Chapter 9

After 10 hours of walking Edward had finally left the snow desert and made it to the top of that small mountain he saw from afar, he looked down the other side and was happy to see that it was a forest !

"Great news ! Staying in this icy area definitely isn't good, after all this time I only met two alien beasts ! I need to hunt at a higher speed if I don't want to be left behind by Sam."

There was a determined glint in Edward's eyes as they started looking for a source of clean water that wasn't frozen outside of the ice desert, in his peripheral vision he saw a high range of mountains and started running towards it.

Less than an hour later Edward slowed down and looked at the huge camp surrounding the water pool, there were at least 10 people minding their own business and 20 handmade huts scattered around !

He didn't lose any time and buried himself deeper in the forest to find some wood, meanwhile the senior soldier who was following him also joined the group of other senior soldiers that had grown to be around 10 people, Sara was still there and sat on a branch looking gloomy.

The girl following Edward looked to be barely 20 years old and she had a very innocent disposition, she wore cute round glass over her greenish eyes and her military uniform was a tad too big for her which made her seem even shorter than she actually was, her name was Ella and she was a good friend of Sara so she went over and asked what was wrong right away.

"Sara you look sad, are you ok?"

"I'm alright..."

Since Sara didn't seem like she wanted to talk about it Ella asked Sid who was also their close friend, even though he looked cold and distant he was a guy with a warm heart who cared about his friends a lot.

Sid told her the whole story and understood why her friend looked so gloomy, she hated failure ! She loathed it to an extreme degree since she was a kid and today she had done a mistake that had cost the life of someone so of course she would hate herself for it.

"But isn't it weird that he just disappeared? How come you didn't find a body ?"

"That's what I was wondering too, the pool is extremely deep and so we couldn't check it completely with the arrival of the other examinees so we'll look for the body after the examination is over."

"Did you report it to the higher ups ?"

"Yeah they were the ones who told us to stop looking for the body to avoid hindering the other examinees."

Even Sid who had nothing to do with Sam looked revolted by the decision of the higher ups, Ella just hugged her friend to console her while watching over Edward, she had seen him fighting in the ice desert and she knew that he wouldn't die easily even if he met a grade 2 beast !

'He's a beast.'

She thought after seeing him fighting with a Blade Owl, the beast had blade like wings that could cut rocks pretty easily but Edward didn't care about it and grappled the beast to the ground when it was about to hit him, next he grabbed its head and continuously slammed it against the hard ice ground until it became a weird paste of brain matters, blood and bones.

Ella felt her lunch making it's way back up towards the outside world after thinking of that and she tried very hard to think of something else, she was a soldier so she obviously didn't care about a bit of blood but seeing such a savage way to kill a beast in front of her was a first time !

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Sam who had finished harvesting the beast core from the Jade Ape heard a snapping sound of a branch above himself and to his surprise he had been completely surrounded by Jade apes who looked like they wanted to rip his intestines out of his body and eat them to sooth the rage that was boiling inside them.

In contrast to the scary expression on the ape's faces Sam looked completely excited for what was about to come, he had a huge smile that leaked a hint of craziness plastered on his face.

As he was getting ready to attack Sam saw a huge rock coming towards him at high speed, in a split second his leg ignited and he kicked the rock that flew back towards one of the apes and exploded it's head like a watermelon.

When a rain of rocks started raining on him from every possible angle Sam finally realized he had came unprepared, however that didn't mean that he had no way of getting out of that situation, he used his strengthened legs to jump as high as he could land used both his legs and dagger to reflect the rocks that came at him.

Even though his legs didn't feel any pain his arms numbed in a second ! Finally even though he managed to get out of the rain of rocks he was still hit by two of them that made him feel like he took bullets in the leg and the stomach.

Above him was a branch so he bore with the pain and used the branch to throw himself behind one of the apes, as soon as he wasn't surrounded anymore everything became incredibly easier, the beasts still tried their best to circle him but it didn't work, he would always jump behind one of them and kill it and with one hit, the beasts were relatively nimble and fast but they were stupid, Sam used the trees and even their own friends as shields against what was thrown against him.

Once he got the hang of it Sam didn't take anymore hits and instead wiped the area clean of any living Jade ape ! The surroundings were full of blood and all sorts of other gross stuff and smelt like a mix of meat, charcoal and sulfur. The smell was horrible and Sam had to get away from there as soon as he finished taking all the beast cores both because the smell was making him nauseous and because it might attract other beasts that he definitely wouldn't be able to kill in this stat as he was extremely tired and he felt pain all over his body.

As he returned to the underground cave and saw his face's reflection in the water he got so scared that he fell on his butt, his face was covered in dried blood and made him look like a fiend that had barely escaped hell.

After a long bath and eating some of the Ruby rat's meat Sam fell asleep in a great mood, for the next 144 hours he was planning to hunt to his heart's content.