“Yeah, he killed them. Don’t judge him by his rank and level, that’s all I can say,” Henry wryly smiled as he saw Almond.
The other party members turned silent in disbelief upon hearing the confirmation. They watched Almond going ahead after two of his summons ate the magic crystals.
“If he is that strong, then he must be proficient in Mana techniques, and his classes must also be crazy powerful…”
‘Not just that, but these people won’t understand his martial prowess with the sword,’ Henry thought.
…
“Don’t you want to eat the magic crystals, Ashkar?” Almond curiously asked.
“Not unless they have fire attribute, my lord,” Ashkar replied, his voice deep and slightly grating.
“Got it. I want to know how they benefit you all,” Almond grinned as he asked Chimera Crystalist and Starlight Beast. “Did you finish digesting them? What did you get by eating those?”
Starlight Beast released sparks from its snout as it replied with the thought that it felt stronger.
Chimera Crystalist’s floating giant crystal body with eccentric patterns and four crystals that separately flew to both sides glinted along with its quartz-shaped eye as it conveyed its thought to Almond.
Almond checked their status and was dumbfounded.
‘They are able to get stronger by absorbing magic crystals?!’
Their stats had slightly increased!
‘I get stats by eating spirits, and my spirit wraiths get stats by eating magic crystals…’
“Did your summons get powerful by eating magic crystals?” Nikki asked, her bushy brown eyebrows matching her hair raised.
“Yeah,” Almond nodded at her.
“It’s not strange,” Anton said. “Some summons do get stats by eating magic crystals dropped by monsters. Some summons require materials or other resources related to their attributes. All in all, most of the summons have some kind of growth mechanism. You can figure them out and make your summons stronger.”
“Interesting,” Almond grinned. “Then I guess I have to start feeding my summons the good stuff.”
“Change of plans,” Almond continued with a smile. “Could you two hunt some monsters for me in the forest, please? Meanwhile, I’ll attract some lightning from the sky to temper myself.”
“Be careful of the lightning from those clouds,” Nikki said. “Drink mana potion promptly when it’s lower because lightning strikes are unpredictable and you won’t be able to dodge since you will be in a meditative state.”
“Understood,” Almond nodded as he exerted his physical strength after activating his Mana techniques and jumped high, kicking the trees’ branches while going up.
Most of the trees were a couple hundred meters tall. The lightning from the clouds above periodically struck them, setting off a chain of lightning effect in the air and through trees.
The hundreds of Thunder Blitz Monkeys in this area were spread out, but the atmospheric lightning coming from clouds that eventually struck them seemed to charge them up. Their fur glowed up as if getting a power boost.
“Let’s not attract more monkeys from afar,” Anton said as he took out a strange gauntlet with a long metallic drill embedded in it in his right hand while his left hand only had a glove.
Nikki appeared to be a mage from her outfit and the wand in her hand.
“That brat has completely left the monsters around here for us,” Nikki saw Almond standing at the very top of a tree and struck by lightning as his Fortification shattered, getting a mild lightning shock throughout his body.
Two monkeys were going up to attack him, and he didn’t even bother doing anything as if he was expecting them to take care of the trouble going his way.
“Let’s just do our job. We got to enter a gold-bordered dungeon thanks to him anyway,” Anton chuckled as he jumped like a rocket, swiftly appearing on the same level as the monkeys before he pierced his drill into one, crackling with blue lightning, and kicked the other one down.
Nikki was about to be surrounded by nine other monkeys of levels 86 to 90, but she appeared carefree as she waved her hand, and faint purple lightning crackled around her.
Ten nail-shaped (wood nail) flickering lightning projectiles materialized around her before surging forward and piercing into the ten monkeys, including the one that Anton sent down.
In the next second, all ten monkeys burst out with purple lightning that tore their flesh and burned their blood with high intensity, giving them intense lightning damage as they were electrocuted, their vitality dropping to 0%.
Although these monsters were empowered by the lightning, too much lightning into them actually worked adversely because they were not elemental creatures if it was a pure elemental creature, that lightning-attributed attack would have done way lower damage.
Marshal Lopol sent Nikki and Anton with Almond precisely because both of them had a lightning affinity, and they had gained it via training.
Being peak Gold-rank adventurers, they were not weak and had cleared gold-bordered B-rank dungeons before.
“Come on, eat them,” Nikki said with a chuckle as she saw a drooling Starlight Beast who was just looking at the magic crystals.
“Grrr…” Starlight Beast nodded before eating them.
Chimera Crystalist also joined in the feast.
Infernal Knight was suddenly attacked and suffered some damage without being able to attack the monkey properly with his sword, but Anton had jumped down by that time and finished it off.
“Be careful. They are twice as strong in terms of base stats, so you’ll have difficulty,” Anton said to Infernal Knight, his eyes curious. ‘This one can speak, so it must be intelligent.’
“I am grateful for thine help,” Infernal Knight’s voice rumbled out. “However, I would request you to allow one monkey to fight me. I shall duel.”
Anton laughed, “Sure.”
Starlight Beast and Chimera Crystalist positioned themselves around Infernal Knight after eating five magic crystals each, ready to assist in case more than one monkey entered the fray.
Anton saw that these summons could coordinate with each other, and his interest in them grew even stronger. ‘Adding to the summons I saw in the video when he fought in the League of Firefly’s guild base, he already has several strong pets…his class must be very strong.’
He speedily vanished from his location with a strong dash towards a monkey and kicked it towards Infernal. “Enjoy your duel.”
…
Ten minutes later, the Thunderbird Guild’s party had cleared all Lightning Horn Rhinos in the first area and arrived in the forest’s periphery.
Seeing Almond getting struck by lightning in the sky and his summons getting played around by Nikki and Anton in a 2v3 battle, they were a bit speechless.
“He’s really getting struck by lightning in a B-rank dungeon…what are his stats exactly?”
“Let’s take a short break here since there are no Thunder Blitz Monkeys around here,” Henry said as he sat down at the periphery.
Layla, the oranged-haired girl, sat nearby and looked at Almond, “Leader, you wanna tell us more about him? Why’s he so strong for a silver-rank newbie?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that he’s strong,” Henry wryly smiled. “And Admiral Rudra is his backer.”
“You mean the Admiral Rudra?”
“Damn.”
“It looks like he is a Super Rookie of GAA who is unknown for now. But if he participates in the Rising Star Tournament and displays his power, he’ll get a strong backing,” said Luke, the light brown-haired guy in the party, while his eyes glinted as he fell into thought. ‘I informed Zoren about this guy, but it looks like things won’t be that easy. He can forget about beating him up, let alone making him beg if he got Admiral Rudra at his back.’
‘But should I inform him about this information?’ Luke’s eyes nastily shone. ‘It’ll be more interesting if things develop further…let’s just hope he comes here with some strong adventurers from the guild to make things interesting.’