บท 38: Forest Bear
"How the hell can you miss its heart? It was such an easy target!" Rowan practically cringed when he saw Alex miss such an easy attack.
Cough
"It's not my fault for being short! I can't help it!" Alex was rightfully embarrassed and slightly angry when one of his few insecurities was pointed out.
The bear was over 4 metres tall while it stood on its hind legs, how was Alex supposed to reach its heart.
"What do you mean short?? Just jump, you're an awakened for god sake." Alex's face went bright red when Rowan pointed out such an easy mistake.
'This kid has a lot to learn, that's for sure — even more reason for me to recruit him to the university.'
"What's done is done, just help me finish this thing off!" Rowan shouted at Alex from the back of the enraged bear.
However when he looked at Alex, he noticed the depressed look on his face.
He could see that he was looking at something he held in his hand, but he was too busy wrestling at the bear's neck to care.
'My dagger…'
What Alex held in his hand was his dagger… what was left of it.
In fact all he held was just a handle, with no blade attached to it.
The moment his dagger made contact and pierced through the bear's stomach, it melted into a goop on the spot, pouring the molten metal further into the bear's stomach.
"My dagger's broken!" Alex awoke from his depressed stupor, less than a second had passed since he heard Rowan's shout.
"So? Kill this thing with your fists!" Rowan didn't care though, he just wanted to finish this fight as quickly as possible and move on to the next one.
"How am I supposed to kill something 3 levels above me without a weapon?" When Alex spoke with annoyance in his tone, Rowan felt like he had a brain fart.
'This kid's talent is so high I forgot he's still just an F+ rank!'
He didn't want to say another word to Alex since he made fun of him for his own embarrassing moment earlier. He didn't want Alex to do the same thing back to him.
Instead, he just threw his own sword at him, and said, "Make sure you hit the heart this time."
Catching the new weapon, Alex inspected the faint, milky white aura emanating off it and didn't hesitate to charge up his attack again.
Around 5 seconds later, Rowan's sword was covered in flames, only this time there were no cracks. Alex was shocked at the amount of power he felt, this was definitely the most powerful attack he would deliver by far!
'I guess the upgrade to my Flame talent decreased the amount of time it takes to charge up the attack.'
With that confirmed, Alex ran up to the madly raging bear, with Rowan about to slip off and once again went in for the kill.
Only this time he jumped.
With the length of the sword, his attack penetrated much deeper into the chest of the bear and when he reached a certain point where the sword was almost three quarters buried, the bear's rapid rampage stopped suddenly.
Alex was so close to the bear, he could feel the energy pulsating through its body and when he penetrated its heart, he felt those energy pulsations stop.
[You have killed an E rank beast, Forest Bear.]
'Interesting… So energy has something to do with the heart!'
"Oh shit!" Alex was so engrossed in his thoughts that he forgot that the four metre tall was still standing there on its two hind legs, and he was right in front of it.
The thing was dead for sure, and the Primordial Expanse had confirmed it.
But that didn't stop the 2 ton corpse of the huge beast from toppling over right on top of him.
"Alex!" Rowan, understandably worried, jumped off its back and pushed the corpse aside with all his strength, going red in the face as he rolled it over onto its back.
"You okay?" He reached his hand down to help Alex up.
Alex just looked at him with a deadpan face while he grabbed his hand.
"You could've warned me." He said to Rowan.
"You could've been more aware." With that quick response, Alex returned to silence. He didn't want to admit it openly, but Rowan was right.
Just because the beast is dead, doesn't mean the danger is gone.
Thankfully, with his F+ rank body along with the increased strength he had gained by the absorption of the soul orbs, he managed to avoid any major injuries, only gaining a few bruises here and there.
"You fight so clumsily I don't even know how you've survived up till this point, didn't the federation teach you anything about fighting?" Rowan was genuinely surprised at how incompetent Alex was when he fought.
"Where I come from, people like me rarely make it back from the Primordial Expanse." Alex said.
"Oh."
With that, the conversation was over just as quickly as it started.
By now, most of the fights between the beasts and humans were already over.
The beast tide had sustained over 1500 deaths, with the remaining few hundred fleeing back into the forested wilderness.
While the human side had only sustained around 60 deaths overall.
Most of these deaths had been from when that minotaur-like beast barrelled towards the unawakened group of people near the city barrier. But with the prompt action taken by Wildblade and the other two D ranks, it had been killed before it could slaughter any more of the masses.
After that point, the other D rank beasts were weak enough that the D rank human trio could split up and deal with them one on one.
"Is it over?" Jones, the 12 year old F- rank boy, asked.
Just as he asked that, shouts and cheers came from all over the battlefield. Every adventurer no matter how injured cheered at their triumph over the beast tide.
"Now it's time for the best part. We loot!" Rowan commented with a wide smile on his face as he headed over to the beast corpses he and his team had killed.
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