Chapter 0 : Prologue

"You vile creature, if you care about your own life, then quickly release my princess Isabella and beg for forgiveness. Otherwise, be ready to face the consequences." Said a youth in a deep threatening voice, who was standing tall at 170cm height in front of a sturdy, muscular, and ugly humanoid creature.

The 16-year-old youth had sharp and bright golden eyes and a good muscular body. His bushy and brown shoulder-length hair fluttered with the wind. His lion ears and tail, which indicate his race to be manticore, stood alert as he strained his senses to the fullest. It was obvious as he was standing before a 2m tall grey orc, a B-rank monster.

This youth was precisely Leonis who had come to save his beloved princess Isabella from the dirty hands of this vile creature… or not. He was currently role-playing a hero from the play he saw yesterday.

"Gerororororo…" The orc growled and swung his large club down vertically, clearly intending to smash Leonis' head with a single attack. But, who is Leonis? He is the strongest man in the entire Bluewind continent… city… no, town. Ahem… he is the strongest… B-rank adventurer in the entire Bluewind town… probably.

With his lightning-fast reflexes and sturdy legs, he dodged the orc's attack to the side and made a light slash on the orc's… umm... pant? Whatever it was, it fell on the ground and the orc's lower body got exposed along with his large… umm, club?

Leonis furrowed his brows as he saw a limp 30cm snake hanging to the crotch of the orc. He can only imagine the destruction it could make to the kidnapped women. Orcs and goblins kidnap women to **** them for breeding, and with their rapid birth rate, the women are used until they die because of their poor treatment.

He felt disgusted just by seeing the orc's monstrosity. He quickly wanted to get rid of it… the orc that is. He no longer felt like playing so he said,

"Vile creature, if you have already broken my princess, then it can not be helped. There is no meaning in brooding over broken things. So this time, I will spare you as I have a big heart like an ocean."

"Ariririrororo…" The orc roared again, seemingly annoyed by the Leonis' nonsense.

Leonis furrowed his brows in anger.

"Aria? You dare call my sister's name with your filthy mouth? Hump, you made the biggest mistake of your life. I might have given you a quick death before, but now, you will die a gruesome death."

With that, Leonis moved and after dodging the orcs diagonal attack, he slashed horizontally by lowering his posture, directly on the orc's dangling snake. With a 'plop', the snake fell on the ground and a copious amount of blood started flowing down the orc's crotch. The large round jewel sack of the orc got exposed.

"Roar" The orc screamed in pain and got weary of this tiny, weak-looking creature.

'Fuck! That's gross." Leonis couldn't help but curse. He no longer focused there and began to target the orc's neck.

The orc turned his body, seemingly wanting to flee with one hand covering his balls. But, Leonis didn't let go of this opening and directly slashed at the orc's neck from behind.

*Thud*

The orc's head fell on the ground. Leonis approached the orc's dead body and started dismantling it. The grey orcs and goblins do not have any magical cores. The grey orc's only valuable parts are their canine teeth and nails which are used in making weapons.

Leonis collected the materials and put them into his spatial pouch. Space rings are a lot expensive than spatial pouches because of the expensive raw material and the difficulty of the work involved in creating them. So most adventurers, as a storage tool is extremely necessary for them, relatively cheap spatial pouches.

Today Leonis has come alone into the forest to collect monster cores. Tomorrow would be his beloved sister's birthday, so to buy a present for her, Leonis came alone to earn extra money. Sometimes, a solo mission can be more profitable than a group one depending on lucky encounters.

The deeper you go into the forest, the stronger the monsters you encounter and the stronger monsters have a higher level of cores which can fetch a higher price.

Based on their strength, the monsters are ranked as S, A, B, C, D, and E from strongest to weakest. Some monsters are much stronger than the S-rank monsters but are extremely rare. They are ranked as SS and SSS.

After collecting the orc's materials, Leonis progressed further into the forest. He then killed some monsters and collected their cores. He suddenly stopped in his tracks as he perked up his ears and noticed a slithering sound, probably of a snake. He could sense a foul smell seemingly coming from the snake.

Around him were dense and dark green trees with little sunlight illuminating the forest's cold beauty. He quickly climbed a nearby tree to see further ahead.

"Fuck! Why is this here? It shouldn't be wandering in this area, or did I come far inside where I shouldn't have come?" Leonis couldn't help but curse because of what he saw.

Before him, hidden inside the bushes was a large snake with an upper-body looking like a woman's torso. Though it looked like that of a woman's torso, with breasts dangling on its chest, it didn't look any attractive. It had an extremely ugly face with an ear-to-ear spreading mouth. It was an A-rank monster, Lamia.

Leonis knows his limitations that he cannot go against an A-rank monster. So he decided to flee from this creature. The Lamia has already noticed him and started moving rapidly towards him.

Leonis stepped down from the tree and started running in the same direction he came. A cyan glow appeared on Leonis' body and the air resistance decreased around him. This further boosted his speed, but the Lamia was still able to keep up with his speed.

He had a sudden urge to turn to his left for an unknown reason, and he did. He started running in the left direction until he saw a cave. By now, the Lamia was about 200m away from him.

He had the same urge to enter into this cave, but if he entered, he would be cornered with nowhere to run. Still, he could feel that he would be safe if he entered it.

And by the time he was pondering over whether to enter or not, he found himself already inside the cave. He ran further inside as if he already knows the cave passages thoroughly. He stopped as he came to a dead end. He then perked up his ears as he became even more vigilant and started to scan his surroundings.

Beast-men have good eyesight, hearing, and smelling capability, so Leonis could still see his surroundings which was dark with almost no light.

As he took a step forward, he suddenly felt dizzy and fell to the ground, unconscious. After an unknown amount of time, he woke up just to see a female corpse beside him.

"Fuck! Why is today such an unlucky day?" This is the third time he has cursed today.

Leonis got scared at the sight of a dead body. Because of the little light available, he couldn't see the colors clearly and could only guess from the figure to be that of a female. It had two horns and a tail. He didn't know about such a beast-man race with horns on its head.

In addition, he couldn't sense any rotting smell, so he concluded the body to be fresh. He didn't want to get involved in anything shady, so he quickly decided to flee from there.

With his night sight and a good sense of smell, he managed to get out of the cave. Upon coming out, he scanned his surroundings with his Beast-men senses and after confirming that the Lamia has gone, he followed back his previous track.

By the time he arrived home, it was already nighttime. His mother, sister, and aunt were extremely worried. His aunt had already prepared to go search for him.

He then got a good scolding from both his mother and aunt.

The next day, Leonis fell ill…