The moment they managed to cut the bone dragon’s head, the fire in its eyes dimmed, and its colossal body dropped to the ground along with its head. At the same time, the transparent barrier around the thrones had disappeared.

Ethan and Beet walked over excitedly and inspected the stone tablets.

‘’There are descriptions,’’ Ethan pointed out. ‘’Don’t send any mana for now. Let me read them first.’’

As he read the writings on the stone tablets, the smirk on his mouth turned into a grin. All of them were good stuff as he expected. The first one was called [Isolate]. It shrouded the enemy with death mana and blocked their [Mana Sense]. Having experienced the absence of [Mana Sense], he knew this was an amazing skill, especially when it was only the enemy who had this inability. The only downside was that it worked for a single target, but he hoped that Beet would be able to change that in the future.

The second skill’s name was [Spectral Division]. It created two phantom copies of the user. Just like Beet’s shades, their attack power was lower than their owner, and the damage these copies took only cost the user mana.

The last of them was called [Skeletal Hand]. As the name implied, it was a straightforward skill that summoned a giant skeletal hand from the ground. Its user was able to attack with its sharp nails or even grab the enemy and confine them. There was no time limit, but it was limited to a single hand at a time and wherever the hand summoned from, it had to stay there with a little mobility. So, if someone avoided it from the start, the skill became useless. Otherwise, it was perfect for both attacking and trapping.

‘’You lucky dog. These are all unique skills with limitless potential. I’m only disappointed that there is no skeleton summoning skill. I guess you have to wait some more until we get you an undead army,’’ he commented in a good mood. ‘’Go on, learn them, and give me a demonstration. I’m very curious about the third one.’’

Beet sent his mana without delay, and the stone tablets crumbled to dust one by one. When the last one was gone, the palace started to shake and a crack appeared in the wall behind the thrones. Yet, it wasn’t a sign of collapse. The crack started to widen toward the sides as the wall separated from each other, allowing more and more sunlight inside.

Ethan immediately went for the bone dragon and stored its head, but the rest of its body was just too big to fit inside his ring. ‘’Beet! Try to store its body! Your necklace should have enough space.’’

Beet flew over but he also couldn’t manage to store it.

‘’Call your shades! We’re gonna wrap this thing up!’’ On Ethan’s command, two shades held the shoulders while the other two wrapped the creature’s wing bones around its body. Ethan himself grabbed the tail and folded it until it reached its neck. ‘’Try again!’’

This time it smoothly got stored in Beet’s necklace, and the duo left the palace hastily. The blinding light assaulted their eyes, making them both squint. When their vision started to return, the rumbling sounds from behind got louder and the crack started to close itself once again.

Ethan blocked the sun with his hand and tried to see their location. Soon, he realized that they were still on top of a mountain, but a different one altogether. Because there were three mountain tops around them, all taller than the one they stood on. We were really traveling through the hollowed mountains all this time. This place isn’t as big as the capital of Mirasatra, but I bet their past is somewhat connected. Once we reached the kingdom, I should investigate this emperor Anpu.

They were standing on a small flat area, a few hundred yards below their own mountain’s peak. The position of the sun indicated that it was closing on noon and they were facing the opposite side of the Mirasatra. It didn’t matter though --with their ship, the kingdom was only about a week or two away from here.

This arduous trial took three months, but the gains were plenty. Ethan was a whisker away from level 43, while Beet newly advanced to level 39 with the death of the bone dragon. The wendigos inspired him to create an awesome skill and the corpse of that bone dragon was probably worth a fortune. After all, there was no dragon in the lower realm, rich people would even just buy it to add to their family heirloom. Not to mention, its bones were as tough as a tier 8 maybe even tier 9.

Still, the biggest prizes were Beet's new skills.

He turned to Beet with a gleam in his eyes and clapped his hands. ‘’Alright then. Let’s see what you got.’’

The image of Beet started to get fuzzy and he split himself into three. The ones at the sides were the exact copy of him, but [Mana Sense] showed that they were brimming with mana while Beet himself only had a small and acute mana pulse, coming from his core.

Ethan narrowed his eyes. ‘’Use the [Isolate] on me.’’

Dark mana gathered around Beet, similar to bone dragon’s miasma but milder. A second later, it disappeared at once and reappeared around Ethan, covering him like a gloomy shadow.

Just as he’d experienced in the trial, he lost contact with [Mana Sense]. His vision was still the same and he was still able to use his skills, albeit with a good amount of awkwardness. But more importantly, he realized that it was now impossible to discern Beet from the copies.

‘’Awesome combo! Nice job, Anpu!’’ he exclaimed with a big smile and fetched his dagger. ‘’Send one of your phantoms to attack me.’’

A quick spar showed that this skill was much more bizarre than they thought. The stats of the phantom were only equal to an early tier-1, but it was able to ignore matter. That included not only the armor but the weapons themselves as well. It had passed through the dagger of the sage like a breeze and cut Ethan’s arm with its scythe that was covered with [Blood Edge]. Although the wound was shallow, thanks to the stat difference between them, it was still impressive.

The downside was passing through matter consumed a good chunk of Beet’s mana, and anything close to biological was off-limits. That also included Devi itself. Still, even for Ethan, these phantom Beets were way too annoying to fight against. If he didn’t have Devi, he would’ve taken a lot of damage until he finally depleted Beet’s mana, and if Beet decided to escape while sending his phantoms in different ways, it would have been impossible to detect the real one without the [Mana Sense].

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

He tried very hard to figure out a way to get rid of the [Isolate], but nothing worked, except one skill, [Void Wrap]. When he covered himself with void aspect mana, he was barely able to use [Mana Sense] again. It was still disoriented like a signal coming from a broken antenna, but it was enough for him to discern which of the phantoms were real.

Though, how many people had the skills to cover themselves with a special aspect of mana? Even in the tournament, he never saw other skills like [Void Wrap].

Thrilled for the little terror’s fortune, he urged him to use the last one.

Beet had already called his [Isolate] off. That was why, for a brief moment, he was able to feel the condensing mana below the ground with his [Mana Sense]. Right after, a giant skeletal hand rose from the earth, piercing the rocks and sending soil everywhere. It happened in a second and stopped when it reached its wrist. The hand was even a bit taller than Ethan himself, and the bone fingers also had bone nails that were sharp and pointy.

The duo started to inspect the hand while trying different approaches and found out that Beet was able to sustain the skill with little mana, change its rotation, and do all kinds of moves including attacking like a claw. Naturally, the first thing Ethan taught him was to make a middle finger. They even chose a secret move: Whenever Ethan rolled his eyes and gave a nod afterward, Beet was tasked with creating a giant skeletal hand that was pulling a middle finger.

They played with it for a good time, and it quickly became Ethan’s favorite skill. The problem of alerting the enemy via [Mana Sense] was solved with [Isolate]. Although many aspects could be improved, he had high hopes for Beet and his top-grade talent.

After half an hour, their enthusiasm started to wane, and Ethan proposed to celebrate it with a good dinner. Since they were already out, there was no need to be picky about their food stock, and thanks to Ethan’s habit of saving the best food for the last, his ring was full of delicacies.

He picked a good location on the mountain and fetched the table and the chairs that he’d borrowed from the mansion of stardust mercenaries. They were even better than the ones inside Anpu’s palace. His only regret was leaving the thrones behind, but sadly, they were both merged with the marble on the ground.

At the mountain ledge, under a huge tree, he donned the table with all kinds of food and fetched a cold beer for himself. The tree was a dried one, but just its wide trunk was enough to make shade for them.

Before sitting at the table and joining Beet who had already dug in, he summoned his ship and entered its cabin to get the memory recorder that was full of Abraham’s songs. The ship’s deck was still reeking of death, but the cabin was in a good condition. He quickly finished his business and stored the ship back while thinking that they needed some kind of water source to clean it thoroughly.

Sitting on his chair, he raised his cup. ‘’To our survival from the clutches of evil Anpu and his notorious army! And to the new evil tyrant of this generation, Beet!’’

Beet raised his head from his food and blinked his eyes in confusion before returning to his meal.

Ethan chuckled as he opened the recorder, and started eating in a relaxed manner.

These three months of pushing themselves to their limits exhausted them both. Especially that bone dragon. He only had four or five minutes to attack the beast before getting close to death, and in that duration, he had to find and strike the place he was focusing under the miasma while dodging the creature's attacks.

It took him about 20 strikes in a day and a whole three weeks to finally kill it. All that time, he was either dancing with death or meditating to get ready for the next dance. Thanks to the potions he drank after the kill, his body was in top condition right now, but the fatigue was still lingering.

Now, finally finished with the hard part and rewarded for their effort, he was able to enjoy himself in an open space alongside a piece of weird but fun music, allowing his frame of mind to get well slowly.

Ethan chugged his beer until the cup was empty and gave out a satisfied sigh. As Beet switched to the last plate with food, he turned to gaze at the scenery. When he used [Mana Sense] with his eyes, he was vaguely able to see the Emerald Forest on the horizon. In between, there was nothing but barren lands. Yet, it didn’t change the fact that the scenery was gorgeous. On top of this mountain range, it was quite clear how small a human was. This understanding was nothing depressing but rather liberating. It filled him with a sense of tranquil fullness.

Getting up energetically, he called for Beet, ‘’Time to go. Let’s end this adventure by adding a cherry on top of it.’’ He stored everything in his ring and walked to the edge of the mountain before calling his special order from Audrey. The wingsuit appeared on top of his clothes, carrying him a few steps back with the wind. ‘’Come. There is a place for you on my back. Get in that pocket.’’

Beet did as he was told without understanding what was going on.

Once Beet was inside the transparent pocket, he zipped the pocket and jumped from the mountain with a big smile. ‘’Woohoo!’’

Ethan dived tens of miles above the ground and glided at an extreme speed through the wind. This was just a fun project. At first, he planned to use it as a means of transportation, but it became useless after buying a flying ship. Unlike with the ship, he was able to use [Blink] with the suit, but he could also just store the ship and use [Blink] anyway. Not to mention, it wasn’t that comfortable for a long journey.

Nonetheless, he still got one just for fun.

Since their destination was on the opposite side, he had to go around the mountain range, but there were a lot of mountains. By the time they got in the right direction, they were already close to the ground. He could’ve used more [Blink]s to delay the landing, but Beet started to get restless, constantly moving inside the pocket and probably looking everywhere with panic.

Ethan wanted to let the guy out and ask if he liked to do it again. Because he wasn’t sure if the little terror was overjoyed with a thrill or getting a panic attack.

As they were less than 100 yards away from the ground, he used a [Blink] and appeared a foot above the ground without any momentum, dropping gently. He stood up slowly and unzipped Beet’s pocket.

Noticing Beet’s wide pupils, Ethan gave a wry chuckle. ‘’You didn’t like it? There wasn’t much danger since I’ve both a flying ship and [Blink]. I didn’t–’’

Beet shook his head, still looking in a daze.

‘’Did you like it?’’

Beet nodded frantically, staring at the wingsuit longingly.

Ethan burst out a laugh. ‘’Alright. I’ll take you for a spin again.’’ But before that, he detected two people with his [Mana Sense]. He was standing on a foothill while these people were above him, climbing the steep mountain with their bare hands. Whoa. Are they pulling a free solo climb? Why, though? Who would climb this mountain in the middle of nowhere?

One of them was at early tier-4 while the other one was at the peak of tier-3, and they clearly didn’t have any flying artifacts. Even for cultivators like them, a fall from that high could be fatal.

Ethan crossed his arms as he watched them curiously. Are they going to the inheritance site?