Chapter 132: Blood Beetles
Rebecca and Tyler walked through the forest, jumping over exposed roots and moving between the thick vines that hung across their path. Tyler stayed one step ahead as he followed the necklace, his attention fixed on wherever it was leading him. Rebecca kept her eyes moving around the trees, alert to anything that might emerge from the undergrowth.
“That slime back there. Why was it green?” Tyler asked, breaking the silence.
“It’s just how the slimes are around here. It’s probably caused by the monster zone,” she answered.
“But I thought you said there weren’t any monsters similar to those in the other base.”
Rebecca turned her head toward him, one eyebrow rising as she looked him over with genuine surprise. “Wow, so you really weren’t lying.”
Tyler glanced back at her, “Lying about what?”
“You really have only been to one base?” She stared at him for another second, as though she were trying to figure out whether he was messing with her. “But even so, it’s common knowledge that slimes are everywhere. Every monster zone has slimes. It doesn’t matter where it is.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.” Tyler redirected his gaze ahead, apparently taking the information at face value and moving on without giving it much thought.
Rebecca’s brow furrowed. Something about his response bothered her more than it should have. She studied him from the side for a moment, watching the way his attention kept drifting between the path ahead and the direction of the necklace.
“Where do you come from?” she asked.
Tyler’s body gave a subtle reaction to the question. His heart suddenly rammed against his chest, and his eyes shifted toward her.
“Where do you come from?” he asked.
Rebecca’s eyes narrowed. “Answer my question first.”
Tyler exhaled, his shoulders sinking slightly as he looked away from her again. For a moment, it seemed like he was considering whether to answer, but whatever thought passed through his mind disappeared just as quickly.
“You don’t need to know that about me.”
Rebecca stared at him, visibly irritated now. “Seriously? You can’t even say where you come from?” She shook her head slightly. “What, do you think I’m gonna go there once this is over?”
Tyler ignored here.
Rebecca waited for an answer, but he never even looked back at her. His expression remained unreadable as he continued following the necklace, leaving her words hanging behind them.
*Seriously, what’s wrong with him? He’s so stupid. He only knows how to fight, but he doesn’t know simple things that Hunters do.*
Her irritation slowly turned into something else as she watched him. She started paying closer attention to the way he moved through the forest.
Tyler was alert. His eyes shifted constantly, and whenever something caught his attention, his head turned toward it immediately. But the longer Rebecca observed him, the more she noticed that his awareness didn't resemble that of a Hunter.
He wasn't studying the environment as they moved. He wasn't looking for signs that something had passed through the area, checking the ground for tracks, or reading the trees and vines around them. His eyes simply moved until something caught his attention, and then he reacted.
Rebecca's eyes lingered on him.
*He's not even watching for anything.*
She couldn't understand it. Hunters were taught to remain cautious while moving, to notice things before they became problems. Tyler seemed to have none of that instinct. And yet he had somehow been completing quests on his own.
Her eyes narrowed slightly as she continued watching him.
*How the hell has he been doing that?*
“Woah,” Tyler said, stopping abruptly.
Rebecca looked forward, following his gaze as Tyler slowly breathed out. “What the hell is that?”
Something was slowly crawling down the trunk of a large tree Infront of them.
It was dark green and looked very similar to a cockroach, but its body was covered in a hard shell, with two long antennas extending from its head. It was enormous compared to any normal insect, measuring about half a meter wide and one meter long. Rebecca's eyes widened slightly as she took it in, but her hand was already moving toward her quiver.
She pulled out an arrow, placed it against her bow, and drew the string back in one motion before firing.
The creature suddenly pushed itself away from the tree trunk, launching its body toward the ground as the arrow flew past the spot where it had been. It missed the creature by barely an inch before embedding itself into the tree.
Its hard body struck the ground before it quickly curled itself into a ball. Then it started rolling toward them.
Its speed increased almost instantly, the large round body tearing through the forest floor as it came straight at them.
“Shit,” Rebbeca as she reached for her dagger, her eyes fixed on the approaching creature.
A few feet away from them, the Blood Beetle suddenly launched itself into the air.
Its body spread wide open.
Tyler looked heard it shriek as its limbs slowly moved in the air, stretching toward him as if the creature were just about to embrace him.
His eyes widened. He immediately lifted his leg and put all his strength into the kick, driving his boot straight into the creature's abdomen.
He heard something break beneath the sole of his boot. The Blood Beetle let out a painful shriek as the force of the kick sent it flying backward. Its body slammed into one of the trees, bounced off the trunk, and crashed onto the ground.
Rebecca had already nocked another arrow. She drew the string back as the creature struggled to roll onto its side and regain its balance. Before it could, she released the arrow, striking it directly in the abdomen.
The huge insect shrieked again, its limbs jerking wildly as its entire body convulsed against the ground. Rebecca kept her eyes on it as the movements gradually weakened, until the creature suddenly stopped.
Tyler took a step toward it. A system panel appeared above the motionless creature.
[BLOOD BEETLE: LEVEL 60]
“It’s a blood beetle,” Rebecca said, resting a hand on her waist. “We’ve stepped into their territories. If we keep going forward, we’ll run into even more of them.”
Tyler shifted his gaze from Rebecca to the pendant. It was still pointing ahead.
“We’ll just risk it. We can use them as a way to level up. Let’s go,” he said.
Rebecca looked at Tyler’s determined expression for a moment before falling into step beside him. She still couldn’t tell whether he was brave or simply careless.
She reached back and pulled another arrow from her quiver. After nocking it against her bow, she left the string loose and kept the weapon ready in her hands, her eyes moving from one tree to another as she wondered whether there were more Blood Beetles nearby.
“Found it,” Tyler said, his voice suddenly filled with excitement.
He quickened his pace, and Rebecca followed his gaze to the tree ahead. It was enormous, twice his length, with bright green leaves covering almost every branch.
“That’s what you were looking for?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Tyler reached the tree and placed a hand against its trunk. His eyes moved over the leaves, and he stared at them for a moment. “I’ve never seen it this big before,” he muttered.
All the leaves on the tree suddenly shone a bright blue before disappearing into his inventory.
Rebecca watched in awe, her eyes widening as she looked at the now-bare branches.
“You took all its leaves,” she whispered.
*Great. With this, I can make more mana potions. I wouldn’t have to worry about my mana depleting whenever I use a skill.*
Tyler then lifted a finger to his chin, his thoughts drifting back to when he had activated his Rush skill and combined it with the coat’s own Rush skill.
*The drawback was a lot more painful than I thought it would be. I really need to find another skill that doesn’t hurt me after I use it. It’s such a huge disadvantage.*
Suddenly, the pendant hanging from Tyler’s hand pulsed. He felt the small vibration against his fingers, like a heartbeat thumping once before stopping. He looked down at it and saw the pendant itself beginning to lose its shape, its surface slowly warping as if it were starting to melt and liquefy like a piece of burning plastic. Tyler stared at it, clearly caught off guard by what he was seeing, when Rebecca spoke.
“This is an incredible ability. Just where do you store these things?”
Her question pulled him from his thoughts, and the pendant immediately stopped pulsing and quickly regained its previous shape.
“Oh, these things?” Tyler said, lowering his hand as he looked at her. “I put them in a non-physical space that I call the inventory.”
“Non-physical?”
“Yeah,” Tyler said, already moving away from her. He walked toward the Blood Beetle Rebecca had killed earlier. “It’s more like some sort of digital space. I don’t think you’ll understand it even if I explain it to you.”
Tyler crouched beside the creature, then turned his head toward Rebecca when he saw the confusion on her face. “Think of it like I’m carrying an invisible bag that can put an unusual number of things inside it, except this bag never really gets that heavy, and I’m not actually carrying it.”
Rebecca’s brow furrowed as she looked at him, clearly still trying to understand what he meant.
“Yeah, I know. It doesn’t make any sense,” Tyler said, turning his attention back to the Blood Beetle.
Its shell shimmered with a faint blue light before disappearing into his inventory, leaving only the slimy, flattened carcass behind. Tyler’s nose wrinkled at the sight, and the disgust on his face was impossible to hide as he quickly stood back up.
“All right, let’s go back before it gets dark.”
“Yes, let’s go,” Rebecca said, joining him as they began walking back.
Rebecca still had plenty of questions about his ability. She kept thinking about how Tyler had been able to put the Blood Beetle’s shell into his inventory without even touching it. She knew the ability was rare. Everybody knew about it. If anyone possessed it, it had to be some sort of ultimate skill, and from everything she had heard, it mostly appeared in healers or mages.
Never assassins like him.
But Tyler had already displayed more abilities that he shouldn't have had in the first place, abilities she didn't even know existed. From what she had heard about the subspace ability, the user actually had to touch something before storing it, and there was a limit to how many items they could keep inside.
Of course, the more the person with the skill leveled up, the more items they could store in there.
But Tyler had just stored something without touching it at all.
Tyler immediately stopped and froze, staring down at the ground.
Rebecca passed him by a few steps before noticing that he was no longer beside her. She slowed to a stop and turned around, her eyes settling on him. “What?”
“Do you hear that?” Tyler said. He tilted his head slightly and focused on the sound, his expression becoming more attentive as he listened.
“Hear what?”
As soon as Rebecca finished speaking, she heard it too. Small, rapid clicks came from somewhere among the trees, as if something were lightly tapping against wood over and over again. Her eyes shifted toward the sound, and she recognized it immediately.
Any Hunter who had spent enough time hunting in this area would know that sound, but hearing it come so quickly, one click after another without pause, made her body tense. Her grip tightened around her bow, and the muscles in her legs stiffened as she listened.
“We need to get out of here. Run!” she said.
She immediately activated Archer’s Flight, and her body shot forward.
Tyler turned toward the direction of the clicking. What he saw made his eyes widen.
Blood Beetles. There were countless numbers of them coming toward him.
Some crawled down the massive trees, their dark-green shells moving between the branches and over the trunks, while most of them covered the forest floor. There were so many that the soil beneath them had almost completely disappeared. Thousands of small legs moved through the earth in a steady, flowing mass, the creatures crawling over one another like a calm sea rolling across a beach.
System panels began to manifest around them.
Tyler's eyes moved from one panel to another, but there were so many that his vision became crowded with them. Levels appeared across his sight, filling the space around the creatures until he could barely keep track of what he was looking at. He had never seen the system become so crammed and cluttered before.
His chest tightened.
*Holy shit, there’s so many of them."
He immediately bolted after Rebecca.
He activated his coat’s skill, and a burst of energy surged through him. His next step dug deep into the soil, throwing loose dirt behind him as his body was launched forward. His feet became a blur beneath him, and within moments he had caught up to Rebecca.
“Why are there so many?” Tyler asked, his voice strained as he glanced toward her.
“I don’t know. We’re not even near the boss’s territory,” Rebecca said between breaths.
Tyler looked at her again.
Her face had tightened from the effort of running, and her breathing was already growing heavier. Even the way she moved had changed. The speed she had started with was no longer there, and her steps were beginning to lose their rhythm.
Tyler glanced over his shoulder.
The Blood Beetles were still coming. Many of them had curled themselves into balls, their hard shells rolling rapidly over the ground as the mass behind them continued to crawl forward. They were a little farther away now, but there were still so many that the sight of them spreading through the forest made Tyler's stomach tighten.
He turned back toward Rebecca.
She was falling behind.
Her breathing had become rougher, and the distance between them was slowly beginning to grow as her legs struggled to keep up.
With a sudden realization, Tyler remembered that she hadn't given recovered from it her earlier. He could see it in the way she was struggling to keep up, her breathing heavier and her pace slowing more and more as the Blood Beetles continued to chase them.
Tyler stopped in front of her.
“Climb on,” he said.
“What?” Rebecca breathed, looking at him as if she hadn't heard him correctly.
“Climb on.”
Rebecca glanced behind her. The Blood Beetles were still rolling and crawling through the forest, the sound of their many legs and hard shells filling the space behind them. She looked back at Tyler, then climbed onto him.
*Won’t this just slow him down?*
The thought had barely crossed her mind when Tyler pushed forward.
He exploded into motion with all his strength, his teeth clenched behind his closed mouth as he forced his legs to move faster. Rebecca's body jerked against him from the sudden acceleration, and she quickly tightened her grip as the wind rushed past them.
Her hair whipped violently behind her, strands snapping across her face as Tyler tore through the forest at a speed she had never experienced on foot.
He was running faster than any cart she'd ever ridden. The trees seemed to rush toward them. Trunks that had been several seconds away were suddenly right in front of them, only for Tyler to twist around them at the last moment and continue forward without slowing.
Vines brushed past Rebecca's arms and shoulders as Tyler shifted his body from one side to another, constantly changing direction to avoid the trees in his path.
Rebecca's eyes widened as she looked around, struggling to take in everything that was flying past her. The forest had become a blur of green and brown, the ground beneath them passing so quickly that she could barely follow it.
She finally looked back.
The Blood Beetles were gone from sight.
Rebecca stared behind them, searching through the trees, but she couldn't see a single one. It was almost as if they had disappeared, as if the countless creatures that had been chasing them moments ago had never appeared at all.
She turned forward again. Her eyes immediately widened.
“No, no, no, turn left!” she shouted, pointing toward the path ahead.
Tyler skidded to a halt so suddenly that Rebecca nearly lurched forward. His boots dug into the damp dirt, throwing mud around his legs as he forced himself to stop. He turned left and immediately ran again without giving himself time to slow down properly.
As they disappeared deeper into the forest, Tyler's thoughts raced along with him.
*Those are a lot of monsters. Is this something that just happens here?*
He had no idea how the monsters in this zone were supposed to behave, but something about what had happened didn't sit right with him.
His eyes lowered briefly toward the pendant.
*Is it because I wanted a skill?*
He thought about the way it had pulsed after he disered to have a skill and how the Blood Beetles had suddenly appeared in such enormous numbers.
*If so, that's one hell of a crazy item.*