I watched the sun dip below the horizon, the world slowly becoming dark. For the first time since coming to the oasis, I was not hiding in a hole at sundown. It was finally time for me to attempt the bonus objective of killing a hundred monsters in a single night. A colossal task, to be sure, but I felt like I had a shot at completing it. So far I came up with three possible strategies that had potential, but before I even started an attempt, I needed information.

So tonight, I would just do my best to hide, not get involved in the fighting, and collect intel. I needed to know where the most monsters would gather, if there were natural chokepoints, and if there were even enough monsters that made it into the oasis to complete the body count.

I already knew that the horde would get thinned out before they even attempted coming into the oasis, as most of the fighting would take place out in the desert. Ideally, I would be able to pick off whatever made it into the oasis and rack up kills during the night. But if I determined that there were not enough monsters that made it here, I’d have to start my night out in the closest dune, carpet bomb whatever emerged from the sand, retreat, and relocate to where I could then pick off more.

Being out in the dunes was strategy number three, also known as the most dangerous one. I’d only do this if my other strategies did not work out.

Night had arrived properly now and all continued to be calm in the oasis… for now. I could already see some flashes of light in the distance, most likely from skills and spells being activated. If my previous experience was anything to go on, it’d take about twenty to thirty minutes until the first fights started breaking out in the oasis. So for now I just enjoyed the light show.

I occasionally glanced behind me and saw some movement in the lake, no doubt they were going at it down there as well. The sky wasn’t spared the nightly fighting either, as flying monsters were trying to outmaneuver each other. I didn’t particularly feel threatened, confident in my ability to hide.

My stealth passive was active, my body was mostly hidden, and I was ready to cast void cloak, should the need arise. There were definitely monsters that could see through my passive ability, but I was hoping that they’d be too busy fighting each other to notice me. Worst case scenario, I would activate cloak and retreat into my nearby bunker. Even worse case, I could keep up my void cloak for about fifty minutes, which should give me enough time to dodge whatever was trying to come after me.

Eventually, it was time.

I had positioned myself closer to the lake than to the dunes, so I could barely see the first thirsty contenders make their way over the crest of the closest dune. It didn’t take long until I saw more flashes of light, this time closer and accompanied by shaking trees. The battle was slowly shifting into the woods as more and more monsters came into the oasis, fights breaking out all over the place.

Then, I started counting, as the first monster frantically passed by my hiding space. That’s one. Not long after, something else came bounding around the trees, following the earlier monster. The first fight behind me broke out, and I counted to two.

I could somewhat make out when another monster passed by me in about a fifteen-meter range, and they slowly trickled in and I mentally counted all of them. More and more fights broke out around me and some of the water monsters started getting involved, pulling the thirsty into a watery grave. How they could spare the time to grab someone from the shore was weird to me… weren’t they fighting just as much in the water?

A flyer would swoop down every now and again, either picking off something from the water or attacking tired fighters around me. For consistency, I counted neither the fish nor the birds, since I didn’t know if I could even get them reliably. Well, if I was a few kills off my target close to dawn, I’d just go “fishing” and hope for the best.

The first wave was the most intense, I counted about thirty monsters that passed by my position within the first hour or so of the night. After that, the rate slowed down by a lot. It made sense, seeing as everybody emerged from the sands at the same time and had at each other. From now on it would mostly be victors from dunes that were farther away.

For the rest of the night, traffic slowed down heavily, although the fighting around me was near constant, still. I diligently counted all through the night and eventually counted eighty-six when the first rays of sunlight hit the oasis.

At first, the number seemed too low for my purposes, but that was only how many came close to me. Technically, if you counted the entire oasis, there were probably a few thousand monsters coming and going each night. There was no guarantee that I’d be able to kill everything that came close to me anyway, and the first hour seemed to be the most valuable.

During that time, I’d need to constantly be on the move, applying poison to as many monsters as possible. The more I managed to down during that time, the better. I was not afraid of running out of regular mana, after all, if I was running on empty I could just retreat into one of my holes, and restore my MP with gluttony.

In fact, it was probably in my best interest to bottom out my regular mana in that first hour of activity. It’d probably take less than an hour to restore it to full if I just kept shoving food down my throat, which would then still give me tons of time to hunt for stragglers.

Contrary to how I usually operated, I went to sleep during the day, essentially adjusting myself to the regular monsters. If I was going to pull off an entire night of fighting, I wanted to be well-rested. As I settled into my barebones home, I went over my first strategy in my head. It’d allow me to cover loads of ground but had the potential to get me a lot fewer kills than I needed.

Well, nothing to it than to do it.

I woke up about an hour before nightfall.

It was time for me to prepare myself. I went over my plan, again and again, making sure there were no obvious flaws in my logic, and eventually started moving to the spot I’d decided on starting this whole thing. My starting location of choice was an unassuming tree about a third into the oasis, coming from the desert.

Most of the fighting would take place at the entrance, the masses thinning out the closer they got to the lake. So I’d make my first stand here, retreat, eat, and then go hunting.

The sun was approaching the horizon once again and I took a couple of deep breaths to move away from the nervousness that threatened to overtake me. There was no need for anxiety. I’d been working on this damn plan for a long time. In fact, it was close to the only thing I’d been thinking about for the past month.

What were my abilities? How could I best utilize them for killing multiple targets? What monsters was I facing? What irregularities could I expect? Was I ready to use my new tentacles to move fast, and efficiently? How should I manage my mana? What were the best times to retreat and refill? Had I memorized each and every location of my underground bases? What should I do if something goes horribly wrong?

I had been asking myself these questions over and over again, mulling them over in my head again and again. Trying to find answers for mostly theoretical questions, that could go wrong in so, so many ways when applied to real life.

But, I had done everything I could. There was no point in asking these questions again because I had remembered the answers perfectly. Which meant, I was now watching the sun disappear. Not in fear, but anticipation.

Darkness descended, and the curtain rose on a massacre.

It didn’t take long for the now familiar flashes of skills and magic to be flung around just out of sight. Good. It meant that there was nothing unusual going on. I patiently waited until the horde thinned out, and eventually, I saw the first monster crest the dune. I watched it descend in a mad dash, who knows when it last drank water, into the oasis.

I let it pass, as it was a bit too far away from my position. It was still too soon to act. Another monster, then another, and another. More and more monsters made their way toward the oasis and I made sure to at least attempt to tag anything close enough with a concentrated poison needle. But this still wasn’t the situation I was hoping for.

Ten minutes later, I finally decided to act. There was a ton of fighting all around me, the perfect condition.

It was finally time to unleash a spell I hadn’t used in a long time. The last time I’d used poison mist was against a camp of goblins on the second layer. It was the perfect weapon against a large number of enemies. And the best thing about it?

The more mana I pumped into the spell, the bigger the area of effect would be!

If I remembered correctly, when I used it against the goblins, I used about a hundred mana, maybe a bit more. At the time, that was a huge investment. Today, with the bonus from gluttony, I had more than 1.1k mana. I was going to absolutely blast this entire area with poison, and nobody could stop me.

I started casting the simple spell, quickly completing it, and then I started pumping more and more mana into the spell. I charged four hundred mana into the spell and let loose.

A massive torrent of poisonous mist exploded outwards from my position, covering a huge part of the oasis. But I didn’t linger to appreciate what I’d just done, no, I needed to move immediately. I had just poisoned a lot of monsters, and I expected that I’d get the kill on about half of them, tops. Most were guaranteed to slay their opponent when the poison weakened them, while my poison would eventually finish off the already beat-up victor of the fight.

Which meant there was no point in hanging around. I quickly launched myself from tree to tree, a maneuver I’d practiced extensively, putting my twenty-two agility to full use. I practically flew over the treetops, making sure to move as stealthily as possible, while still maintaining speed.

I cleared my poison mist after a full three minutes of running and just kept going. After another three minutes, I finally stopped and started charging up poison mist again, four hundred mana once again being pumped into a low-tier spell. I cast the spell and unleashed another torrent of poison mist. If everything went according to plan, this mist should connect to my earlier spell, combining to poison a huge swath of land.

Once again, I didn’t wait and started moving again. The first kill notifications started pouring in as I was hopping from palm to palm and I mentally fist-pumped. It was working! But I had no time to rest.

My next destination was one of my hideouts, and I hauled ass to get there. After I cleared my poison mist again, I cast another poison mist, this one only charged to two hundred. This time, I stood still for a bit, trying to cast three void javelins as calmly as I could. My heart was beating fast and I almost messed up at one point, but eventually, three javelins were hovering above me.

I picked some random spots away from my hideout and threw the javelins as far as I could, each in a different direction. They exploded shortly after landing, no doubt stirring the monsters in those areas into an even bigger frenzy. One poor sod was even directly killed by my javelin.

Happy that most of the fighting would take place where my explosions lured the others, I descended the trees and followed my markings to my hideout, practically threw myself in, and paused for a second, taking another deep breath in an attempt to calm down.

So far, so good.

The first part of the plan had gone by flawlessly, and there was a steady stream of kill notifications coming in. Slow, sure, but steady. Next on the itinerary, stuff myself with dead monsters from my inventory to trigger gluttony and get back to full MP. I quickly took out a large scarab corpse and put my big mouth to good use.

I continued to eat while my eyes were glued to both my mana pool, as well as the kill feed. It eventually stopped after I got the credit for forty-two kills. That was a good number, almost halfway to the finish line, but from here on out, it’d become harder. Prime time was over, and re-using my poison mist strategy would be a waste of mana. No, from now on, I needed to find and kill monsters as efficiently as I could.

Night on the third layer lasted for about ten hours, so I would have about eight hours to get the rest of the kills. That meant I needed to kill seven to eight monsters per hour. Definitely doable if I kept on the move and dispatched them efficiently. Of course, that didn’t factor in times when I needed to pause to restore my mana again. Going forward I couldn’t afford to tag my opponents with a needle and hope for the best. No, I needed to make sure to kill them and do it fast, and that meant not skimping on mana.

I grinned a bit when I saw that poison mist had gained a whole four levels. Most of my poison spells were so close to level ten, which meant it was almost guaranteed that I’d get some new spells tonight. Hopefully, they’d help me complete this challenge.

Eventually, my MP was back to full. It was go-time.

I quickly jumped out of my hiding spot, followed by a quick check of my surroundings to see if anything was within striking distance. Yet, I was faced with nothing but bush, fruit, and tree. No problem, I had a way to find victims. I may have no ears with which to hear, but I had an excellent tremor sense. This feel for the vibrations of the ground had been with me from the very first moment of my journey in this world, and it had been honed into an accurate sense over time.

I stood still for a few seconds, feeling for any tell-tale vibrations of a fight. Once I actually focused on it, I could feel several fights happening close-ish to my location. I picked out the one I felt was closest and started bounding over there, hoping that I might get two kills, instead of only mopping up whoever won.

It took me about a minute to come across the pair of fighters, an imp flinging around wind magic and a buffalo that had vines growing out of its flesh and used them to attack. I’d loaded up four poison spears while rushing over and sent three toward the buffalo and one at the imp. They didn’t see it coming, and all four projectiles hit home.

Now, poison spear was only a D-tier spell, and shouldn’t really do much against a tier-three monster, but there were several factors that made it a deadly weapon. First, my high intelligence score packed the low-level spell with a lot of extra punch. Second, since I was, for the first time in a long time, engaged in an actual fight, my passive giant hunter was active.

Giant hunter doubled all of my attributes as long as my opponent was one tier higher than I was. Problem being, the system didn’t consider me sitting in a tree and assassinating monsters with poison needles “fighting”, so most of the time the passive was inconsequential. But now I was out in the light, engaging my opponents in actual battle.

So my attributes soared to ridiculous new heights, the crazy combination of an S- and SSS-tier passive on full display for the first time. Gluttony raised my attributes, and giant hunter doubled them temporarily. The only drawback being that my maximum HP and MP weren’t influenced by this. Still, with an Intelligence score of 162, my measly poison spear became a projectile of death, even to tier-three monsters.

The small imp didn’t stand a chance, but the buffalo somehow managed to tank all three spears that I shot at him. Enraged, it changed its target to me, but it was an exercise in futility. Poison Spear didn’t have a long cast time to begin with, and my doubled stats made it so I could cast it almost instantly. Before it could start charging at me, another spear domed it, adding another number to my count.

I felt like the fucking terminator. Maybe I should have switched up strategies a long time ago. My fighting power was off the charts and I wondered if I ever needed to be as afraid as I was when I came to the third layer. Granted, I’d gained a lot of attribute points since then, but still.

I tried to calm down a bit, trying to not be overtaken by the rush of power. That was how one made mistakes. I clearly remembered the time I almost got killed by the double-headed fish, which meant what allowed this tactic to work was my heightened attributes since then, as well as the fact that I was no longer constricted by a locked agility stat. I quickly dumped both corpses into my inventory and started sensing for more vibrations.

The fights I has felt before apparently were both over and I couldn’t feel anything in the immediate vicinity, so I rushed in the direction of what I felt earlier. It was entirely possible that the fighters over there had already moved, so about once every minute I took a moment to stay still and look for an active fight.

It was during one of these short stops, that I was hit by a surprise attack.

I had just settled down, trying to focus on what the ground was telling me when I felt a sudden pain along my midriff. I quickly looked at my body, swiveling the other eye to see who had attacked, all while jumping away from where I was. Having independent eyes came in really handy here since I could both check up on myself and look for my enemy.

The damage to my body wasn’t too bad, but there was a cut running across my middle as if somebody tried to cut me in half. And while my body wasn’t cut in half, my HP just about were. I could not allow myself to take another hit like that. A sentiment that was complicated by the fact that I could not spot whoever did this.

I made sure to not stop for a second, always moving, scanning the trees for my adversary. I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye and dodged immediately, barely dodging another slash. I’d finally spotted it!

Whatever this thing was, it was by far the weirdest monster I had seen so far. It was pitch black, seamlessly blending into the shadows around it, which explained why it was so hard to find. It kind of looked like a lanky cactus, without the spikes. Three limbs protruded about halfway up its body and one of them was currently retracting.

It would appear like I was up against a sneaky whip cactus of sorts.

No matter, now that I knew where it was, I had the upper hand. I quickly fired two poison spears at it while retreating, trying to see how it would react. I almost didn’t believe my eyes when it seemed to shift into the darkness and disappeared, my spears decimating a tree behind it.

I frantically looked around, trying to figure out what was happening. Did it turn invisible? Did it somehow move through the shadows? Was it teleporting?

Just to be safe I activated my defensive skills, which severely limited my movement options due to compress, but at least I’d survive one more hit. The monster seemed to take my slowing down as weakness, suddenly appearing right next to me, seemingly from nowhere. Two of its vine whips impacted my body, which I was able to take pretty well now that I was properly defending.

This thing was too fast for me, and I needed to get in a hit now, while it was still close. Just after I tanked both hits, I quickly activated the explosion ability of my mucus armor, spraying my poisonous mucus all around me. There was no way for it to dodge, and thanks to my various passives, my poison would work its way through the skin.

I followed it up with two poison needles, hoping that they would be too small to notice the monster. And to make extra sure, I fired two more spears shortly after, so that it would focus on them. I was semi-certain that I’d seen both needles hit their target, but the monster vanished before the spears could hit it, part of the shadows once more.

Well, two could play at that game.

I launched myself upwards and on top of a tree in order to break line of sight, already casting void cloak in a hurry. I was fighting, so my stats were back to their doubled numbers, which allowed me to cast a lot faster than I was used to, and before long, I was shifting into the void.

I quickly jumped off the tree, just in case another sneak attack was coming, landing on the ground a few meters away. Just in the nick of time, as it turned out, since the monster cut through the tree like butter with its tentacles. I would like to imagine that it was confused since I suddenly disappeared.

When two monsters that could hide perfectly, had a go at each other, whoever ran out of mana would lose, I suppose. Of course, that didn’t account for my poison, which should be draining its HP by the second.

The shadow monster got infuriated that I’d hidden and started randomly attacking everything around it, but much to my dismay showed no signs of succumbing to my poison. This thing was too dangerous, so I started conjuring up a void spear. A whole swath of the oasis was getting decimated because it was looking for me, and the noise would be attracting more monsters anyway, so I might as well.

I waited for a moment where I had a clean shot and let fly. The projectile absolutely nailed the shadow and exploded shortly after, dismembering it and sending the parts flying.

You have killed a T3 Lv.18 Shadow Core

You have been awarded 96 Data Points

Hot damn! That thing was level eighteen already!

No matter, though, I needed to retreat and recuperate. I was a bit annoyed that I had to pull back after only killing three monsters, but if I had to pause anyway, I may as well leave a little present for the monsters that were no doubt rushing over to join the fray.

I quickly pumped five hundred mana into another poison mist spell and let it loose on the area before retreating, all while keeping void cloak going. If I wanted to succeed, I would have to do better from now on.

Several hours later, everything was going according to plan. I hadn’t run into any more high leveled monsters, so it had been mostly smooth sailing. I made it a point to try to be even more aware of my surroundings so as to not get snuck up on again, but there really was no guarantee since I didn’t have any detection-related skills.

Judging by the position of the fake moon, the night was halfway over. I quickly glanced at my quest progress, which sat at a comfortable sixty-two out of one hundred. My hunting had been very effective, and the poison mist I released every time I needed to go restore my mana helped tremendously.

I was technically ahead of schedule, but I could not allow myself to rest, since as the night continued, fewer and fewer monsters were present in the area. The closer we got to the day, the harder it would be to find my victims.

I hadn’t encountered any monsters in a while, and as I did every now and again, I threw a void javelin in the direction of the lake. I’d do this every time I noticed that my VMP reserves were full. That way I wouldn’t waste any of the precious mana. I didn’t always get a kill, as this was the fourth time I did it, and so far I only got one kill out of it. Still, every little bit counted.

It seemed like this one was a dud as well, as I felt the explosion go off, but I didn’t get a notification. Undeterred, I kept pushing forward, towards a new segment of the oasis I hadn’t visited tonight. I was slowly moving around the lake as the night went on and had covered about a third of the land, picking off monsters as I went along.

Finally, I felt the familiar tremors of a fight and immediately changed course, this was a big one.

When I got closer, I slowed down a bit, intent on sussing out the situation before intervening. I arrived at a small clearing where six monsters were duking it out among each other. I quickly scanned them for their rough typing. A snake, a scorpion, a flame-wielding imp, a manticore, an ogre of sorts, and an amalgamation of vines.

It was absolute chaos, as they were all just blindly setting off skills and magic, punches, bites, scratches, and spells flying everywhere. Happy to take advantage of this situation, and eager to test out my newly evolved poison spell I started casting my own spell.

Fatal Poison Bomb (C)

Send out a concentrated glob of poison that will explode on impact, releasing the poison within and dealing moderate physical damage.

Cost: 60 MP

That’s right! Poison spear hit level ten and evolved into poison bomb! Its mana cost tripled, but that didn’t really matter all that much since I had loads of MP anyway! MUHAHAHA! I should invest even more into wisdom!

It didn’t take too long to cast the spell and I threw it into the fray, smack dab in the middle of the fighters. Except for the manticore, none of them even noticed the spell land among them, but even if it did, it was too late. The bomb exploded sending most of the contestants flying into the nearby trees, the manticore and the vine thing managed to hold on, although the explosion still damaged them a bit.

All six of them had already been banged up before I stepped in, so they felt it nonetheless. The scorpion, which was the closest to the explosion was killed, but everyone else was just angry at the disruption, letting out various roars and snarls. Well, not like I could hear those, because, you know, no ears!

I wasn’t about to let them recover though and sent out a barrage of poison spears, a few poison needles mixed in for the manticore and the ogre. These guys were pretty big and probably had a high constitution, so the extra poison was needed. I managed to take out both the snake and the imp with this barrage, adding another two to the count.

I briefly appreciated just how unafraid I’d become of these tier-three behemoths and launched myself to another tree. Unafraid I might be, but if I could get them to focus on each other instead of me, that’d be even better. Since I hadn’t shown myself, all the anger was directed toward the visible enemies and the three remaining fighters were at each other's throats again.

The ball of vines was ripped to shreds before I could really react, but that was okay. There were still two targets left and I started peppering them with more spears. Spears were still my go-to weapon for now, since they were fast, cheap, and packed a punch. And they proved their worth when I managed to take apart the ogre, which was unable to withstand both my spells and the manticore's attacks.

Not willing to let the manticore redirect its aggression toward me, I followed up with three spears, taking out the last fighter. Five out of six kills, not bad!

A thought quickly manifested itself, one that I’d had several times during this challenge. Wasn’t I too strong? While I was at the max level, I was still a tier two creature, and the only thing that gave me some kind of trouble was the high-level shadow core I fought in the beginning.

Maybe I didn’t need to stay on the third layer after all, once I evolved. Maybe it’d be better to go lower anyway… on the other hand, why make it harder on myself when I could just knock out the evolution requirements quickly and without issue on this layer? At the end of the day, the goal was to descend to the eighth layer of this planet, not to face unnecessary risks.

I guess I’ll take a look at the bonus objectives first and decide then.

I collected my spoils and went back to looking for more. Thirty-three more to go!

There were about one and a half hours left, and I’d just killed my ninetieth monster. Way to go, me!

I was on pace to knock this challenge out of the park, provided I was able to find enough things to kill. Worst case scenario, I’d use the last half-hour or so to do some more “fishing”. I stored the body of the defeated centipede monster in my inventory and was just about to continue with my hunt when I was stopped by a sudden notification.

You have killed a large amount of monsters during the night. The Hunter has been alerted to your presence.

Oh no! No, no no no no NO!

Ohhh, this was bad news on a whole new level. I should have known this challenge was too easy! Panic settled in and I frantically thought about what to do. Did I have a chance against the Hunter? Dubious, at best. Maybe if I got time to set up an ambush and fight on my terms, but not like this! Could I run? Most likely not, the system seemed to tell it where I was…

What should I do?

I started hyperventilating at the prospect of that huge monster hunting me down. It could definitely crush me with no effort, and it knew where I was. How far away was it anyway? If I got lucky it wasn’t too close to the oasis, so I might have some time to try and hide.

I immediately shot towards where I knew my closest hideout was. This was exactly the kind of situation that I’d made my hideouts for! On my way there I had to quickly dispatch two monsters in my way, not sparing any mana to finish the fight faster. I was now at ninety-two kills, only eight more to go!

It was just so unfair! How the hell was I supposed to finish this challenge if the hunter came after me every time I got close to finishing? I zipped past trees and bushes on my way to my hideout, frantically looking for my markings along the way. What the hell would I even do once I was in my hideout? My hideouts were barely a meter or so below ground, the hunter could just dig me out with its huge hands.

Was my only real option to avoid it until daybreak?

I seriously doubted that I had a permanent mark on my back now. The system was harsh, yes, but fair… most of the time. My best guess was that the hunter would stop its pursuit as soon as the sun rose over the horizon. Still, that was over an hour where I needed to run from that thing!

I stopped running for a moment, trying to calm my mind a little. I had to find a way to run away for long enough, a game of hide and seek where getting found meant death.

The hunter wasn’t in the oasis yet, of that I was fairly certain. With a huge monster like that, I was fairly certain that I’d notice the tremors it’d cause. I thought about it again and again, but there really was no feasible way for me to outrun the hunter. All I could do was use void cloak and stealth to try and hide from it, and hope to gain as much time as I could with that strategy… If that didn’t work… I’d have to deal with that when it happened.

For now, though, I calmed down a little. I refused to give up on my challenge this close to the goal. My VMP was almost full, which meant I could potentially hide for around fifty minutes, but I somehow felt that the hunter wouldn’t be fooled for too long. My regular mana was about half full, which still let me bring quite a bit of hurt…

Goddamnit!

I rushed to where I felt two monsters fighting and took them out in a flash. Six more, only six more. There were still no signs of the hunter, so I continued running. At this time there weren’t too many monsters left in the oasis, so they were few and far in between. I pushed my tentacles to the limit, putting all of my strength and agility into moving around, trying to get that one more kill, one point closer to completing the target.

I broke up another fight by literally crashing into one of the fighters. Both of them were on their last legs, so I quickly third-partied them with minimal MP loss. Four more.

A vulture swooped down from above, attempting to make me its late-night snack. I managed to blow apart one of its wings with a well-placed spear, and after it lost its air advantage, it was easy pickings. Three more.

Every minute that went by without a sign from the hunter was a godsend, but at the same time, the longer it took to show up, the higher my anxiety spiked. I don’t think I ever felt that nervous before, in either of my lives. The feeling I’d gotten from gambling in my past life was a cute, fluffy feeling compared to the nail-biting stress I was currently under.

The colors around me were a blur as I rushed along the oasis looking for more idiots to kill. There! Another fight! I rushed over to where I’d felt them fighting and just like before, I arrived at the tail-end of the fight and managed to take both of them out in short order. I was only one fucking kill away from completing this stupid quest!

I quickly attempted to look for another fight, but instead of finding my last target, I felt something I’d been expecting for quite a while now. The violent tremors being transmitted through the ground could only mean one thing.

The hunter was here.

I launched myself upwards, trying to get a better view from the top of a nearby palm. I had clearly felt the direction where the hunter was coming from and frantically turned to look. The sight that greeted me was truly horrifying.

There, at the edge of the oasis, on the other side of the lake, was the hunter. Its massive form towered over the palms around it, the trees barely coming up to its hip. The ten-meter-tall minotaur stood there, looking straight at me and I felt a shiver down my spine. I barely processed the emergency quest notification announcing the hunter before it left out a huge roar.

Thankfully, I could not hear it, but I could feel the very air vibrate due to it. I was absolutely certain that a fear effect was imbued in its roar because I’d seen the monsters freeze up when they heard it. I may be immune to its effect, but I was still shitting my pants in fear since I was the target. I hurriedly activated my void cloak, praying to any god that would listen that it would buy me some time, and started running.

I kept above the trees so that I could at least keep an eye on the hunter, jumping from treetop to treetop. In the distance, the hunter started running as well, thankfully not in a beeline toward me. Apparently, it wanted to avoid going through the lake for some reason, so it ran around the lake.

I cursed and changed direction since keeping course would mean I would be running at it instead of away. Of course, the hunter was massive and could cover a lot of ground with just one step. Compared to that, I was barely moving. Still, I was too scared to just stay somewhere and hope that my cloak would hold up against the scrutiny of a literal killing machine that was apparently also some sort of enforcer for the system.

Eventually, the hunter got to the spot where it had last seen me and started looking around. Score! It knew I was close, but at least the system seemingly didn’t give out my exact location constantly. Which meant now was the real test for my void cloak. Just how good of a spell was it, and how much time could it buy me?

The moon was approaching the horizon, which meant it wasn’t long before morning came around. If it didn’t stop pursuing me then, I might as well just give up. A permanent mark would mean no chance for me to do anything, really. So I’d rather put all my hopes on the gamble that it would stop coming after me once the night was over.

I kept a healthy distance from the hunter, trying to move as little as possible. If I’d learned anything about stealth abilities, it was that the more you moved, the more likely you were to be discovered. The hunter was on an absolute rampage trying to find me. Trees were smacked out of the way, sent flying by the ridiculous power the hunter possessed.

Every now and again, it let out another roar in an attempt to get me to react or show myself. I could tell it got angrier over time because it didn’t work like it was used to. So it just decided to absolutely decimate everything around it. It punched, kicked, and used its horns to clear a big part of the oasis and I had to occasionally move my position further away since the carnage was still coming in my general direction.

I cursed when I saw some unlucky monsters get flattened by the hunter. I only needed a single kill to complete the task, but with that huge idiot being around, I couldn’t afford to split my attention. Maybe I should just try and kill the hunter, after all, it was a monster and would probably count, right?

I quickly discarded that thought when I barely managed to dodge a fist that was easily five times my size. Yeah, not happening. I quickly put some more space between us, keeping up the void cloak and stealth the entire time.

Suddenly, the hunter stopped its wanton destruction of the oasis. It got down on all fours and sniffed the ground for a bit. After a few moments, it looked in my rough direction, albeit a bit too far to the left. That wasn’t good, was it?

The hunter opened up its huge mouth and I could feel a huge amount of magic starting to gather. Oh shit, it had to move, and I had to move fast. I hurriedly went towards it in a last-ditch gamble. Whatever crazy spell was coming, I didn’t want to be anywhere close to where it would come through. There was a bit of forest left between the hunter and the lake and I rushed like I never had before to get there in time.

A small light gathered in front of the hunter's mouth and I got a really bad feeling, right before a literal laser shot out from the little light. It expanded from its origin point, getting up to twenty meters wide at some point, evaporating a good chunk of the oasis, slamming into a dune behind it, and continuing on its merry way to glass a good bit of the desert.

I watched in disbelief from right next to the hunter. What the fuck? Was that even remotely fair? If the hunter had something like this up its sleeve, how was any tier-three monster ever meant to defeat it? I couldn’t avert my eyes from the smoldering line of destruction that spread out before me, which turned out to be a mistake.

A fist crashed into the ground, mere meters away from me. The hunter still knew my rough position! I had to run now. I quickly turned around, intent to at least trying to put some distance between us, but was stopped when the other fist flattened a tree in my path. MY world seemed to slow down as I looked back at the hunter, the first fist already pulled back and ready to strike at the exact position I was at.

Was this it? Had I lost?

I watched on as the fist started moving in slow motion, my mind running at a thousand miles a minute, my body refusing to move. Well, I guess I had a good run. The only reason I was in this situation was that I got a bit too cocky. I should have just left the bonus objectives well enough alone and evolved like a regular, good monster. But no, I wanted to have it all.

I tried to make peace with myself as the fist drew ever closer, but I just couldn’t. Dying sucked! I should know, I did it before! I didn’t want to die, especially not because of an overgrown cow that cheated! A truly insane plan popped into my head and I had nothing to lose.

I pushed back with all my might, my tentacles launching me backward toward the lake. Time sped up again and the fist decimated the tree I had just been on, mere centimeters away from me, the shockwave giving me even more momentum. I started casting a void javelin midair, aided by my doubled stats. I was considered to be fighting with the hunter, so my stats once again soared.

As soon as I landed, I jumped back again, getting ever closer to the lake while casting a second javelin set to hover above me. The hunter knew I was between it and the lake, although it still couldn’t see me due to my abilities, and it capitalized on that fact. I was boxed in by a flurry of punches, only barely managing to dodge, losing more and more ground as I got closer to the lake.

A third javelin phased into existence above me, quickly followed by two poison bombs. Just in time as well, since I was sitting on the very last intact tree between the lake and the hunter. I swear I could see that bastard smirk as he pulled back his fist one last time. He had me now, or so he thought.

I quickly jumped as high as I could and shot two of my javelins into the tree. I activated both of my defensive abilities and curled up into a ball, dreading what was about to happen. The giant fist was moments away from crushing me and the tree when my javelins exploded violently.

The shockwave sent me flying high into the air, away from the hunter and over the lake. It hurt like hell and I was pretty sure that my HP dropped significantly, but I had no time to check. I majestically soared over the lake but I was already losing altitude. At this rate, I’d just fall into the lake and either drown or be eaten by a fish. So, just like a rocket, I triggered my second boost in the form of a poison bomb.

I took another bit of damage, but it worked. I was wildly spinning around midair and it was hard to tell if it was enough to clear the lake proper, so just in case, I used my second poison bomb after a while to help me along. Moments later, my spinning sight was replaced by browns and greens, telling me I had cleared the lake. I had a short moment of joy before slamming against a tree.

I had the wind knocked out of me as I flopped against the ground, my entire body in pain. I forced myself to look across the lake, making eye contact with a confused hunter. I could see some aquatic monsters sticking their head out of the water to see what the commotion was about, and smirked.

I shot out my last remaining javelin, nailing one of the curios critters in the head, the subsequent explosion sending water and blood flying everywhere. And, behind the hunter, I could see the first ray of light banish the darkness of the night. The sun framed the hunter as he stared at me angrily before he turned away with a huff and started walking into the desert.

I kept staring at it for as long as I could see it, incredulous that my suicidal plan actually worked out. The pain in my body made me acutely aware of the fact that I was, in fact, not dead. I dumbly stood there for a few more moments before remembering that the hunter wasn’t the only thing here that could kill me, and I started moving, looking for a hideout to go nurse my wounds in.

All the while, happily looking at the system notification I had received a few moments ago.

You have completed a bonus objective!

Kill 100 monsters in a single night (100/100)

Congratulations!