-Vol 5: A New Life-

-Water Pillar-

After killing the turtle, Kenshin didn’t waste any time and selected the [Force Disruption] skill to replicate. The skill's effect may look obscure and weak, but that’s not actually true. This skill had a definition that attracted his attention. It disrupts all kind of aggressive force. In this world, everything had force. Whether its weak or strong, they all had force. This skill could passively block such forces.

An example of the skill’s usage would be the air resistance while running at high speeds. Or water resistance when swimming. Even when getting punched or receiving an attack, that too contained force. If he could disrupt the force, then such things would lose their ability to harm him. For a passive skill, it’s the best.

[Ding* You have successfully replicated sill Force Disruption.]

[Force Disruption Lv 1(Passive/ Always active)][40 EXP to next level up]

0.5% disruption of all aggressive forces around the holder. +10% DEF

“Huh! Only 40 EXP?” Kenshin was surprised at the level up the requirement of the skill. It's by far the lowest amount of EXP needed to level up a skill of his. But after seeing it, he understood one thing. Since this skill needs only 40 EXP to level up, the difficulty of gaining those 40 EXP might be that hard. After all, it was about the universal law called Force here. It's completely different from other things he had experienced so far.

“Okay, I will see what happens. Even so, it’s a good skill to have.” Nodding to himself, he turned around and continued his running. He had already found the other boat in the map, with his current speed he would reach there in the next 10 minutes. As he was running at full speeds, suddenly Kenshin felt a wave of weakness hit him. It's like someone had placed a huge weight on his shoulders. Soon after a notification popped up.

[Ding* Five minutes are over. Due to the lack of high leveled monster on the map, you are no longer able to sustain the title bonus.]

“Time out, huh! If I knew this, I wouldn’t have killed that thing, leaving it half dead.” Kenshin already knew how to use loopholes of the title bonus. The condition was, as long as there was the mobster in the map, he could sustain the effect for an infinite amount of time. Of course, he was yet to know if that bonus would stack or not. He wanted to know if by encountering a beast 20+ higher than him and then encountering another beast 20+ level higher than him, his title bonus would increase by 200% or not. This was not mentioned in the description, so he wanted to find out about it.

If his conjecture was right, then he didn’t need to worry about being defeated ever again. At least he could pull a draw against those powerhouses. But it was still his one side thinking. He was yet to meet a real powerhouse who was above 200. In a battle, raw stats weren't everything; skills, versatility, intelligence, they also play a major role. In most cases with magic skill users, they don’t depend on their raw stats, rather the power of their skill.

With his brief brush in with Lyda, he knew just how strong these guys who had surpassed level 100 were. Although with his current stats, he didn’t need to fear these average level 100 hunters, but who can tell if he can take on a few of them at the same time. Considering how diverse these magic skill users are, he was also unsure if he could even take on a magic skill sure who had undergone his second awakening, that is surpassed level 150.

Monsters were a different matter altogether.

Five minutes later, a small yacht was visible in his line of sight.

XXX

Standing on one side of the yacht, a middle-aged man in crew cut stood guard as he watched the silent ocean. His face was grave as if he was thinking of something. Just a few minutes ago they had finished a great battle. They were attacked by a huge octopus whose level was 124. Since they all were level 100 hunters, they thought they could easily hunt it. But the octopus’s strength was just too much for them to handle.

Even with the combined might of 12 level 100+ hunters, they barely able to kill that giant thing. If not for Lady Sachiko’s [Judgement Light], the thing would have run away after being injured by them. It only happened because they had heavily underestimated that monster and thought of it as a regular level 100+ monster. Due to carelessness, they suffered from the obviously intelligent monster’s pre-emptive attack and nearly drowned by it. Its thanks to this yacht being made of some sturdy dungeon material that it survived its attack.

Right now all the other hunter were recuperating inside the cabin, leaving him who was least hurt on the lookout. He was to alert everyone in case he sensed another monster. Holding the sonar device that worked as a monster sensor, he stood on the edge of the yacht, closely observing everything in his field of vision.

Suddenly the sonar machine started to vibrate, as a red pointer on its LED screen pointed at a certain direction. The man in the crew cut became alerted and opened his level measuring device to measure the level of the approaching monster when it enters his field of view. As a hunter of high level, he could see further than others and had no trouble looking even at night. Soon enough a humanoid figure appeared on his field of vision. Within a few seconds, he could clearly see the humanoid figure who was just a blurry figure a few seconds ago.

“A human?” he was very surprised at this. He wasn’t surprised by a human walking in water, but he was surprised to find a human in this place of all things. Looking a little closer he felt that he had seen this human somewhere before. But before he could delve on it deeper, the human already appeared near the yacht.

“Who are you?” the crew cut guy asked. Nonetheless, he wouldn’t trust anyone in these strange waters.

“Hello! I am Muto Kenshin. Here is my Id Plate.” Kenshin flashed his DCB employee ID. Seeing the ID, the crew cut instantly remembered the man. He was the guy to who was supposed to be on the other boat, a very powerful magic skill user. He had also heard that this man had also gone to north during the incident and hence awarded a few positions due to that. He didn’t expect for him to arrive here of all places.

“Ah! I am Sakurai. I also work for Mito’s main branch. Sorry for being rude, but Why are you here?”

“I heard this boat was supposed to go through all the danger zone, so I came to participate,” Kenshin answered.

Hearing his answer, Sakurai, who had just gone through a life and death situation felt relieved. As it stands, any help they receive was welcomed. Besides he had heard that this man was very powerful, he might be able to help them while fighting the monsters, so he was more than welcomed here.

“Ah! Thank you, Kenshin. Actually, you are a lifesaver. We kind of need all the help right now.” Flashing a smile, Sakurai welcomed Kenshin into the yacht. Just before Kenshin stepped on the yacht, suddenly a huge pillar of water rose from the other side that went up to 20 meters into the air, spraying droplets of water everywhere.

“What the?” both Kenshin and Sakurai screamed in unison when they saw the water pillar was about fall on them.