"Cough!" Aron spat out a mouthful of sickeningly black blood. "Poison! It has a poisonous mist!"
A thick, purple haze was actively leaking from the snake’s damaged scales. Aron’s health bar instantly turned a sickly green and began to plummet rapidly.
"I cannot heal that! My Cleanse skill is still on cooldown!" Riya screamed, pure desperation in her voice.
Meanwhile, Arnold was struggling immensely. He was a dedicated tank, but there were simply far too many enemies for him to handle alone. Dozens of smaller snakes were viciously biting at his leather armor, physically weighing him down.
While the chaotic battle raged in the center of the clearing, Caelus did not just sit still. The swarm of snakes was too large to focus entirely on the main party. A few of the serpents slithered toward the shadowy edges of the camp.
Whenever a snake strayed too close to his hiding spot, Caelus moved in. His rare 1-star Newbie dagger flashed in the darkness.
Slash! Squelch!
He cleanly severed their heads before they could even hiss, immediately placing his hand on their twitching bodies.
[System: Extraction Successful...]
[System: Extraction Successful...]
He repeated this process silently, treating the chaotic battlefield as his own personal buffet. While Arnold and Aron screamed and fought for their lives, Caelus silently assassinated the snakes, extracting their essence and pushing his raw stats higher and higher in the shadows.
"Get off me!" Arnold swung his heavy spear in a wide arc. An invisible wave of energy sliced three snakes completely in half. But for every single one he killed, two more quickly latched onto his armored legs.
"Riya! Help me!" Arnold shouted frantically.
Riya, seeing the team’s tank about to be entirely overwhelmed, made a highly desperate, split-second decision. She aimed her glowing staff directly at the dense cluster of snakes attacking Arnold.
"Fireball!"
She tried to aim for the dirt ground right next to him to safely scatter the snakes with the impact, but under the extreme stress of the battle, her precise mana control wavered. The condensed ball of fire exploded far too close to her target.
Boom!
The fiery blast successfully incinerated four snakes, but the intense shockwave violently knocked Arnold right off his feet, leaving him completely vulnerable on the ground.
"You... watch your aim!" Arnold groaned, desperately trying to stand back up, but the remaining intelligent snakes capitalized instantly on his fall. They piled aggressively onto him, sinking their venomous fangs deep into the exposed gaps of his armor.
[System: Player Arnold has died.]
"..." Caelus seeing this almost burst out laughing but he held it in.
"Arnold!" Riya shrieked in horror.
Aron, struggling weakly against the debilitating poison, tried to rush back into the fray. "Riya, run! I will hold the big one back!"
He charged in with his failing strength, his sword glowing brightly one final time. He miraculously managed to stab the Ruby Serpent again, significantly deepening the bleeding wound on its neck, but the neurotoxin had slowed his reflexes entirely too much.
The Ruby Serpent did not even bother to dodge. It simply opened its massive maw and clamped down viciously on Aron’s shoulder, shaking him violently like a broken ragdoll before casually tossing his limp body aside.
[System: Player Aron has died.]
"Both of them... dead?" Riya stood completely frozen, her magic staff trembling violently in her pale hands.
The elite formation had completely collapsed in less than two agonizing minutes.
She looked around frantically for any hope and saw Caelus. He was calmly crouching near the edge of the clearing, smoothly pulling his bloody dagger out of the skull of a freshly killed snake. A small, gruesome pile of snake corpses already lay at his feet.
Her eyes widened in pure, unadulterated disbelief. Was he seriously farming mobs in the exact middle of a total team wipe?
"You... you bastard! Help me!" Riya screamed, tears of frustration forming in her eyes.
Caelus looked up smoothly, his face entirely calm. "I am just someone with an E-Rank Mana Affinity, remember? What exactly can I do against a Combat Score 6 boss monster?"
As he spoke those words, the massive Ruby Serpent turned its cold gaze directly toward Riya. It hissed loudly, clearly sensing her overwhelming fear.
Swish!
The heavy tail lashed out. Riya tried desperately to raise a magical shield, but her mana pool was completely depleted. The tail struck her squarely in the chest with the force of a battering ram, sending her flying backward until she slammed into the exact same tree Aron had hit earlier.
"Gah..." Riya slumped heavily to the bloody ground.
Her vision blurred instantly. Her HP dropped critically below 10%, immediately triggering the system’s safety lock. She was completely incapacitated.
"It is over," she whispered weakly, slowly closing her eyes as the giant, venomous snake loomed menacingly over her broken body.
But the final, killing bite never came.
Instead, she heard a very distinct, hard sound of knife slicing their tough skin.
Squelch.
Riya opened her eyes weakly, struggling to focus.
Caelus was there.
He had moved the exact instant the giant snake attacked her, perfectly using the distraction to quickly close the distance without being noticed.
He was not attacking blindly. He was targeting the specific bleeding wound Aron had created earlier on the snake’s thick neck.
[System: Extraction of Small Snake Essence Successful.]
[System: Combat Score: 5.45 -> 6.0]
While they were desperately fighting for their lives, Caelus had been incredibly busy extracting raw Essence from the dead snakes he had stealthily assassinated. He had managed to artificially push his combat score up to a solid 6. Although it was a slight pity that not every single snake gave him the essence, the sheer number of stragglers he slaughtered yielded the exact stats he critically needed.
Now, Caelus’s raw physical speed and strength perfectly matched the Ruby Serpent.
"There is absolutely no bad blood between us, so I genuinely hope Miss Riya will not keep a petty grudge against me for not stepping in sooner," Caelus said casually with a faint smile. "As for this snake, I am taking the kill."
The Ruby Serpent roared in agony and tried to violently snap at him, but Caelus was already tightly clinging to its thrashing back like a virus. He ruthlessly jammed his 1-Star dagger incredibly deep into the pre-existing gaping gash.
He violently twisted the sharp blade, cleanly severing the major artery that Aron had thankfully exposed for him.
Toxic blood sprayed everywhere like a broken fountain.
The giant snake thrashed wildly, smashing into thick trees and violently overturning the earth in its death throes, but Caelus held on tight with some minor struggle. Finally, with one last, violent shudder, the massive, terrifying body collapsed heavily to the ruined ground.
Riya stared in completely stunned silence as her physical body rapidly lost its remaining vitality.
Her last image before the system forced her out was of the supposedly "useless" E-Rank Mana Affinity classmate standing triumphantly, completely unharmed, over the exact same boss monster that had just effortlessly slaughtered her entire elite Special Class team.
A Level 3 monster with a terrifying combat score of 6.
[System: You have killed a Level 3 Ruby Serpent.]
[System: You have received +29 Iron EXP, 10 Origin Credits.]
[System: Quest: Survival of the Fittest Complete.]
[System: You have obtained +80 Iron EXP.]