peak of the mortal realm were far too dangerous.

With his regime, he had been training his technique rather than his pure strength. The second ring was large and Emil went to the more isolated areas to increase his proficiency with all of the attributes, but mostly his spatial and temporal magic.

He was far more confident in himself now, but he remained humble.

I’m still weak. If I want to become a force to be reckoned with, I’ll have to work harder.

That was his one goal. Perhaps it always had been. It seemed to be far off, yet somehow, within his grasp.

Emil stopped in front of the receptionist and said, “Is Old Man Petyr in?”

Old Man Petyr was the guild’s top appraiser. He’d always give Emil the best price for the materials he had taken off of the monster’s corpses, so the boy had come to prefer him.

The receptionist looked up at Emil and smiled. He had grown used to Emil’s request and they had started to skip the formalities. “Yes. He’s in the same room as always.”

Emil didn’t respond, but he continued to lug the large sack behind him as he headed upstairs.