Transmigration: I Made A Deal With A Man in Yellow

Chapter 29: Hunting praying mantises with a scythe [5]

The more mantises I cut down, the more my mastery over the scythe grew. It wasn’t perfect yet, but I was getting there.

My clumsy early attacks had become more refined and precise. I kept a safe distance from the mantises most of the time, though occasionally I chose to close the gap to finish them faster, which meant moving quicker than their scythe-legs could reach me.

I tore through them, and as the fight went on, the wounds I kept taking grew fewer and fewer until they could no longer leave so much as a scratch on my skin.

Bodies piled up in my wake.

The smell kept getting worse, but I kept going.

My ears were filled with nothing but the system messages confirming kill after kill.

When a group of mantises surrounded me on all sides, I simply gripped the shaft of my scythe and spun it in a wide arc, cutting them all in half in one sweep.

After a while more of that, I finally stopped, chest rising and falling calmly, as if I hadn’t just wiped out roughly 50 beasts, a mix of Low-class and Mid-class.

I looked around. Nothing but torn and severed bodies in every direction, a spreading pool of green blood that had already reached my boots.

When I lifted a boot, it came up sticky, sending a wave of disgust through me, and I quickly stepped out of the pool while weaving between the dead bodies.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, I was going to be sick.

I ducked behind a tree and threw up.

"God, that’s disgusting."

I made a mental note that if I ever found myself transmigrated into another one of my books, I needed to make sure the monsters did not smell like this.

After a bit more of that, I finally stopped, cleaned my mouth with a cloth from my spatial ring, and disposed of it. freewebnovel.cσ๓

’You should get used to the smell.’ Ezio chuckled in my head.

"Ugh...absolutely not!"

After drinking some water I felt better.

"System."

╔═════ ∘◦ ❈ ◦∘ ══════╗

✧ Name: Yves Noctis Laurent

✧ Age: 15

✧ Titles: [Unwanted Child]

✧ Rank: Ascendant

✧ Subrank: Low

✧ Soul Fragments: 30/200

✧ Story Fragments: 0/150, 0/1000

✧ Main Story: [He Who Yearned for Death], [■■■]

✧ Abilities: [Esoteric Darkness Manipulation], [Clear Mind], [Eyes of The King]

✧ Story Relics: —

╚═════ ∘◦ ❈ ◦∘ ══════╝

Only 30 fragments after slaughtering 50+ beasts.

But it made sense. They were weaker than me. I still hadn’t found a High-class,or Apex-class beast, or even a Greater beast that would actually be on my level as an Ascendant.

At the rate things were going, I would probably break through to the mid-subrank in about a month, if I was lucky.

I dismissed the system. freewebnovel.cσ๓

"Ezio, is there anything stronger around here I could take on?" I asked, looking down at my shadow.

Ezio was quiet for a few seconds before answering. "Yes. Coming from the east at speed, about 300 meters out. It’s an Apex Common beast."

I smiled at that, though I had to admit, sensing something that far away was impressive. His senses were something else.

A few minutes later I heard it. A loud, furious screech. And 20 meters away stood a praying mantis twice the size of any I had fought today, its body larger, its front legs longer.

The energy radiating off it confirmed it. Apex-class Common beast.

The Apex-class was the highest class a monster or beast could reach before ascending to the next rank entirely. And it wasn’t just a step up in power. At the Apex-class, a monster could exceed the normal ceiling of its rank, meaning the creature in front of me carried enough strength to rival a Greater beast, which put it squarely in my range.

It looked down at the bodies of its fallen kin and trembled slightly, before releasing a screech so loud I thought my ears might give out.

"So noisy. I understand you’re mourning, but there’s really no need to go that hard." I said with a grimace, poking my left ear with my pinky.

The giant mantis’s triangular head snapped toward me, and I could practically feel the weight of all those tiny eyes locking onto me.

Then I blinked, and it was gone.

What the—

’Watch out!’ Ezio screamed in my head.

The beast reappeared directly in front of me, its right scythe-leg already sweeping around toward my neck.

It had moved so fast that even with my darkness circle spread across the ground, I had only detected it a split second after it stepped on the edge, which was already too late by normal standards.

That speed was something else entirely.

The hairs on the back of my neck and arms stood on end.

And yet, instead of fear or panic, a wide smile spread across my face.

What a lunatic I was.

In the few seconds I had, I willed the darkness beneath my feet to form a spike that shot upward and intercepted the mantis’s scythe-leg, stopping the decapitation just short.

A second spike was already forming to drive up into its abdomen, but the beast released another clap of displaced air, vanished, and reappeared where it had started, my spike shooting harmlessly through empty air.

"It’s fast," I said, genuinely surprised. "This is going to be an interesting fight."