I Devoured The Primordial Chaos to Become the Strongest

But the heat didn’t affect only the monster; Azaroth was caught in it as well, and it was only the essence that was preventing him from being ashes already.

But it couldn’t prevent everything. The air around him burned, and his face reddened as heat washed over him. His skin was drying rapidly, and essence or not, he’d get badly hurt if this went on.

Luckily, the boss monster’s struggle slowed and then stopped, and the monster died. Not that it had much of a chance with its head burnt away.

Azaroth dropped it and hurried away from there, breathing in fresh air as the green smoke cleared away. The shockwave of their boss’s death reached the wolves, and they ran away, taking the green smoke with them.

Daylight shone on them once again, and Azaroth looked at his surroundings, but he was too tired to do much of anything other than just sit there and let all the essence wash over him. He closed his eyes and began to cultivate.

The two major wounds sent bolts of pain, especially when he sat like that, but Azaroth simply ignored them. They were healing, after all. He could now focus on directing his core.

The ground was covered in dead monsters, burnt, crushed, cut open, and killed in all manner of ways. The team stood breathing hard in the middle of it all. Catena shook his head.

"I’ve forgotten how hard it is to face strong monsters of the same rank. Should we follow them?"

Stallus shook her head. "Follow them? Why? We’ve killed their boss. They won’t bother us, for now at least." She flopped on the ground, not bothered that she was lying on the body of a dead monster. The wound on her leg throbbed where a wolf got her.

Catena shook his head and followed her example, his eyes weary. "We are going to stink for days! But I’m more than happy that we can now heal ourselves with the new advancement."

Alex looked around, his hair standing on end with all the lightning he’d been throwing around. "Is it me, or are there fewer monster bodies than there should be?"

The others followed his gaze and found out that it was the truth! That must mean there’s some kind of illusion in that rotted smoke.

Stallus pulled herself up with an effort of will and then moved closer to Azaroth. She cleared a space and then began to meditate and cycle her essence to her core. The other two did so as well.

They stayed like that until they got the best they could from the essence, then they stood. Catena and Alex stood and began to gather essence stones from the monsters.

Azaroth checked his stomach. The wound had closed somewhat, and his face was still bloody and tender, but with the essence in his body, it wouldn’t take long.

Stallus spoke, awe in her voice. "I saw how you finished the boss. That was insane. For a moment there, I thought you were going to burn with the monster! That’s a deadly clever trick."

Azaroth didn’t reply. He only gazed at her, eyes cold and flat. "I underestimated the monsters. The first ones we fought were weak, too weak."

Stallus nodded. Unable to keep eye contact with him, she looked over at how Alex and Catena broke flesh apart and searched for essence stones. "Fighting proper Acolyte monsters made it hit home, but then again, we’ve not really learned all the skills we need at this rank. We’ll be more formidable then."

Azaroth lifted a single white brow.

She hurried on, switching the topic to their skills. "We all have manipulation skills now, which make all other skills possible. Without Element Manipulation, we wouldn’t be able to do much because that’s the basis on which the foundation is built..."

Azaroth cut her rambling off. "What is it you want?"

Stallus stopped talking and then took a deep breath. "You are right. What I want to ask is, are you sure we can really advance with the way we are doing things? In a few weeks, we will return to the prison town and then do what? Spend the rest of the year trying to rule over some prisoners?"

Azaroth’s gaze had sharpened throughout her speech so that by the time she was done, his eyes were like sharpened metal, gleaming dangerously. "So you’ve noticed as well. The gap that we should have filled with training and filling ourselves with essence is being used for fighting Initiates and what?"

Stallus nodded. "We need to complete the mission, but it’s going to stall our personal growth. I don’t think the Crypt Master wants this, so there must be a trick to it."

Azaroth had been puzzling over this as well, and he hadn’t come to a viable conclusion. "Let us take as much essence as we can here, then we’ll go back. This time, it’ll be to conquer and lead. We’ll leave all disguises behind and blaze all the way to Greytown."

Stallus nodded, the relief obvious on her face. It had been bothering her, and taking in essence now only reinforced her thoughts. Alex and Catena also returned from their hunt for essence, and it turned out that the stink wolves were very stingy with essence stones.

Out of the seventy-something monsters lying there, they were able to harvest about twelve stones. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Alex just shrugged. "This is one of the reasons why Crypts are resources all the great powers covet. And from this rank upward, they are guarded jealously. Ironic, right, that Crypts are the backbone and also the threat that the great powers are wary of."

Alex would have continued his lecture on world politics if Azaroth hadn’t stood up and spoken about their next course of action.

"Right. We will use the schedule we used last year. Sleep. Eat. Hunt. Train. And we’ll do it over and over again until we’ve cleared all the Acolyte-rank Crypts in this forest."

The others turned to him with grins on their faces, eyes lit with an inner fire that smoldered alive like living coal.