Chapter 34: Combat Legacy (1)

The wonderful open air space.

The beautiful sky.

The resplendent trees.

The twittering birds.

The small animals scurrying through the brush.

The humans.

The demons.

All of them.

They were gone.

Now, Neo stood alone. Under this gloomy sky.

The screen that appeared in front of his eyes changed.

A number was displayed.

It began to countdown the moment it appeared.

Ninety seconds was all Neo was given to prepare for whatever was coming.

Under the countdown, there was an option for him to begin immediately.

Neo ignored it.

He chose to prepare himself for what was ahead.

Minor origin was something he had never used before.

Aside from reading about it, he had no familiarity with it.

He cleared his mind of every other thoughts.

He cared for neither the countdown, nor the details of how the Combat Legacy would test him.

He cared for none of it.

His mind was focused on the minor origin within his being.

The immortal rank being had told them that they could use it as they pleased.

There was no natural regeneration.

The only way to gain more of it was to advance further in the legacy.

There were twenty-five points of minor origin in each person.

There was nothing to show them how much of it they had.

There was no way for them to see how much of it they had left after every use.

They had to figure out a way to gauge it themselves.

Neo felt the minor origin within his being.

He grasped it.

The thing wasn’t hard to grasp. It felt like a part of him.

The first thing he did was use it to perform a simple technique.

He noticed the very slight dip in the minor origin within him.

He tried his next move.

He transformed the minor origin into essence.

Just enough essence to match the one of someone in the first level of the F-Rank.

He tried the same technique again.

He was searching for the most efficient way to utilize the minor origin.

Turning it into essence was the wrong path.

Now, he needed to make his use of this minor origin more efficient.

It was an energy that was superior to essence.

He didn’t know how much of it he would gain as he advanced further in the legacy.

He needed to be careful with every amount of it he used.

The number kept counting down, but his mind was focused on his manipulation of the minor origin.

What techniques to use?

How to combine them?

How much of the minor origin was needed to efficiently use the techniques?

He calculated and tested every move he thought was right.

The countdown reached its end.

Now was the time to find out how this Combat Legacy would be choosing the greatest combat genius.

A strange creature appeared before him.

It looked exactly like the ones the group had encountered earlier in the tunnel.

But the aura that emanated from this one was much stronger.

This was Neo’s first opponent.

And it wouldn’t be an easy one.

The strange creature charged at him the moment it appeared.

Intent on crushing Neo, who was the only one in sight.

Neo didn’t bother getting out of its way.

He needed to test the feasibility of the techniques he had chosen.

He drew his sword.

His first move was simple and straightforward.

He waited for the moment the strange creature moved within his sword range.

He timed its movement and stabbed forward. His move landed on the strange creature.

The sword didn’t pierce the strange creature’s body, but it disturbed its momentum.

With the amount of minor origin he had used, it naturally would be hard to pierce the strange creature’s body.

Neo wanted to test the fastest and most efficient way to defeat his opponents.

He didn’t know what the requirements for becoming the chosen one of this Combat Legacy was.

But he had to learn how to conserve his minor origin to find that out.

With every use of the minor origin, it was like his cultivation was regressing.

A very distasteful feeling.

He tested his moves on the strange creature, mindful of the amount of minor origin he used.

When he found a suitable set of moves, he cut down the strange creature.

It disappeared as its life ended.

It seemed the guarantee of not dying did not apply to these strange creatures.

But he doubted if they were even living beings.

They might just be constructs created by the immortal rank being for his Combat Legacy.

He glanced at the rankings.

He wasn’t in the top ten.

He was nowhere near.

It made sense. With how long he had taken to kill the strange creature. Hundreds of people would have advanced beyond this stage.

He saw some strange names in the top ten.

It looked like the top ten was split evenly between the demons and humans.

He looked below the top ten ranking.

He saw his rank which was at 988.

His new opponent had already appeared before him.

It was still a strange creature, this one was slightly stronger than the one from earlier.

Neo fought it.

He continued to use his simple moves.

With every strike, he refined his techniques.

His moves became smoother.

Every use of the minor origin became more effective and efficient.

He stopped caring about the ranking.

He cut down one strange creature after another.

He felt no increase in the minor origin in his being.

But he didn’t stop swinging his sword.

He kept searching for that perfect balance.

He didn’t know it, but the speed at which he cut down every strange creature that appeared increased.

Every move became much more efficient.

He was using less minor origin to power more effective moves.

His ranking rose as time passed.

But that was no longer on Neo’s mind.

The strange creatures that appeared with every advancement began to increase in number.

They began to push his limits.

Now, there was no Devour to help him.

The bloodline had become silent.

He hadn’t noticed it.

The moment he entered that open space, where the immortal rank being had addressed all of them, Devour had gone silent.

He had been spoiled by the endless essence provided to him by Devour.

He noticed that he had picked up some bad habits in his combat style.

A consequence of relying too much on Devour.

Now, he was correcting them, and refining his combat style.

He was fighting a group of fifteen strange creatures.

They didn’t appear from the same direction.

The moment they had appeared, he had been surrounded from all sides.

The strength of the strange creatures had been increasing with every new one that appeared.

After so many of them had appeared, these ones had naturally become very strong.

When they charged at him.

Neo didn’t wait for them to get near.

He chose a direction, and attacked.

He positioned himself in a way that only a few of these strange creatures could engage him at once.

This prevented them from fully surrounding him.

He was careful with using wide range attacks.

They consumed too much of the minor origin.

The minor origin he had left was still more than half of what he had started with.

He didn’t know how many more of these strange creatures he had to defeat.

Dealing with them was consuming more and more of what was left of his minor origin.

As he cut down the last strange creature.

His reserve of minor origin which had been at more than half, had dropped to half.