Sou! Sou!
Just as the vine walls crumbled, the two-star quillrat's eyes shined dangerously as it attacked him with its quills. In an instant, countless half a foot long, dark gray quills shot out towards Max, giving no time to react.
"Nooo!!" Belen and Leticia shouted in horror while, their faces became deathly pale. They knew that even if one of these quills struck him, there were very high chances of him dying due to poison.
While Leticia felt helpless, the mana around Belen swirled chaotically as she forcefully squeezed more than thousand units of mana in an instant and formed a shield in front of him.
Pak! Pak! Pak!
The quills were stopped by the shield before they could pierce Max's body.
"Ugh!"
A smile appeared on her face seeing that she blocked all the quills successfully. However suddenly blood burst out of mouth due to the backlash of her reckless action and she fainted on the spot.
…
Max was stunned seeing her spitting out blood in order to save him and his heart was overflowed with emotions for a second before his eyes became cold and the last bit of required mana was injected into the spell and his fist once again lit up with faint crimson fire.
Swoosh!
He moved at his fastest speed towards the leading quillrat who just realized that its attack had been blocked and the rest of the quills on its back trembled, readying to attack again.
BANG!!!
However, before it could do anything, Max appeared beside it and swung his fist with his full power and struck its neck. A loud bang resounded as the power of the spell blasted the rat's neck along with a few of the one-star beasts around it into smithereens.
"Huu…"
pᴀɴᴅᴀ-ɴoᴠᴇʟ He took a deep breath while beads of sweat appeared on his forehead due to exhaustion. This spell although was very powerful, it also consumed a lot of stamina. But he had already exhausted half of his total stamina while working out all night.
However, ever after this, he didn't stop and casted [Death Rain] and spammed a few 300 MP fireballs and killed all of the one-star rats which were gathered in one place.
Seeing this, Leticia and Haory also started killing the scattered ones. In just a few seconds, hundreds of dead bodies of quillrats were strewn across the battlefield.
…
After a while, Max and others were inside the cave resting. They had given Belen a healing pill after which she had woken up and now was meditating to heal her the injuries her mana core sustained. Fortunately they were only minor and nothing to worry about.
After recovering the mana and seeing that there were a few hours until morning, Max decided to sleep for a while to give his body the needed rest and replenish his stamina.
Haory looked at him sleeping, deep in thought. She was once more shocked by his insane progress and the fact that he had such an overpowered spell which was obviously not form the academy since he had chosen the [Death Rain] from academy.
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After thinking for a while, she shook her head and decided that he was an anomaly who she shouldn't gauge with the normal standards.
…
"Yawn…!"
Max woke up and yawned. All of his exhaustion had disappeared however, he was still feeling a bit stiff.
"Good morning Max." Leticia's enthusiastic voice attracted his attention. He looked around and saw that everyone had woken up including Rima.
"Good morning." He smiled and then asked Rima "How are you feeling now?"
"I'm completely fine thanks to Belen's life potion." She then smiled beautifully and said "Thank you Max for saving us."
Max shook his head "It's fine. As your teammate that's what I should do." He then looked at Belen who was grilling meat with Hoary and asked in a concerned tone "Are you alright now?"
Belen nodded as a smile appeared on her beautiful face seeing that he was concerned about her. Max sighed in relief seeing this. He didn't want her to have permanent injuries like his father which would hinder her from improving further because of him.
In the afternoon, all of them were sitting on the bank of the water stream with their legs in the water, relaxing.
When they came out of the cave after having breakfast, there were a few one-star snake type beasts eating the dead bodies of the quillrats. Fortunately, the valley was enclosed from three sides and the scent of dead bodies didn't spread or there wouldn't be only a few one-star beasts. Therefore, after killing them, Belen gathered all the dead bodies and Max burnt them to ashes.
"Max now that we have six beast cores and all of are in our peak conditions, how about we find some beasts in the initial stage of two-star realm to collect more cores!" Leticia suggested. Hoary also nodded at this. She was also going to suggest this.
Max shook his head and pointed at the burning corpses in a corner of the valley and said as his lips curled up "We don't need to look for any beast since some beasts as well as that Bartan guys and his group would be here soon after seeing the smoke and I'm sure after killing them, we will have more than enough cores."
"Oh?"
Haory and Rima frowned hearing this. Haory looked at him and said "But it would be too dangerous for I, Rima and Leticia since we are only in the initial stage unlike you and Belen."
Before Max could say anything, Leticia said proudly "I've broken through to the middle stage so I'll be alright."
Haory and Rima, both looked at Leticia in shock because although she was more talented than Belen and Rima as she had broken through to the two-star realm at the age of 19, her cultivation speed was lower than Haory who still hadn't broken through to the middle stage two-star realm.
Suddenly both realized something and looked at Max who smiled bitterly while thinking 'So they have already noticed? Oh well, it's not too difficult to guess when they have been with us all this while.'
He then looked at Haory and Rima and slowly said "I'm sure you have some guess about their rapid progress right." His eyes flashed as he continued "Do you guys also want to improve like them?"