Puchu.

  Kane’s dagger pierced precisely through the eye socket of a [ Phase-Rat ]. With a twist of his wrist, he turned its brain to pulp.

  This was the seventh one he had hunted on the third day.

  The entire process was clean and efficient; his battered [ Basilisk Stone Armor ] didn't even catch a stray splash of mud.

  He processed the materials with an expressionless face and waited in silence.

  One second.

  Two seconds.

  Ten seconds.

  The corpse turned cold. Nothing happened.

  Kane withdrew his gaze without a word and stuffed the materials into his pouch.

  As he turned to leave, the knuckles on his right hand—still gripping the dagger—turned white from the sheer force of his grip.

  Seven rats. No exceptions.

  This method of gaining strength, relying entirely on luck, caused a cold irritability to rise in his chest.

  But he had no time for complaints. He simply became more silent, searching for his next target.

  He firmly believed that if he killed enough of them, eventually, one would vomit up the power he craved.

  Until the fourth day.

  A massive, almost exaggerated silhouette slowly paced out from behind the wreckage of a giant, abandoned pumping station.

  It was a titan, nearly twice the size of a standard [ Phase-Rat ].

  Its fur was coarse and covered in hideous scars, each one telling a story of bloody slaughter.

  Those crimson pupils lacked the pure, mindless savagery of its kin; instead, they held a settled, cunning intelligence. It was evaluating. It was calculating.

  The [ Phase-Rat King ].

  Kane’s nerves tightened to their absolute limit.

  This creature had evolved to a higher tier. It was nothing like its kin who hunted by simple instinct.

  He lowered his body, submerging himself deep in the mire. Reducing his breathing to the barest minimum, he watched the King's every move with a death-grip focus.

  The Rat King seemed to sense the scrutiny. It scanned its surroundings alertly before its gaze locked precisely onto the direction where Kane was hidden.

  "Skreeeeee—!"

  With a sharp, warning hiss, the Rat King’s hind legs exploded with power. It launched itself from the station wreckage, transforming into a black blur as it lunged at Kane!

  This battle was more dangerous than any he had faced before.

  The Rat King’s speed and strength were overwhelming, and its mastery of the mid-air redirection was flawless.

  It even knew how to kick up massive sprays of muck to interfere with Kane’s vision and balance.

  Clang! Clang! Clang!

  The [ Basilisk Stone Armor ] emitted a series of ear-piercing screeches under the repeated impacts. The cracks and dents on the scales became increasingly dense.

  Kane was forced to roll and maneuver through the bog, desperately searching for a fleeting opening.

  His dagger struck the Rat King’s toughened hide again and again, sending sparks flying, but failed to inflict a fatal wound.

  The Rat King grew more ferocious, using its massive head as a battering ram in repeated charges. Its glinting incisors were determined to shred Kane into pieces.

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  During one life-or-death roll, Kane was half a beat slow.

  The Rat King seized the opportunity. Its razor-sharp teeth bit clean through his shoulder.

  "Sss!"

  The agony of tearing flesh and bone was like a steel needle driven into his marrow!

  The sensation in his right arm vanished instantly, replaced only by a surge of hot blood that rapidly dyed his dark green armor red.

  Kane didn't retreat.

  The intense pain caused his vision to dim in waves, but his consciousness was tempered to a razor's edge.

  He slammed his teeth together and, following the force of the creature's bite, threw his entire body weight forward!

  This was his only chance!

  Using that momentum, he locked his body against the Rat King's neck. The massive impact caused even the Rat King to stiffen for a fraction of a second.

  Now!

  Ignoring the soul-piercing agony in his shoulder, Kane gripped the dagger with his right hand. From an impossibly cunning angle, he drove it upward through the Rat King's soft underjaw, skewering its brain!

  "Skreeeeee—!!!"

  A shriek so shrill it sounded distorted erupted from the depths of the Rat King's throat!

  Its massive body thrashed and spasmed violently in the mire. The terrifying strength of the beast sent Kane’s entire body airborne.

  But Kane didn't let go.

  He gripped the dagger with a death-clutch, feeling the viscous resistance as the blade churned through warm brain matter, pouring death into the creature.

  The struggle gradually subsided.

  The Rat King's gargantuan frame crashed down, sending a geyser of filth into the air.

  Those cunning crimson eyes lost every spark of light.

  Kane slid off the corpse like a pile of wet clay, collapsing into the mud. His chest heaved violently as he gasped for air.

  The wound on his shoulder had gone numb, but his gaze remained pinned to the Rat King's body.

  The moment the Rat King died, a bright, green [ Essence Orb ]—brighter than any he had ever seen—slowly emerged from its heart.

  It radiated a soft halo. In this place of stench and gore, it looked impossibly sacred, pulsing with the breath of life.

  Kane’s heart constricted.

  A surge of wild joy, suppressed for four days, transformed into an electric current that surged through his entire being!

  It's here!

  The [ Five-Star Soul Seal ] on his right palm burned white-hot, hungrily craving that sphere of light.

  He reached out a blood-stained hand with predatory greed and pressed it against the green glow.

  The moment the orb merged into his palm like liquid mercury, a suppressed groan escaped Kane’s throat.

  A massive, wild torrent of information smashed through the levees of his reason, flooding into his mind!

  In the next second, a tearing pain exploded from deep within the marrow of his legs!

  Kane curled into a ball on the ground, unable to control himself. He could clearly feel his leg bones being forcibly stretched and compressed by an invisible force. His knee and ankle joints emitted sharp cracks as they reorganized into a structure better suited for explosive power and leaping.

  The tendons in his thighs and waist were twisted into thick steel cables, brimming with the sensation of explosive strength.

  The Rat King’s lifelong memories of jumping flashed frantically through his mind:

  A desperate leap for survival when floodwaters drowned the tunnels;

  The madness of kicking off vertical rock faces to escape predators at a cliff's edge;

  The bloody images of using hind legs to kick and bite rivals for the throne in cramped spaces...

  Every jump was saturated with the desire for survival and an all-consuming, reckless fury.

  His soles became hyper-sensitive, capable of detecting every microscopic undulation in the mud. A primal instinct to crouch, coil, and erupt in violence surged from the base of his spine. He subconsciously ground his molars, an uncontrollable low growl—a mix of agony and exhilaration—escaping his throat.

  Suddenly, he looked up at a derelict concrete wall not far away. In his eyes, that vertical surface was no longer an obstacle.

  It was a foothold.

  Instinctively, he knew how to spring, how to twist his body in mid-air, and how to detonate the power in his core and legs for a second time to complete that inconceivable mid-air leap. The sensation was crystalline, as if he had rehearsed it a thousand times in his very bones.

  Kane surged to his feet from the mire, the stabbing pain in his shoulder seemingly suppressed by this newborn strength. He stared at his blood-stained right palm; the glow of the [ Five-Star Soul Seal ] flickered beneath the grime.

  Closing his eyes, he felt the restless, burgeoning power in his legs, desperate to break its shackles. In the next heartbeat, his eyes snapped open, his gaze locking onto a relatively flat stretch of mud ahead like a loosed arrow.

  He took a sharp breath and lunged forward!

  His body shot out like a bolt from a bow, tracing an arc through the air. As he began to descend, that strange instinct flooded his mind. His core tightened, and his toes kicked out against the empty air!

  Swish!

  A faint whistle of displaced air sounded.

  His body defied gravity, rising higher as he propelled himself forward another significant distance before his feet hit the ground in a stable landing.

  Success.

  The sensation of generating force in mid-air was both familiar and foreign, as if this power had always belonged to him and had only been awakened today. A flicker of cold excitement appeared on Kane’s face.

  This was the power that would keep him alive.

  With [ Aerial Step ], he now held a crucial trump card, whether for hunting or for flight.

  Then, a sudden thought flashed through his mind...

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