SSS Ranked Awakening: All My Skills Are at Level 100 Chapter 766: Even the Grazers

Halfway down the ridge, the hill in front of Leon stood up.

He froze in the grass. What he’d taken for a low mound lifted itself on six thick legs, shook a slide of dirt from its shell, and began to walk. It was the size of a farmhouse. Moss grew across its back, and two small, mild eyes blinked beneath the rim of its shell.

The creature gave a mournful hoot and lumbered west to join the others.

[Moundback — Level 88]

[Rank: Archon]

[Affinity: Earth, Water]

Leon waited until it had passed before moving. He’d already met enough of the things that ate other things here. Four Marauder carcasses were sitting in his ring, and his arm still stung whenever his sleeve brushed the burn.

He went south along the migration’s edge, keeping a ridge between himself and the main herd. That took most of the morning. The creatures wandered wherever they pleased, and twice he had to lie flat while Moundbacks crossed the low ground ahead. Once, a flock with wings like torn black sails swept so low that its passage flattened the grass around him.

He kept his aura drawn close and stayed down until the last shadow passed.

By midday, he found a dry streambed beneath a rocky rise, roughly two miles south of the main herd. A slab had split from the hillside and settled against it, leaving a sheltered gap underneath. From its open end, he could see the plain and the ruin in the west.

Before going in, he walked a wide circle around the rise. No fresh tracks crossed the streambed. There were no burrow mouths either, which he was particularly pleased about after the Marauders. A few grey bones lay under the slab, gnawed clean long ago.

Something had lived here once. He checked the back of the shelter to make sure it wasn’t merely out hunting.

Then he raised an earth barrier across the opening at waist height, leaving space to look over it. Anything large would break through, but the disturbance would wake him.

He sat down and reached for his food before doing anything else.

Loriel had packed dried meat and rice cakes with a note telling him to eat them before they went stale. He unfolded the note, looked at the cakes, and took a bite.

A little late.

He ate them with considerable satisfaction anyway, washing down the dry mouthfuls with water. There was something comforting about her handwriting in a place where even the grazing animals could flatten a house. He folded the note again and put it away with the remaining food.

His forearm needed cleaning. The burn was shallow, an angry patch where the Marauder’s fire had reached him through damaged armor. He washed it, spread one of Loriel’s salves over it, and wrapped it loosely enough that he could still move his wrist.

The Hunter’s cut on that arm had already healed. Apparently, the next floor had decided it needed something else.

His armor required more attention. He examined the jagged crack across its chest, then fed it a steady trickle of power. The edges began drawing together, slowly enough that he had to watch for a while to see the change.

He could afford the time. Walking into another fight half recovered would be a particularly stupid way to lose what he’d just earned.

While the armor mended, he examined one of the Marauders in the sheltered bend of the streambed. Its body was as long as a cart. Iron-colored plates covered its back, their seams still faintly red.

He pried one loose and turned it in his hands. A tap of his knuckle made it ring. When he touched a thread of fire to the edge, the seam brightened and the plate stiffened against his grip.

That response survived the creature itself.

He tested it once more with a smaller flame, already wondering what a clever smith might charge to work with it. The jaws looked useful too, as did the fire glands beneath the throat. He didn’t know their prices, but he knew enough to keep the parts intact.

The four kills had cost roughly a third of his ordinary reserve and a separate expenditure of holy energy to finish their escaping Avatars. He wasn’t about to leave half the payment lying in a ditch.

Once the inspection was done, he stored the carcass and the loose plate, cleared the blood from the stone, and returned beneath the slab.

The afternoon passed in stretches of meditation and short sleeps. His ordinary reserve recovered steadily. He checked his holy reserve separately, allowing its own source to replenish what he’d used rather than treating the two as interchangeable.

By evening, the armor’s crack had closed. By full dark, most of his ordinary strength had returned, and the salve had reduced the burn to an occasional irritation.

He settled at the opening to watch the plain.

From this distance, he could follow individual animals instead of seeing one enormous moving mass. The Moundbacks headed west in loose groups, stopping to nose at the ground or shove past one another. Around them, the long-legged creatures he’d seen earlier stalked through the grass.

One stood motionless for several minutes. Then its spear-shaped beak flashed down, coming up with something that kicked between its jaws.

[Stiltreaver — Level 97]

[Rank: Ethereal Initiate — Early stage]

Leon watched it swallow.

The Marauders hunted in packs. They waited until a Moundback strayed, then rushed it from different sides. Twice, Stiltreavers tried to steal their prey. Both attempts ended with the predators driving each other off and the Moundback escaping while they were occupied.

Above them, black wings circled until there was something injured enough to approach.

That explained the different movements much better than a summons affecting everything equally. He began looking beyond the animals, searching the ruin’s foothills for whatever the Moundbacks wanted.

The answer came shortly before midnight.

Pale light swelled between the broken walls. A pulse spread through the stone and down into the surrounding ground. Even from his shelter, Leon felt the brief increase in ambient energy.

The Moundbacks lifted their heads.

Then they ran.

Their heavy bodies converged on the foothills, crowding around places where light welled from the earth. Leon leaned forward, trying to see through the dust. Broken vents and shallow channels fed luminous pools along the ruin’s outer walls.

The creatures plunged their heads into those pools and drank. Gradually, the same pale glow appeared along the edges of their shells.

Leon watched one shove another aside for a better place. Whatever came out of the ruin, there was enough of it to feed creatures that size, and enough to bring them here in numbers.

He couldn’t tell what produced it from miles away. The pulse might have come from a formation, a natural deposit, or something else entirely. But the constructed channels were carrying it outward, and the animals knew where to wait.

His gaze followed the glow back toward the broken walls.

Somewhere inside was the source.

He found himself smiling. Then a shriek carried across the plain, and he glanced toward the predators gathering behind the drinkers.

Getting there was going to take a little care.