Axl spent another few minutes so his major wounds could be stabilized and Moxlin could finish her harvest of materials, most going into his dimensional pouch, to not risk damaging her with poison. Then they relocated further from the site of the battle, towards the very clear tracks the giant centipede left in its wake.

  "Is it normal for a creature to leave such an obvious trail behind? " Axl asked, after Moxlin re-established a talisman perimeter so he could heal more fully and prepare more serum.

  "Not really, unless the creature has a territorial claim and doesn't care about advertising its presence. But it looks like that centipede is not from here, so it might just not be used to moving discretely in these dense woods. Like cultivators, even mindless beasts get brought here by the vale, often in large groups, or else it wouldn't be able to keep up with the demand for F-Grade enemies."

  "That's good, it means they're not fully adapted."

  Moxlin raised her forearms in an exaggerated shrug. "Who knows, really, I'm just guessing since that big meanie was moving his legs so badly. Even we sentient beasts have better instinctive control in our birthed environments."

  Axl grimaced, thinking it was moving pretty damn well to him. It was sobering to find it was doing so at a handicap.

  A good six hours later, Axl kept following the trail, and it was barely another fifteen minutes before he saw another centipede, this one wrapped up in a tree trunk's base, its presence barely hidden by a large bush. He paused his careful approach, examining the creature carefully with [Mana Shroud], eventually managing to disentangle its Mana density and flow from the noisy ambient Mana.

  Early F-grade, he noticed with relief. The creature also had a much thinner body, nearly half as thick as the first. And after carefully encircling the centipede, he also found it was alone.

  He slowly approached the creature's back, sword drawn and low to the ground, again struggling to have [Mana Shroud] blend him into the confused noise of the ambient Mana. To his surprise, he managed to reach striking distance undetected, then slowly shifted [Mana Shroud] to empower his weapon, ready to strike the centipede the moment it stirred.

  The blade heavy and sharp, almost vibrating with dense Mana, he struck, seamlessly bisecting the long body in half. Surprised by the effectiveness of the strike, he took a few quick steps back. The creature's severed halves flailed around, a hissing noise cutting through the air as it flailed, its fangs repeatedly snapping aimlessly.

  He had to take a few more steps back, the severed half with the head continuing its death throes for several more seconds before stilling, and a trickle of Karmic Energy flowed into him. Wiping and sheathing his sword, he took out a spear and poked the body from afar, confirming it was done, and Moxlin got to work.

  "Bah, this one is not nearly as good as the first one," she said, tiny knife-glove busy chopping. "I'm not sure we can make any use of this."

  "Maybe it's just a scout, keeping track of the perimeter to their lair," Axl said, dipping a finger in a small bit of the creature's poison, still wet on its fangs. "But we should harvest anyhow, in case another artisan wants to buy it."

  She nodded, and got back to it as Axl let the poison invade his body. He frowned slightly, not sure what he expected, but this poison barely did anything at all, to the point he took a larger chunk, worried he accidentally picked up saliva or blood instead.

  Still nothing, barely a trickle of numbness, and the smallest droplet of the serum he had in his [Gastric Cauldron]'s orbital storage eliminated it. He even had to drag leftover serum back into storage.

  Moxlin's harvesting soon done, they continued, and soon Axl noted a trio of centipedes off to the side, feeding on a carcass of some sort. All of them were also the weaker variant.

  He again approached with [Mana Shroud] concealing his presence, but this time didn't manage to make it all the way before one noticed him and rose, the others joining their aggressive posture. He shifted [Mana Shroud] to empowering his weapon and lunged forward, wanting to land at least one clean strike before they got a chance to retaliate.

  He cut dug deeply into the midsection of the nearest one, Axl's speed clearly surpassing his opponent's. It reeled in pain as Axl was drenched in purple blood, and he had plenty of time to sidestep the two attacks from the other centipedes.

  He struck a second at the divider between the head and first body segment, the centipede having overstretched its attack. The clean hit neatly decapitated it, and he turned to the last centipede, who was actively trying to backtrack, hissing at him.

  Axl charged in, easily overtaking the not-so-hasty retreat. Realizing it couldn't escape, the final centipede lunged forward, its open fangs poised to snap shut on his head.

  A stone crashed onto the creature's face, right at its mana-dense, hidden central eye. It fell to the ground, stunned, and Axl finished it with another neat decapitation.

  He cleaned the blade on a rag and sheathed it, feeling oddly satisfied at how smoothly this battle went. Moxlin processed the bodies as Axl kept a lookout, and they soon continued onwards. Several times he again assaulted a small group or single centipede, all of them weak and no real threat, but every time he insisted on approaching under cover of [Mana Shroud] and trying to end the battles as efficiently as possible.

  He could easily imagine himself getting overconfident and making a stupid mistake that would get him killed, or overlooking a centipede being as powerful as the first one. So he kept his pace slow and steady, every battle approached with meticulous care. He settled into an almost meditative trance as the hours went by and he killed his tenth, then twentieth centipede, the quiet reverie only broken by Moxlin's occasional complaints about being bored.

  When nighttime descended, Axl let Moxlin set up a small illusory and warning talisman circle for herself in a small burrow, and he sat just outside, cross-legged, standing guard. He knew he needed some sleep, but something about the nighttime air beckoned to him, the sheer darkness of a moonless and starless night above strangely reassuring.

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  The Mana in the air stilled, an oozing mist gently emanating from the trees and ruined buildings, rising into the air in tumbling eddies that merged into the translucent canopy. Far above, he could see the lines of orderly white triangles lined up, slowly crossing the pitch-black heavens. Roken's memories found these skyward lines mundane, but Axl stared at the unexplained phenomena for a moment in wonder.

  What were those shapes so neatly arrayed in the sky? They stretched from one horizon to the next, hundreds of triangles to a line, and dozens of these lines streaked against the black. Each line of triangles had varying hues of white and brightness, some fast like a ripple across a pool of water, others barely moving at all. And why couldn't he see any stars?

  Axl had assumed that he was on a planet, the daytime sun only looking somewhat larger than Sol did from Luna, and the endless stretches of wildness were far too extensive for any station or ship. But now he wasn’t so sure.

  But he shook the idle speculation away, trying to maintain the measured calm of the battles he'd engaged in so far. He took a recentering breath and returned to the feeling of the steady pace, every move deliberate, every sword strike cleaner and more precise. Slowly, it seemed like his body had started to move better, his senses sharpening, like when he used the peak feature of [Mana Shroud], but more organically, without relying on external Mana. He tried holding onto that feeling, nurturing it throughout the night.

  Come morning, he was refreshed and clear-minded, and when Moxlin was ready, then continued. He hoped to keep at the same pace as before, with perhaps slightly higher density of the creatures, but after barely half a dozen dispatched, he noticed a large commotion ahead, sensing a disturbance in the ambient Mana before he saw centipedes slowly crawling forward. Dozens of them spread out across the distant undergrowth, moving forward in a concerted fashion.

  Axl's eyes narrowed, realizing they would only move in this way if they were looking for something, and he'd bet that they were looking for him. He should've asked Moxlin more about what to expect from their group tactics, since he didn't expect them to be able to mount a concerted defense, but here it was. At the very least, however, this development likely meant they were also going in the right direction.

  Not wanting to risk fighting so many of these at once, Axl ran back and away from the main body of their approach to examine the line of creatures. He realized these were not like the meticulously synchronized crabs back in Piril, their line full of gaps and blind spots when blocked by the frequently uneven terrain.

  Betting that these predators were not well-suited for this kind of tactics, he and Moxlin decided to sneak past. He squeezed himself into a hollowed-out tree trunk, and with Moxlin's illusion talismans, the centipedes passed right by them.

  Continuing onwards, Axl now avoided fighting any more centipedes, even as their density got higher and higher. He even spotted a few solitary ones that had similarly dense Mana to the first he fought. He was itching to try his hand against them now, but continued on, not wanting to draw more of the centipedes to his location.

  Finally, he reached his goal, a small clearing made from hastily tearing the trees up from the ground, leaving behind numerous stumps and clusters of shredded roots. At its center was a small stone plinth, previously some sort of mosaic, any pattern in the neatly flush stones long worn out. Atop it was a massive centipede, its coiled body reaching seven meters in the air.

  A dense sheen of green liquid coated its body, oscillating strangely. It took Axl a moment to realize what he was looking at, a stream of liquid crossing the creature's carapace as if living waves, spreading inwards from seven neatly aligned gems at the edges of the stone plinth.

  Those gems were clearly natural treasures, each blinding to [Mana Shroud], the creature clearly forming some sort of array with it. Perhaps this was what triggered the quest, not him having killed the first one that attacked him? Was it a thing that the Deep System liked to throw challenges at you right at moments like this, when one was at the threshold of greater power? Or maybe this was a long, ongoing process for the bug, and his coming here was just a coincidence.

  The several other pieces of cultivator corpses littering the area supported the second theory, especially since many looked particularly fresh. Realizing this would be a tougher fight than his first, he backtracked a few hundred meters to reconvene with Moxlin after setting up an illusion talisman perimeter.

  "I'm guessing that's a hive swarmer?" Axl asked. "My quest told me to kill two-thirds of the centipedes or just one of them."

  "That looked like a late F-Grade cultivation session, and no mindless beast would share leadership with somebody even remotely close to their power, so I think that's totally the case."

  Axl nodded, in thought. "The poison is likely much harsher than the first one's, even just looking at that liquid…"

  "Sure, but that's just a cultivation array, its gonna look more impressive than what the cultivator doing it can pull off in battle. Or else why do it, you know?"

  "I don’t, actually," he said, staring at the small spider. "I gained all my Skills and such from quests and achievements, not with anything like that."

  "Gaargh," she choked, exasperated forelegs raised. "I keep forgetting you're still in the G-Grade. Just how are you still in the G-Grade? You've killed more F-Grade creatures than I've ever even seen!"

  He shrugged. "I think my class is somewhat difficult to level, unfortunately."

  "Fine, I guess that evens it out a bit. Anyway, what that creature is doing is a normal, non-cheating way to get stronger, by taking natural treasures and having them form a resonance to improve some aspect of your cultivation. Beasts have a huge advantage here since we get drawn naturally to the treasures that resonate with us, and can instinctively form cultivation arrays, especially the mindless beasts. Sentient ones like me have to work a bit more to form them, and you bipeds need to do it practically from scratch. But no matter the details of these practices, they always produce massive amounts of Mana, Karmic Energy, and whatnot, so they often draw in competitors who want the resource for themselves."

  "Or a system throws challengers at you."

  Moxlin nodded. "Yeps! Mommy says it helps foment the advancement, seasoning it with adversity."

  "Great. I look forward to being on the receiving end of that later."

  "I dunno, you seem to do a great job of nearly killing yourself all on your own, I wouldn't be surprised if even the Deep System itself told you to calm down instead."

  Axl rolled his eyes, but remembered that was close to one of the first things Quelling told him. Well, after establishing the Foundational Nexus, he'd take a two-day vacation and start enjoying his imaginary nutripaste raise. Kick back and relax over the smoldering ruins of his dead moon and the corpses of everybody he ever knew.

  No longer in the mood for chatter, Axl and Moxlin finished up their preparations and started towards the centipede leader. One more kill in the bloody path to a human victory in Sol.

  He took a good half hour to slowly encircle his target, making sure he faced its back, then slowly approached, his full focus on the concealing function of [Mana Shroud]. The goal wasn't to reach the creature itself, since he was certain this one was far more perceptive than its lesser kin, but a fragment of downed wall creating a small lip barely six meters from the raised plinth.

  One careful step after another, slow and smooth, his shroud billowing and churning in tune with the ambient morass. Just another whorl to the complex current of the vale. Body slick with sweat, he barely made the stone's cover as his attention faltered at a gust of cross-winds, the air's Mana dancing manically against his skin.

  The centipede half-turned, head raised, but Axl was already hidden behind the heavy stone ruin, breath held, still as the rock itself. A heavy few breaths passed, and there was no attack incoming, so he redirected [Mana Shroud] to empowering his weapon, an even split between speed and sharpness.

  Sword drawn, he jumped over the fallen stone and charged, but the centipede was fully reared up ten meters in the air, its two fangs each as long as his body and coated in a dense, deep poison that stung simply to look at.

  Axl had time for a single step forward and his body was fully bisected by the clashing fangs.