Ascension of the last Celestial

Valerian landed softly on the ground in front of the large pile of unmoving vines and trees that were part of the forest monster’s body.

’Maybe it had something useful.’

Expanding his spatial perception, Valerian scanned the mountain of vines and dead trees, but to his dismay, the only thing he found was the split core of the creature.

With a thought, the core appeared before him. Since it was larger than his head, Valerian summoned a small updraft of wind to keep the core floating. Examining the core, Valerian came to a disappointing conclusion.

’It’s useless, but maybe just because I have the space.’

The orb floating in front of him disappeared into his pocket dimension, waiting for him to find a use for it in the future.

"Well, onto the next one."

Valerian flexed his cosmic dragon wings and ascended into the sky. Once he reached around 500 meters altitude, he stopped his ascent and looked at the seemingly endless forest before him.

While looking at the supposedly dangerous forest, Valerian thought back to the fight. It wasn’t a particularly hard fight; it barely lasted a few minutes. But the fight showed him something else: the moment the beam attack of the beast was about to reach him, panic took over, and instead of closing the distance—which he could easily do with his space affinity to deliver an attack from behind—he retreated.

The panic of the incoming beam and fear of getting hurt caused him to make a move that, if it were a close fight and not a one-sided beatdown, would have resulted in a really bad situation for him.

’I need more combat experience. Maybe it’s best to start with smaller-scale close combat.’

Wanting to hone his battle instincts with close combat first and not these large-scale battles, Valerian extended his spatial perception to the max.

A bit over 2 km to the east, he sensed a cave. Normally, just a cave wouldn’t grab his attention, but inside this cave, he could feel a large amount of creatures. They were roughly his size, and there were so many he couldn’t even count them.

The lowest of these creatures was B+ rank and the highest... SS-.

He could feel it; the creature had just broken through. It stood at the very beginning of SS- rank.

Setting course, Valerian flexed his cosmic wings and, with a single powerful, mana-enhanced flap, he broke through the sound barrier. It didn’t even take 7 seconds for him to reach his destination.

Descending down to the cave, Valerian tried to map out the entire cave system with his spatial perception. But the cave was so large and widespread that even with his 5 km range, he couldn’t sense the end of it, but he could feel that the creature that recently broke through to SS- was very deep in the cave.

Now standing in front of the entrance, Valerian dispersed his wings, as they would only hinder him fighting in a cave.

His mana pulsed through to Twilight, and a new weapon appeared in his right hand.

It was a sleek, matte-black katana with a deadly, slight curve to its dark blade. The metal looked almost organic, and etched deep into the steel were glowing, purple vein-like markings. The moment he funneled his mana into the hilt, the dark veins didn’t just light up; they actively pulsated with raw energy, bleeding a faint, cosmic glow along the razor-sharp edge. Similar to the greatsword, small constellations began to follow the blade once he infused his mana.

’This should be better for fighting in a cave.’

Using a greatsword in a cave would just cause the blade to get caught by the walls and ceiling, and since he had the freedom to just choose whatever kind of weapon he wanted to use, Valerian decided on a katana.

’Okay, let’s do this.’

Valerian stepped into the cave. The inside of it was pitch black, but there were mushrooms glowing in a faint blue light. But even if there were absolutely no light, it wouldn’t be a problem since his spatial perception didn’t need light.

Instead of letting his perception spread out to its full range, Valerian kept it just a few meters around him. Knowing exactly where a monster was even if it was kilometers away wouldn’t help him train his battle instincts, so he decided to make the sphere of perception only cover his immediate surroundings.

For the first 10 minutes, Valerian didn’t come across any monsters, but this unnerving peace didn’t last any longer as he felt a presence enter his dome of perception. It wasn’t alone, as three others followed closely behind. They were fast and coming at him from four different sides. They had humanoid bodies that were smaller than Valerian, reaching around his chest, and they wore what could be interpreted as armor made from the scales of some beast they had hunted. They had primitive weapons; one had a sharp piece of some stone tied to the end of a stick, mimicking a spear.

Another had two daggers made in the same way, and the other two had swords. Valerian couldn’t make out what they looked like since his spatial senses didn’t work with color, but he could feel that they had sharp fangs and small tusks coming out of their lower jaw. All of them were in the B+ rank.

They closed in fast, but Valerian wanted them to; he needed the close combat. In a flash, he sidestepped the attack of the closest of them, the spear user. Using the rotation of the dodge, his blade met the sharp edge of one of the swords. Since the weapons of the creatures were made from some kind of stone and Valerian had his Twilight that was formed from his mana, his blade cleanly cut through the sword without any resistance. The monster, caught off guard by the blade that cut through its weapon, wasn’t able to react, and Twilight carved through the skull of the monster.

Before the blood that was sprayed in the air could even land on the ground, Valerian was already moving to the next one. With a single step, he now stood in front of the dagger wielder, who was frozen in shock at the sight of its companion’s halved head.

This moment of shock was enough for Twilight to cleanly cut off its head. The other sword user didn’t waste a second mourning its fallen comrades and closed the distance to Valerian, who was still facing the dagger wielder’s body.

Thinking it could abuse this moment of carelessness, the sword user swung down with a crushing swipe. But before the blade could touch Valerian’s body, it stopped in the air, completely unable to move.

Confusion spread through the creature’s mind at the still-standing blade. Valerian slowly turned around, and with a lazy swipe of his katana, the head of the third creature left its body.

All of this happened before the head of the first creature could hit the floor. Now there was only a single enemy remaining. The spear-using monster began to tremble in fear at the sight of the being that had just killed three of its friends in less than a second.

Valerian turned his cold purple eyes to the last one and, without showing any mercy, stabbed his katana straight through its head.

As the warm blood dripped down his blade and filled the cave with a metallic smell, Valerian let out a small breath.

’They won’t do. The difference in strength is just too large.’

Even though he was disappointed with his opponents, he still wanted to see how they looked, as he had only gotten a rough outline of them.

A ball of light mana gathered in the air and filled the cavern with a bright light. Valerian crouched down to the body of the spear wielder and got a sight of his attackers for the first time.

They looked exactly like his spatial perception told him. They had a humanoid body with crude armor and weapons. Their faces had sharp fangs and two tusks protruding forward from their lower jaws. The only new thing was their skin color; it was a deep green. Finally seeing their skin color, Valerian remembered one of the books he had read some years ago in the palace.

They were goblins. To be specific, they were cave goblins. As the name implied, they spent their entire lives in caves, never leaving the protection of their walls. Now it also made sense that he couldn’t feel the end of the cave system; since cave goblins spent their entire lives in caves, they built an entire colony in them. With farmers and breeding animals for food, the complexity of their society was close to that of humans.

They had evolved their eyes so that they could see perfectly in the dark and had no need for any light. Additionally, their ears had evolved to have a kind of echolocation to better navigate the caves.

’So the SS- one must be their chief. Haa, this could take a while.’

Since the chief was at the heart of this colony, Valerian decided that it would be best to first wipe out all the goblins in the cave corridors before moving to the large caves that held the houses, farms, and such.

Valerian stood up and cracked his back.

’This will be fun.’

With that, he casually made his way through the caves to commit genocide on these poor goblins that just happened to have built their colony in this cave.