"Well, don't be so hasty! I'm here and I'm not running." Carl shrugged while staring at his enemies.
The fat guy started transforming his skin into dragon scales, roaring at Carl.
"You're going to know what real pain is…"
But before he could finish, in the blink of an eye, Carl vanished from the enemy's view. In the blink of an eye, Carl then reappeared in front of the fat guy and slammed his hand to the man's throat, cutting off his air.
Too bad for the fat guy—he hadn't reinforced his throat with hard scales in time to block Carl's lightning-fast strike. His windpipe was crushed, and at that moment, it was game over for him.
The fat guy sank to his knees, clutching his throat and gasping for air.
Carl just smirked, grabbed a handful of his hair, and yanked him up. But he immediately felt the fat guy's weight pulling Carl's arm down.
He clicked his tongue, tightened his grip, and used more strength—no way was he letting his new clothes get dirty from this fat guy collapsing.
He then glanced at the remaining two.
"So… who's next?"
Of course, with his motto of killing as fast as possible, he wouldn't give any of them a chance to react.
[Flame Breath activated!]
He spewed a large flame toward the guys, who were still stunned by what had just happened. Their brains couldn't process it properly or fast enough.
The tall guy snapped out of his useless thoughts and shouted in fury.
"How dare you? I'll show you my power!"
He triggered his skill, breathing out a flame at the same time as Carl ,since he, too, was a Stoker Class, carrying the blood of flame dragons just like Carl.
At the same E rank, their flames canceled each other out on impact. Yet, the tall guy suddenly grimaced in pain as a sword appeared from somewhere in the flame and stabbed into his chest, knocking him down. His body was quickly engulfed and covered by Carl's oncoming flames, as his flame had been snuffed out before.
Then just the yell in the agony left.
Everything happened too quickly.
The thin guy, who looked sharper than his two unlucky friends, finally realized what was going on. Carl was no longer the crippled heir of the Ryan Family—he was a wolf hiding under a sheep's skin.
Without a second thought, he ignored his friend's desperate screams in the fire and fled cowardly into the forest.
Carl knew that, but he was too busy at the moment. He quickly grabbed the fat guy's clothes while asking,
"Can you handle that thin guy for me? Cobb!"
At a glance, the black dragon tattoo on Carl's chest nodded obediently and turned into a cloud of darkness, flying in the direction the thin guy was fleeing.
Carl smiled and put on the new clothes.
Looking at himself in the new outfit, he felt rather satisfied… but he still had business to handle.
He glanced at the two dying guys ahead. One was yelling amidst the flames, and the other was nearly dead, struggling to breathe from lack of oxygen.
"Well, I should finish them off before they're done."
[Soul-Devouring Flame activated!]
Immediately, he shot a scream of blue flame at both of them… it quickly wrapped around them, drowning them in its power.
It was a special flame—it barely harmed the body, yet it had a power that struck fear into anyone: devouring the soul.
[System]: Target offered no resistance.
[System]: Soul Devoured: 20%
[System]: Soul Devoured: 40%
…
[System]: Soul Devoured: 80%
…
[System]: Soul Devoured: 100%
"Good!" Carl murmured in satisfaction, a small smirk on his lips as he summoned the system.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Name]: Carl Ryan
[Age]: 18
[Class]: Stoker
[Rank]: F [550/5000] (Requires Monster Card)
[Soul Rank]: ★ Dragon (Progress: 1.00%)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"What the hell? 1%? That's not even enough for a dessert." While Carl complained about his progress, another sound rang out.
Ting!
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[System Notice] : "Let's be satisfied with that—they're just two-star dragon souls."
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"Yes, my wife. That should be enough." He sighed, rubbing his chin as he calculated.
"So two-star souls are 0.5% each… then I'd need around 198 star souls to reach a two-star soul Rank."
He shook his head in boredom.
"That's too much for me. I should focus on three- or four-star dragon souls—it'll boost my progress a lot more than hunting two-star souls."
"If only someone had an eight-star dragon soul to selflessly sacrifice for me…" He shook his head again, knowing that would never happen.
But that was too hard—he was only able to reach rank E with a one-star dragon soul. Truly, the potential of a one-star dragon soul was far too low.
Suddenly, Carl heard something ahead and smiled.
"Good job, my boy! Now I just need 197 more two-star dragon souls."
***
"Woahhh! Last night was a long night." Carl yawned, stretching and taking a deep breath before glancing at the candidates in the center of the safe area.
The sun was up! Now, they would depart for the second floor of the dungeon. He guessed he should go along with them. That way, he could take advantage of the situation—for example, he could use them as a shield, or if someone unlucky like yesterday picked a fight with him, he could devour their dragon souls without feeling guilty.
Anyway, he had only killed the damn guys who started a fight with him. He wouldn't kill humans without reason.
However, if someone voluntarily sacrificed themselves for him, he would really, really accept it with happiness.
Meanwhile, Carl continued to immerse himself in his plan. Soon, they arrived near the gate to the second floor of the dungeon.
But the gate made Carl uneasy—it was connected to the mountain, which meant they would have to go through a cave.
Based on his knowledge, they were likely to encounter all sorts of traps:
Arrow traps.
Pit traps.
And more.
However, in exchange, many treasures were waiting for them.
That was perfect timing, as he was running low on money. He needed a large amount of gold coins to survive at the academy, and he still had to buy many things.
All in all, he was a poor boy.