: A Berserker’s Rise - Chapter 22

The lizards jumping on Adam all had levels varying between 10 and 15, but most of them were nearing 15 rather than 10. Even Veteran players wouldn’t be able to deal with them on their own, it looked like this Geppo Pass would take many lives.

But even if they had all been level 15 and been ten jumping at him, it wouldn’t have been a problem for Adam.

As the monsters entered his attack ranged he activated both [Mighty Strike] and [Wind Blade], before slashing out.

He made a circular slash, hitting all the lizards at once and sending them flying against the walls, hard. The first lizard he hit was killed on the spot, and although the others survived, they all had a deep slash on their bodies from which green blood flowed down. Moreover, they had taken a lot of damages from crashing into the walls.

After all, comparing Adam’s strength to Common Level 15 monsters which specialized in stealth was just pure bullying. Adding in the knock back effect from Mighty Strike, the 10% bonus to his stats and 10% decrease to their stats from his title and the additional 10% from his weapon’s skill, all the lizards got many bones broken from the collision.

And they had barely fell to the ground that Adam used his Wind Blade to cut all of them some more. Only one of them was capable of getting back on its feet, and tried to flee. This was another unique feature from Epoch, monsters weren’t just dumb beasts that would attack anything within sight until death.

If a player was much higher leveled than a monster, then said monster would flee the player. In the same fashion, when the lizard saw all its companions getting crushed by Adam, it wanted to flee.

However, Adam felt that if it entered the darkness killing it would become a real pain, so he threw his sword at it, something a Berserker absolutely shouldn’t do in normal times. However, there wasn’t any threat surrounding Adam, and even if he were surrounded by enemies he could use his fists.

His sword hit the lizard and impaled it into the ground. However, it still wasn’t dead, this lizard was more resilient than the others.

Adam approached it and saw that its HP had reached below 10, it had been lucky. Adam took his sword out of the lizard, killing it, and wiped the blood off of it before sheathing it and looting the corpses. He only found some materials and Common equipments which he threw into his inventory.

From the very start Adam had felt something was very wrong with this guard, after all what kind of guard would just sit on the ground like this? Moreover, the way it talked, it sounded way too weird, as if the soldier didn’t know how to talk to people.

So when Adam felt the presences of several beings appear around them, he didn’t hesitate and killed the NPC. Still, Adam was impressed by the lizards, he had only been able to detect them when they had already surrounded him and released their killing intent.

On his way through Geppo Pass, Adam encountered multiple more lizards, which he killed, but the more he killed and the more the lizards hesitated to attack him. It was as if the lizards could feel the amount of lizards Adam had killed, which was actually not very far from the truth.

After walking for an entire hour in the dark, Adam had killed quite a lot of lizards, and by now they were all avoiding him like the pest. Unfortunately, the amount of XP needed to get to level 11 was quite a lot, so Adam still hadn’t leveled up, although he wasn’t far from leveling up.

It wouldn’t be for now though as Adam could finally see the end of the tunnel. It hadn’t been much of a challenge for Adam, but he knew for sure most players would struggle in this tunnel. Only a party of Level 15 players could pass through this without much of a problem.

As Adam neared the end of the tunnel though, he suddenly felt the air shift a little behind him. This was a skill that could only be learned after countless battles, but it was essential for a martial artist. It allows them to ward off assassins who were able to hide their presence and killing intent to the point of becoming invisible.

Adam had suffered many ambushes on his way through the tunnel, and although every time he would feel their presence and killing intent first, he had still learned how the air reacted when they jumped.

And here, Adam could feel that whatever was jumping on him was bigger than the earlier lizards, but had a similar shape. It didn’t take a genius to guess this was an Elite Geppo Lizard since this map’s monsters capped to level 15 and Chieftains were too rare to just bump into them.

Anyway, Adam immediately unsheathed his sword, activated [Mighty Strike] and [Lunar Smite], and slashed at the monster attacking him.

-1410 HP!

Critical Hit! -1177 HP!

-588 HP!

-589 HP!

Almost 4000 damages were dealt with one attack, and when the Elite monster crashed into the wall, the damage officially went past the 4000 barrier. The Elite had died in a single attack.

With Adam’s new equipment, skills and title, even an Elite monster that was five levels above him was oneshoted. That was to be expected though, Adam’s equipment and status was an abnormality right now.

His skills should have never been this high leveled, but thanks to the battle of Rosewatch he used his skills hundreds of times and leveled them up to very high levels. As for his equipment, except from his helmet he was covered in Uncommon equipment, except for his weapon and his chest plate, the two equipments that give the most stats, that were Rare.

Until level 20, Rare quality was the strongest quality one could get. And a Class Equipment was the best equipment one could get for their class, so Adam was really an abnormality for a level 10. And that was without even counting his martial art skills.

Anyway, now that he had killed the mini boss Adam went to loot it. Until now, from all the Geppo Lizards he had killed he had only found materials and Common equipments of varying levels.

He had sent a screenshot of the materials he had found, and sent it to King Slayer, asking whether he needed any of them, but he didn’t need any of them.

Back to the boss, it dropped quite a few things, including an Uncommon ring.

[Geppo Ring] (Uncommon, Level 15)

Requirement: Level 15

Agility: +25

Improve Stealth: The wielder is 20% harder to spot in dark areas.

There were two kinds of equipments in Epoch. First were ‘normal’ equipments, which were the Helmet, Gloves, Boots, Armor and Weapon. Most of the equipments for those five categories were restricted to a certain class.

There were special equipments though, being the necklace, cape and rings. A player could put two rings, one amulet and one cape at a time, and those were special because they had no requirements for the class of their wielder.

Still, even if there weren’t any requirements some were more suited for certain classes like the ring he just got. The +25 Agility was the standard for a Level 15 Uncommon item, and the improve Stealth was useless to Adam.

Despite that, Adam decided to still keep the ring. Even though it would be in better hands if he sold it to King Slayer, Adam still wouldn’t spit on a +25 to his Agility. Only if he found better equipments would he sell it.

Thinking of this, Adam was starting to feel the need of changing his equipments, his gloves and his boots to be precise. The two were only level 5, and even though they were Uncommon, a Common level 15 equipment was better. And he also needed to find himself a helmet.

Unfortunately, the lizards in this cave tended to drop light pieces of equipment for classes like Assassins or Swordsmen.

Now that he had everything with him, and that he had killed the boss of the area, Adam could finally leave. He felt several presences when he made his way to the end of the tunnel, but they were exuding fear instead of killing intent.

When he exited the tunnel, Adam couldn’t help but close his eyes painfully. He had spent an hour in a dimly lit tunnel, so seeing the sun once again hurt his eyes a little.

And as he was blinded by the rays of the sun, a woman appeared beside him and attacked him.