9 Chapter 9 - The Hunter’s Dominance

Slash! Slash! Slash!

Drop! Drop! Drop!

As he followed his bloody path, with hands shaped like a knife and wind blades covering his hands, Noah was clearing the large number of rabbits that were around him.

Gray, white, black, all kinds of rabbits were being torn in half as he advanced. With blood turning to ashes, he had an expressionless face as he decapitated yet another white rabbit.

Bang!

His movement became a bit stiffer, but he easily pierced the neck of a giant rabbit that suddenly appeared in front of him. And when he noticed the unusual amount of red orbs and purple orbs, he realized he had killed a super rabbit. Despite being rare, he had already killed three.

After a few minutes, with only the sound of his breathing remaining in the dark place, Noah finally began to collect the fallen orbs from the rabbit nest.

"And with that, it's at least 400..." Noah collected the last orb, already losing count of how many he had. And the large and small orbs mixed together so much that he only counted as if it was the same thing.

Bark! Bark! Bark!

As soon as he turned to leave the nest, a bark echoed through one of the tunnels behind him. And as one bark sounded, several others in different tunnels also began to sound.

Standing in the center of the nest, Noah watched with calm eyes as a large number of black dogs began to emerge from the tunnels. There were at least a few packs per tunnel, and there were dozens of tunnels. There were at least a few hundred black dogs.

These Black Dogs were approximately 1.5m tall, entirely black fur and their sharp teeth and strong muscles were their strong points. Meanwhile, there were also some larger dogs, called Armoured Dogs, which were almost a small evolution difference from the previous ones. They were 1.7m tall and Noah remembered that they could use spirit attacks and shoot dark energy balls.

"Damn..." He raised his eyebrow in curiosity, as he didn't remember having provoked any wrath from these dogs the last times he was here.

But then he considered the hypothesis that this rabbit nest was just part of a larger nest of the Armoured Dogs, who also use nests, and realized that he potentially just eliminated their hunting grounds.

"Growl…" A particularly dominant Armoured Dog was growling at Noah threateningly, clearly annoyed. But when he realized that his prey remained motionless, his sharp-toothed mouth seemed to show a smile.

And with just one command, he had them all attack Noah.

"BARK!"

Jump!

With a flurry of attacks coming from all directions, Noah jumped towards the ceiling, avoiding them all at once. And as soon as he got to the ceiling, he jumped away again, a wave of dark energy balls attacking the place where he was.

Still in the air, controlling the wind around him, Noah formed blades of compressed air and attacked in every direction he could.

Slash! Slash! Slash! Slash! Slash!

With cutting sounds echoing all over the place, Noah once again formed wind blades on his arms and started to run and slash towards the Armoured Dogs, which could constantly attack from afar.

In a battle nothing less than spectacular and bloody, Noah looked like a meat grinder ending the lives of all of them, red orbs and purple orbs falling everywhere. Unfortunately, they didn't have any type of God Art, or else his hunt would be even more satisfying.

About three hours later, Noah stood in front of the leader Armored Dog's carcass, thrusting his wind blade into its neck and decapitating it. He did it quickly and cleanly, with no pain to the monster.

Completely drenched in blood, this time his own, Noah took all the orbs from the nest and finally left the nest. With the sun beating down on his face, he was forced to close his eyes to adjust for a moment. Feeling the breeze brush against his wounds, he spat saliva mixed with blood onto the ground.

"Damn puppies..."

After complaining, Noah continued walking in any direction on the grassy plateau. He definitely did not want to get into any more nests, but he would also not stop hunting.

While he was walking, he saw a kind of flaming lion in the distance, and immediately turned around. On any other day he could start exterminating their species, but today he wanted to hunt more green wolves. He only hunted about twenty to thirty in the first few hours before he could no longer find any.

And finally, after walking a bit, he found a green wolf lying in the grass not far away, feasting on a poor grey rabbit.

Without ceremony, Noah disappeared from the place when he started running towards the wolf. But as soon as he got close enough, he noticed a strange familiarity with this specific wolf.

"You..." Noah suddenly had some kind of recognition. With a sinister smile forming, he sped up even more, "SO IT'S YOU!"

"Woo?" The green wolf heard the shout when it suddenly looked up and all it saw was a fist.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

With a series of punches that could kill any other wolf, Noah began punching this green wolf's intestines with such absurd control that it didn't even kill directly, just hurt and pain in the extreme.

"Did you have fun tearing every piece of me apart, you son of a bitch?" Noah had an indifferent expression on his face as he coldly held one of the wolf's leg and ripped it off.

Even though this was just a fake death, the pain was very real. Being cut apart piece by piece and seeing your predator with a sadistic smile on his face can cause a pain so great that you would sacrifice the rest of your entire life to be able to do the same to your torturer.

He may not have come out with any mental scars, but the hatred and fury were still there.

"Woo..." With all four limbs ripped off, the green wolf was still confused as to how it got into this state. The pain made him look clearly at his enemy and he finally realized why he was suffering this. And he accepted.

It was the law of nature. If you were prepared to hunt, then you were also prepared to be hunted.

Looking at the precarious state of the wolf, Noah took a deep breath and calmed down.

"Make sure not to be so sadistic the next time you respawn here. Or else I will hunt you again." With his last warning, he watched the wolf turn into ashes and leave the orbs.

After that, Noah continued hunting green wolves, encountering some packs. He also found another mouse by pure chance and collected the purple orbs with indifference.

"Finally a thousand-" Noah was about to celebrate when he felt his vision go dark.

°°°

Waking up on the couch, he felt no pain, but he was still drenched in sweat and the tears came anyway. It seemed that this time he had been removed from the hunting dimension for staying there too long.

Sitting upright on the sofa, he picked up the blanket that Nojiko had covered him with and realized that he had just slept for a very long time. His afternoon nap had turned into a deep sleep of several hours.

"I ended up skipping dinner..." Hungry and still groggy, Noah got up from the couch and went to the kitchen.

Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, he drank it all until it was empty, almost two liters of water. And when he put the bottle with tap water back in the fridge, he realized there was a plate covered with a cloth there. It was his dinner, which Nojiko had saved thinking he would wake up soon.

Grabbing the plate, he took some cutlery and started to eat the cold dinner. He was quite used to this and didn't care. Besides, who didn't like mashed potatoes with cold fried fish...

"Are you already awake?" Nami suddenly appeared in the kitchen door. She walked to the table while rubbing her eyes and sat on the chair, resting her chin on her hand.

"Did I wake you up?" Noah smiled at her while eating his dinner.

"No, Nojiko's snoring woke me up." Nami smiled back at him, watching him eat.

"I don't snore, you snore..." Nojiko also appeared in the kitchen door, her hair a little messy. She sat in a chair at the table and put her head on her arms, as if she were going to sleep there.

"Why don't you go back to sleep?" Noah laughed at how they were almost falling asleep again, forcing themselves to stay here with him.

"Because today is an important day." Nami stared deeply into Noah's eyes, and only felt an enormous tranquility.

"Is it your birthday?" He asked with a smile as he took a big forkful of the fried fish.

The two girls, with a smile on their face, watched him eat calmly, as if nothing important was about to happen. As if in a few hours he wasn't going to challenge the local tyrant, responsible for killing several people before.

"You know you can run away at any time and we won't say anything, right?" Nojiko put her cold feet on his under the table, reassuring him in some way.

"I know." Noah looked at her and put the cutlery back on the plate. With a seriousness they had never seen, he stood up and leaned his hands on the table.

An intense pressure took over them, as if stealing their breath. It wasn't the first time they felt this, this natural superiority that he emanated, but it was never so intense.

"But I never run."

°°°

It was still dawn when Noah left the house and started walking through the forest, towards the waterfall. With his calm and confident stride, he was ready to take the final step before shattering everything when the sun rose.

Taking off his clothes, he jumped into the waterfall and swam straight to the stone bed there. Taking out two Deep Red Orbs and swallowing them, Noah felt an intense heat throughout his body. The energy seemed to penetrate deep into his bones, directly hitting the marrow and refining its last step.

Despite taking a long time to get here, Noah had been preparing both mentally and physically for a whole week for the step he was about to take. It wasn't just about physical strength. It wasn't just about how hard he could hit.

And finally, after a week, the fifth step of refinement was completed. His Bone Marrow Refinement was successfully completed, and all impurities began to leave his body, one after another.

Once again diving deep, Noah was feeling all the internal changes happening in his body, changes brought to the surface. An unprecedented vitality filled his body as more and better quality blood were produced.

His already refined skin, muscle and tendons underwent another refinement and even more fat was removed from his body and stored inside the bones, making him even more handsome and muscular. A little more and he would become strange, but as it was, it had perfect symmetry.

After spending some time in the water, Noah finally came out of the waterfall and dressed again. Seeing that the sun was about to rise, he would not go back to the village anymore.

Taking another path inside the forest, he began to head to the east coast of the island.

To Arlong Park.