"Alright," Judas clapped his hands, drawing their attention. "You have the knowledge. Now you need the experience."

The cozy domesticity of the Couple Space was a cage. They couldn't grow here.

"We are going back out. Stay close to me. Do not panic. The moment we exit, we are in combat."

The women nodded. Ezra gripped her sword until her knuckles turned white. Nina hid behind Ezra, her hands glowing with prepared healing mana. Summer licked her lips, her eyes glowing red.

Luna took a deep breath. Since she didn't have a bow, she had to draw an arrow with her intelligence. Judas decided he would get all his wives suitable equipment after he refilled his affection points.

"Let's go."

Judas willed the space to dissolve.

The transition was instant. The smell of lavender and stew vanished, replaced by a wall of stench so thick it felt physical.

The smell of rot. The smell of burning. The smell of carnage.

They reappeared in the rocky pass, exactly where Judas had killed the Ogre.

But the scene had changed.

The two massive Ogre corpses were still there, but they were no longer alone. The scent of high-grade monster blood had acted like a dinner bell for every creature in the Budding Zone.

The pass was swarming.

"Kreee!"

"Grak!"

Green skin. Yellow eyes. Jagged teeth.

Goblins. Hundreds of them.

They covered the Ogre corpses like ants on a sugar cube, tearing away chunks of grey flesh with ravenous hunger. There were standard goblins, hobgoblins with crude shields, and even a few apprentices holding bone staffs.

The sudden appearance of five humans in the middle of their feast caused a ripple of silence to spread through the horde.

Hundreds of heads snapped toward Judas and his wives.

Hundreds of bloody mouths stopped chewing.

Ezra froze. Her face drained of color. Training was one thing; standing in front of a green sea of monsters was another.

Luna's hands shook. The mana arrow rattled against the air.

Nina let out a small, terrified squeak. Judas licked his lips, excitement burning inside.

One goblin, a brave scavenger near the front, screeched and lunged.

That broke the spell.

The horde roared. It was a sound like a landslide of gravel. They abandoned the cold Ogre meat for the fresh, warm flesh of humans.

"Wake up!" Judas roared, activating Intimidation. That stunned a few goblins, making them stagger, as he and Summer activated Stagnate, decreasing the speed of the rushing monsters by half.

He exploded forward.

Dash.

The air cracked behind him. He disappeared from the vision of the front line.

He reappeared in the center of the first wave, ten meters ahead of his wives.

He drew his iron sword. The metal hummed, vibrating with the power of a Level 10 Rare skill.

Lightning Sword Slash.

He swung.

It wasn't a simple cut. A crescent of purple electricity erupted from the blade, expanding outward like a shockwave.

Crack-boom!

Lightning sparks exploded around him. It jumped from the primary target to the goblin next to it, and then the next.

Ten heads flew into the air simultaneously. Their bodies convulsed, fried by the high-voltage mana before they even hit the ground. The smell of burnt meat spread in the surroundings.

Judas didn't stop.

Slash. Slash. Slash.

He was a whirlwind of death. He moved faster than the goblins could track. His Agility attribute, bolstered by Dash, made him a blur.

Every swing of his sword reaped a harvest of lives.

[Goblin killed. +1 SP]

[Goblin killed. +1 SP]

[Hobgoblin killed. +5 SP]

After learning the Appraisal skill, he could see the amount of skill points he received after killing the goblins. He could also see the progress bar of skills leveling up into the next stage.

Lightning Sword Slash was now filled 67% with skill points. When it reached a hundred, the skill would level up.

The notifications scrolled in his peripheral vision like a waterfall, but he ignored them.

He spun, ducking under a crude spear thrust, and severed the attacker's legs. He pivoted, driving his blade through the chest of a hobgoblin trying to flank him.

Within ten seconds, he had killed twenty monsters. Within thirty seconds, the count passed fifty.

He created a circle of death, a buffer zone of corpses and crackling electricity that kept the horde from rushing his wives.

But there were too many. They were beginning to spill around him, leaking past his defense like water around a rock.

"Don't just stand there!" Judas shouted over his shoulder, decapitating a goblin that had leaped at his face. "Fight!"

His roar snapped the women out of their stupor.

Ezra was the first to move. The warrior spirit in her blood ignited. She saw a goblin slipping past Judas, heading straight for Nina.

Her eyes narrowed.

Dash.

It was clumsy. It was a Level 1 skill, unrefined and raw. But it worked.

She surged forward, closing the distance in a burst of speed that surprised even her.

Sword Slash.

She swung her weapon. She didn't have the lightning attunement, nor the grace of Judas. But she had Strength.

The blade bit into the goblin's shoulder and didn't stop until it exited the opposite hip.

The monster was cleaved in two. Blood sprayed over Ezra's new tunic.

She blinked, looking at her hands. She felt powerful.

"I… I did it," she whispered.

Then she looked up. "Die!"

She charged into the fray, positioning herself to cover Judas's left flank.

Luna, seeing Ezra move, gritted her teeth. She wasn't going to be outdone by her.

She focused on her Intelligence attribute. She visualized the mana in the air, pulling it into the arrow nocked on the string.

Piercing Shot.

The arrow glowed with a faint blue light.

She released.

Thwip.

The arrow flew true. It ignored the wind. It ignored gravity. It punched straight through the wooden shield of a hobgoblin and buried itself in the creature's eye.

The monster howled and fell.

"Yes!" Luna cheered.

She quickly nocked another.

Arrow Split.

This time, the arrow divided in mid-air. One became two. They weren't as powerful as the single shot, but they struck two separate goblins in the throat.

Burst Arrow.

And they detonated. But the pieces of the explosion not only injured surrounding goblins, but also Judas and Ezra who were in the fray.

"Oh shit…"

"Tsk." Summer clicked her tongue. "Nina…" She muttered.

Nina gritted her teeth. She squeezed her eyes shut and raised her hands.

Vital Zone.

A green circle expanded from her feet, covering a five-meter radius.

It washed over Judas and Ezra.

Judas felt his stamina return instantly. The small scratches he had accumulated from the detonation before closed up. The fatigue in his muscles vanished.

But the skill had a double edge.

The goblins that stepped into the green light screamed. Their blood refused to clot. Old wounds reopened. New scratches bled profusely.

It was a domain of life for allies and a domain of bleeding for enemies.

"Good job, Puppy!" Judas yelled, stepping back into the zone to refresh himself before diving back into the meat grinder.

Summer stood in the middle of the formation. She didn't need orders.

She watched the blood spilling on the rocks. There was so much of it. It was a river.

Her eyes glowed.

Blood Bind.

The spilled blood on the ground came alive. It turned into crimson tendrils that lashed out, wrapping around the ankles of the charging horde.

Goblins tripped. They fell face-first into the dirt, where they were easy pickings for Ezra and Luna.

The team was sloppy. They were inexperienced. They made mistakes—Ezra overextended, Luna missed shots, Nina wasted mana.

But they were fighting.

They were no longer damsels waiting to be saved. They were Awakened.

Judas grinned, his face smeared with green blood.

He activated Stealth.

He vanished from the perception of the Hobgoblin chieftain that was barking orders from the rear.

He reappeared behind the brute.

Lightning Sword Slash.

The chieftain's head flew into the air, spinning amidst a halo of purple sparks.

The horde wavered. Their leader was dead. The "food" was fighting back with the power of a storm.

Judas stood on top of the Ogre corpse, lightning crackling around his blade.

"Push them back!" he ordered.

Ezra roared a war cry and advanced. Luna rained death from the distance. Nina's healing became a curse upon the monsters. Summer turned the battlefield into a blood swamp.

And so, the hunt ended in twenty minutes.

Judas Dashed in between the corpses, collecting the dropped items into the Couple Space. Then he dashed back to his wives.

"Let's go."

Waiting here would attract more monsters. His wives were already tired.

They needed rest. The reason he didn't put them into the Couple Space was because doing that would make them overly reliant on the space. They had to learn about maximizing output with lesser energy consumption.

He led the three excited women and one bored vampire to the second zone. From the second zone onward, they would face a different variety of monsters.

Although the chances of meeting monsters with Rare attributes, like blood, were lesser, he couldn't completely erase that possibility.

So he intentionally moved in the outer edges of the second zone. He would go deeper when the skills of his wives reached Level 10 and evolved once.

In the meantime, he wanted to level up his Dash and Stealth to ten, and evolve them.

And just like that, a single man, accompanied by four breathtaking beauties, became an apocalypse for the apocalypse-born monsters in the outer edges of the second zone.

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