Chapter 395
Several possible scenarios for escaping his predicament flashed through his mind. However, there was no telling whether any of them would work quickly enough to free him before the bladecrawler struck again. So, instead of trying to extricate himself from this fix alone, he chose to do something else entirely.
Just as the bladecrawler swung its arm-blade upward, poised to deliver a devastating follow-up attack, two wingclaws descended from the skies. One of them pounced onto the monster’s back, its powerful talons sinking into the bladecrawler’s shoulder, leaving long, deep gashes.
Simultaneously, the second wingclaw latched onto the side of the monster’s neck. With a vicious yank, it tore away a huge chunk of flesh, causing the monster to emit a guttural roar of anger and surprise.
The bladecrawler wasn’t happy about this turn of events. It seemed to momentarily forget about Jake in its fury. With a powerful wrenching motion, it pulled its arm-blade free from Jake’s body with a sickening crunch.
He immediately felt mana spill from the vicious gash across his shoulder, a blow that had come perilously close to cleaving him in two. But his Enhanced Regeneration had already surged to life, stitching torn strands of flesh to seal the injury.
While the bladecrawler was engaged in a fierce fight with two of his wingclaws, he seized the opportunity to morph his free arm into a chainsaw. He then drove the whirring blade into the crossmaw’s thick neck. The chainsaw’s teeth gnawed through the tough flesh with a grinding noise, sending sparks flying.
Within moments, the crossmaw’s head was severed from its body. Almost immediately, the monster began to disintegrate, turning into a fine, swirling dust that was carried away by the wind.
After that, Jake mentally instructed his crawlers and the remaining wingclaws to attack the other ravaregs, giving himself a moment of respite to let his body heal.
Wherever he went, a small group of crawlers and wingclaws followed at his side. The practice had long since become second nature. Experience had taught him that the ravagers were dangerous foes, and with ordinary survivors growing stronger by the day, it seemed wise to keep reliable reinforcements close at hand.
Most of the time, when he engaged in a fight with the ravagespawn, he instructed his minions to keep their distance and not engage unless told otherwise. The reason for this was something he had learned a long time ago: their kills granted him no experience whatsoever.
While some of his creatures provided great help in combat and others could gather various resources for him, slaying mutants brought no reward for either him or his minions. If a creature under his command claimed the kill, the precious experience was lost forever.
His minions could gather valuable resources to expand his lair and breed new horrors, but their usefulness had limits. If the kills they made granted him experience, he could have spent his days lounging in one of his lairs, idly twiddling his thumbs while his monsters did everything for him, bringing in resources and earning experience on his behalf.
Unfortunately, the system didn’t work that way. To grow stronger and level up, the kills had to be his. So, while he always took a small contingent of monsters wherever he went, he brought them along not to fight in his stead, but to step in when battle became overwhelming, as they had moments ago, when he’d narrowly escaped a dangerous predicament.
As his body knit itself back together, he swept his gaze across the battlefield. Crawlers and wingclaws clashed fiercely with the relentless ravagespawn, killing them in droves. Yet all the experience points that could have been gained from their deaths vanished into the void.
It would have been a shame if the nest had a limited number of monsters to produce. But instead, it was churning out monsters faster and faster, with no hint of ever stopping producing them.
Much of his mana had spilled from the wound when it had been open, and even more had been consumed by his body’s accelerated regeneration. Now his reserves were far lower than before.
Still, he figured his body had enough mana to carry him through until he leveled up. After that, he planned to refill his mana reserves somewhere. Now that he had multiple methods of restoring mana at his disposal, scarcity was no longer a threat.
He took another look around. The two wingclaws he had instructed to attack the bladecrawler had already dealt with the monster. He had wanted to kill it himself to see how much experience he could gain from it. Still, it was of little concern. The nest would surely produce more of its kind… perhaps even before this particular fight was over.
With a thought, he ordered his minions to fall back but stay close enough so that they could re-enter the fray at his signal if necessary. Then, morphing his hands into his favored weapons, he dashed forward, closing the distance to meet the advancing ravagespawn head-on.
For the next couple of hours, he kept fighting the ravagers the nest was spawning. It mostly produced allseers, occasionally interspersing them with ironlashes and crossmaws. It had yet to create another bladecrawler, though.
This type of ravagespawn was definitely much tougher than the other three known types, and Jake couldn’t help but wonder if it was harder for the nest to create this particular monster. Perhaps it could only produce one once in a while, or maybe it required some specific, rare resources that the nest currently lacked.
Jake knew little to nothing about the Ravage Contamination at that point, so all he could do was speculate.
In that battle, he mostly used his chainsaws. One of the upgrades he had previously acquired for this combat ability was Chain Reaction, and it proved extremely useful when dealing with weaker types of monsters.
Once activated, the upgrade increased the damage of his attacks for a brief amount of time, and every consecutive kill with the chainsaws extended and intensified that boost, stacking higher with each kill. At full power, his chainsaws could easily rip through even powerful mutants such as the ironlash, bringing them down with just two or three well‑placed slashes.
At some point, the notification he had been waiting for finally flashed through his mind.
Level Up. 165 → 166
+5 SP
XP: 4,125 / 183,785
Now, it was finally time to retreat and acquire some new skills with the five skill points he had just earned. He sprinted away from the ravagespawn. They tried to chase him at first but stopped once he had put roughly thirty yards between himself and their nest, unwilling to stray too far from it.
His loyal minions followed closely behind, wingclaws soaring through the air on beating wings and crawlers skittering across the buildings’ walls, easily crossing the gaps between structures with powerful jumps.
Jake scaled the nearest structure all the way to its roof. There, under the open sky, he scanned the surroundings to make sure he was alone. Only then did he close his eyes, summoning the familiar glow of the status menu into his mind.