Nova continues his hunt, but the air in the novice zone now feels strangely still. As a rank nine awakened, his presence alone seems to weigh on the surroundings. The system notifications in his mind have slowed to a crawl; because he is now so much stronger than the rank six beasts that roam these outskirts, the points he receives have dropped into the single digits. The challenge has vanished, and he realizes that to truly grow, he must leave the safety of the novice zone behind.
He walks deeper into the forest, the canopy overhead growing thicker and the shadows stretching longer across the damp earth. After a while, he comes across a weathered sign marking the border. Beyond this point, the safety of the novice zone ends. He sees the tracks of humans and powerful beasts alike—a common sight for high-level awakened and warrior realm martial artists who regularly venture into the true wilderness. Without a moment of hesitation, nova crosses the line, stepping into the untamed forest.
At the same time, far behind him, the assassin slips past the city gates. His eyes are cold and focused as he begins to track nova's scent through the brush.
deeper in the woods, the scent of pine and wild musk fills the air. Nova soon spots a winged tiger stalking through the undergrowth. The creature is magnificent; if it could take just one more step in its evolution, it would become a golden winged tiger, with thick veins of gold running through its powerful wings. Nova sinks into the tall grass, hiding behind the bushes to wait for the perfect opening.
With a sudden burst of speed, he activates his phantom steps. He blurs through the air and swings his sword in a wide arc, aiming directly for the beast's wing to ground it. The tiger roars in sudden, agonizing pain as the blade connects. but the sound is immediately met by a second roar echoing from deep within the forest. Nova's face turns serious. If the second winged tiger joins the fight, the situation will become dangerous. He narrows his eyes, focusing his full force. using his phantom steps to close the gap, he executes a swift wind swordsmanship strike, cleanly severing the monster's head just as its mate bursts through the trees.
The second winged tiger is fast, its intact wings allowing it to dive and strike with terrifying speed. It begins a relentless chase, forcing nova to dodge continuously. For the first minute, the back-and-forth is difficult, but as the fight continues, Nova begins to truly adapt to his mastery-level phantom steps. What felt clumsy before now becomes fluid. He waits for the tiger to overextend, and when the moment strikes, he slashes at its right wing.
the beast loses its balance in mid-air and crashes into the dirt with a heavy thud. Nova seizes this golden chance, moving in like a shadow to sever the head of the second tiger. After resting for a short moment to catch his breath, he stores the corpses and moves forward.
a little further ahead, he discovers a small cave tucked between jagged rocks. Inside, resting on a bed of dry leaves, is a huge egg that reaches up to his knees. He recognizes it immediately: a winged tiger egg. The two beasts he just killed were a couple. He carefully picks up the egg, considering whether to raise the creature himself or sell it for a fortune later.
He spends the next few hours hunting other rank nine monsters, including the massive iron armored bull and the lethal green anaconda. With every kill, his combat experience sharpens, and the flow of energy in his body becomes more natural. Finally, he glances at the time. lunch break is about to start at school, and he needs to maintain his act. He turns back toward the city, moving swiftly through the trees.
After he enters the safe zone again and walks forward a few seconds, he sees a man dressed in black. At first, he didn't think too much, but after that guy saw nova, he started to run towards nova madly with fast speed. Nova's instincts told him this guy is malicious. Nova's head starts to move first; looking at the man's posture, he is definitely here to kill him. Why kill him? He didn't offend this man.
Maybe he was a hitman someone paid to kill him. After thinking for a while, one name came to his mind: Jack. Nova's face turned cold. He thought, I didn't think of taking care of him since Jack's family is doomed and Nova will leave Emerald city to go to star rise academy soon. In his memory, when he meets Jack again a few years later, Jack's family will be already pretty much destroyed. But now, because the beast god cult makes the city unsafe, he doesn't want an unpredictable factor like Jack around.
for now, how should he take care of this hitman? He has no intention to let this man live, but he can't kill him here in the safe zone. If he kills him here, his strength will be exposed and he will be targeted by beast god fanatics. The only way is to run to the outside of the safe zone while pretending to flee.
After he enters the dense forest, he will kill this man. When he returns to the city later, the city guards will ask about the hitman since they saw him running into the forest. He will just lie and say that after entering the forest, he hid in a concealed cave. Then, when he came out a few minutes later, the hitman was gone and he didn't know anything else.
with a plan in his mind, he starts to execute it. He pretends to run towards the outside of the forest. When he enters the trees, he suddenly stops and turns around. using phantom steps and swinging his sword, the hitman isn't able to react and his head falls off. while running, nova already realized that this man is not that strong, so he didn't waste time or words and just killed him.
He took the hitman's storage bracelet and left. As expected, the city guards asked him a few questions and then let him go. He can see the office buildings are in a full hurry. it must be the beast god cult causing the stress. After that, nothing else unexpected happened. He attended the special class, pretending as usual, and then went home.
After he reached home and ate, he entered his room to see exactly what the assassin's storage bracelet held. The room was quiet, lit only by a thin beam of light hitting the floor. He opened the bracelet and felt a cold tingle as he took out things one by one. First, he retrieved a heavy suitcase made of cold, brushed metal. Inside was a sleek metallic black bank card for an anonymous account holding 100M alliance coins. Nova smiled; the card felt smooth and heavy in his hand.
He wanted to buy quite a few things from the warrior mall but had been worried that he would not have enough money. Jack sending him so much money was really so foolish of him. Nova is a man who repays favors, so he will definitely repay this favor by killing him. Next, he found a mask that was thin as skin and felt strangely cold to the touch. It had many runes engraved on it that caught the shadows in the room. There were some other useless things too. Nova searched about the mask on the internet and found that this kind of mask is usually for disguise and concealing the aura.