Chapter 72: They hunted

They hunted. The monster was like a living armour as it tore through monsters in the forest. All Riven had to do was stay atop it and feed it with aura while he directed it.

And the monster would tear and crush other monsters beneath it as if it was nothing.

“…Big guy! I’m really lucky. If you had put your mouth in front of my face… your stinking mouth… then it would have been a very difficult battle for me…”

Big guy couldn’t answer. It could only move through the forest like a fleeting shadow, loom above smaller monsters, and wipe them with its hand-like claws.

Riven was enjoying his time. He didn’t even bother to check the assessment ranking. The only thing that made him slightly on guard was the feeling of eyes on him.

It wasn’t something that lingered, but it was there, and Riven didn’t like it. The feeling came and went, but it left Riven feeling weird.

“…Can Tong really be here? No… They are not allowed into the assessment. Besides, the rank threes’ assessment is tomorrow… Am I becoming so paranoid of attacks to my back that I’m starting to feel things…?”

But he soon put that at the back of his mind since no answers came to him, so he hunted and relished in the slaughter.

Suddenly, he ordered Big Guy monster to a stop. “What sound was that?”

He had heard a flashing scream. Riven jumped down from Big Guy and into a tree branch. He jumped from one place to another like a monkey and soon reached a clearing.

Indeed, there were some students. A group of twenty students surrounded another group of four.

Riven stood quietly atop his tree branch and watched.

The leader of the twenty students was a girl with buck teeth. She sneered and swung her bow at the forehead of one of the four group students. “Idiot! How dare you make fun of my teeth and then have the guts to say it in my presence.”

“Bucking teeth… I mean, sister…!”

He didn’t get the chance to finish. An arrow that glowed with a golden light slammed into his head, and he flew back. A shield had covered his whole body, but his head was painted bright red. With a whooshing sound, he devolved into light and streaked into the air.

Buck Teeth shook her head. “Unbelievable. He’s really courting death. That’ll do him. Let him suffer for the rest of the month. Kill his companions!”

The other students rushed forward, weapons flashing, and soon three light streaks flew into the air.

Riven nodded silently to himself. “As expected. With enough time to gather interest, we are now in the phase when students will hunt each other.”

Riven looked up. The sun was still high in the sky, but it was apparent that they were getting closer to evening. He silently retreated and climbed on his undead monster to continue his slaughter.

He saw a lot of similar things happening all around him. Groups of students ambushing each other and killing. Most of them used the opportunity to settle the bad blood they had against each other.

All around the assessment training, the same thing was happening again and again.

Riven removed himself from it. He didn’t participate, not because he didn’t want their points, but because he didn’t want to be tied down fighting them. The other reason was because, in truth, he was mostly outnumbered.

So why risk a situation that’s not in his favour? He’s able to hunt down a large number of the monsters without issues, so he’s not just going to give that up.

He continued to avoid the students and focused on his monster hunting, so much so that by the time he took a break, he realized that the sun was indeed dipping very low.

Riven cursed. “I totally forgot about the strips!”

He checked the ranking. In the ranking, he was the one with the most points, but he was in the eleventh rank. Jasper was in the number one spot. The other nine spots were filled as well.

Riven raised his head and sensed where the different strips were. His eyes widened. “They all are in the same place?”

He climbed the monster again and frowned. “Heed me, Spartacus. Grave Knight.”

“This will be difficult. The strips being in one place means that they are either a group or one person collected everything. Either way, I must get my hands on one of them.”

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“It’s a real shame that your student lacked foresight, Master Zandrel. If he had gone after the strips much sooner, then he would have clinched a place in the top ten.”

“Indeed. But either way, he has proven his worth to the sect. He will be admitted,” the head instructor said. “And he even managed to break a record in killing that monster. Even the amount of points he earned is three times that of Jasper, who’s the second leading in points.”

“Master Zandrel, you have my congratulations on having a student this strong.”

Because Zandrel was not part of the sect, they could only congratulate him and not the sect for having such prodigies. Zandrel smiled and nodded humbly. “Thank you so much.”

An instructor snorted in envy. “And so what? He has that amount of points but is not in the first ten. Then it’s worthless. The real winners are those who manage to get into the top ten. They will be the ones to fill their stars quicker and thus advance faster than their peers.

“This way, they will grow stronger. In fact, they are the strong ones. After all, this assessment is also a way for us to distinguish who the sect should invest heavily in.”

Zandrel nodded seriously. “You are right, but the sun isn’t down. A lot of things could still happen. Will happen.”

“Stop dreaming, Master Zandrel. The ten that have the strips are the ten that always had them, all of them led by Jasper. They directly formed a group, and no one else has been able to get into the top ten since rank one.

“Now that they are rank two, the gap between them and the others is just too large. Although your student managed to beat Jasper, can he beat a combination of the ten strongest?”

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