"Where are we going again, Brother Zhang?"
"For the seventh time, Ming, through the mountains, and then we wait at the base on the other side. Zhang Wei, pay attention, and stop using Mr. Flux's juice powder... Are you seeking death, or what?! You dumbass..."
"Ah, come on! The boss won't care if I have a little bit. He knows how boring water gets..."
The man at the front of the trio, moving quietly through the woods, shifted the burlap bag hanging from his shoulder and winced beneath the section of his helmet that shaded his eyes when he heard the word "boss."
He used to get a little respect from the two following behind him when 'boss' was his title.
The trio, dressed in matching jet-black Sacred Blood class armor that gave them an oddly bulky and imposing look, moved swiftly through the forest with surprising grace for their size. Their path led toward a seemingly quiet yet notoriously treacherous mountain range, infamous for housing countless Mutant class creatures they would have to brave if they hoped to reach their destination.
They would however, much rather face these Mutant class beasts instead of fail to bring the sacks full of cans, juice powder and other goods to the man that had taken Biao Zhang's place as their boss for the last three months now.
His two former subordinates, Wang Wei and Yang Ming, still tended to follow his lead out of habit, but they all knew who was truly in charge now.
Unfortunate souls they were, but not too unfortunate.
Yes, they had foolishly picked a fight with Max, but in a surprising turn of events, he agreed to forgive them in exchange for running a few errands to and from the Alliance on his behalf, instead of crippling them then and there.
This surprising act of mercy erased any lingering resentment from their botched attempt to ambush him on his first day in the sanctuary. Rather than seeking further revenge, Max let them leave with nothing more than a few broken bones from the harsh beating he had originally delivered as punishment.
From the get go, he had always been holding onto an 'outside the box' perspective of his Jump Chain, he didn't take their attack personally at all, in fact, Max loved that kind of thing.
He had already figured these guys were probably under some kind of influence, part of the drawback that made sure he'd have to deal with a burglar or two every month during his stay in this jump, so he decided to go easy on them.
That being said, after the three had reluctantly agreed to become Max's henchmen, they would often wonder what had convinced all of them to move on their new leader, regretting it most of the time, until Max had surprised them with some good will.
They were in fact both wearing, and relying on that good will, so to say, to protect themselves on their way to a location quite far from the Steel Armor Shelter, it would take them two weeks worth of travel, including the portion through the mountainous terrain they were about to enter.
With the armors and special beast soul weapons Max had provided them, they did not fear anything, asides from running into Sacred Blood creatures, that is.
Asides from the black beast soul armors they had been just simply given, Max had also created simple, 10 inch long daggers using metal drawn straight from the ground of the sanctuary itself, creating a special alloy far stronger and harder than even the toughest Sacred Blood beast souls in this level of the sanctuaries.
He made up a creature name when handing them over to his new 'employees,' simply calling them 'Ashy Owl Dagger' when transforming them into beast souls, which ended up being ranked as Sacred Blood class as well.
In the sanctuaries, beast souls could be sold and then transferred between sea of souls, so he had to bullshit up a creature name before handing them over to his guys, which worked flawlessly.
The price of a Sacred Blood beast soul in the First God's Sanctuary was worth an astronomical amount of money, in the hundreds of millions in the Alliance actually, so when six of them were just given to them, Biao Zhang, Wang Wei and Yang Ming were shocked, impressed and sort of wooed all at the same time.
Maybe working simple delivery jobs for this hulking, generous new boss of theirs wasn't so bad after all!
A week or so before Biao Zhang and co had set out on this latest trip, Max had managed to locate a group of Sacred Blood class creatures that lived in a large troop. Simian-like creatures that were jet black in color, and among the two hundred or so members, there had been around thirty Mutant types and six Sacred Blood variants among the numerous ordinary and primitive types.
The troop of creatures was already formidable by First Sanctuary standards, their strength undeniable, esspecially when including these Sacred Blood variants, and their presence was commanding; no other creatures dared come too close to their territory.
What made them truly extraordinary, however, was that the alpha leading them was none other than a Super creature, a being of immense power and unmatched prowess in this sanctuary, elevating the group to an entirely new level of dominance over the area.
After utilizing [Destiny], Max had picked a time in the middle of the night when he knew the large apes were going to be at their most vulnerable. He had seen what could be gained from this group and had decided to pull off his first killing of a super creature.
Normally, someone so new to the sanctuaries running into a group like this would be dead for sure, but Max was a huge exception.
His fitness before using any mutant type abilities from the Marvel jump had already increased from 15 to 24, which was strong enough to start slaying Sacred Blood creatures for the most part, but not Super creatures, who had an average fitness of around 35-40, which was a massive gap.
Normally.
The moment Max decided to throw his collection of outrageous beast souls and mutant abilities into the mix, it easily bridged the huge gap in his base power and the power of Super creatures. In fact, he could've been dropped into the second or even the third God's Sanctuary and still been pretty safe and secure, thanks to his [Electromagnetic] abilities alone, not to mention [Domino] and [Destiny].
That being said, Max still patiently bided his time until most of the troop had drifted into slumber. Concealed in the shadows of the tall grass surrounding the monkeys, waiting for the perfect moment to strike, he summoned forth the bag of exotic Marvel metal particles he had transformed into a beast soul, now known as 'God Dust.'
He lingered there, watching as the towering ten-foot-tall monkeys finally settled down for the night, leaving only a few of the weaker ones—up to Mutant types on watch—while the rest of the beasts dozed contentedly around their king.
Their lair was a hollowed-out hill, reminiscent of the cozy hobbit homes described in 'The Lord of the Rings', though far more primitive, with nothing more than a simple hole serving as both entrance and exit.
When the time was right, Max, about a hundred meters from the burrow, summoned another beast soul—the Reed Specials. Glasses materialized on his face as he sprang up from the tall grass where he'd been hiding, using the invisibility effect granted by his [Electromagnetism] at the same time.
Max activated the glasses, and they instantly highlighted every creature inside and outside the hollowed-out hill with a glowing red outline and overlay of their bodies. He then willed the God Dust to shape itself into countless tiny needles, which shot toward the handful of monkey guards at breathtaking speed, as if they had teleported across the hundred-meter gap between Max and the monkeys in the blink of an eye.
Plop. Plop. Plop.
The monkeys outside keeping watch hadn't even had a chance to notice each other falling before they were all dead, and the needles didn't stop there.
Only the massive alpha stirred at the sound of its subordinates dropping outside, but before they could even hit the ground, countless spinning needles tore through its heart and brain, killing it instantly.
When placed in front of Max's magnetism and what was most likely the toughest physical material available in Marvel, the durability of the Super Ape was no better than its lesser brethren.
Max had started operation 'Acupuncture' for ten seconds or so and yet, not a single one of the red outlined creatures in Max's glasses moved an inch anymore.
He had slain them all so fast that it took a moment for the messages in his head to sound off and catch up.
"Primitive creature Obsidian Ape killed. Beast soul gained. Eat the flesh of Obsidian Ape to gain zero to ten primitive geno points."
"Primitive creature Obsidian Ape killed. Beast soul gained. Eat the flesh of Obsidian Ape to gain zero to ten primitive geno points."
"Mutant creature Obsidian Ape killed. Beast soul gained. Eat the flesh of Obsidian Ape to gain zero to ten Mutant geno points."
"Super creature Obsidian Ape killed. Beast Soul gained. Consume its life geno essence to gain zero to ten super geno points randomly. Meat inedible."
"Hahahah! That was a piece of cake, all these mental messages though...too bad there isn't a silence notifications function." Max laughed aloud to himself at the easy victory he had achieved via a sneak attack.
He waited patiently as nearly two hundred similar messages echoed through his mind, and only then did he give the order for the God Dust to shift from its needle-like form into a flexible mesh.
The thick, metallic weave moved with Max's usual precision, lifting the fist-sized, jet-black stone that the alpha had relinquished in death, and carrying it with deliberate care until it was placed firmly in Max's grasp.
Most Super creatures, especially ones in the first sanctuary, would normally dissolve into nothingness upon their death—leaving only their life essences behind and this Obsidian Ape was no different.
Each and every single hunt that Max had attempted had been pretty easy thus far, but he had expected this from the first God's Sanctuary.