Alec could tell he had been underestimated simply because he was only a Tier 6 mage, he was certain of one thing, if not for the fact that he was the lord of the settlement, they wouldn’t have sent as many as five after him.

Even so, he had to admit he was genuinely surprised by the Stalker Zergs, their camouflage had reached the point of true invisibility.

But that didn’t mean he would show them any mercy, the moment his left hand drew the Bone Katana from its scabbard, he raised it toward his left side though not the entire length of his weapon, just enough to defend himself as a loud clang rang out.

The body of the Stalker Zerg that had just tried to sneak attacked him instantly came into view the moment the strike landed, its face carrying clear surprise, as if it had never expected something like this to happen.

Its body structure resembled that of an Arachne, not exactly the same, but close enough, the upper half had a humanoid form, while the lower half was far more insectoid, supported by numerous blade-like legs.

The other four stalled for a moment still in camouflage, as they were trying to process whether Alec had truly predicted that attack or if it had merely been luck, but while they hesitated, Alec did not.

He raised his right hand, conjured a short sword of earth, and drove it straight into the neck of the Zerg before him, leaving it buried there. Alec killed it without the slightest hesitation as dark purple blood splashed across him.

He didn’t care.

Instead, he twisted sharply, dragging the Bone Katana with him as he swung it out like he was deflecting another incoming strike. And, a split second later, a loud clang echoed through the air as the body of another Zerg—whose attack he had just intercepted—was sent flying backward by the force of Alec’s blade.

At that point, the remaining three dropped their camouflage and revealed themselves. They had already come to one conclusion, Alec could truly see them, and keeping up their invisibility was nothing but a useless waste of energy, even Alec deactivated his energy eyes as of that moment.

“Good. I can see you insects clearly now,” Alec said as he raised his free right hand, as he was manipulating the earth element in the ground, and small shards of rock began to levitate into the air around him, hovering in a loose circle.

Then, with a single hand sign from his right hand, the shards started rotating in midair, their forms being reconstructed in real time until each one sharpened into a spearhead.

“Kill him,” one of the Stalker Zergs said, trying hard to force out human speech without slipping into a screech, seeing that Alec became even more certain that these ones had already consumed humans before.

Perhaps not enough to master proper speech, but enough to show why they were far more cunning than the average Zerg, even so, Alec had already stopped rating them highly.

The moment he thrust out his right hand, the earth shards shot forward, they were meant to act as a distraction, but one Stalker Zerg at the front had been trying to break through toward Alec before the others.

Instead, it became the one that suffered the most, the creature took the full brunt of the attack and learned the hard way never to underestimate simple rocks. Its body was pierced from all sides as the sharpened shards tore through it like it wasn’t even there before continuing toward the ones behind it.

The Stalkers at the back did not suffer nearly as badly, because much of the force behind the earth shards had already been reduced after passing through the body of the one in front, the first Stalker was left looking like a leaking corpse, with small holes all over its body as green blood poured from every wound.

Sling...

A metallic sound rang out, like metal punching through metal, all of them looked up at once, trying to understand what had gone wrong, that was when they saw it, the sharp end of the bone blade jutting out from the back of their companion’s head.

And at that exact same moment, another bang sounded out, one of them suddenly felt danger closing in, though it tried to turn—

However, it still wasn’t able to avoid the attack aimed at it. An arrow coated in Frost Qi pierced straight through its head, sending its body flying outside the gate and back toward the lesser-ranked Zergs below.

That left only two Stalker Zerg remaining in the air with him, before the one closest to Alec could escape, Alec retracted his sword, causing the corpse of the dead Zerg to drop right on top of his floating cube down.

“Convert,” Alec said immediately.

The body broke apart into fragments of energy and was absorbed, and the sight of that made the two remaining Stalker Zergs decide to go all out, they dashed at him together, one of them thrusting its right hand forward as it transformed mid-motion into a metallic blade.

It was inverted, but from the vicious gleam shining off it, Alec could tell it would do the job without any trouble, in response to that, Alec pushed out the Bone Katana he was holding in an inverse grip with his right hand.

With just a slight shift after the blade made contact with the Zerg’s metallic arm-blade, he redirected its path, allowing it to do no more than graze past his right shoulder.

Alec groaned lightly as he felt a poisonous substance trying to seep into him even after he had coated his body with Qi.

From the gruesome creature’s expression, he could tell it was smiling because it had managed to cut him. However, Alec wasn’t overly bothered by poison. He still had high-rank detox pills refined from zombie corpses, so he pressed on without hesitation.

The moment he got close enough to the Zerg’s neck, Alec released the blade from his right hand, but before the katana could fall, his left hand caught it and instantly swung it to the left, deflecting the sneak attack of the second Zerg that had attacked him from the side.

Boom!

The Amazon Archer Queen fired another arrow to support Alec, but this time the second Stalker Zerg tilted to the side, giving up on performing a combo attack on Alec and narrowly avoiding the arrow.

It had clearly adapted that evasive movement after seeing how pitifully the last one that took her arrow head-on had died, though it managed to dodge, a massive hole was still torn through its shoulder as the arrow blast ripped away a large chunk of its flesh, freezing the open flesh in the process.

Continuing his assault, Alec’s right hand shot forward and gripped the other Stalker Zerg, interlocked with him by the neck as he cast a spell.

[> Mid Tier Spell - Ignite. <]

The moment the spell was cast, black flames burst from Alec’s hand and engulfed the Zerg’s neck, it screamed and screamed in pain, but in the end, it was consumed by the Hell flames and died.

As for the last Zerg, it was still groaning in pain of not feeling its arm that had been shot when Alec blurred past it, his sword stretched outward, once he was past it, he spun the Bone Katana through the air before driving it backwards and straight into the beast’s spine without even turning back.

“Absorb,” Alec said.

As the Zerg’s head was falling down its neck behind him, the body also immediately began to shrink, while his bone weapon pierced deep into it turned more robust and took on a crystalline sheen.

By the time the Bone Katana was done draining the Zerg, all that remained was its skin. Alec pulled the blade letting the skin fall free, and now the bone weapon now looked more like an odachi than a katana because of its increased length.

Without wasting time, he compressed the weapon, reshaping it back into a katana, but from that compression, a second bone blade was born, a wakizashi.

The same hue. The same durability as the first, completely beautiful as Alec held it in his left hand.