The Great Crestmaster

He turned around and ran straight ahead at the roaring monster. it used a diagonal slash and Aldrich as if on pure instinct rolled into the wide open body of the husk.

He had seen this move many times even after the change the armored husk still used it which gave Aldrich the chance to slip into the personal area of the husk.

Being big wasn't always good, sometimes it left behind openings that wouldn't normally be there. Though that is in part thanks to the fact that it had to limp awkwardly after it lost its knee.

Aldrich slipped in and stabbed through the exposed neck of the husk but it was no longer a normal skin. The skin that was a mixture of hardened flesh and metal, it was too tough even a point blank strike only left a shallow wound.

Aldrich was not willing to lose this chance so he grabbed onto the neck of the husk and propelled himself behind the neck, straddling it. Since the husk was kneeling it was not too hard to grapple onto it.

From there he stabbed through the husk's eye and the eye popped, splashing blood the husk roared and thrashed.

If it was of the same size as before the transformation then it wouldn't have managed to do much but now even small movements could cause destruction.

It flipped over and slammed Aldrich to the ground and the remains of the walls at random, each hit put cracks in the building.

Aldrich felt his the bones all over his body break and his flesh got flattened with each impact. He was under the impression that the entire house was shaking at this time.

But Aldrich wasn't done just yet, blood soaked his entire body and he felt that even breathing was hard but he unleashed a roar of his own. He stabbed his sword deeper still into the husk's eye socket causing the husk to thrash even harder.

But Aldrich didn't care he stabbed the sword until only the hilt remained, at which point he felt the husk's movements grow slower, clumsier no longer as powerful as they used to be.

Until it fell down and the thrashing came to an end and so did the battle. Aldrich breathed in and out and every breath caused him agony but he still smiled. Victory at last.

No wait!

He didn't get any essence orbs yet nor did he feel that insatiable hunger. He felt a chill all over his broken body and looked at the face of the armored husk.

He saw it's one remaining eye staring at him shining in red.

The red light was flickering, like an old moss lamp that was about to go out for good but it still has some kick left in it.

Aldrich sprang into action, if it was successful in using the stamina drain skill then he was a goner. He placed both hands on the sword's hilt and propelled himself to the opposite direction of the head, twisting the husk's neck in the process as he went.

That's right he didn't pull the sword out of the husk's head.

He leveraged his own weight and the fact that the husk was incapable of moving in order to break its neck. His feet touched the ground on the opposite side and he pulled for all his worth as he roared his defiance.

He looked at the eye and it stared back at him, the red light flickering and it was getting much clearer and brighter. Aldrich pulled and pulled, he heard the neck of the husk crack.

But by then the red light had come into full bloom, Aldrich shut his eyes. And then….

Nothing.

Aldrich hesitantly opened his eyes and looked at the neck, it had a huge open gash in the middle where green-red blood spilled. It was the shallow wound he had previously left on it before he abandoned that approach.

The strain on the neck when he twisted it to break it caused that wound to expand and grow from a shallow wound into a lethal one. Aldrich didn't let his guard down he kept his eyes fixed on the huge corpse lest anymore unexpected things happened.

After a while he felt the familiar insatiable hunger and he allowed himself a smile. He had done it.

He slayed a mighty foe.

When he was first killed by it back then he had just gotten to the nightmare town, he was truly a greenhorn.

And even after he went through all that bloodshed and became able to kill all the husks with ease he had hit a metal plate when he tested himself against the armored husk again.

In all honesty his victory almost turned into defeat multiple times throughout the battle, especially during the second phase of the battle.

Aldrich knew for a fact that if he had not crippled it before it transformed there by limiting its movement he would have lost.

If he had not destroyed at least half of the armored husk's armor he would have lost. If the complete armor set fused with it's skin to form that powerful protection he would have no way to deal any heavy damage to it.

Worse still, if he had not made it exhaust it's Stamina Drain skill before it transformed he would have lost.

If, if and if, there were no ifs in life. He had won one way or another and he proved himself the better man.

Aldrich wasted no time in claiming his reward, he touched the armored husk's fallen body and a great amount of essence orbs was absorbed by him.

Aldrich was shocked he looked at the interface and looked at the number of essence orbs increase like grass shoots in spring.

Essence orbs: 24—> 80 —> 98

And then when the number hit one hundred something strange happened.

Essence orbs: 1 (green)

Under Aldrich's shocked gaze the essence orbs in the armored husk were fully absorbed and a another change occurred.

Green essence orbs: 1

Red essence orbs: 19

He had gotten an absolutely massive amount of essence from the armored husk and got to see a new change in the attributes panel. He actually got ninety five essence orbs!

After a few minutes Aldrich had a good guess about what happened. All the essence orbs that he had seen before were red and the armored husk's were no different.

However, it seems like when the amount of essence absorbed reached a certain threshold, in this case one hundred, it would be gathered together and be compressed into a green essence orb.

Meaning that one hundred red essence orbs are equal to one green essence orb. From this one could naturally infer that green essence orbs must be more valuable than the red ones.

But of course he had to test things out to find out for sure.

Name: Aldrich

Age: 15.5

Strength: 4+

Agility: 4+

Endurance: 4+

Vitality: 4+

Intelligence: 4+

Spirit (black): 4+

Green essence orbs: 1

Red essence orbs: 19

Ether: 3

Abilities: Eyes of Insight LV.1+

Condition: blood of ######

Finally he could actually upgrade the Eyes of Insight, without a doubt it actually consumed green essence orbs.

In the past he had wondered at why even after he hoarded 72 essence orbs he still couldn't do anything about that ability.

Awesome! It was the hardest battle he had ever fought and he won. His body was broken in such way that even he was disgusted to look at himself and he could hardly crawl even if he tried and yet it was all worth it.

It was then.

Aldrich was shocked to see the armored husk's body burn into nothingness. It didn't burn like how a body burned but like when one lights piece of paper with a lighter.

From the feet up and up to the maligned head very quickly, in what could only be less than five minutes a whole body disappeared. It didn't leave behind any ashes or foul smell.

But it did leave behind a fat coin pouch, a tiny red colored shiny stone and a black heart that was levitating in the air.

The black heart had pure white bones jutting out of it from the back and coiling around it in a protective fashion. Eerily enough the heart was beating rhythmically as it levitated in the air.

Aldrich crawled over to the coin pouch, he looked at the workmanship of it and whistled, it was some high class stuff alright. He opened it.

"Holy Altunan!"

The pouch fell off his hand and onto the floor and coins rolled out, gold coins. Aldrich hurriedly, hands trembling, caught the coins that rolled out and put them back in.

His breathing was rugged and it wasn't all entirely from the gut twisting pain he was suffering just moments ago. He counted the coins and counted them again and again. There was no mistake, in this pouch there was thirty gold coins.

That fucker, if he had known that it had this much money Aldrich would have killed it sooner even if he had to chew on dung.

Aldrich suppressed his emotions and looked at the remaining two items before him. One was very familiar, the other was unknown, strange and somehow twisted.