Pov: Ryuk
Wiping the sweat from my forehead with my upper arm, I looked deeper into the dark, endless expanse of the Blackwood Forest. In the distance, the roars of even stronger beasts echoed through the purple canopy.
"Ten more fights," I muttered, a fierce grin spreading across my face as I dashed deeper into the shadows of the trees. "By tonight, I will step into the Grade 1 Martial Artist realm!"
With that goal in mind, I turned into a four-armed hunter stalking the dark woods.
In my previous life as Rajeev, and even during my short days as the eleven-year-old Ryuk Ashborn, I had never experienced what it truly felt like to dominate in a fight. Back then, even beating three drunken thugs in a back alley required throwing a garbage bin lid as a sneak attack.
Now, inside this Asura Martial Vessel that Morven had spent centuries crafting, every muscle in my body felt like a coiled iron spring waiting to explode.
Over the next six hours, I did not rest for a single minute.
Using Dominion Scan to check my surroundings every few hundred meters, I specifically targeted groups of Peak Grade 1 corrupted beasts while carefully avoiding the territories where I sensed terrifying Grade 2 auras.
My second fight was against a pack of five Iron-Bristle Boars. Their hides were as tough as steel plates, and their tusks could easily pierce through brick walls.
When they charged at me like a line of heavy trucks, I didn't dodge. Guided by the golden threads of the Beacon of Truth, I used my lower two hands to grab the tusks of the lead boar, lifting its 500-kilogram body straight off the ground, and slammed it into the other four boars behind it! Then, my upper two fists rained down like meteor hammers, shattering their thick skulls one after another.
"PROFICIENCY INCREASED BY +180!" "CURRENT MASTERY: FOUR-ARMED ASURA COMBAT TECHNIQUE {BEGINNER} (330/500)."
Two hours later, near a muddy swamp, I encountered a seven-meter-long Corrupted Swamp Python paired with two Blood-Winged Apes.
By this point, the awkwardness of controlling four arms had completely vanished. My brain had naturally split my focus into dual combat patterns. While my upper two arms locked the giant python's jaws and tore its scales apart with my sharp dark nails, my lower two arms and legs executed spinning kicks and elbow strikes, crushing the chests of the two apes mid-air.
"YOUR MAJESTY HAS ADVANCED IN FOUR-ARMED ASURA COMBAT TECHNIQUE (500/500)." "CURRENT MASTERY: FOUR-ARMED ASURA COMBAT TECHNIQUE {ADEPT} (20/1000)."
As the technique broke into the Adept stage, a wave of warm heat flowed through my four shoulders and down into my spine. The muscle fibers of this body tightened further, becoming denser and more streamlined, increasing my raw punching speed by nearly thirty percent.
However, I didn't stop at Adept.
Remembering what Yuki had told me—that only by reaching the Pro stage of a martial technique can a person build the most perfect foundation before breaking the mortal barrier—I pushed myself even harder.
As the afternoon sun began to dip below the giant purple leaves of the Blackwood Forest, the entire outer region of the woods echoed with the sounds of snapping bones and the dying howls of corrupted beasts.
By the time darkness finally fell over the forest, my black leather coat was drenched in dark beast blood. In my Emperor's Storage sat twenty-eight Grade 1 Corrupted Beast Cores that I had dug out of my prey.
In front of me, the final enemy of the day—a three-headed mutated hound at the absolute peak of Grade 1—collapsed into the dirt with all three of its necks twisted at fatal angles.
Panting heavily, I dropped down to one knee on the blood-stained grass, white steam rising from my skin into the chilly night air. Even with the monstrous stamina of Morven's masterpiece body, fighting non-stop for ten straight hours had pushed my physical energy to the absolute limit.
Just then, the notification I had been waiting for all day flashed in golden letters before my eyes:
"YOUR MAJESTY HAS ADVANCED IN FOUR-ARMED ASURA COMBAT TECHNIQUE (1000/1000)." "CURRENT MASTERY: FOUR-ARMED ASURA COMBAT TECHNIQUE {PRO} (0/2000)."
"Finally... Pro stage," I breathed out, a satisfied smile forming on my tired face.
In a single day of brutal life-and-death grinding, I had raised a Grade 3 martial art from Beginner all the way to the Pro stage. If any of those proud geniuses in the human federation heard about this, they would probably cough up blood in disbelief.
Checking the black compass ring on my finger, I saw that I was about six kilometers away from the underground laboratory. Since the smell of blood here was too strong and nighttime in the Fallen Heartlands was bound to bring out far deadlier monsters, I didn't dare break through out in the open.
Standing up, I sprinted back through the dark forest, following the compass needle. Within twenty minutes, I reached the hidden cave entrance, shifted the heavy boulder aside, and went back down into the safety of Morven's underground laboratory.
Inside the quiet lab, I first went to the underground water spring Morven had built for cleaning and washed off all the foul-smelling beast blood from my body and leather coat.
After drying off and putting my clothes back on, I walked to the center of the stone chamber and sat down cross-legged on the floor.
I reached into my Emperor's Storage and took out two things: the wooden box containing the three Grade 2 Blood-Forging Pills, and the pile of twenty-eight Grade 1 Corrupted Beast Cores.
Looking at the blood-red pill in my upper right palm, I could smell a rich, medicinal fragrance that made every cell in my body tremble with hunger.
"Yuki told me that to become a Grade 1 Martial Artist, a normal person only needs one Grade 1 potion to force a trace of martial energy into their body," I muttered, looking at my four muscular arms. "But this Asura body is way stronger than a normal human body. Will one pill be enough?"
Without hesitating, I threw the first Grade 2 Blood-Forging Pill into my mouth and swallowed it.
BOOM!
The moment the pill touched my stomach, it exploded like a bomb of pure liquid fire!
A massive torrent of thick, scorching vitality and martial energy rushed out from my stomach, charging violently into my limbs and meridians. If a normal eleven-year-old child had swallowed this Grade 2 pill, their veins would have burst open from the sheer pressure within three seconds.
However, as the fiery energy flooded into my muscles, I realized something shocking.
The mutated cells of this Asura Martial Vessel were like a bottomless black hole! They drank the entire energy of the Grade 2 pill in less than ten seconds, and the invisible biological barrier separating me from the Grade 1 realm only cracked halfway!
"What a monstrous appetite!" I gasped, feeling my body screaming for more energy to finish breaking the barrier.
Without wasting a second, I took out the remaining two Grade 2 Blood-Forging Pills from the box and swallowed both of them at the exact same time!
ROOOAAR!
Twin torrents of blazing energy erupted inside me. The cracks on my biological barrier spread rapidly, covering the whole barrier like a spiderweb, yet it was still missing one final push to shatter completely!
"Not enough?! Then eat these too!"
Gritting my teeth, I grabbed ten of the dark red Corrupted Beast Cores sitting on the floor beside me. Normally, absorbing corrupted cores directly would turn a human into a mindless zombie, but I had the Beacon of Truth and the Sigil of Evolution!
"System, activate Sigil of Evolution and Beacon of Truth! Purify and absorb these cores!"
As I held the cores in all four of my palms, the dark tattoo over my heart flared with a blinding crimson-gold light. The foul black corruption inside the beast cores was instantly burned away by the Beacon of Truth, while the pure, wild martial energy inside them was sucked straight through my palms and into my meridians!
One core, five cores, ten cores... all the way until all twenty-eight beast cores crumbled into gray powder in my hands!
CRACK—SHATTER!!
A deafening sound, like a dam breaking inside my soul, echoed through my entire body.
The biological barrier shattered into nothingness!
In the center of my lower abdomen, a vortex of dark-gold martial energy formed, spinning rapidly and sending waves of explosive power rushing through my spine, my legs, and all four of my arms. Every bone in my body let out crisp cracking sounds as they grew denser and harder than tempered iron.
At the same time, a series of system notifications chimed in my mind:
"CONGRATULATIONS, YOUR MAJESTY HAS BROKEN INTO THE GRADE 1 MARTIAL ARTIST REALM!"
"DUE TO THE SUPREME FOUNDATION OF THE ASURA VESSEL AND ABSORPTION OF 3 PILLS AND 28 CORES, HOST'S BASE STRENGTH HAS SURPASSED NORMAL REALM LIMITS!"
"CURRENT STRENGTH: EQUAL TO 40 ADULT MEN ( EQUIVALENT TO MID-STAGE GRADE 2 MARTIAL ARTIST IN RAW POWER)."
"MAIN QUEST COMPLETED: BREAK INTO GRADE 1 MARTIAL ARTIST REALM (1/1)." "REWARD AVAILABLE."
I slowly opened my eyes, breathing out a long stream of hot air that actually left a scorch mark on the stone floor in front of me.
Clenching all four of my fists, I felt the surging river of martial energy flowing freely under my skin. Back in Ashborn City, a normal Grade 1 Martial Artist only had the strength of ten adult men. Yet I had just broken into Grade 1, and my raw strength was already four times higher than the standard!
Calming the surging blood in my chest, I looked at the system screen floating in front of my eyes and said with anticipation, "System, show me my updated status and give me my reward for completing the first quest!"