Dark Creature

Shock!

Utter shock!

Yin Ming looked down and saw Jeroen Hoven's old face.

He felt not the slightest fear, panic, or anger. Instead, countless absurd thoughts sprang up:

Could it be that Eno, the original owner of this body, had inadvertently offended Jeroen Hoven? Like accidentally killing his parents?

Or had he fallen under an illusion? Was it actually he who had failed to murder Jeroen Hoven, and now Jeroen Hoven had come for revenge?

Yin Ming could not be blamed for thinking that way!

This was not the deepest part of the Magic Beast Forest.

But the chances of encountering magic beasts were far from low. Man-eating predators like bears, tigers, and leopards were everywhere.

Without a wizard's powerful spiritual perception and the Zero-Ring Wizardry Wizard's Hand, Yin Ming would not have stayed in a place like this for even a second.

In novels from his previous life,

places like this were forbidden zones where the protagonist would survive after being driven to the brink, while villains would stop pursuing at the boundary.

If serfs fled into the Magic Beast Forest, it was considered suicide. Not even slave-catching squads would go in after them.

How deep was this grudge?

To come looking for him at the risk of his life?

"If you haven't finished moving those stones, there won't be any dinner tonight!"

Beneath the tree, Jeroen Hoven wore a half-smile, with no anger visible on his face.

It was as if he had merely caught a lazy serf and was preparing to teach him a lesson before urging him back to work.

"I'm not moving them! I wasn't planning to eat anyway!"

Even if Jeroen Hoven had not come looking for him, Yin Ming had been planning to find a chance to poison him.

His mental power traced the spell rune for Wizard's Hand. He only needed to inject magic power to activate it.

"My fault! I was too impulsive. I set the task too harshly!"

Jeroen Hoven looked full of regret as he covered his face and let out a pained sigh.

Then, his face twisted into a ferocious sneer. "I should have calculated it carefully and set a goal you could see but never reach. That way, you wouldn't lose hope, and you could die in agony from hunger and exhaustion."

Yin Ming: "..."

Just how twisted could humans in this world be?

The incense offering ritual had become a blood sacrifice!

Murder with neither hatred nor conflict of interest!

Taking pleasure in another person's suffering!

Jeroen Hoven was definitely not an exception. The manor stewards throughout Golden Lion County were all cut from the same cloth.

"Heh! You didn't run. Are you planning to fight me to the death?"

After his regretful act, Jeroen Hoven realized that Yin Ming was looking at him as though he were some rare animal.

The look gave him a slight jolt. He began sizing Yin Ming up from head to toe, and when he saw the other's thin body, mockery involuntarily curled his lips.

The muscles on a serf's body and the muscles on a knight's body were fundamentally different, like cattle and sheep compared to lions and tigers.

"It has been so long since I last fought that I nearly forgot I was a knight."

"..."

A knight!

A semi-supernatural knight.

Yin Ming had seen quite a few knights, but he had never witnessed a knight's strength.

Still, he could guess with his toes that anything associated with the word supernatural would not be simple.

Knight ranks were divided into: Low Knight, High Knight, and Grand Knight.

Jeroen Hoven managed Tulip Manor, and the knight guards held no respect for him. So even if he was a knight, he was only the weakest kind: a Low Knight.

"Come on! Let me see a knight's power!"

If he had not obtained a wizard's inheritance, Yin Ming would have become a knight first.

But it would only have been the worst of bad options, a temporary transition.

Back then, in the battle for Mountain Territory, those three hundred knights had died far too miserably.

It left Yin Ming unable to feel even the slightest longing or anticipation toward the semi-supernatural power of knights.

"I'll break all four of your limbs first. I'll use your screams to accompany my meal."

Jeroen Hoven's aura suddenly became incomparably violent, his skin turning red like heated iron.

His height swelled from one point eight meters to two meters as he transformed into an irrational wild bull charging out of its pen.

A faint ripple of elemental fluctuation appeared around him. It was entirely different from a spell manipulating the elements, more like a pebble falling into a lake and causing the elements to ripple passively.

[Wizard's Hand!]

Yin Ming did not dare let down his guard in the slightest.

He injected magic power into the rune, forming a transparent Wizard's Hand.

It seized the charging Jeroen Hoven and clenched its palm into a fist with all its strength.

Semi-supernatural was still supernatural. Even a lion used its full strength when hunting a rabbit.

A moment later, the hand opened, and all that remained on the spot was a puddle of minced flesh!

Yin Ming: [...]

There was no sense of combat at all. It felt like crushing a hopping grasshopper to death.

Still, that suited Yin Ming's fighting style even better.

Only a brain-damaged madman would leave flying swords, Daoist arts, talismans, and dharma manifestations unused, then swing a huge sword around and trade slashes with someone else. Who had more heads to spare?

"A wizard! This is a wizard's power."

Yin Ming stared at the puddle of flesh. He felt no nausea or urge to vomit, and began considering the difference between knights and wizards.

Knights were actually not weak!

Jeroen Hoven's full-force charge had unleashed at least two thousand catties of force, and his speed had reached twice that of an ordinary person.

On a battlefield, such physical abilities made him a mowing machine against ordinary people. He deserved the title of semi-supernatural.

But wizards did not need to fight knights at close range. Wizard's Hand was completely transparent; without a wizard's spiritual perception, one could not even sense its existence.

A knight with only brute force facing a wizard who had mastered spells—

was simply like encountering a natural predator. He did not have even the slightest ability to resist.

If a knight wanted to defeat a wizard, he either had to launch a surprise attack and kill the wizard before the spell circuit was drawn, or wait until the wizard's mental power and magic power were exhausted.

"That is somewhat like cold weapons facing firearms. Either kill the opponent before he fires, or wait until he runs out of ammunition."

Wizard Apprentices still had many shortcomings.

But Yin Ming had only cultivated for two days. He had merely permanently formed one Mental Rune and learned one Zero-Ring Wizardry spell.

"..."

Suddenly, from the puddle of flesh that Jeroen Hoven had turned into,

a small, pitch-black ball of fur the size of an adult's fist emerged, with a pair of blood-red eyes.

Its four legs resembled four sharp reaper's scythes. With a slight bend, it sprang swiftly through the bushes, fleeing toward the outer edge of the Magic Beast Forest.

"What the hell is that?"

Yin Ming was badly startled!

The Wizard's Hand had not yet dissipated. He hurriedly controlled the giant wizard hand and grabbed the black furball darting about.

Before he even exerted much force,

he heard a pop.

The black furball burst like an inflated balloon when squeezed.

It turned into a black crystal sphere the size of a fingernail, brimming with sinister energy.

[Collect!]

Yin Ming took out the Scavenger Gourd.

Jeroen Hoven's corpse could be left to the beasts of the Magic Beast Forest as an extra meal.

The black crystal formed from the black furball's corpse was obviously no ordinary item, but a supernatural one. It definitely had to be stored in the gourd for recycling.

[Name: Unknown Parasite Corpse Core.]

[Components: Crystal: 90%, Mental Energy: 4%, Unknown Energy: 3%, Unknown Creature Blood: 2%, Impurities: 1%.]

[Note: An unknown parasite that is keen on collecting special souls. It can control the emotions of its host, exists between matter and element, and lacks the ability to reproduce.]

[Extractable: Unknown Consciousness Fragment: 1, Mental Power Essence: 0.5, Unknown Energy Essence: 0.2, Unknown Creature Blood Essence: 0.1.]