The System wasn't going to make him wait. It wasn't going to throttle his progress. It was challenging him. It was daring him to keep up. It was presenting him with a near-endless, self-replenishing supply of high-value targets, and the only thing stopping him from accumulating a king's ransom in Farming Coins was his own ability to stand, fight, and endure.
The last vestiges of the soul-crushing boredom of the slime grind were burned away in the fire of this new revelation. The slow, patient waiting of the goblin forest was a forgotten memory. All that was left was the pure, unadulterated, and terrifying challenge of continuous combat. How many could he kill? How long could he last? How far could he push himself and his divine spirits before their power cores ran dry and their wills finally broke?
It was a magnificent, horrifying, and utterly liberating thought. He was no longer a farmer waiting for a slow, predictable harvest. He was a warrior standing on the shore of an endless ocean of enemies, with a bounty on every single wave that crashed upon the sand.
The thundering grew louder, closer. The dust cloud was no longer a distant plume; it was a rolling storm. He could now make out the individual shapes of the boars within it, their forms just as massive, just as furious as the last.
He felt the deep, resonant ache in his unified power core. He was not at full strength. His spirits were only partially rested. To take on another full herd so soon, without a proper recovery cycle, was a risk. A significant, undeniable risk.
He laughed. It was a short, sharp, and utterly fearless sound that was carried away by the hot, dry wind of the savanna.
Risk was just another word for opportunity. And this opportunity was too profitable to ignore.
He summoned his spirits once more. Fang Fairy appeared in a flash of cool, calming azure light, her golden eyes already locked on the approaching threat, her expression one of serene, battle-ready focus. Iffrit materialized with a guttural roar of his own, a furious, challenging answer to the thunder of the herd's charge.
Lloyd raised his sword, its dark, potent blade seeming to drink in the harsh sunlight.
"Round two," he said, his voice quiet but ringing with an absolute, unshakeable confidence that was born not of arrogance, but of a perfect understanding of the new, brutal rules of the game. "Let's get to work."
The bounty of the Savage Brushland was endless. And he was ready, willing, and able to collect.
The second battle was a masterclass in adaptation. Armed with the game-changing knowledge of the active spawn rate, Lloyd approached the engagement with an entirely new philosophy. The strategic calculus had been fundamentally rewritten. This was no longer about winning a single, decisive fight. It was about establishing a sustainable, efficient, and repeatable process of extermination. The new primary constraint wasn't the availability of targets, but his own mental and spiritual endurance. Every drop of energy, every ounce of focus, was a precious, non-renewable resource that had to be managed with ruthless efficiency.
As the second herd, a mirror image of the first in its fury and power, thundered across the savanna, he implemented the tactical adjustments he had formulated just moments before.
"Iffrit, no firewall!" His mental command was a blade of pure, strategic clarity. "Your raw power is our greatest asset, but static defenses are a luxury we can no longer afford. I want targeted strikes. I want you to think like an artillery piece, not a fortress wall. Use your flames to create chaos, not barriers. Break their charge before it forms."
A wave of guttural, intelligent understanding, mixed with a grudging respect for the cold logic of the new strategy, flooded the psychic link from his fire demon. Less wall, more cannon. The logic is sound. It will be done.
"Fang Fairy!" Lloyd's second command was equally precise, a counterpoint of cool, ethereal control to Iffrit's brute force. "Area denial. I need you to make the ground itself our ally. Forget precision strikes on their eyes for now; it requires too much focus. I want you to electrify pools of ground, create zones of pain that will shatter their momentum and force them to maneuver into our kill zones. I want a web of storms."
A web of storms, she replied, her thought a cool, elegant, and perfectly descriptive concept. Their rage is a current. I will build the dams to redirect it. As you command.
With his two spirits aligned to the new doctrine, the engagement began.
The herd thundered closer. This time, Iffrit didn't wait for them to reach a designated line. He took a deep, shuddering breath, his magma-plate chest expanding like a bellows. Then, with a series of powerful, guttural roars, he unleashed a torrent of fire, not as a solid wall, but as a volley of five massive, roaring fireballs. They soared in high, graceful arcs, trailing plumes of black smoke like demonic artillery shells, and crashed into the charging herd with devastating effect.
The explosions were not as instantly lethal as the firewall, but they were infinitely more disruptive. One fireball detonated directly in the middle of the pack, the concussive blast sending two half-ton boars flying through the air like discarded toys. Another created a deep, temporary crater of molten earth, forcing the beasts behind it to swerve violently, their charge breaking as they collided with their neighbors. The single, unified wave of the stampede was instantly shattered into a series of panicked, fragmented, and disorganized movements.
This was the chaos he wanted.
Simultaneously, Fang Fairy executed her part of the plan. She zipped across the battlefield at low altitude, a blur of silver and azure light, her hands trailing arcs of crackling electricity. She didn't strike the boars directly. She struck the dry, grassy earth in their path. Large, circular patches of the savanna sizzled and popped, the ground itself now glowing with a visible, dangerous blue energy. She was weaving a minefield of pure electricity, a series of traps laid with supernatural speed.
The boars, their simple minds still driven by a singular, aggressive rage, ran headlong into these electrified zones. The moment their heavy hooves touched the charged ground, they were hit with a massive, paralyzing jolt of high-voltage current. It wasn't enough to kill them, but it was more than enough to inflict excruciating pain. They squealed, their powerful leg muscles seizing in violent spasms, their thunderous charges collapsing into uncontrolled, pathetic stumbles.
The result was a masterpiece of tactical battlefield control. The herd was scattered, burned, disoriented, and being actively funneled into zones of agonizing pain. Their greatest weapon—their unified, unstoppable charge—had been rendered utterly impotent before they had even gotten within fifty yards of Lloyd.
This was the new strategy. Not annihilation, but control. Not overwhelming force, but superior tactical design. It was far more energy-efficient for his spirits, and infinitely more elegant.
Lloyd watched the chaos unfold with the cool, detached satisfaction of a master puppeteer pulling the strings of his divine marionettes. His spirits were no longer just his swords and shields; they were extensions of his strategic will, actively reshaping the very terrain of the battlefield to his precise specifications.
Now, with the enemy broken and confused, it was his turn to enter the stage. The conductor was ready to bring the symphony to its bloody crescendo.
With the battlefield perfectly prepped, a chaotic arena of his own design, Lloyd made his move. He didn't charge into the thickest part of the melee. That was Iffrit's domain. Instead, he became a ghost, a predator hunting on the periphery. He picked his targets with the cold, calculating precision of a surgeon identifying a tumor to be excised.
His eyes locked onto a massive boar that was flailing on the ground, its body still twitching from the lingering effects of one of Fang Fairy's electrical fields. It was exposed, vulnerable, and a prime target.
His Void power, the B-Rank Steel Blood, answered his call. But this time, he didn't manifest his signature assassin's chains. That was a tool for binding, for control. He needed something faster, more direct. He focused his will, and a single, thick, three-foot-long spike of polished, dark steel materialized in his hand. It was perfectly balanced, its point honed to a razor's edge. A short spear. A javelin.
He didn't throw it. He launched it.
With a powerful, focused pulse of his kinetic Void power, the steel spike shot from his hand. There was no sound, only a faint distortion in the air as it accelerated to a speed that made it a near-invisible blur. It crossed the thirty yards to its target in an instant and struck the downed boar in the thick, armored plate of its skull.
The sound was like a boulder being split by a blacksmith's hammer. The B-Rank steel, propelled by his will, proved superior to the beast's natural armor. The spike punched through the bone plate and buried itself deep in the creature's brain. The boar's flailing ceased instantly. It was dead before its nervous system could even register the killing blow.
Lloyd didn't pause to admire his handiwork. He was already forming another spike in his hand, his eyes scanning for the next target of opportunity.