Ethan suddenly stopped.
Every attack ceased at the exact same moment.
The vines that had been dancing wildly froze in mid-air, the falling leaves suspended motionless, and the wooden stakes that were bursting from the earth remained stuck in the soil.
Andiyu froze for a moment.
Then he saw the curve at the corner of Ethan's mouth.
"I'm done playing with you," Ethan said.
The moment the words left his mouth, the earth beneath Andiyu's feet flipped over completely.
The ground within a hundred-meter radius was lifted from its edges like a carpet, as soil, rock, vine fragments, and the remains of corpses all flipped inward and pressed down toward the center.
Andiyu stood at the epicenter of the inversion, surrounded on all sides by collapsing earth and rubble, with nowhere to run.
He was buried alive.
Soil and rock crushed down from every direction, completely swallowing his massive frame.
The rumbling lasted for several seconds as the ground collapsed into a massive crater dozens of meters deep, its walls still shedding loose dirt.
Ethan stood at the edge of the pit, looking down.
There was no movement at the bottom.
A few seconds later, the soil at the bottom shifted suddenly.
A hand with bulging veins thrust out from the dirt, its fingers digging deep into the rock of the pit wall. Then came another hand, then shoulders, and finally Andiyu's face, which was caked in mud.
He crawled out from the bottom.
His leather armor was completely shredded, he was covered in blood, and his left arm was twisted at a grotesque angle, clearly broken. Several more wooden stakes were now embedded in his right leg alongside the original one. The scars on his chest had all split open, and pale green blood gushed from dozens of wounds simultaneously.
But he was still standing.
His right hand still gripped his battle axe. The emerald light on the blade had mostly faded, but a faint glimmer remained.
Andiyu raised his head and looked at Ethan at the edge of the pit. His amber eyes were no longer dark red; now that the bloodlust had faded, only emptiness remained. His lips quivered twice as a blurred sentence squeezed out of his throat.
"Leah... Father is coming... to be with you..."
The smile vanished from Ethan's face.
He raised his right hand.
Hundreds of leaves poured from his palm like an emerald rainstorm, cascading down into the pit.
The leaves filled the entire crater.
The sound of dense slicing and tearing of flesh rose from the bottom, continuing for nearly ten seconds before finally falling silent.
【Life Energy +339,441. Current Life Energy: 742,743.】
Ethan looked away from the bottom of the pit. "A bit touching. Unfortunately, it was useless. Still, you certainly provided a lot of Life Energy."
After his mocking remark, Ethan glanced at his Battle Merit.
1,142,417.
Before killing Andiyu, his Battle Merit had just surpassed 140,000.
A single Tier 1 Lifeform had contributed a full million Battle Merit.
"A Tier 1 Lifeform gives this much?" Ethan's lips quirked. "That's quite satisfying."
Vines sprouted from his palm, wrapping around Andiyu's corpse and dragging it into his storage ring.
The corpse of a Tier 1 Lifeform could be exchanged for a large sum of magic stones, whether sold to the academy or the War Fortress.
Combined with the complete Holy Beast corpse and the pile of war machines in his ring, the gap needed for the High-Level Meditation Method had shrunk significantly.
"It looks like I should shift my focus to Tier 1 Lifeforms."
Snap.
Ethan snapped his fingers.
The twisting, squirming plants stopped simultaneously, then rustled as they spat out the cannon fodder troops who had been trapped within the Deep Forest Emergence.
Then, Ethan turned and walked away.
As for those plants?
He would let them grow freely here.
As he walked, Ethan glanced at the Battle Merit Ranking.
"Well, a million merit puts me straight in first place. No problem there."
...
An apprentice wearing a dark green short robe pulled a short blade from the corpse of an Amons warrior, casually flicking away the droplets of pale green blood from the blade.
Behind him lay dozens of corpses scattered about, each with a fatal wound to the throat or eye socket, delivered with clean efficiency.
"Took a bit of effort, but it was worth it."
He muttered as he wiped the blood and filth from his face.
This squad of Amons warriors had been more troublesome than expected. Their leader was a tough Trainee Priest; just breaking through that priest's protective vines had cost him three explosion scrolls.
But the harvest was great. The energy crystals on the Trainee Priest were of good quality and could be exchanged for at least seven or eight hundred magic stones back at base.
Not to mention the Battle Merit.
He had accumulated 100,000 merit so far, which was enough to crack the top hundred in the apprentice rankings of any past World War.
Although it was still the early stage of the war and more powerful experts would surely emerge later, being in the top hundred early on was a way to make a name for himself.
"Hehe, my merit should definitely be in the top hundred. Let's see."
He extended his mental power into the Wizardry Tool in his right ear.
The Battle Merit Ranking unfolded in his consciousness, with names listed in a dense column from top to bottom.
His gaze habitually scanned upward from the hundredth position, a grin he couldn't suppress hanging on his lips.
Ninety-seventh place, not him. Eighty-third place, not him.
Sixty-first place!
"Haha, I knew it! All that effort wasn't for nothing. This feels great! Let's see what the big shots' merit looks like."
Third place: Malfoy Broken-Blade, 494,541 merit.
"What a freak."
Second place: Ella Gray-Spear, 507,620 merit.
"Are they even human?"
Then he saw the first place.
Ethan Leo, 1,142,417 merit.
He stared at that number for several breaths. The smile on his face slowly froze, eventually vanishing completely. "Wait, what?"
He had fought tooth and nail to kill a squad of Amons warriors and a Trainee Priest just to get 100,000 merit.
This bastard named Ethan had reached 1.14 million?
His voice squeezed out of his throat, "What the hell is over a million merit? Is he hacking? Did he forget to turn it off?"
At the same time, on the western side of the battlefield, in a blood-soaked marsh.
A female apprentice wearing deep purple tight-fitting leather armor jumped down from the corpse of a four-meter-tall magical beast.
She had just pulled her rapier from the beast's eye socket, the blade still dripping with pale green brain matter.
Behind her was an entire Amons patrol she had slaughtered single-handedly, with thirty or forty corpses soaking in the muddy water.
"150,000 merit. That's enough." She exhaled slowly, sheathing her rapier and sending her mental power into her ear-piece.
Then her movements froze.
"1.14 million? Is this a human?"
On the northern side of the battlefield, in the ruins of a village leveled by war.
A bald strongman was crouching behind a collapsed stone wall, hands on his knees as he panted heavily.
His bare torso was covered in dark red runic patterns, each line squirming slowly like a living thing.
A pile of Amons warrior corpses lay at his feet, their pale green blood pooling on the ground.
"These natives are pretty tough."
He grinned, habitually scanning the Battle Merit Ranking with his mental power.
Rate on N.U.
