On a narrow mountain path, a pure white cloud leopard raced through, leaving everything behind it as a blur.
Ahead lay a ravine, several dozen meters wide. With a powerful leap, the cloud leopard soared across to the other side of the cliff.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Slow down! Are you trying to scare me to death?” Robert woke up with a stream of curses. When he looked into Charles’s cold, piercing eyes, he shivered and quickly shut his mouth.
He was completely bound with ropes and strapped onto the cloud leopard’s back, unable to move.
However, since Charles hadn’t killed him, it meant that Charles was still wary of his connection to the Taylor family. This thought brought a smug smile to Robert’s face. “Charles, as long as you don’t kill me, once we get back to Lsengard, I can give you money, women—anything you want!”
“Kill you? I wouldn’t want to dirty my hands,” Charles scoffed. He lightly patted the cloud leopard’s back, and it immediately picked up speed, causing Robert to be jolted back into unconsciousness.
When Robert next opened his eyes, he found himself lying at the entrance of a dark, eerie tomb. A cold wind blew from within, carrying a strong, putrid stench.
Charles was there, using a small knife to cut the ropes binding Robert.
“Charles, what are you…?” Despite his relief at being freed, Robert couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling creeping over him as he took in his surroundings.
“Of course, I’m letting you go,” Charles replied with a friendly smile.
Before Robert could fully grasp what was happening, Charles kicked him into the tomb. As Robert tumbled inside, the sound of something crawling echoed behind him. He turned around to see dozens of blood-red eyes glaring at him from the darkness.
Outside the passageway, Charles was slowly closing the heavy stone door.
“Charles, you bastard! You broke your promise! Didn’t you say you’d let me go? Open the damn door!” Robert screamed, his voice raw with desperation as he pounded on the stone door.
Just before the door fully closed, through the narrow gap, he caught a glimpse of Charles’s face, twisted into a chilling smile. “I did say I wouldn’t kill you, and I was planning to let you go. But did I ever say where I’d release you? Why don’t you stay here and keep those man-faced spiders company?”
Boom!
The stone door slammed shut with a resounding thud. Robert froze for a moment. “Man-faced spiders?”
Then it hit him. Before entering the ferocious beast mountain range, his father, Sly, had warned him repeatedly about the terrifying creatures that lurked in the tombs and caves of the range—creatures even Morrs wouldn’t stand a chance against.
As Robert turned around, he squinted through the faint light coming from the door’s gap. In the darkness, he saw the grotesque monsters creeping toward him. They had the bodies of spiders, but with hideous human faces, drooling blood and saliva as they crawled closer.
“Charles, you bastard! Open the door!!” Robert banged on the stone door with all his might, but the massive door didn’t budge, not even a little.
As the dozens of man-faced spiders closed in, Robert was so terrified that he wet himself again, curling up in a corner by the door. Under the overwhelming shadow of death, his mind flashed with the faces of the classmates he had killed, as if in a movie reel.
But now, those hundreds of faces were just as hideous as the man-faced spiders.
Snap.
A sharp, clear sound rang out, followed by an excruciating pain that nearly made Robert faint. One of the man-faced spiders had bitten clean through his leg, the searing pain almost causing him to lose consciousness. “Aaaahhh!!!”
The scent of blood filled the air, driving the man-faced spiders into a frenzy as they swarmed over him.
“Charles!!!”
As Charles walked away from the bloody pool outside, he could faintly hear Robert’s cries for help.
Charles smirked coldly. “Robert, now you know the fear and pain that those classmates you butchered felt, don’t you?”
…
Outside the bloody pool, Charles glanced back at the ancient tomb, now long deserted. In the week since he left, even the coffins inside had been emptied out by a gang of grave robbers.
From within the tomb, faint echoes of screams and the sound of man-faced spiders gnawing on bones could still be heard.
Charles let out a long sigh. “By killing Robert, I’ve officially made the Taylor family my mortal enemies.”
Since arriving in this world, Charles had never intended to provoke anyone. All he wanted was to survive, and one day, return to Earth. If that was impossible, then at least he hoped to find his parents and live a comfortable life in this Beast Mastery World.
But if anyone tried to kill him, he wouldn’t hesitate to retaliate with the most brutal means available.
After leaving the bloody pool, Charles took another look at the points leaderboard.
—
[Ferocious Beast Mountain Range Training Points Leaderboard]
1st: Grace [21,524 points]
2nd: Thomas [14,381 points]
3rd: Emily [13,019 points]
…
9th: Charles [10,298 points]
…
—
With Robert’s death, Charles’s ranking had climbed up one spot to 9th place.
Now, admission to Vendantia Academy in the province of Vendantia was practically guaranteed. But if he could raise his rank by just three more spots, he would earn a spot at one of the three prestigious Imperial Capital academies.
“Even though I have Emma’s recommendation letter, which could get me into Nova Academy on special admission, I’d rather not give that woman any reason to look down on me!” A determined spark lit up Charles’s eyes.
Moreover, the top six would be granted access to the academy’s treasure vault. With the right mystical beast egg, his power could undergo a dramatic transformation, just in time to tame his third mystical beast.
There was less than a week left until the end of the training, and the window to surpass his rivals was closing fast. But before he could focus on that, there was something even more important he needed to take care of.
…
Around the bloody pool, a few grave robbers were cautiously patrolling the area.
“I think I heard something from the bloody pool tomb just now. You all stay sharp! Don’t let Charles get away!” barked the leader, a scar-faced man, his voice laced with menace.
But as soon as the words left his mouth, he noticed something strange: a light snow began to fall around them. It was August, yet the air suddenly turned bitterly cold.
“Achoo! What’s with this weather?” The scar-faced man sneezed, only to realize that his feet were now frozen to the ground.
At that moment, a tall, muscular young man slowly approached him. “I’m the Charles you’re looking for. So, what? You think you can catch me?”
“You… you…” The scar-faced man’s face twisted in fear.
But before he could even shout Charles’s name, his head had already been severed from his body. The other robbers behind him were quickly skewered by Max’s ice spikes, their bodies left looking like pincushions.
“Charles, it’s you!” The last surviving grave robber, Uldir, exclaimed in surprise and dragged Charles into a nearby thicket. “That bastard Bradley has been going crazy looking for you ever since you killed Felix. How can you risk coming back here?”
Charles peeked out of the bushes, confirming that no one else was around, then lowered his voice. “Uldir, I’ll keep this brief. I’m back to get my revenge on Bradley. Can you fill me in on what’s happening now?”
Despite having seen Charles’s strength, Uldir was still visibly worried. “Bradley’s camped about 30 kilometers west of the bloody pool. This month, he’s taken in another group of exiles from Lsengard, including two who are about to become Level 2 Beast Masters—very powerful guys…”
As Uldir explained, Charles got a good sense of Bradley’s gang’s situation.
The group had grown to several hundred men. Besides hunters like Uldir who had been forcibly conscripted, the core members were nearly a hundred exiles, mostly Level 1 and 2 Beast Masters, with a few on the brink of advancing to Level 2. The most formidable among them remained their leader, Bradley.
“Are you sure about this? Even if you can take down Bradley, they’ve got the numbers on their side!” Uldir said, his voice still tinged with concern as he looked at Charles.
Charles smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m not stupid enough to take on dozens or even hundreds of them all at once.”
When it came to dealing with enemies, Charles wasn’t above using underhanded tactics. If he couldn’t win in a direct confrontation, he could always resort to assassination.
Suddenly, the sound of footsteps echoed from the distance. Uldir glanced in their direction, wiping the cold sweat from his brow. “I know I can’t talk you out of this. How about this—I’ll find a way to draw them away, then you can go in and take out that venomous old snake, Bradley?”
Charles looked at him in surprise. “But won’t that put you in danger?”
Uldir waved his hand dismissively, a rare glint of fury in his eyes. “That bastard Bradley destroyed my village, humiliated my children. The men were forcibly drugged and controlled by him, and the women were turned into slaves under his command. I’ve wanted revenge for a long time!”
He rolled up his sleeve, revealing an arm covered in needle marks from drug injections. His face was twisted with hatred. “If I can get my revenge, I’m willing to die for it!”
Seeing Uldir’s anger, Charles felt a pang of sympathy and finally understood what Uldir had meant when he said Bradley had something on him.
Uldir had been forced to serve his enemy, Bradley, through the cruel methods of drugging and holding his village people as hostages. Just imagining it made Charles feel the weight of the tragedy.
“Alright, then we’ll split up. Be careful,” Charles agreed to Uldir’s plan, watching as Uldir left the bushes. Charles then slipped back into the dense forest, his heart pounding.
A month ago, he had severely injured Bradley but at the cost of being unconscious for three days and nights. Bradley was, without a doubt, the most formidable enemy Charles had encountered since entering the ferocious beast mountain range.
Now, the time for revenge had come.