For the past few days, I have been thinking about what kind of equipment I should create; I needed something to increase the things I could do. The small fries didn’t worry me anymore, but I still was having some hardships while fighting against those big evolved monsters, even if I use those special stones. With a simple potion, I could heal almost any wound, but still, getting wounded all the time was annoying and painful.

The best way to deal with them was causing as much as damage as possible, so a more powerful version of my current crossbow would suffice. But, to create bolts of a more powerful crossbow, I would need to use more MP, and that wasn’t something I had at the moment. I was drinking those potions and lemonade like a maniac to increase my MP, but that would only help me in the long run. I needed a solution more immediate. And so I thought:

‘Since I don’t have much MP, there’s a way for me to use the enemies MP?’

And it turns out that I can! But to drain the monster’s HP, MP, and STA to myself, I would have to create a weapon which would cost 50000 evolution coins! And to have all those effects, I would have to pay 150000 evolution coins! Not to mention, I could only drain a small percentage. So, for now, I can’t absorb the monsters’ energy. But I can still use it in my favor, all that I would have to do was to create bolts that can absorb the monster’s MP and instead of sending it to me, the bolt would use the MP to cause damage.

But what kind of damage? Only cause damage wasn’t enough, so I decided to create three types of those bolts: explosive, electric, and freezing bolts. With luck, the explosive bolts would be enough to kill those evolved monsters with weak defense, but if that weren’t enough, the other two would do at least give me enough time to finish the monsters.

I had to think for more than a week to come up with that idea. But that didn’t bother me because in the end, to create a crossbow which can produce bolts like that, I would have to spend ten thousand evolution coins, and I had to kill monsters for almost ten days to collect so many. There were others downsides too; my new crossbow wouldn’t shot three bolts in a second. And the cost of those new bolts was also high, 10 MP to create a single one. But that was ok, as long as that new crossbow could explode, toast, or freeze an entire arm or leg of those evolved monsters; it would be more than the worth of its cost.

The new crossbow was simpler than the vampire hunter’s crossbow, but it looked somewhat very high-tech. It was silver and also seemed to be entirely made of steel. Since it was half-meter long, it was also heavy; it seemed to weight around ten kilograms. Maybe this time I won’t be able to avoid, and I’ll have to break my physical limit a few times. Or I can use the crossbow’s weight and train my passively my body. The crossbow name was E.F.E. metal crossbow

At the end of the twentieth day, I received the rewards. I received a few more items and potions, but I was more interested in how much my HP, MP, and STA would increase.

You consumed 20 kilograms of monster meat – Reward: HP increased by 4/ STA increased by 4

You consumed 55 Liters of restorative potions – Reward: MP increased by 5

Very little progress, but even so, I was satisfied with that. Although, in the past few days, I almost give up on eating only monster meat and drinking lemonade. But I didn’t stop; because I knew it, it was getting harder to break the limit. Eventually, eating monster meat and drinking those restorative potions would be more effective than killing monsters.

Although I progressed a lot in the past ten days, nothing could be compared with the progress I made on the twentieth day. When I also broke my sensorial limit for the twentieth time, I obtained a new skill.

“Congratulations, you broke your sensorial limit twenty times. Now you will receive a random sensorial skill… your new skill has been selected; you obtained the skill Analyze.”

Skill list:

Concentration Lv03 25%: Raises your attack power and range by 3% each hour. The bonus resets when you sleep.

Crosshair: Lv09 8%: Creates a crosshair in your field of vision to aim at enemies.

Radar: Creates a radar in your field of vision to detect any living creature on your surroundings.

Effective Range: Sensorial limit (20) x 10 meters.

Analyze Lv01 0%: Analyze and show enemies status and information.

Cost: 01 MP

Finally, I obtained a skill that I have to spend some MP to use it. And also it seemed very useful, instead of risking my life to understand the enemies’ attacks and weakness, I could obtain information just by looking at them.

“I need to test this immediately.”

Since I was already returning to the hotel, the enemies around were few. But fortunately, I found a lone mutant rat on my way.

Mutant Rat - HP: 30

Info: a mutant rat.

“… It’s less useful than I thought it’s almost useless. Maybe it’s because this skill can also level up… I have to use this skill frequently to see if that is the case.”

Against small fries, that skill wouldn’t be useful, but against the big guns, I would be able to estimate how much damage the monsters would need to receive to die. Although I didn’t have much MP, that skill would be handy to collect information about new monsters in new areas.

“With my current skills, I would be more useful in investigating new places… too bad those guys want to see me playing the watchdog.”

Well, it didn’t matter much to me anyway. I was doing my part and letting the difficult decisions in their hands, so, I couldn’t complain that much.

A little before sunrise, I arrived at the hotel, as I expected the lobby was still empty. In my opinion, those guys should make more good use of sunlight, but whatever, the time they lose is their problem and not mine, so I decided to keep that to myself. Since I had some time before the kids' next mission, I decided to take a short nap in one of the lobby’s chairs. I was more tired than I thought because as soon as I closed my eyes, I fell asleep, and when I opened them again, I saw Claire and the kids staring at me with great interest.

“Seriously, what did I do to deserve this?”

Since they were just kids and a woman, it didn’t feel that creepy being stared while I was sleeping, but I still felt very uncomfortable. Besides, it was pretty much evident that they ate their breakfast in silence just to scare me. Probably Harry and the other survivors did the same since they were nowhere to be seen… someday I’ll return the favor.

“Do you want to sleep more?” Claire asked while smiling. “Surprisingly, you almost look like an innocent boy while you sleep.”

“… Let’s just begin this already, the sooner we begin, the sooner we’ll return.”

After a long sigh, I said those words, deal with the others was tiring, but Claire surpassed all the others by herself in that aspect.

“You hunted monsters like a madman for ten days to create that?” Claire asked, surprised.” Boys and their toys…”

“Mind your own business.”

I was pretty excited about testing my new weapon, but everything has a time and a place. I didn’t intend to use that crossbow on my small fries, and that was why I didn’t sell the vampire hunter’s crossbow.

After leaving the hotel, we hunted the nearby mutant rats until the kids broke for the first time their mental limit. They were getting better at an alarming rate because when that happened, we still had four hours left. Since the kids were easily exterminating the rats, I thought about saying to Claire to change the targets. It would be more efficient to hunt the mutant cats, but I changed my mind. Suddenly the wind became stronger, and I began to feel worried. When I’m around, and the wind grows stronger, something terrible was bound to happen. However, nothing occurred soon afterward, but the wind didn’t lose strength, and I felt the wind getting colder. It wasn’t that time of the year, but it did look like the autumn suddenly had arrived. Besides, the smell of blood had increased.

“Do you know what is going on?” Claire asked while she looked around with her bow in hands and with her guard raised.

“Something similar happened before, for some reason, the wind becomes stronger, and the smell of the monster's blood spread around the city, and a big monster appears. But this time, it’s different. I can’t feel any monster approaching us.”

I didn’t see many trees around us, but many three leaves began to pass by us and cross the city.

“Something changed… something in the city changed. We have to return immediately, and after that, we should try to see what exactly changed.”

“Let’s return then.” Claire declared.

It was a pity for the kids, but they knew that something strange was happening and it wasn’t safe for anyone to stay on the streets.

When we arrived at the hotel, we saw Harry’s group in the lobby. But they looked tired, and Harry was wounded and had a lot of blood on his body, it seemed that they didn’t find any survivors and instead they faced a powerful monster.

“What happened?” Claire asked, worried. “Are you alright?”

“More or less,” Rose said, showing a pale face. “We got attacked by one of those monsters Ethan had faced before, an evolved mutant hawk. Not only that, the monster attacked us when we were crossing a park.”

Face those monsters in an open field was almost a death sentence. It seemed that they got powerful to be able to survive against that thing, or perhaps they got lucky. Even if they all managed to obtain their new skills, nothing would change that much. After all, the evolved mutant hawks could attack them from all directions and thanks to its size, the creature was unstoppable.

“Did you guys noticed something different before the fight? We returned early because the wind became strangely strong and still didn’t lose strength.”

“Yeah, we noticed that too,” Harry said, showing an expression of pain. “But we didn’t have time to react to it.”

“We should cancel all of our activities outside this place until we understand what is going on.” Sandra declared. “This is the first real change since those monsters appeared. We have to be extremely careful, or we will suffer huge damage like the first day.”

No one disagreed with Sandra's words, and until we could pinpoint what changed it would be too risky to leave the hotel. I wanted to test my new crossbow, but even I wouldn’t do something so stupid just to satisfy my curiosity.

“We delayed that until now, but I guess we should upgrade our equipment,” Sarah said while looking at her whip which she didn't master yet.

“You are right,” Rose said. “But we don’t have to decide what we should create now, let’s rest and think carefully about it. Tomorrow we’ll talk about our ideas and share with the others.”

Since they always fought together, it was a good idea to discuss what kind of equipment they wanted. Although, they all pretty much already knew their respective jobs, debating about it could give them new ideas. As for me, I didn’t have to worry about that. My defense was lacking, but I didn't have to worry about it as long as I can kill the monsters before they got close enough to attack. It was also a bit hard to be able to defeat every single type of monster at the same speed, but that was precisely why I created my new crossbow, to cover most of my handicaps.

Although I was more comfortable in fighting alone, in the next few days, I would probably fight alongside the others. Not only because they would need my sensorial skills, but because from that day onward, I wouldn’t be able to defend myself from all directions. I fully understood that when I looked at the skies, and I saw many black points flying around.

“I guess the hunting season is open.”