"Perfect," Dravin sighed loudly, his eyes beginning to glow with a faint, crimson light. "That saves me a lot of trouble."
Before they could process his words, he acted.
The latent power of the Crimson Thunder God, which he had kept suppressed, exploded from him.
"Crackle!"
"BOOM!"
He activated `Divine Thunder Might`, a 200% boost in raw power surging through his veins, as crimson thunder erupted from him, striking the ground around him like a thunderstorm!
His muscles bulged as though inflated as his aura skyrocketed rapidly. 275 % of level 6 is what?
In the same instant, he used `Crimson Thunder Step`.
There was not a single after image, he simply vanished.
The wolf-man, who had been circling, suddenly felt a presence behind him. He spun around, his yellow eyes wide with shock, but all he saw was a flickering, crimson afterimage.
A whisper of movement to his left. Another afterimage. Dravin was moving at the speed of literal lightning, his form becoming an incomprehensible blur of red streaks that filled the grotto.
The wolf-man’s enhanced senses couldn’t keep up. He suddenly felt a faint tickle on his neck.
Then, the world tilted sideways. He saw his own body, standing there, headless, before a fountain of blood erupted from his severed neck. His last conscious thought was one of utter confusion.
Dravin reappeared on the other side of the grotto, his cleaver dripping with fresh, dark blood. A smirk in his lips as his thunder filled eyes crackled.
The crocodile-man stared at the headless corpse of his comrade, his mind unable to bridge the gap between the struggling Rank 6 boy from a moment ago and the crimson god of death that stood before him now. Fear, an emotion he had not felt in years, suddenly came crushing down on him.
"W-what are you?!" he roared, taking a step back.
"Death," Dravin replied, his voice cold as the void.
The crocodile-man, driven by terror, unleashed his own secret technique.
"Bloodscale Tyrant’s Rage!"
"ROOOAR!"
His jade-green scales flushed a deep, bloody crimson. His muscles bulged to an even more impossible size, and his power level spiked, rocketing to the very peak of Rank 7.
"Bang!"
The air compressed and collapsed as he moved with incredible speed.
He was fast, incredibly fast, almost managing to match the blur of Dravin’s Thunder Step as he attacked.
"Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!"
Their blades and claws met in a furious, high-speed exchange, sparks of fire and crimson lightning flying in every direction, the grotto shaking from the force of their blows. But the dark cultivator was only delaying the inevitable.
Dravin saw his opening.
He feinted a high slash, forcing the crocodile-man to raise his arms in a block.
In that split second, Dravin’s other hand crackled to life.
He channeled a small but incredibly dense amount of energy into his palm, forming a focused, spear-like `Crimson Bolt`.
Stomping his feet, he dashed backwards and thrust his hand forward, under the man’s guard.
"Boom!"
The bolt of pure thunder slammed into the dark cultivator’s chest. The crimson scales, which could have deflected a cannonball, cracked, shattered, and were instantly vaporized.
The bolt pierced through his chest, blowing a massive, cauterized hole where his heart used to be, before exiting out his back.
The crocodile-man froze, a look of disbelief on his face.
He looked down at the gaping, smoking hole in his torso, then back up at Dravin. He opened his mouth to speak, but only a gurgle of blood came out.
A moment later, his eyes went dim, and his massive body crashed to the floor, dead.
Dravin stood panting, the immense power of his bloodline receding, leaving behind a familiar, draining fatigue.
He looked at the two corpses, then at the unconscious girl, a grim expression on his face.
He hadn’t expected the trial to be this dangerous and who exactly were those people?
Dravin’s gaze fell on the dark, unassuming cloaks on them. He walked over and picked one up.
The material was strange, cool to the touch, and seemed to absorb the light around it, giving it a deeper blackness than any normal fabric.
He remembered their words. A Type I Relic called the ’Veil of Shadows.’ He didn’t know how to use it, but he knew it was valuable. He folded it carefully, a new prize for his growing collection.
He then began to search their bodies, his movements methodical and efficient. He found nothing of value in their pockets no identification, no currency, only a few low-grade energy replenishing serums.
But then he noticed something on their fingers. Each of them wore a simple, silver ring with tiny jewels embedded in them.
They looked like cheap trinkets, but Dravin knew it might be a treasure with something as no one would wear trinkets just for fashion. Especially these ugly monsters.
He slipped the ring off the crocodile-man’s scaled finger. He pricked his thumb on a sharp edge of his cleaver and squeezed a drop of blood onto the ring’s surface, the standard method for binding most relics.
Nothing happened. He frowned, then tried the same with the wolf-man’s ring. Again, nothing.
A thought struck him. These were not standard relics.
He focused his will, drawing upon the viod energy saturating his cells. He channeled a tiny, wisp of his strength into the ring.
The moment the energy touched it, the black ring flashed with a faint, grey light. An invisible connection formed between his mind and the ring, and a new space suddenly opened up in his perception. It wasn’t a physical space, but a mental one, a pocket dimension the size of a small, cramped room.
"A spatial ring," he breathed, his eyes wide with excitement.
He had heard of such things, of course. They were legendary treasures, artifacts of incredible rarity and value that allowed the user to store items in a separate dimension. To own one was a symbol of immense wealth and status. And he had just found two.