｢Name: Void Fodder – Private Rank monster
Level: 34
HP: 15,000/15,000｣
Unfortunately for this poor creature, it was only a Private Rank monster! How could it resist Draco with its meager HP and defense? Before it could even scream for help, it was bisected with ease.
Draco got a piddling 4% experience for killing this monster. While it seemed like a small amount to him, this monster was supposed to be handled by a minimum 4-man team of Elites at the least.
So ideally, it would be split to 1% each. Naturally, grinding was about quantity over quality, but fortunately this Field Zone currently offered both in spades.
After slaughtering this poor void monster, Draco - along with Clarent - rushed deeper inside. Despite the heavy miasma of Destruction Energy around, he could see through it like it was a sunny day.
As for the void monsters, they would not be able to claim the same. They were barely able to remain in this realm until the time came for their event to begin.
Just like how the Metal Dragon had to wait until the timer countdown before it was free to wreak havoc, the void monsters were similarly bound from leaving their location. Of course, the in-game lore reason was that they were amassing numbers for a surgical strike.
Whatever the case, it meant dogshit to Draco. He and Clarent were like wolves who have stumbled upon a sheep herd as they cut down anything in front of them. When Draco had met a party of five void monsters, he engaged them without hesitation.
"Sword Skill 56: Myriad Slash!"
He swung both Dragorugio and Fragarach at a speed that left behind afterimages. It was like rays of sword lights emerged around him, appearing and disappearing so fast it like one was watching a video on fast forward!
Draco jumped into the air gracefully and landed on the head of the leader of this pack, the Void Monster.
｢Name: Void Monster – Specialist Rank monster
Level: 39
HP: 150,000/150,000｣
It had the HP of a Captain Rank monster, so he couldn't dispatch it in one hit like the others. As such, Draco raised his right leg and channeled his subjective magic.
It was impossible for the fellow to use spells of the pinnacle elements just relying on his willpower for the cause and effect theory, so he directly used both his Control and State of Being to handle the resource gathering.
He imbued his right leg with an intense gravitational force, making it weight more than 50 tons. Then, he brought it down on the head of the Void Monster he stood atop.
The monster's head was smashed into the earth, and it lost an entire 20,000 HP from that strike alone. One should note that this was a Void Monster, not a Void Fodder.
Shaving away this much HP with just a casual stomp imbued with extreme weight was truly impressive. Thankfully, his Dragorugio set was Aether-Imbued, otherwise he would have to be happy if his stomp did as much as 20 damage!
But was Draco done? Far from it! With a light smile, he raised his leg and brought it down again and again on the head of this poor Void Monster!
Stomp! Stomp! Stomp!
-20,000! -20,000! -20,000!
Draco had to stop when the Void Monster was at 50,000 HP remaining because it had finally mounted a true defense. It burst out with its Abyssal Energy, which Draco was immune to thanks to the Abyss Key.
However, that did not include his weapons and armor, and he didn't want them needlessly losing durability. As for why not, the reason had already been touched upon.
Not only that, bursting out with its aura had a force of its own. It was like a car exploding. While there was the fire aspect, there was also the shockwave that pushed back anything nearby, sending it flying.
Since Draco didn't fancy the idea of being blown away, he decided to resist. After underestimating the fellow and letting him stomp it to near death, this Void Monster became much more cautious.
However, there was one great weakness of void monsters, it was that they were slaves to their instincts. Even though they might recognize a situation to be deadly, they would never flee or use tactics, only try to kill!
This was fair though. After all, this species had so many benefits that they could slaughter all entities within their Rank with ease. Only monsters like Draco and Eva could fight back easily, as well as races like Dragons, Phoenixes and what not.
Out of the surrounding four Void Fodder, Draco had easily bisected two of them, leaving Clarent to deal with the other two. After all, the fellow was the one who had pined for combat, so he should face his foes head-on!
Along with that, since he was in a new body, having to start from scratch, he had to acclimatize himself to his current abilities. As a Red Dragon, he was an offense-based breed of their race, easily able to dish out heavy damage.
｢Fireball – Ability
Effect: Shoot a ball of fire at a target within 50 yards. This deals 15% fire damage.
Cooldown: 7 seconds｣
｢Flamepillar – Ability
Effect: Cause an eruption of fire at a certain location that engulfs an area of 1 yard. This deals 45% fire damage per second.
Duration: 5 seconds
Cooldown: 5 minutes.｣
｢Immolation – Ability
Effect: Set a target within 5 yards aflame from the inside out. This deals 75% fire damage.
Duration: 3 seconds
Cooldown: 10 minutes｣
｢Divine Origin – Trait
Effect: Possessing true Divine Aura, this combat pet will face no growth issues until at the Divine Rank.｣
｢Fire Immunity – Trait
Effect: Total Immunity to all fire damage.｣
｢Dragon's Fire – Trait
Effect: 100% to all fire damage.｣
With these skills, Clarent was easily able to play these unfortunate creatures to death! His base fire damage as a Rank 1 Dragonling was higher than a Rank 2 Pyromancer.
And then, it was boosted by the Dragon's Fire passive trait, thereby doubling all his fire damage! He had three abilities that allowed him to exert more concentrated power, which was the basic fireball, flamepillar and immolation.
Currently, Clarent had cast flame pillar over his two enemies, though unfortunately, it did little damage. After all, Clarent could not Aether-Imbue himself, that was something possessed by only equipment and inanimate objects.
Void monsters in general had a 70% defense against magic, so the potency of Clarent's fire was greatly dumbed down. He could only deal somewhere in the range of 2,500 damage per fireball, and 7,500 per second with the flamepillar.
His physical attacks with his claws did nothing, as void monsters were fully immune to any non Aether-Imbued physical attacks. Without an Aether-Imbued weapon, it was almost impossible to fight these monsters.
Clarent was small and quick though, so they could not retaliate. He just flew circles around them as he bombarded them. He could use a special form of auto-attack that was the signature flame breath of Red Dragons.
It cost him nothing to fire it out and he could keep it up days, only that its damage was capped at 200 per second. Of course, this alone was tyrannical, as Clarent could vanquish a Captain Rank monster in 500 seconds! Any player would sell of their mother if they could take out such a being in basically 8 or so minutes!
Naturally, said Captain Rank monster would have to be tied up for Clarent to cook the fellow well over time, and such a situation was unlikely. As such, its utility was to compliment his fighting style while his abilities were on cooldown.
But one thing that was tyrannical about combat pets over combat mounts was that they had drastically better abilities. Only Clarent's first ability could be described as average.
Flamepillar and immolation, on the other hand, were almost at the level of being overpowered. With those two, Clarent could inflict serious damage upon any foe, though he didn't bother to waste immolation on mere Void Fodder.
Draco himself was having a breeze against the Void Monster. It made rapid swipes at him with its horrible claws that would lower the durability of any item greatly.
He easily dodged them while moving with the wind. With his Void of Perfection active, it would be impossible to land a hit on Draco unless one possessed speed far above what his mind could process.
Draco sidestepped another swipe and brought his leg back before kicking the Void Monster in the gut with his gravity-imbued leg. It cried out in pain and lay limp for a second in order to gain its bearings.
Whether one was an ethereal void monster or a humanoid, a hit to the gut would wind you for a second. Draco shook his head and brought Fragarach and Dragorugio down on the neck of the Void Monster sequentially.
-17,000! -19,000! -16,500!
In no time, the weakened Void Monster was dispatched. Draco turned to see that Clarent was long done. It had only taken him a few seconds to dispatch such weaklings.
Draco received 98% experience this time, which made him nod his head. Truly, killing Specialist Void Monsters was far better than killing actual Specialist monsters.
The experience was higher by almost 100%! Not to mention that Draco was now level 36 since he had gained a level from this. He allocated his 3 points into Strength.
After clearing this batch, he moved on. As he slaughtered his way through the Ruined Plains of Deriam, Draco continually amassed horrendous amounts of experience which he allowed to congeal on himself.
Not only that, but he abused the first passive of the Abyss Key, which allowed him to convert Abyssal Energy from slain void monsters to Aether Crystals.
A Void Fodder became a low-grade Aether Crystal, while the Void Monsters became five low-grade crystals. With the amount Draco killed over the next 6 hours, he got about 100 low-grade crystals.
At the same time, he had reached level 40. He now placed the extra 12 points he got into Intelligence, in order to increase his magic damage. After all, it lagged greatly behind his physical damage.
Soon, Draco met up with a pair of Void Killers, and he had to get slightly more serious.
｢Name: Void Killer – Sergeant Rank monster
Level: 42
HP: 1,500,000/1,500,000｣
Regardless of offense or what not, any monster with higher than one million HP was hard to deal with. Because with such a high HP pool, it usually meant that its defense was high as well. After all, HP was decided by the Endurance stat.
Endurance also decided your defense, so it was natural that Draco's attacks did less damage here compared to before. Even his gravity stomp did only 2,000 damage to the Void Killer!
Luckily, his Dragorugio set had been rebalanced, granting him many immensely useful abilities to rely on. As such, Draco was able to fight with the Void Killer in an intense bout for 5 minutes before he finally managed to vanquish it.
He had to use a mixture of subjective magic, Control, his sword skills, equipment skills and combat skills to achieve this. This could be described as 30% of his peak power, and it still took a whole 5 minutes!
It seemed like soloing these Sergeant Rank Void Killers was not such a walk in the park! He even had the help of Clarent, who was also a powerful damage dealer and still…
However, the experience was truly good! Draco gained a whole 235% experience from them, bringing him to a level 45. Over the course of hunting for the past hour, he had climbed so many levels with ease.
However, he had only killed about 0.1% of the total void monsters here. Since he didn't want to alert the Void Destroyers too quickly, he dared not use his Area Zone attacks.
One should not forget, in the Emergency Quest, Draco and Eva together had almost been killed by the Void Destroyers. If it hadn't been for his 99% bloodline purity and Clarent's passive that had boosted his Draconic techniques by a factor of 5, he would not have been able to save himself with the Orb of Destruction.
Draco was now fighting a group of 100 Void Fodders and 20 Void Monsters. He immediately used his Dragorugio set abilites to clean up!
Black Flame!
Rapid Hands!
Rapid Legs!
Black Dragon's Roar!