-Vol 5: A New Life-

-The Ugly Scorpion Boss-

After storing the boots into his inventory, Kenshin started to follow the source of his uneasiness. As time passed, instead of feeling only tingling sensation over his body, Kenshin started to see slight visions of various things happening to him. Well, it's not like he was having visions; but more like memories of visions. Memories of visions that he was sure he never had.

“Looks like my [Dragon Sense] level upped again. I can't wait to see my new stats.” Kenshin laughed to himself, feeling very excited at the prospect of his system’s level up. These indirect vision were to guide him through the path of less danger, but who was Kenshin?

He was a super-strong hunter who had become even more strong after his first awakening. He went through the most dangerous path available while laying waste to all and every monster that dares to approach him. his [Dragon Sense] was now working as a secondary system scanner after its mysterious level up, so he wasn’t worried that he didn’t bring the DCB issued Level Analyzer.

The monster in this forest were all plant types and a few oversized critters like rabbit and hamsters with a strange mutation to speak of. Kenshin didn’t actively kill them, they just died with the shockwaves generated from his sword swings. A single swing killed more than 20 of these monsters, making Kenshin wonder exactly what were their real levels. But he didn’t dwell on it further. He wasn’t there to kill them anyway.

*Ting*Ting*Ting*

As we close on the mountain, he gradually started to hear a sound of something hitting against others. The sound resembled a blacksmith’s hammer hitting against the anvil, and the sound was especially loud, to the point that it created a weak vibrational force that rippled across the air.

Kenshin knew whatever it was, he was getting near to it.

“Groar!!!”

Suddenly a bestial roar reverberated throughout the area, shaking everything and even generating a minor earthquake. Kenshin became vigilant of the unknown and decided to mindful of his steps. Just as he was about to take a step further, the ground in front of him cracked apart as a huge scaley claw came out and tried to attack Kenshin.

“Looks like I have triggered a boss of this area!” Kenshin mumbled. But he had his doubts. If the normal monsters of this area could be killed with just stray shockwaves from his sword swings, what about the boss? Won't it die from a few casual strikes? To test this, Kenshin slashed his sword at one of the claw’s fingers.

*sling* Boom!!

As expected, a fine blue line streaked across as one of the fingers of the claw sliced cleanly. Then a millisecond later, a force generated from the cut and destroyed all the remaining fingers. The accompanied damage was caused by the shock wave generated from the sword touching the claw of the monster.

“Hmm! I have to do something about this shockwave…nah! It's good…” although the shockwave was a little ugly to look at, and a big let down after such a fine sword move, it still provided with some additional damage. Who would say no to that? From the beginning, Kenshin advocated practicality over looks, there was no need to change that now.

“Roar!!!” the claw flailed around after receiving such huge damage and retracted into the hole created from the fissure. Then suddenly another loud roar could be heard deep underground before the fissure expanded and created a larger hole.

Kenshin stepped back to not get caught in the hole and fall down, that would be pretty embarrassing.

Exactly at that moment, a long scaly human-like leg came out of the hole and landed heavily on the ground, followed by another and another… very soon a huge scorpion with the most bizarre appearance stood in front of Kenshin with a face that looked uglier than a pus moth.

The huge scorpion was around 9 meters big with its overall length being 15 meters. It was pure black and scaley, advocating a large amount of DEF. It had more than fifty legs, but all of them looked like human legs. Its body was also covered in black scales, but he could see occasional mouth like opening over its body that had human-like teeth. Its carb-like pinchers which were called palp, was even larger than a car, covered in thick black scales and have razor-sharp teeth across it as well as inside of the pinchers.

As for its tail, it was akin to a huge beast’s claw, the very thing Kenshin destroyed just now. It was destroyed by a casual slash from Kenshin and was hanging limply. The monster had compound eyes, but it looked like human eyes of varying colors.

All in all, it looks like a real nightmare that would scare anyone if they appear below their beds.

Suddenly Kenshin had a brilliant idea. He took out his newly bought smartphone and fiddled with it to open the camera.

“Hey you, say cheese…” Kenshin said tauntingly and took a snap.

*roar!!*

It pissed off the monster for some reason. Yello pus dripped from its mouth as it opened it and sprayed towards Kenshin. With a sidestep, Kenshin jumped away from there. The yellow pus landed on the ground, and then with an audible sound, the ground started to melt at a visible speed.

“Eww!! Such a nasty thing…” Kenshin blocked his nose from the offensive smell that came out of the pus. His senses were all enhanced to a degree where he can discern between even the smallest of smells or minutest of color schemes. He could even hear sound from miles away and discern various wavelengths. He discovered that he was even able to hear sounds with higher wavelengths.

No doubt it was the effect of his first ascension.

“I will burn you to crisp!!” Shouted Kenshin angrily. Earlier, he had refrained from doing so because he was afraid the forest would be affected. But he discovered that he couldn’t endure the offensive smell as it was making him see red. His senses were on overdrive, and he was feeling irritated by it. The feeling was the same as standing in a tightly closed room where everyone’s busy cutting onions.

It would make one go mad.

“Flame Pillar!!” since no one was around, Kenshin called a cool sounding name and used his [Fire Manipulation].

Suddenly a huge ring of fire created around the scorpion, then below it, a massive magic circle like thing appeared, and then from it, a huge pillar of red hot flame erupted like a volcano. The flame pillar was huge, covering the whole scorpion and even large enough to reach the sky.

“What!!” Kenshin was startled. He immediately cut off the magic supply. Despite that, the flame pillar still continued full power for a few more seconds before disappearing. As it did so, the sorry figure of a burnt scorpion could be seen. Well, it actually died the moment flame pillar touched it, and it didn’t even get time to screech. What left of it now was its huge pinchers and the dismembered tail claw.

“What! What the hell was that? I didn’t intend to make it this powerful? What the hell is happening? And what was that cool looking magic circle? It never happened before?” Kenshin rambled on and on. The situation felt that weird to him.

He could accept it if his skill became powerful. But this was not even in the level of powerful, it was a catastrophe. He, himself couldn’t believe it, let alone others.

“What the hell happened during my awakening? Damn…I need to see everything after my system comes online.” A strange mix of anticipation and worry-filled Kenshin’s heart.

*BOOM!!!*

A huge explosion occurred on the other side of the mountain, pulling Kenshin out of his reverie. Remembering his priority, he hastened his pace towards it, while feeling uncomfortable all over. This [Dragon Sense] was really annoying sometimes.