[ You have absorbed the blood essence of a corrupted 'Mountain Boar king', purification in progress….. ]

[ You have received 90,336 EP! ]

[ You have leveled up! ]

[ You have reached level 22! ]

[ You have absorbed the essence of a 'Corruption Core', purification in progress….. ]

[ You have received 110,076 EP! ]

[ You have leveled up! ]

[ You have reached level 23! ]

The next day's gate clear went on smoothly, the difficulty level was lv40+ this time, but as I only trained my swordsmanship without having to focus on researching and creating a technique like the last time, it took even less time, instead I only gained 3 levels compared to the earlier gate which insisted on the fact that gaining levels was becoming more hard…

Fortunately, the stat points I gained finally made my perception reach above 10 points, though there was no limit break ability, which meant that I would need to add more points till I reached that limit.

[ • Stats :

Strength: 13.62

Constitution: 14.51

Agility: 10.84

Dexterity: 10.654

Perception: 10.06 (+1.2)

Wisdom: 10.64

Intelligence: ???

Dual-element: 5.39 ( Lightning, Thunder )

Unassigned stat points: 1.23 (-1.2) ]

At this point, most of my stats ranged between 10~11 other than Strength & Constitution who were higher, my still unknown intelligence stat, and finally my fledgling element stat.

With most of my abilities within a certain range, I felt that my body was quite balanced and in a state of true harmony, so I decided to keep all the stat points that I would acquire during the next week and contemplate on which stat to assign them to after experiencing their effects on battle.

Most importantly, this gate was also a normal gate, with normal corrupted monsters and no more anomalies, but I didn't plan to judge on that situation fully before the end of my 10 days-long grind.

As I took less time to clear this gate, and my speed has increased as 'Swift Steps' leveled up leading to me returning before sunset, I had more time to spend on absorbing crystals and doing my routine training before heading to bed.

`~~`~~`~~`

The next gate I was currently heading to was actually the gate that we were supposed to raid in a ten days, supposedly a lv30+ gate that should be quite easy to handle. I would have headed to higher level gates, if not for me wanting to make a full analysis in the anomaly problem, going only to certain level gates would give me little information to make a true judgement after all.

For some reason though, there were no guards or scouts standing outside, didn't they fear that someone entering and dying there would accelerate the eruption date even more? Because the guards were normally there for this reason…

Though it seemed suspicious, it didn't stop me from passing through the barrier, it was rather an encouragement as I still didn't get an answer to the anomalies that we experienced in the first gate.

However, upon entering, the scene left me in utter surprise, the borders of the gate which were normally devoid of monsters was filled with big humanoid monsters holding pickaxes and hitting the walls of the caves.

Moreover simply inspecting them with 'Eye of knowledge' proved something….

[ 'Orc Soldier' Lv36 ]

[ 'Orc Gladiator' lv.38 ]

[ 'Orc Miner' lv.35 ]

[ 'Corrupted elemental crystal ore' (Grade one) (Normal***) ]

This was definitely not a coincidence....