Defiance of the Fall

Born for Carnage , Ultimate Reaper , Luck of the Draw , Giantsbane , Disciple of David , Overpowered , Slayer of Leviathans , Adventurer , Demon Slayer I , Full of Class , Rarified Being , Trailblazer , Child of Dao , The Big 500

Dao

Seed of Heaviness - Early

Strength

145

Dexterity

59

Endurance

84

Vitality

69

Intelligence

49

Wisdom

49

Luck

67

Free Points

0

Nexus Coins

157096

He had once more gained another title , this one called The Big 500 . He focused on it and a prompt explaining the title appeared .

The Big 500 : First in world to reach 500 total attributes . All stats +2]

And the strong get stronger’ Zac thought wryly . It seemed somewhat unfair that the System rewarded those with the most attributes with even more attributes , but no one said that the System was fair .

Just look at how it sent the talented people to some tutorial , deeming the rest as trash and leaving them here to fend for themselves .

It wasn’t a large boost , but it did cheer Zac up after the Child of Dao title . It also reminded him of his strong points . He might not be as smart and talented as others , and he might not be able to cultivate . But even if the cultivators came back with a bunch of skills and knowledge he could still beat them up with his pile of attributes if needed .

He found a secluded spot between a mountain wall and some bushes and sat down to recuperate . With the assistance of the mother-daughter array and a Nexus Crystal it only took him 45 minutes to restore his cosmic energy to its peak . He felt the pinch when using a crystal for recuperation instead of cultivation , but he didn’t want to waste any time so close to enemy territory . A crystal lasted for roughly 2 hours , so his reserve of crystals would be enough to keep a breakneck grinding pace for weeks if needed .

As soon as he was topped off on energy he kept looking for the next group . He didn’t dare look while recuperating , as he never knew when he’d be stuck in an avalanche of monkeys . Soon he found another gathering of the beasts , this one slightly larger than the last . He didn’t know if these groupings were families or packs , but he was thankful that they were spaced out a bit in this manner .

After another recon of the surroundings , he once again started a slaughter . There was not much of a difference between this fight and the last , and it soon ended . He was a bit worse for the wear , but blunt hits from their stone fists did not impact his body overly much . He had over 80 endurance by now , and he gauged the monkey’s strength to be somewhere in the 60’s . They still hurt , but it would take some while for him to take actual damage .

The only real dangers the monkeys could muster up was either from their sharp teeth or from simply tiring him to death with numbers . But with the reach of his weapon infused with Chop] no monkey maw really managed to get close to him , and he carefully checked the surroundings before every fight for hidden backups .

Zac kept this rotation between fighting and resting going , slowly making his way toward the central area of the mountains . Zac figured the Herald should be somewhere on one of the peaks . Unfortunately , the mountain had a number of peaks rather than just one , so he was planning on checking them one by one , and killing the monkeys in-between .

Zac had already known grinding monkeys would be lucrative as each monkey gave almost as much cosmic energy and Nexus Coins as four barghest . But with his improved stats and skills , his grind speed skyrocketed , shocking even himself . As the suns set Zac finished up his last battle for the day , which had actually rewarded him a second level , bringing him to level 30 .

Done with the fighting for now he retreated to a small cave he found while traversing the mountain paths . It was secluded and seemed to have once housed a bear or some similar animal from the shed fur in the corners . But from the dust gathered it seemed that no one had been here for weeks .

Zac guessed that this cave was moved here with its inhabitant from wherever this mountain came from , and that the stone monkeys killed the bear when it ventured out for food .

The cave wasn’t huge but provided Zac with sufficient space to practice using the Axe Mastery] guidance system before he finally sat down and rested . He also spent over an hour on trying to gain another Dao seed . He was trying to actualize the other aspect he had sensed the strongest from his Dao vision , sharpness . If he got another Dao Seed he would gain another power-up and speed up his farming even more .

But no matter what he did or how , he couldn’t take even one step on the path . When he had tried to imagine the one for heaviness it went very smoothly , and he couldn’t quite figure out why the difference in difficulty was so huge . He could only speculate that he either simply had no talent for the Dao of Sharpness , or that the System restricted Dao seeds somehow .