Valuable Lesson

While scanning the monsters' corpses to collect them inside his pocket for later absorption, Achilles recalled the battle between the mosquito and the boar along with his and the former's fight. He realized how inexperienced and weak he was compared to the creatures born from the nightmare itself.

He may have had the necessary skills to stand against a regular Divine, but when facing a being that only had a twisted, chaotic mind, whose emotions were nothing but the thirst for blood and destruction, he was utterly helpless. If it wasn't for his ability then this forest had already become his grave for all eternity.

'I will remember this failure.' A gleam of determination flashed in Achilles' eyes.

This setback would not stop him from advancing forward, he would use this as a lesson to lay the foundation for his path. A path filled with blood and bones that would lead him to the absolute top.

After finishing storing the corpses, Achilles disappeared from his position and swiftly moved towards a particular location. The map he had bought from the general goods store showed that there was a small river up ahead of him. He wanted to clean himself up and also lessen the smell of blood radiating from him to avoid attracting uninvited guests.

A while later, he arrived by the river's side but he didn't jump into it immediately. The river looked blue and seemingly glittered underneath the sunlight, it created a beautiful scenery for those who gazed upon it.

Achilles however, knew very well that this was only a facade to hide the horrendous abominations hiding within the water, preying on those who were stupid enough to wander near the river.

He grabbed a rock that was big enough to fit his palm, then channeled the essences to strengthen his arm and the rock. He mimicked a throwing position then used all his strength to throw it on the river's surface, as far away as possible from him.

Boom!

The water shook a little by the force behind the rock and Achilles utilized this chance to dash near the river. He summoned a large bottle and scooped up as much water as he could then quickly escaped away from the river.

What he just did was putting the principle behind blast fishing onto practice, by throwing the rock onto the water, he had created a force powerful enough to temporarily stun the Corrupted.

Then, all he had to do was quickly collect the water and moved to safety.

After heading to a relatively safe position, he poured the water to lessen the stench of blood on his body without caring about his clothes. When he was sure that the ghastly smell of iron was for the most part gone, he rested for an hour to recover some of his injuries. Since he was now a Divine, non-life threatening injury were for the most part easy to heal and soon he was back in his near-top shape.

'Animals' senses are much better than humans, I probably won't be able to attempt another sneak attack.'

The lonely shadow ran through the large forest as the sun shone brightly in the sky, illuminating the area below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few hours later, as twilight began approaching and the night drew close. Somewhere at the outer perimeter of the forest, smoke was rising onto the sky,

Beneath the black smoke was a figure clad in black armor and wearing a black skull mask, its red eyes shone fearsomely inside the sockets.

Achilles had been through many tough battles over the span of a few hours, his body was tattered and bruised by the Corrupted. Each fight was more harrowing than the last and finally, after a long day of work, he could finally rest to check his spoils of war.

He had hunted ten different creatures in total, after scattering their corpses on the ground. He pondered which one to consume entirely and spared which one.

A while later, he split them into two parts and then started absorbing the remnants inside one group that had the mosquito. The other part he put them back inside his pockets to deal with later.

He wanted to test his luck to see if he could get any soul artifacts out of one group that had the mosquito as a part, while the other group he would devour their souls entirely. He was not worried about the fact they might form evil spirits since time was non-existent inside dimensional pockets, he could leave them in there as long as he wants.

Achilles glanced at the sky and noticed that he didn't have much time left, he started processing the meat of whatever he thought was edible and began cooking them under the fire with some salt he had bought.

As the meat began getting roasted, his mouth started watering while he thought with anticipation:

'I've always wondered how Corrupted taste like...Now I can finally know!'