While I was quite excited to try learning 'Lightning Steps' right now, the time was not appropriate as it was already nearing 10 PM and I needed to get going now.

So, I simply packed up everything back into the ring, dressed myself back into the dark attire of executioners, and finally headed towards the corruption core.

Lightly jumping up, I used my body art to crush the orb that was embedded into the hill…

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

[ You have received 1,624,263 EP! ]

[ You have leveled UP! ]

[ You have leveled UP! ]

[ You have leveled UP! ]

[ You have reached Level 53! ]

Thanks to my already almost filled essence bar from killing the Ogre Patriarch, I managed to lvl up thrice!

I simply vanished from my location as usual, before appearing at the front of the cave-like gate…

Sphhhlt.

Something had penetrated my arm…

Taken by surprise as I just exited the gate, an invisible object had somehow ignored my perception and went in and out of my left arm…!

I hurriedly activated my body of elements as I dashed out of my position only to see a sword like shape defined by my blood hovering in the air.

'Not good!'

It was at the very least a very proficient shadow practitioner at a higher layer than mine using his element's ability to vanish… or even worse.. A darkness practitioner!

In just a split second the blade vanished once again, unhindered by the blood that covered it just now, displaying the abilities of a great shadow assassin..

'I made a mistake…'

Thinking that I would just appear and vanish at every gate to gain easy EP turned out to be quite the foolish act,in the end I actually got a shadow assassin sent at me… no matter how I thought about it if the association was truly clean then they would approach carefully first.. Right?

But to think that my earlier thoughts would be confirmed this quickly, there was no mistake about it, there was truly a corrupted individual hiding within the association's ranks!

And apparently whether they knew I was doing it on purpose or just blindly clearing gates, they have determined me as a hindrance, eventually sending a shadow assassin to take care of me…

I wasn't totally at fault as no one would expect them to send an expert of this calibre to pin me, but I still made a pretty big mistake underestimating the importance of their plot.

Did I become too naive for doing everything easily since I left the system space? Did my strength increasing by the day and my techniques advancing at a visible speed made me believe I was invincible?

Thwarting such an important scheme and believing they would send some mob that could be easily avoided or defeated was the epitome of foolishness, but now wasn't the time to reprimand myself…

Swishh!

I simply made a dash for it, after all, the only thing I believed that I could beat experts at would be speed, especially when your target is totally invisible. Staying still or engaging in close combat would only be quite the amusing way to commit suicide!

As I couldn't directly head to the camp, I decided to simply take him in a tour through the forest we were currently in, hoping that I would finally lose him.

Of course, in the very chance that he was still tailing me by the time I returned to the camp, then I would at least get the chance to enhance my perception using my stats points that were saved until now.

If I could see him then the outcome would be truly different, after all, an assassin's strongest ability was being unseen!