Defiance of the Fall

Zac moved through the forest with determination . He felt that he couldn’t look around for information or clues anymore . He simply couldn’t find the last Herald , and he was making no headway regarding the General either .

The general was likely holed up in the city , and the last herald either stayed in the cave or in the city as well . He had traversed the whole island while grinding for his quest skills , and hadn’t even seen a trace of the alpha beast . The city and the cave were the last two options that he could come up with .

He needed to progress his quests , and the monkey mountain was the only way he could as he saw it . The other option was entering the cave , but he felt it was too risky for now . There was a lot of foot traffic to and from that cave , and it seemed they placed great importance on it . He had no idea of the topography inside either , meaning he might be stuck in a large cave with no other exits .

The mountain was a safer bet . While it was somewhat close to demon activity , the cave was located at the foot of the mountain towards the southeast . If he kept his activities to the western part and the central area of the mountain he should be able to act unconstrained without any demons noticing . That was as long as another war party didn’t happen upon him of course .

But the mountain sported a complicated terrain with a multitude of outcroppings , caves , and paths , making it convenient to escape even if he was found out .

He soon arrived at the mountain and stealthily started making his way forward , looking for targets . He was planning on thinning the herd for a few days while looking for the monkey king . Since the stone monkeys had a strong sense of camaraderie he was afraid that the monkey Herald would be able to summon hundreds of monkeys with a shout .

But if those animals were already dead he’d be able to fight the boss without any interruptions . He had already seen that no reinforcements came through the crystal , so every monkey he killed was one less to worry about in the future .

There were a lot of monkeys in the mountain , but nowhere near the seemingly endless amount of barghest that were skulking in the forest . He soon found a group of roughly 50 monkeys that sat huddled together and seemed to be sunbathing . They were completely immobile and staring up at the sky . It was a group like this that had almost ended Zac’s life just days before .

Zac didn't prepare any tricks or traps for this fight , and after a quick survey to make sure not another group was in the vicinity , he charged into the pack . He charged up Chop] through the fractal in his hand to the limit of what he could control , and with a great arc decimated three monkeys with one swing . Apart from being a good skill for surprise attacks , it also was excellent when fighting large groups of weaker prey .

Between the haft and the elongated blade of his skill he had a far greater reach compared to a normal axe wielder , and everything within two and a half meters of him was a zone of death . Enraged screams erupted from the pack of monkeys , and they started to frenziedly throw themselves at him .

This time he wasn’t in as dire straits as the last . His strength and endurance had increased considerably , and the skills increased his efficiency against large packs of enemies . Last time he often wasn’t able to completely kill a monkey with a swing , only managing to hurt or maim it . But with Axe Mastery] he learned better ways to handle his weapon , and with Chop] he managed to hit more targets at once .

He was like a harvester cutting down his crops , as with every swing a few monkeys perished . The rock plating on their bodies offered almost no protection against Zac’s inhumanly powerful swings , and rock chips and body parts kept flying in all directions .

The battle only lasted for a minute but almost every monkey died . Terrified by the onslaught some of the smarter monkeys had desperately fled when Zac had killed half of the pack . Zac couldn’t be bothered with hunting them down , as he was quite exhausted and panting . The fight had been fast , but it also had been furious . Keeping his Chop] skill active at maximum capacity for a whole minute also drained him of a lot of his cosmic energy .

Exhausting himself had been worth it though , as the fight gave him another level . Of course , he was quite close to leveling up already before the battle . Zac pulled up his status screen to allocate his points while he moved away from the battle .

He quickly allocated 2 points in endurance and 1 in strength , but as he was about to close the status screen he noticed that all his stats improved again after the allocation . He quickly stopped and took another look to see what changed .

Name

Zachary Atwood

Level

29

Class

Hatchetman (F)

Race

Human (F)

Alignment

Human (Earth)

Titles