Chapter 90: Growing Stronger

The duo continued their way through the Nightmare Realm. Reinhardt was allowed to ride safely on Elizabeth’s back as she flew high through the skies. She constantly used her Eclipsing Dragon Breath and her Ice Dragon Breath to pulverize the entire forest of Nightmare Trees below, earning a steady stream of Experience Points with every explosion.

BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!

Naturally, her levels increased greatly as she unleashed pure chaos across the landscape.

Ding!

[Due to the accumulation of EXP, your Levels have increased.]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[Level Up!]

[…]

[Your Dragon Path has Leveled Up from Level 155 to Level 167!]

[Your Chaos Demon Path has Leveled Up from Level 135 to Level 146!]

[Your High Human Path has Leveled Up from Level 107 to Level 118!]

[Your Ice Dragon Path has Leveled Up from Level 8 to Level 22!]

[Your Adventurer Class has Leveled Up from Level 111 to Level 126!]

[Your Jack of all Trades Class has Leveled Up from Level 17 to Level 36!]

[All your Stats have increased.]

[You earned a large quantity of Stat Points.]

[You have earned 1,032,000 System Points.]

[Your Bonded Familiar: [Incarnation of the Spiral of Eternity: Paragon – Rank 3: Level 132/300] has Leveled Up to Level 144!]

[Your Bonded Familiar: [Dark Nether Treant: Dryad – Rank 2: Level 100/200] has Leveled Up to Level 110!]

Once she finished killing almost three hundred of these annoying trees and had completely devastated the living forest (after carefully making sure there were no humans trapped inside), she extracted every corpse.

“Extract!”

All the corpses in front of her disappeared at once and turned into items inside her inventory.

Ding!

[You have Extracted]:

[Soul Enhancement Elixir (C+ Grade)] x25

[Spirit Enhancement Elixir (C+ Grade)] x25

[Mana Enhancement Elixir (C+ Grade)] x25

[Endurance Enhancement Elixir (C+ Grade)] x25

[Vitality Enhancement Elixir (C+ Grade)] x25

[Bottled Nightmares (C+ Grade)] x5

[Bonus EXP Card (C+ Grade)] x5

[Nightmare Skill Shard (??? Grade)] x25

[Low-Tier Nightmare Tree Ring (C Grade)] x11

[Low-Tier Nightmare Tree Necklace (C Grade)] x11

[Low-Tier Nightmare Tree Lance (C Grade)] x11

[Low-Tier Book of Nightmare Trees (C Grade)] x11]

“Hm, the Elixirs sound useful. There’s also… bottled nightmares?” Elizabeth carefully analyzed the new items.

Bottled Nightmares allowed her to summon Nightmares that had been sealed inside the glass, forcing them to attack any foe in front of her. She might never use them herself, but Mongrel quickly took the bottles from her hands and happily ate the Nightmares contained within.

The Bonus EXP Card increased her Experience Point gain, so she immediately used one of them and gained a temporary bonus to all earned Experience Points.

Nightmare Skill Shards… she could only guess they were fragments needed for a new Skill. Astraea had told her she needed to gather around a hundred of them, and so far she already had nearly forty if she counted the ones she obtained earlier.

Elizabeth decided to feed all the equipment items she had just obtained to Ariel and Asmodeus, purifying the ones meant for Ariel in the process.

[Your Familiar: [Divine Grimoire of Harmony: Ariel – Rank 1: Level 55/100] has Leveled Up to Level 100!]

[Your Familiar: [Demonic Grimoire of Chaos: Asmodeus – Rank 1: Level 55/100] has Leveled Up to Level 100!]

[Your Familiars, Ariel and Asmodeus have reached Max Level and are ready for Rank Up. More Spells can be learned and unlocked this way.]

[Do you wish to evolve them?]

[Yes] [No]

“Looks like I can just do it? Sure.”

Elizabeth did not receive any extra message asking her to choose special options, so both Grimoires instantly began evolving.

They glowed brightly. Ariel shone with pure holy light while Asmodeus became covered in dark, murky shadows. Slowly, both Grimoires gained minor visual differences. Ariel gained more golden decorations, and Asmodeus grew noticeably darker and more menacing.

[Congratulations, your Familiar Grimoires, Ariel and Asmodeus have Ranked Up to Rank 2!]

[Ariel has unlocked the new Spell: [Holy Beam]]

[Asmodeus has unlocked the new Spell: [Shadow Bolt]]

“Offensive Spells this time…” Elizabeth noted with interest.

They were not her personal skills, so they could not level up on their own. However, every spell grew stronger as the Grimoires themselves leveled up. That meant the higher their Level and Rank became, the more powerful all of their Spells would be.

With that finished, Elizabeth dove downward and quickly arrived at a large canyon. There she could clearly sense a massive concentration of lifeforce.

“Is it over there, Elizabeth?” Reinhardt asked. He had mostly been watching everything in awe while earning bonus Experience Points simply by being part of her “group.”

“Yes.”

Elizabeth descended and landed on the flat, scorched land left behind by her earlier destructive attacks. She ran forward on all four legs, crossing an arid desert-like plain before entering a vast canyon of dark red stone.

At the very center of the canyon she felt an enormous amount of concentrated lifeforce. Elizabeth narrowed her eyes and glanced at Mongrel for a moment.

“Are you ready to evolve yet?” she asked.

“No, I still need to eat more,” he sighed.

He had already consumed almost a hundred Nightmare Cores, yet he still seemed far from maturing enough to Evolve. Something bigger was clearly required.

Maybe if she had fed him the Rank 5 Nightmare Tree Core… but she had ended up giving that one to her Grimoires instead.

“The next strong thing we find is yours. For now, let’s concentrate. Tell me, what can you feel?”

“Hm…”

Mongrel fell silent for a moment and expanded his senses while Elizabeth continued running through the canyon, leaping from one rocky ledge to another.

As she moved, she began noticing large patches of a strange, sticky red substance. She did not recognize it at first, but the closer she drew, the more she saw it covering the canyon walls and depths.

Once she was close enough, she realized the red substance was actually thick threads of some kind.

“Ah!”

Mongrel suddenly gasped in alarm.

“Elizabeth, watch out! From below!”

“?!”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened as a giant red claw suddenly shot upward and grasped her tightly around the midsection.

“Ugh?!”

She was violently flung through the canyon and crashed into a stone pillar, completely destroying it!

BOOOM!!!

Elizabeth was unharmed, having reinforced her scales just in time. Reinhardt had been safely moved out of danger by Paragon.

“W-What was that?!” Reinhardt shouted. “Huh?! It’s coming!”

“GRYYOOOOOHHHHH!”

A deafening roar echoed through the canyon as Elizabeth and Reinhardt finally saw the monstrous creature emerging from the depths below.

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