Chapter 76: Earth Armour

A wild boar bolted through the damp beds of the ancient forest floor. Its massive frame was covered in thick, granite-like plates of earth-hardened mud that cracked with green mana every time its heavy hooves slammed into the soil.

Two jagged, moss-covered tusks protruded from its lower jaw, glowing with a faint elemental light as it desperately plowed through the dense undergrowth. The beast ran with a frantic, explosive speed, its chest heaving like something truly horrible was chasing it.

A single, thin red thread rushed through the air directly behind its heels. The boar tried to escape the pursuit by rapidly changing directions, veering sharply behind massive oak trunks and leaping over rotting logs.

But every single time its heavy body shifted course, the crimson thread altered its trajectory instantly, flowing through the misty air like a sentient, hungry tentacle.

If a trained scout looked closely at the terrain, they would notice a terrifying pattern in the beast’s flight. The boar was not running away from the danger at all; it was running in a perfect, shrinking circle, moving along the exact same gnarled paths it had trodden minutes before.

The total diameter of this circular arena was decreasing by the second. Every single outer escape route had already been thoroughly netted by high-tension, blood-red threads that hissed faintly whenever they touched the wild foliage.

The most horrifying aspect of the scene was the absolute calculation behind the pursuit. Whatever entity was currently chasing this monster had possessed countless opportunities to catch it within the first three strides.

Yet, it seemed to actively enjoy the methodical parameters of the hunt, deliberately cornering the poor beast into a smaller and smaller boundary, systematically stopping its every movement until it had no psychological way out.

The circle finally collapsed to a mere five feet.

The iron-furred boar let out a panicked, deafening cry that echoed violently against the thick canopy as the crimson threads dropped from the overhanging branches, completely wrapping around its trembling torso.

The moment the sticky fibers secured their grip, her newly synthesized acid began to leak from the silk. The volatile substance hissed, eating through the granite-like plating and the thick hide within a single heartbeat, slowly decomposing the living flesh to absolutely nothing but a pool of high-energy soup.

A huge spider the size of an infantry elephant walked out from the dense web of threads, its eight jointed legs clicking lightly against the damp gravel as it glanced down at the remains of the last earth boar in the immediate surroundings.

Ayla yawned inwardly with a slight sense of boredom. Hunting the earth type boars finally allowed her to obtain a C quality trait.

[Earth Armor: Rare-C+]

She opened her internal status screen to log the cumulative results of her multi-hour feast. The sparse interface materialized within her vision, displaying the updated metrics of her temporary vessel.

[Current Status]

Identity: Mimic Slime (Matriarch Faction)

Role: [Bystander]

Rank: Bronze (6.3%)

Active Traits: Perfect Assimilation, Corrosive Abyssal Fluid (Common-A), Earth Armor (Rare-C+)

She had killed over hundreds of boars, ranging from those with common quality traits to Rare type, yet the percentage increase of her Bronze rank was considerably lower for the kills.

Ayla noticed the exp gained from killing same type monsters decreased over time, irrespective of their traits or the percentage of their Bronze core.

She didn’t know the reason for it. If Kenji was here, he would’ve explained the reason for it.

Ayla missed Kenji, his smell and touch. However, going back to find him would stall her progress. She knew Kenji had an important role in this Spire Event. She couldn’t disrupt him. He would seek her when he needed.

Ayla knew ’act hard to get’ from Amanda’s memories.

The best way to make Kenji understand she was the mate for him was denying the access of herself to him by distancing from him. Though the chances of Ayla keeping this principle were less because she was already dying to see him.

Ayla forcefully suppressed her urges, turning her attention to the northern horizon. The thick mist of the forest was beginning to clear, even from here the majestic white walls of the Supreme Beast Academy could be seen. Kenji was somewhere there...

She was turning around to leave when a sudden notification glared in her eyes.

[Do you want to regress together with Kenji?]

[Yes/No]

The resolve she tried her best to form seemed to be shattering inside her mind.....

Different from Ayla’s predatory feast in the quiet wilderness, Kenji’s situation inside the majestic white walls of the floating city was entirely different.

Getting the special Protagonist role did not acquire him any immediate, overwhelming strength. Rather, the system logic seemed to turn him into a walking target for the entire academy population.

When he had been tested at the registration gates earlier that morning, his soul power had measured as a perfect zero. In a world completely built around the rules of beast taming, a zero rating meant he could not even summon an ordinary, baseline monster.

That evaluation literally made him a historical cripple within the number one academy of Beast Masters.

His hidden trait did not grant him any raw battle powers either. But Kenji was a seasoned Crusader. If he simply used his earth-honed martial arts and the pure energy of his core bone fragment, he could easily fight and kill anyone below the Silver rank even without a battle trait.

However, exposing the power of the bone fragment would instantly cause his true identity to be exposed to the surrounding crowd.

The transmigrated challengers from Earth had a strict rule: they could never reveal they were intruders from another world. Doing so would violate the core parameters of the Spire and eliminate themselves from the simulation entirely.

So currently, he could only rely on his pure martial arts techniques.

Still, the average first-year students were not an opponent to him in a fair fistfight. But his role acted like a powerful magnet attracting loose metals.

He continuously found himself being targeted by almost every aggressive student from every single year, all of them looking for a weak slum-born cripple to trample for easy merit points.

He had been cornered behind the training grounds by a group of senior enforcers. Currently laying face down in a deep, mud-pitted hole, his physical condition was entirely tattered. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

His tattered ribs were particularly bent inwardly from a heavy earth-type stomp, the jagged bone fragments puncturing his lungs with every small gasp. A thick, suffocating pool of blood welled up in his throat, making it impossible to circulate air.

The pain was sharp and cold, a familiar sensation of mortality that he had tasted in previous loops. He could feel his heart slowing down against the cold mud.

His fading consciousness finally went dark as the red notification screens flared against his eyes.

[You have been slain.]

[Ayla has rejected your regression request...]

Hearing her familiar name within the cold system text, a peaceful smile appeared on his bruised face before his mind slipped into the void.

The exact same emotion could not be said for the owner of that name. Miles away at the edge of the forest, the small blue slime was now literally fuming, her dense membrane vibrating with an explosive, terrifying rage.