Last Ruler Of The Empty Throne-Chapter 67: Beetle and Spider III

"Huu..."

Jon raised his head to the sky as he took a deep breath, then looked down at the corpses of the monsters around him and finally at the ones slowly surrounding him.

At this point, all the small-sized monsters and half of the middle-sized monsters had perished—both spiders and beetles. Now, the remaining ones had finally come to their senses, realized he was the cause of the whole situation, and decided to attack together.

At the beginning, after seeing the effort he had to use on just one beetle, he realized he had to invest in his strength aspect from now on. He was beginning to see the areas he was lacking in, and since it was still quite early, it was easy to correct them.

First, he added all his status points to strength. The feeling of raw power entering his body made him shiver in excitement. Feeling it suddenly made him curious about his current strength stats.

When he checked, it showed:

[STRENGTH: 290]

He nodded in understanding as he approved of what he was seeing. His stamina had also almost reached 300, and he rarely felt tired, except when he eventually had to sleep. But it was just like that, now, his strength was becoming one of his highest stats.

With this new strength, he pounced on the monsters again. The beetles that survived his "One strike" previously were now left with holes as he pierced forward.

He used telekinesis and his bluish fog to incite more chaos as he moved around, killing more. Since it was already a full-blown fight, inciting more chaos was easy.

He morphed his rod into a sword and swung out, aura mixed with moon energy. And as the night was coming out, his moon energy output was steadily increasing. He moved behind the monsters to behead them, trying to avoid frontal conflict to keep them from flocking toward him.

And among all that, he was leveling up and getting used to their attack patterns, making their attacks easier to block, parry, and counterattack.

At that point, due to his increasing speed in killing them, the monsters stopped falling for the trick of hitting each other and focused on Jon.

True to being in the first realm, they noticed the oddity of the situation. The same thing had been happening, but it took the deaths of almost half the middle-sized monsters and all the small-sized ones before they realized it.

Now, Jon was calmly looking at those surrounding him while keeping his breath steady. He looked into the distance at the leaders of the spiders and beetles that had still not moved since the beginning. He didn’t know what they were waiting for, but he couldn’t falter before he faced them.

With all his increased strength, level, and the moon out, he noticed something about his skills. Apart from "One strike" and "Moon," he didn’t have any other attack skills. He had earlier said he was satisfied with what he had, but he was finding himself retracting his statement upon finding himself in this situation.

Cloud clones started appearing around him, and suddenly, he became ten. They all separated in different directions. Jon watched calmly as his clones reached their destinations and the spiders shot out webs as thick as rocks and pointed like blades. And instead of shooting the pointed webs at the clones, they targeted the original Jon in the middle.

After fighting him for a while, they realized the clones were mostly useless except for deception—or so they thought. All the webs came from all sides, and when they reached Jon, they pierced through him.

As they pierced, Jon disappeared in a poof, and the webs fell to the ground. It was also a clone. The monsters’ eyes widened in shock, but before they could react and start attacking the clones—

SLASH

The head of a spider fell to the ground. Jon had been among the clones. Using his fist covered in blue aura, he slammed his free hand against the nearest beetle.

Skreeeee

The beetle writhed in agony. Without waiting, Jon used the special activation on his shadow steps to move through the shadow of one of the clones now being attacked. When he appeared, he jumped, raised his rod into a great sword, and slammed it down on the beetle.

THUD

The dull sound of a head denting inside its body was resounding. Now the beetles realized they couldn’t stay back, so they moved forward. Their flaming bodies were really tough, but Jon thought of something else: armor.

If one could see it as armor, there would always be an opening. So, by the time he used the shadow steps disappearing-into-clone tactic twice, the monsters had eliminated all the clones.

However, there were still some disadvantages of the clones. It costs mana to keep them active and drains it unnecessarily. And another was, the clones couldn’t attack; they could only follow simple orders like run and stop.

So, with their purpose accomplished, he then switched strategy to full confrontation.

"I should be able to now." Now more confident after fighting them for a while, he lowered his stance, focusing all his attention on the monsters in front of him. Just as he was about to charge in, something caught his senses.

He immediately snapped his head in that direction. An arrow of flames and a thicker, bigger version of webs were being hurled at him.

"What?"

BOOOOOM

His body was immediately flung back like a kite and slammed onto the ground in the distance. He kept rolling continuously and only stopped himself later. Then the reaction hit.

"Arghhhh..." He grunted in pain as he pushed himself up from the floor. He activated his regeneration skill immediately. His clothes were torn and burnt, but the injuries he had sustained began to heal visibly.

"Damn, so this is how it feels." He had always fought cautiously to avoid getting injured, but it was inevitable.

He looked at the monster leaders, glaring at him with angry eyes, as if they had just realized what he’d done. He had been monitoring them with his senses to track their movements. They hadn’t moved for a while, so he thought they would wait, but when he refocused, they struck.

He then looked down at the unrecognizable object on the ground.

It was the "Broken door" he had gotten out of an orb when he got to the camp. He had brought it out immediately when the attack registered in his senses. But since the door could only block unranked realm monsters or weapons, it was badly damaged by attacks from higher first realm monsters.

"It was useless anyway, but it saved me," he sighed as he looked at the door one last time. It was crazy how it quickly got useless. But he didn’t think of it too much. His injuries were now fully healed, and he was good to go.

Taking a glance around, there were still a few medium-sized monsters left and their leaders.

"Haa... I’m actually getting angry." He had enjoyed it at the beginning and middle stages, and even when he decided not to be comfortable with his current state, and to stop being conceited. But now, he could actually die if he wasn’t careful.

Another spear of flames and web was being hurled in his direction. It seemed the leaders didn’t care and just wanted to kill him.

"What do I expect from a beetle and spider?" He sneered at the incoming attacks from the monster leaders, and as if annoyed by his words, they started hurling even more attacks at him.

He was able to raise a shield of moon energy to block the attacks.

BOOOM... BOOOM

CRACK

The shield began cracking all over as the attacks of the leaders packed real power. The shock pushed Jon backwards.

"Ha... I’ll really kill you," Jon muttered, actually angry, as he then voluntarily released his bloodlust.

The bloodlust he didn’t know how to control now blared out.

The air grew heavy as a strange red aura hovered around his normally blue one. The beetles and spiders that would normally rush in first began trembling under Jon’s bloodlust.

It was the bloodlust built upon the monsters he had slain before entering the first realm. They, being in the first realm while he was unranked, had only fueled it into something potent enough to make even the leaders hesitate.

Ignoring the remaining beetles and spiders, Jon went for the leaders. I have to end it fast. He had used quite a lot of stamina and mana, especially with regeneration to heal, so he had to finish it fast.

VOOOM

Concentrating all his mana at full power, he sped toward the leaders. The leaders were massive, and as he got closer, even with his bloodlust still wildly flaring, it was like he was running toward a building.

Then, using his momentum, he jumped high into the sky.

Flames began gathering around the beetle leader, and the spider leader was forming a mass of web. As expected of leaders, they quickly overcame the bloodlust, though they couldn’t avoid it entirely. The power they gathered was slightly weaker than he remembered.

Jon gathered his aura, moon energy, and even bloodlust to the tip of his spear and activated the special ability of the skill "One strike." The special activation was one that doubled the power of his attack. Then—

BOOOOOOOOOM

KREEEEEEEE

The spider screamed as the attack hit. The shield the spider leader tried to put up crumbled under the power of double his attack. And without hesitation, he stuck onto the spider. He didn’t want to land on the ground.

Using its head as a foothold, he jumped higher, moving above its head. The spider raised its bloodied face at that moment, spitting out a massive ball of web spiked all over.

It was an attack that could consume him if he wasn’t careful.

And at that moment, in the air, he closed his eyes.