The sun in the sky barely indicated that noon had arrived above the treetops of Mythlorien when the vanguard of Astralis Requiem began its power-leveling operation.
The group led by Alice, despite lacking Epic or higher-tier gear, was like a fighting machine compared to the monsters they encountered in the forest.
Everyone there was a Level 11 Player, having crossed the qualitative barrier that Lohan and Lisa so desperately sought. They had already gone through the basic evolutions of their starting classes, becoming specialized versions of their archetypes.
"All right, everyone! Let’s turn these two into real monsters before dinner!" Alice exclaimed excitedly, moving lightly among the trees as if she already knew where each monster was hiding even before they emerged from the bushes.
Their strategy wasn’t innovative at all, but it was very efficient. The group split into pairs with a frontline and a damage dealer: Dee and Tunder as Warrior and Mage, Samantha and Justin as Rogue and Archer, and Alice and WyrmWood as Pugilist and Druid.
Although Alice and Samantha didn’t have perfect frontline classes, their power was sufficient when dealing with Level 10 monsters and a few Level 11 ones.
Lohan, in his blue Slime form, watched from behind Lisa as the carnage began.
The group moved like shadows. At the first spot, Dee, the warrior, used his Uncommon-quality shield to parry the advance of a Level 11 Copper Fang Wolf, while Tunder fired electric bolts that reduced the creature to exhaustion.
As the wolf grew slower and weaker, Dee threw a small blue jelly ball at the monster. That jelly ball was a Lohan Clone that he had given to each member of the group, both as a precaution for their safety and to facilitate the elimination of these monsters.
Thanks to Lohan’s high digestive power, when it stuck to a wolf, the monster’s skin and flesh were visibly digested, taking only a few minutes to open a fatal hole in the creature’s body.
Thus, even if the pair of soldiers couldn’t handle a monster on their own for long, with the help of the Slime clones, as long as they gained the upper hand in battle, victory would be practically guaranteed.
Just as the wolf was hanging by a thread, unable to react, Lohan guided Lisa.
"Now, Lisa, finish off the wolf at 7 o’clock from your position!"
At Halon’s command, Lisa didn’t hesitate and fired a [Spirit Fire], instantly finishing off the creature.
The system then responded with a cascade of notifications that Lohan could barely keep up with.
[Experience Gained: +245 EXP]
The amount of experience he received was half the normal amount, since the ones involved in the combat were the pair of soldiers, him, and Lisa, but even so, the growth rate was much higher!
With 3 pairs stacking up monsters, even if the experience was halved, the hunting speed was at least 5 to 6 times faster than when he and Lisa hunted alone.
This "leeching" tactic was brutally effective.
While the Level 11 pairs and Lohan’s clones did the heavy lifting of wearing down the Level 10 and 11 monsters, Lisa simply delivered the finishing blow while Lohan’s main body stood by, surveying the battlefield and guiding everyone.
Under normal circumstances, even Lohan would have struggled to handle such a large group of Level 10 and 11 monsters at once, but with the vanguard holding back the beasts’ momentum, the experience flowed like a river.
After an hour and a half of uninterrupted grinding against packs of wolves and other monsters, the Mythlorien Forest witnessed the fall of dozens of elite creatures, and an intense, refreshing light enveloped the Spirit Fox; thirty minutes later, the Slime was also enveloped by the same light.
[Halon: Level 09 → Level 10]
[Name: Halon
Race: Slime (Mythical)
Class: Devourer (Mythical)
Titles: Predator
Level: 09 → 10
Experience: 48 / 51,200
Mana: 93 / 100.5]
Upon reaching Level 10, the sensation was even more intense than when he reached Level 9. Lohan felt his gelatin become denser and more stable; the [Energy Contraction] technique he had learned from Yrneha became slightly harder to maintain, and most importantly for him.
After so long without spending Biomass to improve his digestion speed, upon leveling up, his base digestion speed rose again.
From 62.46 Bio/h to 72.46 Bio/h.
An increase of just 10 Bio/h might seem small, but with all the buffs Lohan had, that small increase caused his digestion speed under the [Hemolymphatic Tissue] to rise from 5.1k to 5.9k Bio/h!
An increase of 800 Biomass per hour just from leveling up! Without having to spend any Biomass on Evolutions!
’The snowball is finally rolling incredibly well for me...’ Lohan thought excitedly.
But the group didn’t stop there.
"Don’t slow down! Maybe we can still get them to Level 11 today!" Alice encouraged them excitedly, her eyes shining as she watched the light indicating their level-up.
With Lohan and Lisa’s levels higher, the help they provided in battles was even greater, so the group continued advancing into even deeper areas with more powerful monsters.
They stuck to the same tactic, ignoring their mental fatigue.
Even though the process seemed tedious, they were specifically targeting monsters on the list Intervar had given them; in other words, even if the experience for the soldiers wasn’t as great as it was for Halon and Lisa, the money they would earn today would easily exceed the money earned from hunting monsters in Newbie Village over the past few weeks!
Watching the experience bar fill up at a rapid pace, Lohan and Lisa’s anticipation skyrocketed at the thought of what their evolution to Level 11 would be like.
From what they’d discussed with Alice’s group, upon reaching Level 11, the body undergoes a minor evolution, greatly enhancing the user’s Race and Class, with a certain chance of even increasing their rarity.
Among their group, Alice was the one who got lucky in this evolution, raising her Base from an Uncommon Class to a Rare Class!
For Lisa, this might even bring a little hope, but Lohan didn’t even know if there was a level above Mythic for him, so he just focused on the evolutionary improvements he could receive.