Skill Hunter -Kill Monsters, Acquire Skills, Ascend to the Highest Rank!

Ike raced toward Wisp's voice. The boarmen loomed in the forest, each at least as large as the one Ike had dueled. This time, he wasted no time. Ike activated Storm Clad and tightened his grip on the sword. The closest boarman turned toward him, but too slow. Ike leaped into the air. In a flash of purple lightning, he cut the boar's head clean off its throat.

The second he activated Storm Clad, all the fatigue he'd accumulated up until that point vanished. The surge of aether washed it away. His physical body was overwhelmed by the strength of the aether. At the end of the day, it's nice to train my physical body alone, but I am fighting with aether. No point throwing away my greatest advantage, unless I'm deliberately training.

He leaped from boar to boar. They turned. One or two managed to fire a strike from their axe before Ike reached them, but the waves of green energy shot harmlessly beneath Ike. One after another, their heads rolled, and the boars slumped to the ground.

Climbing out of a nearby tree, Wisp looked at Ike. "Why didn't you do that from the start?"

"I was practicing," Ike said. He nodded at her. "There's more of them?"

She nodded back. "Keep going that way. I'll go the other way. They're ringing the castle, but the both of us can take half and keep them off."

Ike nodded. He saluted and ran on. Wisp vanished back into the tree, leaping from branch to branch in the opposite direction.

The forest was thick with the large boarmen. Ike darted from one to the next. Traces of purple lightning flashed behind him as he raced through the trees, little more than a purple shadow. The boars fell one at a time behind him. Even if he couldn't take the time to duel each one and draw out the full potential of what he could learn from them, he still didn't want to waste the fight. With each battle, he refined his usage of the River-Splitting Sword. He carefully marked how he held the blade and swung the sword to strike as cleanly as possible, with the least effort. His instincts began to guide him toward the gaps in the boars' neck vertebrae, so he could cut their necks without striking his blade against bone.

He didn't need to waste any focus on fighting the boars, after all, so he could pour all his mental energy into refining his technique. After his duel with the boarman earlier, he knew their moves like the back of his hand. He instinctively dodged their swings and ducked their strikes, and when they had the time to launch a blast of axe energy at him, he hopped it without looking. The sensation of the axe energy entering his aether perception was enough to avoid it.

The boars' bodies littered the forest. When he met Wisp again at the far side of the mountain, she was chewing on a boar leg. She glanced over his shoulder. "You gonna eat those?"

"Huh?" Ike glanced over his shoulder at the boars, then shrugged. "Nah. Go for it."

"Nice." Wisp passed him, heading for the boars.

A roar shattered the temporary peace. The trees swayed from the force of the roar, as though a fierce storm rolled through them. Ike lifted his hand, bracing against the force of the roar. Wisp lowered her center of gravity. Two pairs of spider legs sprouted from her back and clutched the ground to stabilize her. They both looked up, toward the sound of the roar.

An enormous pink pig's head peered over the forest. The pig woman stood thirty, maybe forty feet tall. Heavy rolls of fat sagged around her armor. She carried a huge spear whose shaft was made of the trunk of a great pine many times the height of the largest one in this forest and whose blade was twice as long as Ike. She roared again, then pointed her spear toward Ike's castle.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

"You dare to kill my adorable piglets? You, pathetic human scum?"

"Piglets?" Ike asked. He glanced at the fully grown boarman Wisp was eating. There was nothing piglet about him. From his tusks to his bristles, not only was he an adult boar, but also, he was a serious threat. There was nothing adorable about him at all.

"They don't taste like piglets. Piglets are much more succulent and delicious," Wisp opined. She licked her lips, then looked at Ike and added, "you pathetic human scum."

Ike rolled his eyes. "I can't win, can I?"

"Nah. It's not your fault you're human, but it does mean you can't win," she said, patting his shoulder.

Ike sighed.

Across the forest, the pigwoman whipped around. Her eyes landed on Ike, and they narrowed. "You!" she boomed.

"Me!" Ike nudged Wisp and ran toward the pigwoman. Wisp followed after him, vanishing into the trees again. Ike didn't comment on it. If the pigwoman was locked onto him, better to keep her attention on him and let Wisp crawl around behind her for a sneak attack later.

He pointed his sword at the pigwoman. "You want a fight? I'll give you one!"

"Are you the one who killed my precious piglets?"

"Hell yeah. And I fed them to my spider friend, too!"

The pigwoman's eyes flashed red. She hauled back with her spear arm, lifting her other arm to aim at Ike. She sent the spear flying. It blasted through the sky, splitting the forest apart. The trees fell left and right as the wind of the passing spear broke their trunks. Where it passed, a fresh gap carved through the thick tree cover.

Ike glanced over his shoulder. His castle laid directly behind him. If he dodged, the castle would be hit. I have to take this blow, or it's the end of the trial for me!

Planting his feet, he activated Storm Clad to its full power. A clap of thunder rolled through the forest, setting the leaves around Ike trembling. Lightning flashed all around him. Overhead, the heavens mimicked his raging skill. The sky darkened, and fingers of lightning flickered in the freshly-formed clouds. Ice coated Ike from head to toe, mixing with the wind and the lightning to form a full-body protective and empowering layer. His sword, too, crackled with lightning. Aether hummed through him as he circulated it at his full strength. Every bit of Ike sang with the storm, his whole body one with the raging lightning and roaring thunder.

The spear blasted toward him. It cut the wind, whistling forth with the speed of an arrow.

Ike waited. He drew his sword back into the form of River-Splitting Sword's upward strike. With every passing second, he poured more aether into the blade. His eyes locked onto the spear. Every bit of it lit up before him in excruciating detail. Its blade. Its haft. The places where the wood split, where branches had been carved off. It hurtled toward him. As its tip narrowed on his location, time seemed to slow. The tip passed over him, thrown not for him, but deliberately at his castle. In the distance, the pigwoman's lips curled upward in smug success.

The blade reached Ike. Ike breathed out slowly. One breath out, one in. His grip tightened. Not yet. Not yet. The tip passed over him, then the binding. And then it was only the shaft.

Ike's eyes flashed. He struck.