Having left Lilia and Blitz at the edge of the massive forest that made up the current area they were in, Marcus and Roxene headed towards the depths of the forest.
There they would be able to find stronger beasts and monsters to fight in order to increase not only their levels but also their proficiency with their skills.
Walking for hours through the woods with their vigilance heighten, by using Roxene's keen sense of smell, and Marcus' ability to sense traps the two of them had gotten deep into the forest without encountering any resistance.
Neither of them wanted to fight a bunch of pointless battles or be worn down by traps so avoiding the weaker creatures around was in their best interest.
However, as they were getting to about the halfway point to the center of the forest, Roxene picked up a scent that caught her attention.
'Marcus something to the east of here has an incredibly powerful fragrance. I think it might be a rare herb or even a natural treasure. There is likely to be a strong creature around eating what is growing there and also using it to lure other beast and monster.'
Thinking about it for a moment, Marcus nodded his head towards Roxene, and he began following her as she began tracking the scent.
Soon the two of them came up to a large pond that had a number of water lotuses floating on the top, and at this distance even Marcus could smell the fragrance coming off of them.
After looking at them closely, Marcus found that the flowers where mostly pink but some of them had an orange color, and after Roxene carefully sorted through the different smells could tell that the orange ones had a better smell.
'Those must be natural treasures of some kind, though I am not sure how powerful they are.'
Now that Marcus and Roxene had determined the existence of the natural treasures in the pond, Marcus went into his ghost form and floated down into the pond to find out what was hiding beneath the surface.
The pond itself was actually quite deep and after floating down around a hundred feet Marcus found the creature that had made this pond its home.
'Level thirty-five Gloom Crocodile. It has a darkness affinity like me and Roxene and is around forty feet long. I suppose it is a bit stronger than the creatures we have seen so far but it is still lower level than I was hoping. Oh well, at least we will get some natural treasures along with a bit of experience.'
With the current inhabitant of the pond confirmed, Marcus sent back the information he had found out to Roxene and then possessed the gloom crocodile.
The crocodile tried to fight back against the possession but the difference between it and Marcus' spirt stat was insurmountable, and it was not long before its body was under Marcus' control.
Swimming up to the surface, Marcus made sure to come out without disturbing or damaging any of the lotuses and crawled up onto land.
With the gloom crocodile now brought out of the water, its best tactic of ambushing anything that got close to the water's edge was now no longer in play.
'Okay Roxene I am going to give the gloom crocodile control of its body again in five seconds, and when I do go ahead and hit it with an attack.'
After having finished planning with Roxene, Marcus counted to five and then unpossessed the gloom crocodile.
As soon as Marcus left its body the gloom crocodile began looking around at its surroundings, realizing that it was no longer at the bottom of the pond.
However, before it could get its bearings, Roxene who had activated her Paragon of the Divine Wolf supreme skill, had latched onto one of its front legs and with her powerful bite skill crushed its bones and tore out a huge chunk from its leg.
Feeling the pain course through its leg, the gloom crocodile swung its large tail towards Roxene, intending to swat her away.
Jumping back, Roxene quickly moved out of range of the gloom crocodile that had just tried to smack her with its tail.
The crocodile let out an angry growl as it charged towards Roxene, but with one of its front legs broken and bleeding its speed was far lower and it could not catch up.
Seeing that it was not getting anywhere the crocodile stopped and shot out a powerful jet of water from its mouth towards Roxene.
Seeing the water rapidly approaching her, Roxene cast a wall of darkness spell in front of her and as the blast of water impacted it bounced off harmlessly.
The crocodile getting angrier and angrier began shacking as a shroud of darkness began spreading throughout the area.
With darkness covering a large area, visibility suddenly dropped and Roxene could only see a few feet in front of her and the crocodile had disappeared.
Unfortunately for the crocodile, while Roxene could no longer see it, her acute sense of smell alerted her to its location.
The gloom crocodile thinking it had concealed its location, began creeping towards Roxene with incredible silence not expected from its large size.
Except right as it was about to strike out, Roxene who had known where it was the whole time leaped over it as it went to strike and landed on its back.
She then proceeded to cast a shining lance spell and sent the spell right through the crocodiles hide.
As the sharp and searing pain of the shining lance pierced through its flesh, the gloom crocodile began thrashing about and even started rolling in order to force Roxene off.
The gloom crocodile soon smashed into a group of trees causing many of them to collapse onto the ground as it got up, swing around in order to keep Roxene from attacking again.
'Guess I should finish this.'
Reappearing right above the gloom crocodile, Marcus took his scythe and after activating the light and lightning enchantments on it swung down with a powerful slash and sliced deep into the neck of the gloom crocodile.
To his surprise though, its tough hide actually stopped his scythe from going all the way through and Marcus was soon on the receiving end of a tail slap from the heavily wounded gloom crocodile.
Jumping to the side, Marcus felt a blast of wind as the tail passed him by, but he soon felt a new sense of danger as he looked to the side and saw that the crocodile had opened it mouth and was preparing to crush him with its powerful jaws.
However, before the gloom crocodile could bite down onto Marcus, Roxene slammed into its head and her claws ripped through its hide and she tore out another chuck of its flesh with her teeth.
Taking this opening as the crocodile was knocked around and distracted by Roxene, Marcus spun around and jammed the tip of his scythe right through the gloom crocodile's eyes sliding it in deep.
He then cast his tier one lightning magic spell sparks and sent it through his scythe and into the gloom crocodiles head.
Convulsing as the electricity fried its brain the gloom crocodile tried to shack Marcus off, but its numerous injuries were catching up to it and the mighty beast soon fell.
Jumping off of the gloom crocodile's head, Marcus could not help but respect its toughness.
'Its speed was pretty lackluster, and its overall offensive abilities were not the best, but damn was it durable. I was pretty surprised when I did not take its head clean off with my first swing but that just goes to show that everything has its own strengths.'
With the gloom crocodile that had taken the pond full of water lotuses as its domain dead, Marcus went to work harvesting the orange lotuses that were quite obviously natural treasures.
He worked very carefully as to not damage them and when he was done, he stored them in his item box which was near full capacity from all of the honeycomb he had gathered earlier.
'Now what do I do with the gloom crocodile, even if my item box was empty, I could not store the whole thing.'
Marcus contemplated what to do with the gloom crocodiles body for quite sometime before he reluctantly emptied out around half of his stores of honeycomb and stored away a decent amount of hide along with its magic core, teeth, and claws.
With their spoils now collected from their first major battle in the depths of the woods complete, Marcus and Roxene continued on heading deeper.
…
"Flame Tiger Strike."
Casting his tier four fire magic spell Marcus sent the massive blazing incarnation of a tiger towards his current opponent.
However, before his spell could get anywhere close, massive roots sprung up out of the ground and blocked Marcus' spell.
At the same time Roxene had fired of her own spell shotting a laser across the main body of their enemy carving through its outer layer.
"Crrrrrrrr"
The creature after taking the laser spell let out a horrible screeching sound and the area that had been hit began closing back up.
'Damn why are plant type monsters so resilient. This stupid elder treant is taking everything we throw at it, and it is only level forty-three.'
The elder treant they were currently battling, after having taken damage from both Marcus and Roxene, began shacking its branches as hundreds of razor-sharp leaves started flying in every direction slicing through the forest.
To counter this Marcus cast his tier five iron magic spell and spread out his six wings in front of him like a shield, allowing the sharp leaves to bounce off harmlessly, while Roxene deployed a wall of darkness along with a shield of light in front of her and for good measure used her mana barrier skill.
After the onslaught of flying leaves, Marcus and Roxene continued to blast the elder treant from afar but none of their attacks had yet to cause decisive damage and its regeneration kept it from going down.
'Roxene go ahead and use you unique skill, we need to break through and what we are doing now is not working.'
Roxene receiving the okay from Marcus bent her head upward and howled causing the visage of the sun to appear.
And a moment after a massive burst of searing light enveloped the colossal body of the elder treant causing many of its branches and leaves to burn up and turn to ash.
Nevertheless, even after the incredibly powerful attack, Roxene had not managed to finish off the elder treant, but now that it was stunned for the moment and many of its defenses down, Marcus charged in to deliver the finishing blow.
'Embodiment of Darkness.'
Activating his own unique skill, Marcus flew towards the injured elder treant and cast a heighten darkness drill spell and shot it straight through the center of its truck.
The darkness drill bored right through the tough outer bark of the elder treant causing a huge hole to form into its trunk where Marcus flew inside.
Now inside the monster, Marcus began slashing widely with his scythe clad in darkness and firing off a barrage of blades of darkness spells.
The elder treant for its part tried to stop Marcus, sending in roots and vines to try and grab him, but every attempt it made was slashed to pieces by Marcus wild onslaught.
Soon the powerful nearly a hundred-foot tall elder treant collapsed, even its potent life force fading under Marcus' relentless attack.
Floating out of the now dead husk of the elder treant they had just fought, Marcus had a massive smile on his face because he had just received the level up notification from the system.
'Finally, I have made it to level thirty-seven. It has gotten quite a bit harder to level up now, but since my potential is as high as it is that is to be expected. At least it is not as bad for me as Roxene, she barely levels up any faster than I do even though she is still in the single digits. Though, I guess we should head back now. It is already the last day before we need to meet back up with Lilia.'
However, as Marcus began making his way back over to Roxene, a loud explosion in the air shook the area and as Marcus looked up, he saw the silhouette of a person flying out of the smoke.
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