CLEAVER OF SIN Chapter 783: Basilisk

Asher moved to another function on the bracelet. It was a real-time live ranking. Asher was curious; he had just landed here about three minutes ago, and he wanted to see what names were already topping the ranking.

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Qualifiers Round Ranking

1/ Finch Whale / 1000 Points / Zarethorne

2/ Acker Holloway / 200 Points / Vandross

3/ Zis Zaitsu / 100 Points / Velkarin

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After that, no other name appeared at all, showing that everyone else was still on zero points. It either meant they were in the same condition as Asher, or they were still in the process of battling their own enemies or whatever challenges they had encountered.

Asher stared at the ranking, through some quick mental calculations, he deduced that perhaps Veil-class monsters netted either fifty or one hundred points. But after thinking about it for a moment, he chose to forget about it. It didn’t matter how many points each monster or Emovirae was worth; once he saw anything Rank 3 or Veil-class and above, he would end it.

After all, there was a saying back on Earth; mosquito meat was still meat.

’How did Finch even have such an amount of points within three minutes?’ Asher thought to himself as he stared at the ridiculous score displayed on the projection before him. Not even the so-called Hope of the World, Arianna Haellight, had a single point at the moment, yet Finch already had a thousand.

Asher’s mind couldn’t help but drift to the various moments when William would always say Finch had been lucky ever since they were children, even before the guy had awakened.

’Looking back on it, Finch never denied that he had always been lucky,’ Asher thought to himself. ’Did that guy land in a Positive Zone? Or did he land in a Negative Zone that happened to have a lot of monsters?’ Asher considered.

But after a moment, he chose to forget about it, even during the brief period he had spent thinking about all this, twenty names had already climbed onto the ranking. Everyone was indeed working hard from the very first day, the competition had only just begun, yet participants were already scrambling for every possible advantage.

Personally, Asher wasn’t in a rush to climb the ranking. He had four whole days, and he had no intention of being anything other than Rank 1.

As Asher didn’t particularly have any abilities that could be locked or restricted, he couldn’t find out how many points would be required to unlock abilities. Although Asher guessed the cost would certainly be higher than the two thousand points required for elements.

With everything done, Asher decided to start moving, he had spent nearly five minutes doing nothing after all. His eyes immediately traced up the trees, an idea flickering within his mind, without hesitation, he sprang into motion, his foot kicking off the ground with a squishing sound as he leaped onto a tree branch, then another, then, with a final powerful jump, Asher shot into the sky, his body leaving the forest canopy entirely as he decided to survey anything beyond the forest, and where better to do that than from the sky itself?

And since he couldn’t fly without Astra Energy, he needed to be fast before gravity claimed him.

Asher subtly guided his Star Energy into his eyes as he ascended into the air, he turned his head to the left, his vision extending for kilometres, then he turned to the right, scanning that direction as well. The next second, gravity reclaimed him and he plummeted back into the forest, Asher landed on the crown of a tree as though he weighed nothing at all.

The moment he landed, he turned and then shot forward like an arrow, as he already knew the way out of the forest lay in this particular direction, the Star Energy enhancing his vision vanished immediately afterward. Although he had said he wouldn’t be using Star Energy for now, that was only for major actions that would require him to openly reveal it, as for subtle things like sight enhancement, that could surely be done without anyone noticing.

Asher leaped from one tree to another, his speed swift as he crossed hundreds of metres within seconds with ease. He didn’t bother running on the ground. It was damp, full of mud, and would only slow him down while dirtying his shoes even more. If any monkey or ape saw Asher at this moment, they would wonder if he possessed some form of bloodline that allowed him to perform such manoeuvres easily.

’How large is this battlefield or survival field?’ Asher thought as he increased his speed even further. Just the poisonous forest alone was already this large, Asher couldn’t help but wonder if there were 1,740 more locations like this, all connected to one another in a massive interconnected landscape.

Although he seemed not to be paying attention to his surroundings, Omni Perception mapped out everything above, below, behind, in front of, and beside him within a kilometre radius while he held his breath, making sure not to inhale anything.

’At least the poison doesn’t permeate through skin pores. That would have been extremely wicked,’ Asher thought to himself as he moved.

’This gives me another inspiration for training. I’ve been focusing my Light Affinity on healing so much that I forgot to train its purification aspect in order to cure diseases, cleanse toxins, remove curses, and all that,’ Asher thought to himself. ’I’ll focus on that when I return,’ he concluded, the moment he did, he picked up a presence a kilometre away.

Asher could sense it was a Mark-class presence, which, in terms of the Ten Monster Classifications, sat at the fifth rank.

Asher didn’t even hesitate, he immediately changed trajectory as he shot forward like a cannon. The moment he closed the distance sufficiently, his eyes fell upon a huge basilisk that stretched for dozens of metres. Asher didn’t dare consider the thing before him a mere snake, although it radiated the presence of a Mark-class beast, surely it could rival a Grave-rank monster.

Its scales reflected faint traces of light filtering through the forest canopy, and every movement it made carried a sense of unnatural menace. The creature looked less like an animal and more like a predator specifically designed for slaughter.

Asher didn’t hesitate, the rank didn’t matter; all that mattered was ending it where it stood. But the moment he blurred forward, Asher’s senses screamed like a blaring horn, and at that exact moment, Asher’s purple eyes met the basilisk’s yellow ones.

And if there was one thing Asher trusted more than anything else in this world, it was his senses. He didn’t dare continue his attack, instead, he abandoned it entirely and shot upwards, diving onto a branch above. The moment he did, through his Omni Perception, Asher saw the trees behind him immediately become petrified.

The transformation happened almost instantly. Bark, leaves, branches, and even the vines hanging from the trees turned into lifeless stone in the blink of an eye.

Asher couldn’t help but feel a sudden chill, clearly, he had underestimated this beast merely because it was at the Mark-class. But with such a petrification ability, surely this monster was far stronger than it initially appeared.