Slaying a Boss Grade Feral Beast — The Rewards

**"ROAR!!"**

This time, Lu Yuan was not standing on the Ancient Sea Giant Crocodile's armored back.

He was pressed against its belly.

Both hands locked on the hilt, he hauled the greatsword through yielding flesh, tearing open a gash nearly a meter wide — wide enough to see organs. Blood poured over him in sheets. The air filled with a thick, fetid reek, waves of rotten stench rolling through the space around him.

The wound wrenched an agonized roar from the Boss. Its massive body shuddered.

Given the creature's sheer size, even a wound this severe amounted to nothing more than pain — not a killing blow. But Lu Yuan didn't need a killing blow right now. He just kept pushing, kept cutting.

The Boss had already tried rolling across the pile of Elite-grade corpses, attempting the same trick as before — crushing him under its catastrophic weight. He'd felt the pressure slam down through his whole skeleton, bones grinding and groaning. But he was on the belly now, not the back. The underside was soft. As long as his defense held, it wouldn't finish him. He had no other options to consider anyway. He just kept applying force.

Eventually, the Boss made a decision. It knew it couldn't drive him away on land. It lunged for the deep pool, water erupting around it.

Lu Yuan's expression shifted as the pool swallowed him whole.

Underwater, he could barely make out the surface above. No escape route — he'd had none since this started. The only way out of this was to kill the Boss, or die here.

The creature rolled and thrashed, slamming itself against the pool's rock walls in its pain. Lu Yuan felt himself hurled in every direction, tossed and flung through the churning water. Only his raw strength kept him from being ripped loose. He held on. Kept cutting.

Then he noticed the Boss angling toward one particular section of wall. Its body was gradually vanishing into the rock.

He found himself in a passage — pitch black, so dark that even his current eyesight couldn't reach the far end.

As a wall rushed toward him, Lu Yuan thought for a split second, then wrenched the greatsword hard.

Time stretched. He couldn't tell how much had passed.

He could feel the Boss's struggles gradually ebbing.

At last, the creature broke the surface — a hollow, agonized roar, utterly spent. Nothing like the thunder it had unleashed before.

Lu Yuan released the belly and surfaced, greatsword in hand.

He wasn't at the outer pool. He was inside a dim cavern. The space was roughly twenty meters across, one side bounded by a sheer cliff wall, the other by a rocky clearing strewn with boulders. The pool had already been stained from the blood of the Elite-grade corpses; now, great surges of the Boss's blood poured in, dyeing the water a deep, uniform crimson.

The Boss dragged itself half onto the rocky clearing, its lower half still submerged.

A faint white light flickered across its body. Something sparked in Lu Yuan's eyes.

He climbed carefully onto the shore, watching the creature intently. It had gone still. He was already moving in to test whether it was really over — when its massive body gave a single convulsive shudder.

Then nothing.

*Dead.*

*Really dead.*

His mouth curved into a smile.

The drops materialized — three orbs of light, one cyan, one green, one white.

He grabbed all three at once.

The cyan orb was a jet-black bone staff.

*A Boss Grade Gene Armament.*

His eyes lit up. He had no idea how rare Boss Grade Gene Armaments were exactly, but they were definitely far more valuable than Elite Grade ones. Boss Grade. That alone said enough.

The green orb made him widen his eyes entirely.

*A Transcendent Gene.*

He took it in hand, and the information flooded into his mind.

**Transcendent Gene: Water Arrow.**

*Fast. Powerful. Short charge time.*

*Upon engraving: primarily enhances the Gene Warrior's mental strength. Bonus enhancement to strength and defense.*

He turned the gene over in his thoughts. The bonus to strength and defense was probably tied to the gene's source — the Boss Grade creature it had come from.

The white orb was a leather armor set. He had no interest in it. It went into his Battle-mark Space.

Then he glanced toward the Spirit Crystal drops. A small white jade stone among them caught his eye. He picked it up, and information entered his mind.

*"That lucky?! An Origin Stone — just like that?!"*

He stared at it. He'd never gotten one of those before.

Another smile.

He took a moment to think through everything.

Throughout the entire fight, he had absorbed Spirit Crystals close to twenty times. He'd used back-to-back Potent Serums — a full-spectrum stack. And even with all of that, before the Boss's Spirit Power ran dry, he'd been running for his life, chased in every direction. Even *after* the Boss's Spirit Power was exhausted, it had taken everything he had — his slight edge in speed, and the terrain the Boss itself had maneuvered him into — just to find and attack its weak point. And even then, the kill hadn't come quickly.

*This creature was a Boss Grade Feral Beast. Of course it was that strong.*

He understood it now, in his bones.

He'd been following Battle Net posts long enough to know. Yesterday he'd read one that was making the rounds — a write-up about a coordinated hunt: thirteen Elite Grade Gene Warriors, all with Elite genes engraved, all at over ninety percent tempering, leading more than two hundred ordinary Gene Warriors against a Bloody Giant Python with barely seventy percent tempering. They'd lost more than half their people before they brought it down.

Thirteen Elite warriors to kill one Boss Grade Feral Beast. That was considered a creditable performance.

And the crocodile he'd just faced had clearly been stronger than that python. Yet he'd done it alone.

*I solo-killed a Boss.*

If he said that out loud, people would think he'd lost his mind.

He gave a quiet mental shrug. *I'm just a bit stronger. That's all.*

He turned his thoughts to the Water Arrow gene.

Right now he had no ranged capability at all. If he engraved Water Arrow, that changed completely. He still had vivid memories of what those shots had done to solid rock — thirty-centimeter craters punched clean through. Fast. Powerful. Short charge time. The Boss Grade Gene Armament, Elemental Type though it was, could still slightly boost water-type Combat Techniques on top of that. And factor in his Spirit Crystal absorption talent — he'd essentially become an inexhaustible water arrow turret, never running out of Spirit Power.

But he was still hesitant.

The Gene Armament was Elemental Type. That was a shame — it wasn't designed for his type. And the Gene Battle Technique he'd originally planned for as his second gene was supposed to be speed. Speed was his only weak point. His defense was already a strength; with Black Steel Force pushing his strength up by eighty percent, raw power was a strength too. Speed was the gap. Close that, and in close combat, he'd be nearly unstoppable. He had the Boss Grade Gene Armament and Black Steel Force on top of that — with speed added in, there would be almost nothing left to wish for.

*What's the point of thinking about all this now?*

He hadn't ranked up yet. He didn't have a second gene slot. And he hadn't gotten a speed-type Transcendent Gene either. There was nothing to decide today.

He shook his head and put everything away.

He looked around the dim cavern, finally taking stock of where he was.

A rotten, blood-soaked smell hung in the air. The crimson pool glimmered faintly in the dark.

Everything was in place.

*All that's left is to rank up.*