World's Apocalypse Magician 5 Chapter 5: Burning Sands I

Sahara desert.

I didn't realize at first when I arrived that something felt off with the desert. It was too quiet. At the same time, there was a difference in the temperature present in the area. It was hotter than before, when I first visited 5 years ago.

Suddenly, a notification sounded out from the system.

It alerted me 3 times, showing the severity of the issue. I immediately opened the skill tree and saw the [Fire Bolt] skill branched into 2 at this point, with one of them connected with the wind bolt.

[Heat Resistance: Increases heat resistance by 15% each level. Max level 10. Once it reaches past lvl 6, additional levels would result to increasing Fire Affinity +5 per level]

[Desiccation Resistance: Increases desiccation resistance by 12% each level. Max level 10. Once it reaches past lvl 7, additional levels would result to increase Fire and air affinity +3 per level]

Affinities? Seems like a new stat. Will check on that later. I'll just set my skill points up... Done. d.a.m.n, spent around 500 points each skill.

Huh. It really is effective.

Immediately, I could feel a sensation that kept me cool and moist as I circled within the area of the danger zone that was recognized by the system.

Since the main problem was solved, I immediately opened the map interface to view how large the danger zone is actually. I was surprised when I saw the information.

[Danger Zone, Category: Fire. Rank F-, radius of 20 kilometers. Chance of 2-star beasts appearing: 15%. Majority of the monsters are in 1-star ranking.]

[Main Quest: Discover the source of the anomaly in the desert.

Rewards: 1000 system points]

This... was unexpected. the beast I kill-stealed from the Amazon forest was only 2-star; 1-star beasts were similar in ferocity of a panther and a vitality of an elephant, multiplied by 5. If majority of the monsters were like that in this danger zone, I would waste more time facing the sp.a.w.ns rather than the 2-star beast in control of the zone.

Do I go in, or do I retreat? I pondered for a while, thinking of the pros and cons to it, before deciding to go in.

The reason? The rewards outweigh the risks. Skill points as well as system points per beast killed, and every star multiplies the reward by 10. So a no-star beast would give me, let's say, 5 skill and system points, a 1-star would give me 50, a 2-star would give me 500 of each type of points, and so on.

Of course, difficulty increases with the increase of star ranking. All I could hope is that the 1-star monsters were actually far from one another.

System, what is my current battle strength when compared to the star system of beasts?

Hmm. Weird, as I don't even know that I had trump cards.

Oh. I'll probably saved that as last resort then.

Now then, let's clear the beasts in this region.

_______________________

2 hours later...

A loud roar resounded. In front of me, a lion-like beast was dying.

His mane hair was scattered all over the area, all sharp and pointed.

One could infer that the beast had the ability to sharpen his hair into fine needles and launch them towards its prey.

Pity for it, it met me. Everytime it attempted to hit me with its hair, I merely flew away from its range, causing the hair to aimlessly hit thin air and fall down to the ground.

I continued to launch both water and time bolts after several tries of different elemental bolts as these two were the most effective.

The water bolts had a weakening effect on the mane hair, as they would droop and lose its strength.

The time bolts had an instant penetration ability since it could just reverse the time around it to penetrate any defense that isn't guarded against time.

In a matter of minutes, the beast was dead. Sadly, it didn't contain any beast core as the cores were only available in 2-star beasts and beyond.

I collected its corpse and put it in the spatial inventory of the system. Good thing about it is its near infinite s.p.a.ce. Sadly, I can't put any living thing on the s.p.a.ce inventory until I unlock the spatial skill [Small World].

This was my 12th encounter of beasts in the past 2 hours, and I wasn't even close to the source of the intense heat.

I checked the system map and it still showed a golden arrow point towards the source of the heat, but it wasn't visible in the map yet.

I wonder if the map view could be expanded.