Two Months

Two months later, at the perimeter of a forest faraway from the city.

A mantis-like creature was ravaging on the corpse of a dead Corrupted, tainted its mandibles and claws with a bright red color. As it continued to devour the Corrupted, the aura surrounding it started to thicken and its body seemingly became larger along with its exoskeleton that increased its resilience.

Unlike Divine who made physical contact to absorb the remnants within a body to strengthen themselves, Corrupted directly devoured a body entirely and absorbed half of the remnants inside.

Their method was barbaric since they barely had any self-awarenesses, they could only follow their natural instincts to eat and the desire to fortify their power to become the top predator of the food chain.

As the mantis continued to eat what was left of its prey, it suddenly stopped and looked in a certain direction. A shadow was dashing directly to its position at an alarming rate, the mantis immediately raised its guard as it jumped head-on to the shadow.

Kang!

The two collided upon the impact and a loud sound akin to two weapons colliding with each other sounded out.

The shadow revealed itself to be a humanoid individual clad in black armor along with a fearsome black skull. Its two eyes' sockets were burning with a red light that would send chills down anyone's spine.

The skull was holding an axe with one blade as it was trying to push back the mantis' claws.

They remained struggling for a while before the skull deflected the claws and swiftly retreated away from the mantis. The latter obviously wouldn't let its prey run away as it once again closed up on the former with a speed even more terrifying than what it had displayed earlier.

Just as the skull's head was about to be severed from its body, it managed to move its body and avoided being beheaded. The mantis only managed to leave behind a small cut on the former's neck as blood slowly trickled out.

The skull touched its neck a little before standing upright again. It increased the grip on the axe while looking at the enemy in front of it. The mantis didn't give the skull any more time as it immediately dashed towards the latter again.

The black skull didn't try to dodge but only moved its body slightly to avoid the mantis from stabbing directly at its vitals.

Splash!

A splashing sound rang out as the claws penetrated the skull's left arm, nearly severing it as blood started flowing down like a river.

The mantis tried to retract its claws but was unable and they remained glued on the skull's arm. The latter didn't give the mantis any chance to retaliate and raised its axe high, the crimson eyes of the skull flashed brightly before the axe fell down with all of its strength while moving closer to the mantis' head.

The insect could only watch helplessly as the axe quickly covered its view before its vision went black entirely.

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

"Gods! That was such a suicidal move!" Achilles complained as he watched his arm slowly healed back to normal after drinking the "Water of Invigoration".

It had been around two months ever since he had ventured out to hunt for Corrupted, which made him go through a fair share of battles throughout this insane wilderness.

Some had been easy, while others were nothing but nightmarish tortures where his life was on the line, similar to the battle with the mantis just now.

The insect's swiftness was simply outrageous, each of its strikes was deadly and was fueled by a crazy killing intent that made it even more dangerous.

If Achilles didn't decide to sacrifice his left arm to prevent the battle from prolonging any further, then he would already be at the mantis' mercy.

On the other side, it was not like that he wasn't able to gain anything from all of that bloodshed. While his dogshit luck didn't manage to bring him any more soul artifacts, he had powered up quite nicely and was now much stronger than he did, thanks to all the remnants he had absorbed.

He had also gained a lot of battle experience which made him a much more skillful axe user than he was two months prior.

All and all, things had been going well for him...aside from a few near-death experiences, of course.

Achilles scanned the mantis' corpse that was split in half into his pockets then waited until his arm had all healed up. He swung his left arm a little and couldn't help but felt impressed:

"Man, that artifact is really useful...Too bad it only has five times uses remaining."

After making sure everything was alright, Achilles quickly disappeared from his position, dashing to the southern direction of the forest.

...A few moments later, multiple shadows swiftly stealthily followed behind him.