Only I Am A Reader - Chapter 494: th Challenge, 1st Puzzle

{ Challenge 45: Kill 15 real monsters, killing a fake will result in negative progress. }

‘It’s finally starting to get complicated.’

Receiving the new instructions, Leo took a second to digest their meaning. Only a little more than a couple of hours had passed since he finished disciplining Ken, but this was already his tenth challenge!

Just like the first and the second ones, the rest of the challenges up to now weren’t that hard. At most, Leo had to run through groups of monsters to kill a specific type amongst them.

However, even that was considered straightforward compared to his tenth challenge. The instructions didn’t give much information to begin with.

‘Should be doable, but…’

Although Leo didn’t think that this was a major obstacle, he was a bit worried about the escalating difficulty.

The monsters were still of average strength so far, but if locating the right ones and killing them kept getting harder, too much time would be wasted!

In the novel, Aurora ended up wasting more time due to her teammates rather than the challenges themselves. However, that only applied to her. Having encountered his own randomized challenges, anything could pop up for Leo.

Thankfully, while there were a few troublesome challenges that involved time waste, the majority of the challenges still seemed to focus on the main task that clearing Gates was all about. Killing monsters!

With ten consecutive extermination challenges right from the bat, Leo decided to keep his hopes up.

‘Let’s just get with this.’

Leo moved beyond the tunnel as usual. Though things weren’t as simple, the landscape was practically a copy of the one in the second challenge.

It was still a hunt, but this one tested perception and cautiousness. Going on a killing spree with the hope of hitting the target before too many fakes were killed was the worst method one could think of.

‘It all depends on what counts as a fake.’

Was this another monster-type differentiation where he had to guess the right and the wrong types? Or did he have to recognize his prey on a deeper level?

Leo had his guesses as usual, but he could only start becoming more sure of them after testing them out. Unfortunately, there was no such thing as a progress counter, so basic testing was out of the window.

‘First test subject.’

Leo’s first monster encounter in this stage was swift. Instead of the weird Werecheetah at the beginning, the monster he found this time was a traditional Werewolf.

“Excuse me.”

Rather than instantly killing him as he did so far, Leo unleashed his Shadow tendrils as he added a second passenger to his Shadow train!

‘You will have to wait for now.’

In order to find a way to distinguish the real from the fake, more test subjects were needed! There was no use killing the first monster while there was nothing else to compare it to.

Tightening his grip on the monster to stop its struggle, Leo went on with his hunt. One after the other, he collected ten monsters after 15 minutes!

‘They are even more scarce.’

The lacking number of monsters suddenly opened the door for one more fear into Leo’s heart. Could this stage possibly have a limited number of monsters?

If that was the case, then killing just one fake too many could only end up with Leo being stuck in this stage. He would then have to wait for Aurora to clear the other 90 and release him…

‘Let’s see…’

In the end, Leo could only suppress his emotions as he suddenly released all ten Werewolves he collected. He had to focus on finding the right target now, there was always time for regret later.

‘No rash decisions.’

“Awwwo!”

One of the Werewolves let out a strange howl once he was freed, dashing directly at Leo to take his revenge for being dragged.

Leo easily dodged while taking the chance to visually check out, but nothing seemed different. They all had dark black fur and reddened eyes.

Although it took a little more while for all of them to react, once they did, all the Werewolves were hostile, so even their behavior didn’t seem to be any different from each other.

After a few deep glances, Leo felt like he noticed that something was different, just that he couldn’t put his hand around it.

‘It’s there, just that…’

After a few deep glances, Leo felt like he noticed that something was different, just that he couldn’t put his hand around it.

‘Guessing game is over.’

There was definitely more to this challenge, but Leo opted out of dealing with it using the normal way. It was time for his perceptive shadow to do its job!

The Shadow tendrils moved out once again. However, instead of making physical contact, they stuck to the Werewolf’s shadows, transmitting Leo the information that he needed.

‘One… Two… Just two!’

Visual looks could deceive, but shadows couldn’t deceive the Lord of Shadows! Once Leo was done analyzing the shadows, he signaled out 2 Werewolves who had slightly different specifics compared to the rest.

‘It has to be that.’

While it was still uncertain whether the 2 or the 8 were the real monsters, Leo’s gut told him that the minority were the fake ones!

At the very least, he hoped that would be the case. Considering that monsters were too few, it would take forever if only a fifth turned out to be real monsters. As such, Leo decided to go with the more optimistic guess!

Swish!

Restraining the two different ones, Leo went ahead and beheaded the rest. Now that he took a closer look at the corpses, the two that remained alive had slightly different ears. They looked more like that of a dog rather than a wolf…

‘It would take even more if the ones I killed were the fakes, but I like my odds.’

With 8 already dead according to his death, Leo just had to follow the same method to get another 7 kills, and if that didn’t clear the challenge, he would be able to quickly tell that it was the other way around.

‘Unless there are more monster varieties, this should be a piece of cake.’

Having already established a clear method, it didn’t take Leo long to reach his desired conclusion. However, just when he was praying for less complicated challenges, he ended up making his second human encounter…