An entire year passed since Wolf progressed his physique to the fourth stage of Star Body. During these twenty months he spent in Demon Forest, he slew thirty-one Eleventh Order Demonic Converters. Using two of their Monster Cores, he advanced his Sword-Sage Order. Unfortunately, even after attaining the Tenth Order, the secret of becoming a Sword-Saint eluded him.

Despite the setback, this advancement nearly doubled Wolf’s Internal Energy pool. As a Tenth Order Sword-Sage, he could unleash Sunder the Mountains once without suffering from Internal Energy deficiency.

With great confidence, Wolf stepped into the glade of the last Eleventh Order Demonic Converter he planned to eliminate. He had long since abandoned the routine of exterminating the nearby Demonic Beasts. Despite the direct approach’s higher risk, Wolf found it outweighed the inconvenience of wasting two to three days to clear up a demonic tree’s surroundings.

Regular Demonic Beasts no longer posed sufficient threat and weren’t worth the time investment. This bold choice had already saved him several weeks, and even Silver didn’t complain.

This time was no different. Wolf dashed into the glade cloaked by Ghost Shroud, catching the demonic tree by surprise. By the time it shook its leaves and started dropping an avalanche of apples, Wolf already stood before its trunk. Nine mounds began forming around the tree, but they were too distant to influence the battle.

Book appeared in Wolf’s hand while he was in the middle of a deep inhale. Sunder the Mountains!

Internal Energy raged through Wolf’s body, yet it failed to disturb Ghost Shroud, which had grown twice as powerful as it was when Wolf was a Ninth Order Sword-Sage.

The rich, earthen light of the Ninth Order maneuver flashed and pierced the thick trunk like paper.

*Da! Da! Da! Da!*

Black apples rained on the grass, booming like a stampede. Meanwhile, Wolf stored those above his head into Archibald’s Ring of Holding. Demon Forest exploded with savage bestial sounds, but a moment later, the cracking and snapping of the falling Demonic Converter drowned that din.

Without skipping a beat, Wolf dashed towards the Demonic Converter’s crown. He stopped halfway, then savagely hacked at the steel-hard trunk, without infusing an ounce of Internal Energy into Book.

“Roar!” A Forest Lioncrab scuttled into the clearing, dashing at its typically insane speed before Wolf landed twenty strikes.

He didn’t care about the Tenth Order Demonic Beast appearing. He continued casting Subtle Scapegoat, while sending man-sized chunks of tough wood flying with every two to three swings he made.

The Lioncrab crazily charged the young True-Namer, who was destroying its food source.

“Roar!” The Demonic Beast opened its weird, crescent-shaped maw, while snapping its pincer at Wolf.

The youth’s form blurred. He ducked under the attack, pivoting around his right foot while slashing upwards with Book as he dislodged the sword from the Demonic Converter in one fluid motion. The steel-hard splinters showered the crab monstrosity as Book flashed.

Yellowish ichor sprayed from the severed limb as the pincer smashed into the black tree trunk. The Lioncrab didn’t get to screech in agony. Book continued to hack off the stalks which ended in Linocrab’s eyes, blinding the monster.

Wolf then left his maimed opponent and went back to chopping Demonic Converter. The pain drove the crab insane, while the demonic tree’s leaves ceaselessly rustled. It failed to dispel Wolf’s magic, but then the pattern of its rustling changed, and the crustacean momentarily stiffened.

This was one of Wolf’s accidental findings. By leaving behind enemies deprived of their senses, Demonic Converter would waste its time acting like their eyes, guiding them to attack Wolf.

The young True-Namer found this behavior preferable to losing his enchantments, while the demonized trees certainly found it preferable to achieve something than playing pointless games of failing to strip Wolf of his spells.

The Forest Lioncrab smashed its remaining pincer at Wolf, who ducked. The giant appendage whizzed above him; crashing into the cut he started hacking through the massive trunk. With proficiency born from routine, Wolf abandoned his current target and ran towards his next designated chopping spot, already expecting to find the Monster Core in the cyclopean trunk’s upper reaches.

He still hadn’t finished cleaving the felled tree in half, but there was no harm in leaving the job unfinished. The Demonic Converter couldn’t gather the slain monsters’s vitality without roots. Meaning it couldn’t regenerate its wounds.

While the maimed Lioncrab chased Wolf, a Landbound Crocodile bounded into the clearing with a hiss. Moments later, Demonic Beasts of Eighth and Ninth Order appeared one after another. Instead of scrambling over apples, they went berserk. Someone had destroyed their tree.

Great, it’s a crock. Wolf scanned the crowd and immediately changed his plans. He halted, then doubled back, ducking under his pursuer’s lumbering limb. The blind Lioncrab wasn’t nearly as agile. It kept scuttling towards the Demonic Converter’s branches, braking and skidding on the soft soil.

This cheap pivot bought Wolf enough time to hack at the tree five more times. Meanwhile, he examined the crocodile, noting the faint particles of death rising from the rotting trunk, the yellow ichor pooled on the ground, as well as the severed pincer.

Those were the strongest sources of death near Wolf. Further away, dense clouds of death erupted from the half-formed mounds in which the severed corpse puppets lay motionless. Then, the weak aura of death lingered above the grass crushed by the Demonic Converter’s fall, and many deaths of tiny lives which lived on the trunk and in the giant tree’s crown.

Wolf focused on that shade of death around him. He melded it into something he needed. Soul Force surged out of him and Wolf formed a word no manling could comprehend.

Pieces of wood flew in slow motion, and the Landbound Crocodile galloped towards Wolf as Book smashed into the tree trunk yet again.

“ᛃᚨᚹ,” Wolf uttered when the reptile was five meters away from him. The shade of death condensed and surged into the crocodile’s maw.

Only those who understood death saw that color. Others could only guess what happened based on the results. The Landbound Crocodile tried to open its jaw, but failed.

The muscle which opened its snout was dead, and the giant reptile panicked. It stopped, clawing at its face, trying to move something which worked from the moment it drew its first breath. However, no matter what the crocodile did, its muzzle remained shut.

The Demonic Tree rustled its leaves, and the Landbound Crocodile calmed down. The reptile forgot about its imminent death from starvation, instead focusing on a worthier goal. Namely, the hated enemy which had destroyed the Demonic Converter.

Wolf expected this. The enslavement, combined with the fact that Landbound Crocodiles only had two methods of attack, meant Wolf played the Demonic Converter and the Demonic Beast into doing his bidding.

Wolf intentionally remained in place, chopping at the significant hole he’d made in the giant trunk. The Landbound Crocodile spun around with surprising agility, before slamming down its muscular tail.

The reptile attempted to crush Wolf into a pancake, and even the Demonic Converter lost sight of his inconvenient position.

*Crack!*

Wolf jumped away, while behind his back Landbound Crocodile’s tail smashed into the remains of Demonic Converter’s trunk. Wolf had already whittled down the tree by two-thirds, and this devastating tail slam was the war-maul which broke the camel’s back.

Pandemonium ensued. Charging Demonic Beasts fell upon the Landbound Crocodile, who wrecked the Demonic Converter before their very eyes. The tree gave up on the Landbound Crocodile. As Wolf labored to split the Demonic Converter into two new halves, the crippled Lioncrab charged over and attacked him, along with half a dozen Ninth Order Demonic Beasts.

Wolf kept track of them all, combining the sensation of hatred with the surrounding sounds. He dodged the out-of-balance blow, then swept horizontally with Book. Yellow ichor sprayed, and the Lioncrab’s left legs fell to the ground.

Wolf deliberately left it alive. He knew the Demonic Converter would focus on it until another suitable Tenth Order Demonic Beast appeared. And the giant tree got its reinforcements.

In just ten minutes, five more Tenth Order Demonic Beasts appeared. Wolf killed, crippled or maneuvered them without the slightest bit of panic, showing how much experience he’d gathered under similar circumstances.

Normally, piling up corpses before a Demonic Converter the way Wolf did was suicidal. No matter how many wounds he inflicted on the tree, they would all heal. But after separating the Monster Core from the roots, the situation devolved into stacking food before an immobilized starving man.

An hour later, corpses littered the glen. The only Demonic Beast alive was the crippled Forest Lioncrab, which hobbled under the Demonic Converter’s guidance and attacked Wolf, trying to obstruct him.

Two hours later, the Lioncrab was dead, and Wolf held an emerald Monster Core in his hand. He didn’t even see this as a victory. Instead, he found it a kind of graduation.

I guess I’m ready to try a Twelfth Order one? What do you think, Silver?

I think you are ready, Master. Just be careful.