The Lizardman Chief squatted down.

"Wait! Is it gonna–" Jack was familiar with that starting move. And as his bad feeling grew, the Lizardman Chief proved his suspicion to be true. It kicked off from the ground and flew towards him in high speed. It was using its Leap attack which was supposed to still be in cooldown.

In alarm, Jack realized it was too late for him to dodge. Even if he used his Magic Shield to block, the enemy move might still kill him based on his experience the last time he blocked this skill during enemy's berserk state.

In this critical moment, he suddenly realized one of his moves had just come off cooldown. He decided to just make a bet.

Sword of Light!

The crescent light shot out and bit at the Lizardman Chief at mid-flight. The light went passed it as monster's body was sliced clean in two.

Critical damage!

Jack was stunned as the two body parts fell in front of him.

He stood there and stared at the corpse of the Lizardman Chief near his feet. He was still in a daze until he heard the voice notification that congratulated him for having defeated the Lizardman Chief.

Before he could celebrate, he heard another notification, "congratulations! You have reached level 15 for Magician class."

Jack finally relaxed his body, he didn't realize that he had been holding his breath ever since he used the last Sword of Light. He let the trapped air out. His knees lost their strength and buckled, he fell on his butt. He sat there among the ruins of the encampment and looked up at the full moon. He reckoned it was closed to midnight at the moment.

Level 15 for Magician! He could try his advanced class trial for Mage now, putting both his classes at the advance stage. But that would have to wait until he got back to the capital. Probably after tomorrow morning's dungeon business with White Scarfs was over.

"That was close!" Peniel commented as she flew to his side.

"Yeah!" Jack nodded. "I thought I was a goner in that last second. I didn't know it can use its leaping attack again so soon."

"That must have been its near-death ability, some monsters possessed that. It must have reset the skill's cooldown again.. Aren't you going to pick those up?" Peniel was referring to the loots on the ground, the Lizardman Chief corpse had disappeared and dropped some items.

"Give me a minute to rest, will you?" Jack said.

"I was wrong by the way," Peniel said.

"About what?"

"About a group of thirty level 12 or 13 adventurers to be able to raid this settlement. If it was only the lizardmen you decimated in that ravine there, it will be true. But against these three elite bosses? Those thirty adventurers will get mow down. You would need at least fifty of them, or thirty at level 15 who have changed to their advanced class."

"I am only one, doesn't that mean I'm awesome?" Jack said with a wide grin.

Peniel rolled her eyes at him, "you are abnormal! Your dual class attributes completely outclass any adventurer at the same class. And you also have many equipment and skills that the average players don't have, which give you much advantage."

Jack nodded, but then said, "but they are still not enough. Look at how close it was just now. I have to become even stronger!"

"You won't be if you are just sitting there," she said.

"Okay, okay!" Jack said as he rose up.

He looked at the loots, frowned, and picked them up.

Chief Axe, level 15/35 (Rare two-handed axe)

Physical damage: 74

Attack speed: 1

Durability: 50

Dexterity +3

Apply knock-back force to every attack

"Crap! Rare weapon, but why is it an axe? What do I need an axe for?" Jack uttered with disappointment. "I can't sacrifice this for my Storm Breaker, can I?"

Peniel shook her tiny head, and affirmed him, "you can only sacrifice one-handed sword."

Jack looked at the axe on his hands. It made sense to drop axe, the boss was using it in the fight after all. Probably he would just dismantle it, he thought. But he felt it's a pity to dismantle a rare weapon. He just stored it for now and would decide about it later.

He checked the other loots, it was 8 silver and 63 copper coins, a Scale, and a Lizard's Gland, which was described as uncommon ingredient. He stored them all, then walked to the area where he had defeated the Lizardman Archer and Lizardman Shaman.

From their loots, he had collected 11 silver and 21 copper coins, another scale, and an uncommon staff. Together with the staff he was equipping, he already had three uncommon staffs. He needed another five more and he could combine them using the Transformation Box to become a rare staff.

After collecting the drops outside, he was ready to enter the main hut to check the settlement treasury now. But before that, he took a look at the Containers of Souls in his storage bag. He had been hunting non-stop since he departed from the Capital, and he had killed many monsters to complete his hunting quests. When he checked at the collected souls, he was astonished to find that there were already 1003 souls inside. He had had enough to upgrade one level of his basic skill.

He immediately used 1000 souls to upgrade his Magician skill Heightened State to level 2. The skill had helped him in the battle just now allowing him to keep on using battle skills continuously. He expected he would still be relying on this skill in the future.

While he was upgrading his skill, he also noticed a change to his Power Strike skill. The dim stars in the skill description had one of the stars filled up with bright yellow color. This indicated his proficiency with this skill had increased due to multiple usages. He checked on the skill's description and saw that the star had increased the efficiency on the knockback force applied to this skill.

"Are you going to enter or not?" Peniel said with impatience as she flew around the door of the main hut.

"Coming," Jack said as he walked over.

He pushed the wooden door which was actually quite heavy, then walked inside. The interior was illuminated by several candles hanging on the wall. It was a simple circular room with no furniture except for something like an altar at the center of the room.

He approached that thing. "What's this?" He asked Peniel.

"It's the settlement core," she answered. "You need to break the core in order to complete the raiding of this settlement. You will get the reward afterwards."

"Break it? How do I do it? Do I just attack it?"

"Yes," Peniel nodded.

"That's simple," Jack said with a relief. He thought he needed to do some complicated thing again in order to complete this raiding. It was late already, and he was rather exhausted after the battle. He would like to take a rest soon for the rest of the night if possible. Tomorrow, he would still have a long day as he was required to join in on the clearing of the dungeon with Silverwing and the others.

He took out his Storm Breaker and without further ado, started hacking at the Settlement Core.

The Core was unexpectedly resilient. Even with his high damage, he could only reduce it to half after continuously attacking for a full minute.

"Does it have to be this hard to just destroy this Core?" He complained.

"If it is that easy to break, wouldn't you think people would just try to sneak in and destroyed it in secret?" Peniel countered. "Furthermore, once the core was attacked, an alarm will sound out in the head of every monster that was from this Settlement. So unless you have killed all the monsters first, or having a solid team to protect you, it shouldn't be possible to destroy the Settlement Core."

That made sense, Jack thought.

When the health bar of the core was near its end, Jack sent Power Strike with a flourish move.

"Finishing touch!" He yelled as the Power Strike connected.

Peniel smirked at his childish display. "Was that really necessary?" She said.

"Hey, I'm a young man if you haven't noticed," Jack countered. "I'm entitled to this kind of stress-relieved once in a while. I'm just through a stressful battle if you remember."

The Core broke apart as they were arguing, bright golden light poured out from it.