The hunting ground stretched before Scar like a living cathedral, each tree a pillar supporting a canopy so dense it filtered the sunrise into scattered emerald shards. Dew clung to spider webs like crushed diamonds, and the air carried the earthy perfume of decomposition and growth intertwined.
Scar moved through this verdant maze with renewed purpose, his enhanced senses mapping every rustle, every heartbeat of the wilderness around him.
His feet made no sound against the forest floor, the light sneakers damping his footfalls to silence. He adjusted his grip on his obsidian dagger, moving like a silent predator.
He wasn't here to play. He was here to grind.
In the first twenty minutes, he found a nest of six F-Rank Iron-Bristle Boars.
They were massive, armored beasts… the size of minivans, with coats of jagged, metallic quills. They caught his scent instantly, turning their massive, tusked heads toward him with guttural squeals.
To Henry, they would have been terrifying. But to Scar, they were target practice.
Scar took off, charging them head-on.
The lead boar lowered its head, aiming its serrated tusks directly at his chest.
[Accelerated Perception Activated]
[-5 EP]
The world ground to a sluggish halt. The rushing wind died down to a low, sluggish moan. The charging boar hung suspended in the air, clods of dirt slowly lifting from its hooves.
Scar didn't even blink. He analyzed the trajectory, simply pivoting on his right heel to slip past the lethal tusks by a fraction of an inch. And as he glided past the beast's flank, he brought his dagger up in a smooth, effortless arc.
SLASH.
The blade, fueled by his immense speed, sheared through the boar's metallic bristles and thick hide like wet tissue paper. He sliced its jugular wide open. The boar collapsed in a geyser of pressurized blood, tumbling violently across the dirt.
[+20 Exp]
Scar didn't stop. He became a phantom of slaughter. He wove through the remaining five beasts with terrifying, effortless grace, leaving afterimages in his wake. He threw his dagger, piercing the skull of the first boar, blurred behind a second to snap its neck with his raw physical strength, and recalled the dagger to his hand to gut the third. Crimson ribbons of blood hung suspended in the air behind him as he moved.
He ducked under a wild gore, dragged his blade across the exposed neck of the fourth boar, vaulted off its falling carcass, and drove his dagger down through the back of the last boar's head, killing it on the spot. The entire nest became a pile of bleeding carcasses. And Scar had done all these in just ten seconds.
[Accelerated Perception Deactivated]
[-10 Ep]
[You have defeated 6 F-Rank Iron-Bristle Boars]
[Total Exp Gained: +120 Exp]
[Exp: 305/500]
[Auto-Loot Activated: 6 mana cores have been added to your inventory]
Scar swiped the holographic screen away and kept moving. The hunt was far from over.
He wandered deeper into the forest, looking for more beasts to kill. And a moment later, he found what he was looking for.
Deep in a grove of ancient, twisted trees, Scar encountered three E-Rank Scythe-Mantes. These were massive, insectoid beasts that moved with terrifying, twitchy speed, their forelimbs evolved into razor-sharp, chitinous blades.
They dropped from the canopy in a coordinated ambush and attacked.
Scar's eyes widened slightly as the first mantis swung its scythe with a speed that produced a sharp sonic crack. But he activated AP quickly.
[Accelerated Perception Activated]
[-3 EP]
But even in slow motion, the blade was moving fast. Scar threw his torso backward, the scythe grazing his jacket and slicing off a single button. But he didn't retreat. Instead, he stepped into the beast's guard. Then with a flick of his wrist, he buried his dagger into the joint of the creature's primary attacking arm, ripping it clean off in a spray of acidic green hemolymph. Then he grabbed the detached arm and swung, using the beast's forelimb blade to sever its head from its body.
The second mantis lunged, aiming to impale him from behind.
Without looking, Scar snapped his right hand out. A pulse of blue light deposited his energy pistol into his grip. He aimed backward over his shoulder, relying purely on spatial awareness, and squeezed the trigger.
BANG!
A bolt of superheated blue plasma punched a perfectly round hole straight through the insect's triangular head. It dropped like a stone. Lifeless.
The final mantis shrieked, swinging both scythes in a frantic, cross-shaped pattern. Scar holstered the gun, dropped into a slide to slip beneath the intersecting blades, and slashed upward, splitting the creature's thorax wide open. It collapsed to the ground immediately, twitching for a moment before going still. Dead.
Scar stood above the corpse of the beast, wiping blood off his dagger. Then he turned off AP and checked the multiple system notifications.
[-5 Ep]
[You have defeated 3 E-Rank Scythe-Mantes]
[Total Exp Gained: +150 Exp]
[Exp: 455/500]
[3 mana cores have been added to your inventory]
Scar cleared the notifications and advanced forward. He was close to leveling up. He couldn't stop now.
A while later, he encountered four F-Rank Razor-Feather Avians roosting in the trees. These beasts were faster, looking like overgrown crows with sharp feathers, diving from above with lethal precision.
Scar drew his energy pistol. He activated Accelerated Perception, tracked their diving trajectories in slow motion, and fired perfect, surgical headshots, dropping four of the massive birds out of the sky before they even reached the canopy line.
[You have defeated four F-Rank Razor-Feather Avians]
[Total Exp Gained: +80 EXP]
[Exp: 535/500]
[Congratulations! You have Leveled Up!]
[Level 3 >> Level 4]
[+2 points have been added to all physical attributes]
[Hp: 300 >> 400]
[Stamina: 98 >> 108]
[Ep: 60 >> 80]
[You have received +5 Stat Points]
[Exp: 35/1000]
[4x mana cores have been added to your inventory]
Scar didn't pause to celebrate. This wasn't an achievement for him. Just another stage he needed to progress from. He noticed that the current experience requirement was double what it was before. That meant he had to move twice as fast and put in twice the effort.
He stood in place for a while, allowing his energy points to refill, before resuming his pace, moving deeper into the forest.
For the next four hours, the Hunting Ground became an abattoir. Scar tore through packs of Steelwolves, armored reptiles, and venomous arachnids. He didn't take a single hit. The beasts were simply too slow, too predictable, and too weak for him… being mostly F and E ranked.
He utilized his tactical awareness, his speed, and his weapons with the cold, mechanical efficiency of a seasoned executioner.
By noon, his interface was flooded with notifications.
[You have defeated four E-Rank Bloodhounds]
[You have defeated six E-Rank Iron-Bristle Boars]
[You have defeated ten F-Rank Scythe-Mantes]
[You have defeated five F-Rank Steelwolves]
[Exp: 835/1000]
His Exp bar was climbing steadily, and his inventory was packed with over twenty newly acquired Mana Cores. The past few hours had been fruitful.
After wiping out a pack of five F-Rank Bloodhounds in a wide, sunlit clearing, he finally felt the drain. His Stamina was barely holding, and his EP was running low from the continuous activation of Accelerated Perception. Also, the constant spamming of the skill was mentally taxing. He needed to rest, and to let his energy points get refilled.
He needed a short nap.
Scar looked around the blood-soaked clearing. Sleeping on the ground in a forest full of predators would be a grave mistake that'd get him eaten.
He looked up at the towering, ancient trees surrounding the perimeter. Their branches looked sturdy enough to host a person his size. They were perfect.
But before seeking high ground, he moved rapidly around the perimeter, plucking handfuls of large, brittle, dried leaves from the dead brush and meticulously scattering them across the natural entry points and chokeholds of the clearing. He was creating a flawless, 360-degree acoustic alarm system. A single misplaced footstep would echo like a gunshot to his ears and alert him of an intruder.
Satisfied with his handiwork, Scar selected a tree to climb. He picked the massive oak that dominated the clearing's center. Its branches began six meters from the ground, but that was no obstacle for someone with his current attributes.
Scar leaped, catching the lowest branch and hauling himself up with practiced ease. He moved through the tree with flawless efficiency, climbing higher until he found a branch thick enough to support his weight and flat enough to provide something approaching comfort.
Here, with his back against the trunk and his body balanced on the branch, he could rest while maintaining his awareness of the clearing below.
Scar closed his eyes, allowing the sounds of the forest to wash over him. A stream not far away babbled its endless conversation. Birds called to each other in complex patterns. Wind stirred the canopy into a rustling symphony. Beneath these natural sounds, his enhanced hearing tracked smaller movements—the scuttle of insects, the flight of butterflies, the quantum of a squirrel's heartbeat three trees away. His high perception stat was with no doubt functioning perfectly.
His thoughts drifted, processing the morning's combat in review. Every movement, every decision, every near-miss catalogued and analyzed for future improvement.
He had gotten much stronger, that was undeniable. But he wasn't satisfied. The last pack of bloodhounds he took down had been eliminated in under thirty seconds with minimal damage taken. Yesterday, that same pack might have overwhelmed him through pure numbers.
Scar clenched his fist. He needed to get even stronger.
Progress. That was all that mattered. Incremental, relentless progress.
Minutes passed. And Scar began to slowly fall asleep.
The jungle's sounds became a lullaby. The ambient hum of insects lulled his hyper-active mind into a light, restorative doze. His breathing deepened, his heart rate slowed. Sleep approached with gentle fingers, drawing him toward rest's healing embrace.
He was slowly drifting into slumberland, feeling a sense of inner peace. Until—
CRUNCH.
Scar's eyes snapped open with the force of a physical action, his body tensed to spring
His passive Accelerated Perception flared, feeding the acoustic data directly into his brain. His enhanced senses instantly triangulated the echo of the crushing dry leaf. *Forty-five degrees to my right. Ground level. Edge of the clearing.
Scar's ears perked up immediately. His eyes remained shut, but his brain instantly snapped to maximum processing power. His enhanced hearing caught the sound of the crushed leaf, his senses perfectly triangulating the acoustic bounce. And with his accelerated perception, he was able to echolocate the source. Forty-five degrees to the right. Ground level. Edge of the tree line.
With insane, superhuman reflex prowess, Scar jolted upright. And with his eyes still completely closed, his hand whipped out, summoning the energy pistol and leveling it flawlessly at the exact coordinates of the sound. The entire triangulation of the sound waves and movement from rest to combat-mode had happened in just under 0.5 seconds.
When Scar finally opened his eyes, he expected to see the snarling, grotesque maw of a mutant beast. Instead, the glowing blue muzzle of his pistol was pointed directly at the face of… a human.
Standing amidst the bloody, decapitated corpses of the hounds was a teenage girl, roughly his age. She was incredibly beautiful, with long, vibrant pink hair that cascaded down her back and piercing, vivid green eyes. She wore a simple black hoodie, dark athletic shorts, and a white pair of sneakers.
She stood perfectly still, looking up at the tree. She wasn't startled by his presence, neither dod she flinch at the sight of the dead beasts that littered the clearing. It was as if the corpses were nothing more interesting than fallen leaves.
But what immediately set off Scar's internal alarms was her face. She carried a profound, detached expression of absolute boredom, entirely unfazed by the fact that there was a gun pointed at her face. Either she was extraordinarily confident, or she was simply oblivious to the danger.
Scar tilted his head, his finger resting lightly on the trigger. "Who are you?" he asked, his voice carrying the hard edge of someone who had killed many things today and wasn't inclined to stop just because his target looked human. "And what are you doing here?"
The girl didn't answer. She turned away from him, ignoring both his question and the firearm pointed at her face, and surveyed the beast corpses scattered across the clearing. Her bored expression shifted slightly, taking on a quality of assessment as she examined the kills.
"Are you going to take these carcasses?" she asked, her voice calm, sharp, and chillingly flat. "Or are you just going to leave them here?"
Scar frowned. That wasn't the reaction or reply he had expected from her. A normal person would have dropped to their knees with their hands up, pleading for their life. This girl acted as if a gun pointed at her face was a minor inconvenience, like a fly that could be waved away.
"I asked you a question," Scar said sharply. Then he dropped from the branch, landing smoothly on the grass without a sound. He raised the pistol again, keeping his distance. "Who the hell are you?"
The girl sighed, as if the entire interaction was tedious her beyond measure. "I don't appreciate being held at gunpoint," she said, looking at Scar with absolute disinterest. "Lower your weapon." Her voice remained flat and emotionless, but beneath the boredom lurked something dangerous. A warning. One delivered with the casual certainty of someone who had made similar statements before and had always been obeyed.
Scar's frown deepened into a dark scowl. His aim remained steady, the pistol perfectly aligned with her center mass. "That's not happening," he said, tightening his grip.
The girl stared at him for a second. "Very well," she exhaled.
Then, she moved her arm.
It was incredibly fast. Even with his passive Accelerated Perception, Scar barely tracked the blur of her motion. And just as she raised her hand, his pure survival instinct kicked in before his conscious mind did, screaming at him to move. Without hesitation, he threw his head violently to the side.
And just as he did, a beam of concentrated, pink light shot from the girl's fingertip. It grazed the tips of his hair, singing the strands, and blasted into the massive tree behind him. The beam didn't just pierce the wood; it blew a perfectly spherical, football-sized hole completely through the trunk, before shooting through the next tree, and the next, leaving a line of destruction fading into the forest.
Scar caught himself before he could fall, having already recovered from the shock. He stared back at the destruction and gritted his teeth. A cold, murderous rage washed over him. She had just tried to put a hole through his skull.
Meanwhile, the girl hadn't moved from her original position—she stood exactly where she'd been, her right hand still extended, a single fingertip still faintly glowing pink. Her expression remained as indifferent as ever, as if she hadn't just tried to kill him.
Scar was furious. His eyes met her gaze, and something cold and hard settled into his chest. She had attacked him without hesitation. There was no coming back from that.
He was going to retaliate.