Kapitel 3: First kill

'Damnit, it didn't die?' Yulong thought as the snake writhed about. Yulong drew his sword out before nimbly leaping away. The snake turned its slitted eyes towards him, angrily glaring at Yulong.

"Hmph... Come at me, beast." Yulong said. Suddenly, his sword glowed a brilliant and dazzling light. Sword intent. His mastery was extremely high in his past life, so his ability to use sword intent was transferred.

With a cold smirk, he rushed at the already injured snake, who also did the same.

'Sword Dance...' Yulong thought, imitating one of his skills from before. Not only was it a movement technique, but it was also powerful, with 99 moves involved.

A flurry of blinding sword slices chipped off the snake. The sword wasn't strong enough to pierce the scales instantly since he was not hitting a weak spot, but he was destroying the frontier part of the beast's scales while evading its fangs. Since his cultivation base was low, he couldn't execute his moves flawlessly.

He leaped up, throwing his sword back at the same spot; the back of the neck.

Another cry of agony vibrated through Yulong. He smirked as the beast tried to attack him. He evaded again, leaping onto its head and pulling out his sword before plunging it back in.

He would do this many more times before the snake died of blood loss.

"Sigh... Only 50?" That meant he had 150 Qi left before he could gain another breakthrough. Sure, the snake was only at the weakest stage, but he should've gained more Qi.

Seeing himself struggle against a pitiful Mortal Martial beast... He really was weak right now.

'I'd better harvest its beast core then.' Yulong thought. He didn't magically gain the beast core of every monster he killed, he needed to carve open the head to achieve that. The game developers wanted the game to be as realistic as possible.

Beast cores gave Qi from absorbtion. Not only that, you had a chance of gaining a beast's skills from them, and an even rarer chance of being able to gain a one-time temporary summon.

Once he had carved the head open with his sword, he opened it up, pushing through the blood and gore to get to the beast's core, his hands moving as if he had done this many times before. This game was extremely realistic, which would be the downfall of those not prepared to see guts and gore.

He then pulled out a dull green pebble.

'So small. And it's of low quality too... '

<Description: A simple pebble-sized best core from an Earth Eating Serpent of the First Level Mortal Martial Realm.>

Sighing, Yulong popped it into his mouth. It melted on contact with his tongue, and he could feel the Qi from it spreading through his body in a wave of warmth, making him feel as if he was approaching a breakthrough.

Yulong didn't smile at this. He just simply got a little less weak. This would help him grind further. Deciding to kill 20 serpents before heading to the nearest city, Yulong turned East and ran.

---

"Hah..."

Yulong breathed as he sat on the dead corpse of a serpent. His sword was still in its head. Yulong was sweating, having killed his 19th serpent. After killing 19 serpents, his cultivation base had only just reached the Sixth Level of the Mortal Martial Realm.

"Whew... One more beast to go..." Yulong currently had 19 beast cores in his inventory. He was planning to sell them because they were of low level and couldn't be of use to him at his current cultivation base.

Yulong drew his sword out of the corpse's head and leaped down to the ground when a notification thundered across the sky.

'You finally appeared, huh?' Yulong thought. Emperor was his arch nemesis, someone equal to him in power. He was currently ahead of Yulong, just like before. But there was also a chance that Emperor, too, had been reincarnated.

Strengthening his resolve, Yulong looked at the Qi in the air when he sensed a distortion right of him. Turning on his heel, he darted towards the disturbance much faster than before.

Boom!

After he had been traveling for an hour, the sound of something hitting a tree was just up ahead.

And it seemed like something big.

He burst into another clearing, only to see two serpents dueling it out.

'A fourth level fighting the fifth level...?' Yulong thought. There was no way a beast would pick on something stronger, but this here was either an example of a stupid beast or an odd one. He was now a spectator, watching as the biggest snake he'd seen slammed and destroyed a thinner and smaller snake.

The fight broke trees, although, to Yulong, this could hardly be called a fight. Not only that, he encountered high-level Earth Eating Serpents. For their species, this was rare, especially since they don't live long.

The bigger serpent struck the smaller one with large fangs, causing the smaller one to writhe in pain as the poison was being pumped into it.

Finally, the snake went limp.

The victorious serpent turned towards Yulong after establishing its dominance.

"Oh, you want to fight? Don't worry, I'll give you a quick death." Yulong said, cracking his knuckles before swinging around his sword. Suddenly, he and the snake rushed at each other.

Boom!