The beginning was brutal, the man that I helped seemed to easily take care of anyone who decided to fight him, I thought about the reason he was captured, he probably was captured by stronger people and given to this caravan to transport. Swsshhh A blade swung towards me from overhead, I dodged swiftly to the right as the blade passed by my left arm. I then slashed forward with harvester causing the attacker to drop to the ground. It seems all the higher levels went after him, leaving me the lower bunch. This is going to be easy!

With each slash, my soul pool grew in size. If I could almost deal with the level 30 earlier, than what lower level would be able to stop me? I lunged forward, and with another attack I brought a level 25 down.

Ding!

Congratulations! You are now level 24!

I felt my body grow stronger as a warm energy flowed through my entire body. It seemed to enhance anything that it touched. Every time I leveled up, I would feel this feeling!

There were at least fifteen bodies lying on the floor in front of me, as I looked over at the man I released, he seemed to be easily dealing with the last of the level 30s including Gerald. Jo and another level 30 were laying on the ground already. I watched the fight closely, to be able to deal with multiple people that are close to your level means that this guy is powerful, especially under the fire of a mage aswell!

Gerald shouted, “God dammit! Attack him at the same time!” Gerald began to mumble and the ground shook once more, a piece of earth the size of a cannonball floated in front of him. With a wave of a hand, it shot forward.

The man seemed to notice this and flicked his arm to the side, the ball of earth smashed into pieces as it made contact with the fist. “You know that you won’t be able to stop me, without the core group. You guys are incredibly weak!” The man heartily laughed.

Gerald kept chanting, as the others pounced at any moment they could grab. I looked towards Gerald, and summoned the power in my body thrusting myself forward towards him. I held the harvester to the side, and with one swipe I cut his robe. He noticed me before, and quickly used evasive magic to move the earth beneath him, moving him quickly!

“Tsk… You messed everything up!” Gerald yelled, suddenly the ground shook. Shattered Earth, again?

I continued my assault and ran towards him again, spikes of earth began to shoot out of the ground around me. This was a powerful AOE spell, but on a single target that has seen it before. It was useless! I dodged spikes that attacked from the side, and destroyed the ones that emerged from the front easily making my way towards Gerald.

Gerald began to notice that his efforts were useless, and began to run away! “Damn mage, who knew that you trained your body as well!” I raised my speed to the limit, and caught up pinning Gerald to the ground.

“Stop, don’t do this!” Gerald shouted, but quickly quieted down as the harvester ended his life.

I looked behind me and saw that the man, easily dealt with the others after I took Gerald away. He walked towards me smiling.

“Thank you, kid. I may have never gotten out of there.” He sighed, “I’m a monk from the Temple of Iron, and that’s the only reason I ended up in this situation.”

“What is the Temple of Iron?” I asked.

“The Temple of Iron, has probably been forgotten long ago. My fellow disciples and the elders joined together to fight against the demons, but in the end we failed. This happened five years ago, and I am twenty four now. The only survivor was me! There were over fifty of us! The Temple of Iron as an ancient temple, had skilled fighters that could trample the kingdom’s so called best fighters!” The man seemed proud, but his words contained a hint of sadness.

“By the way, what was that murderous aura I felt earlier? Did that come from you?” He asked as he looked towards me.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” I smiled.

“Well I guess I won’t push too far, you are strange indeed. A warrior with a mages aura,” He scratched his head, “By the way, you can call me Tako.”

“You can call me, Dante.” I said.

“Dante? That’s a pretty strange name as well!” he laughed and turned to the entrance of the cave, “So what were you doing here in the first place?”

“It was raining outside, and I needed a place that would keep me dry for awhile.” I said.

“Good reason, usually people don’t travel with slavers unless they are slaves themselves.” He looked towards the entrance, “I see that you are an adventurer as well though, are you off to do a quest?”

“Yes, I am heading to Howe Village to get rid of a group of goblins.” I looked towards him.

“Alone? Well I guess with your power it would be easy.” He nodded, “How about this, I can help you finish your quest quicker and we can split ways after you turn the quest in at a city.”

I thought for awhile, deciding that with him I would be able to finish the quest at least two times faster! “Alright, that seems like a good deal. We can leave in twenty minutes, I want to see what these guys had with them.”

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“Alright, it doesn’t seem like they were transporting any other people besides you. There was also quite a bit in one of their carts.” I said.

“That is quite a bit, there was also a lot of good equipment on them as well!”, Tako smiled as he held up arm guards that emitted a reddish aura. “Fire armguards of this quality are pretty rare for silver adventurers.” he quickly replaced his regular armguards with them.

I held in front of me a dark blue magic cloak. The stats were better than a normal cloak by a bit, but the best part was that it had MP regeneration!

Equipment informationNameDark Blue Mana CloakRankMagicRequirementsLevel 20 and abovePassive BuffMP Regeneration - 100/minute

In battle, my magic power seems to drain a lot if I use class skills. The fastest I could generate MP was 50, every minute. That would be a black bolt, every five minutes. This cloak would allow me to use blackbolt nearly every 2 minutes now without the worry of running out of Magic Power!

“hmm”, I sighed. I’m not sure if I should use spells in front of him. He hasn’t seen the black miasma directly yet.

“Are you ready to go yet?” I asked, Tako was sitting down looking at some of the items he picked up.

“Let me put these away first, don’t be to anxious to get there.” He hurriedly shoved everything into a bag that he took off one of the slavers and stood up.

“Alright, let’s go.”, He smiled as he stretched, “It’s great finally being able to move.”

“How long were you in there?” I asked

“A couple of months.”, he replied and began walking towards the exit.

I followed behind him soon making it to the main road. We began walking in the direction of Howe Village.

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Crrkkkk With a smash of one fist, cracks began to appear on the stone throne.

“What do you mean we lost contact?”, an angry voice resounded in the hall.

A man trembled while looking up at the throne, “Slave group four, the group that was carrying the monk. The leader of the group’s blood paper contract also burned to a crisp!”

“The blood paper contract burned? So he is dead?”, the man in the throne replied.

“I’m afraid so, but do not worry my lord. We will figure out what happened!”, the man said.

“Hmmph.”, Swissshhhh A giant axe spun through the air chopping the man in half. The man in the throne sat quiet for a moment and then pointed at one of the guards. “You there, go get me the twins.”

The guard trembled for a moment before hurrying, he did not wish to upset him any further.

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Chapters may end up coming out on Wednesday instead, possibly Tuesday.

Any comments are appreciated, as well as criticism, etc!

This chapter is also unedited, I briefly read over it though.