Everything in front of Shang exploded, and he was thrown back into the black fire. Luckily, Entropy couldn't hurt him.

The explosion shook the entire cave, and if everything around Shang weren't made of metal, he would fear a cave-in.

After a couple of seconds, the rumbling finally calmed down.

Splash!

Shang peeked his head out of the sea of blood and looked forward.

A gigantic crater had appeared at the previously closed entrance.

It was over a hundred meters wide and perfectly circular.

For all intents and purposes, it was like someone had detonated several tons of TNT in this place.

There was nothing left of the centipede.

The explosion had eaten up its entire body, leaving nothing behind.

Shang slowly stood up. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"It's fine," Sword answered.

Shang was worried that this much stress on Sword would have taken a toll on it, but everything seemed to be okay.

"Good," Shang said.

"What do you think this thing was?" he asked.

"I don't know. I'm a weapon," Sword answered.

Shang only sighed.

Sword was always like this when he wanted to talk.

Shang thought back to what the centipede had done.

‘This kind of ritual it performed with its second head was definitely not normal. I doubt that a True Path Stage beast can learn something like this naturally.'

‘The diagram that appeared on the ground was far too detailed and advanced for a mere beast to come up with. In fact, it looked like a complex Magic Circle.'

‘However, it definitely was a beast.'

Shang tried to come up with a plausible origin or explanation for the beast's abilities, but this time, he just couldn't find an answer.

He had been able to find out how Vice-Commander Wilbury had found Shang, but this time, there was simply too little information.

‘One thing is for certain. It's definitely not a normal beast, and it's definitely not a weak or average one.'

‘In fact, in a certain sense, the centipede felt even more powerful than the Ice King, but that isn't necessarily due to its power.'

‘The Ice King had mastery over everything, and it was dangerous to every kind of opponent.'

‘Meanwhile, the centipede was only powerful in a melee match-up, and its speed also wasn't ridiculous.'

‘While fighting it in close quarters, it's probably more dangerous than the Ice King, but a Mage could definitely keep it at bay and fight from range. The spikes shouldn't be that big of a deal for a Mage to handle.'

‘It's like this centipede was specifically designed to deal with warriors.'

‘That would also explain where it got its abilities from.'

Shang sighed.

‘However, I refuse to believe that an Archmage can design something like this, which means, if it was designed by a human, it must have been designed by someone more powerful, and those people don't appear in this place.'

‘And if those people wanted to deal with me, they would just come themselves and kill me.'

‘It seems like, for the time being, the origin of this thing remains a secret.'

Shang used a little bit of his Domain of Entropy to get rid of the blood on his body.

By now, his body was well on its way to recovery, and it would only take a couple more seconds to fully heal.

‘Sadly, the attack destroyed the entire thing. I think that thing would have been worth a lot of money, but I guess that's gone now.'

‘But the fight wasn't for nothing. I can feel that I've gained several new shards on the way to the Colossal Sword Star.'

panda (nov)el​ Shang walked forward and felt strangely naked.

Then, Shang remembered that he had sacrificed his armor to deal with the thing.

‘I can't ask Jerald for another set without paying. I should hunt some weaker True Path Stage beasts and store their corpses to pay him.'

Shang looked at the cave and noticed that the metal was slowly turning into stone again.

He wasn't surprised by that. Metal summoned by Mana would quickly turn back into Metal Mana after a while.

Shang also saw that the place behind him had huge crevices going through it in a spiral shape. The crevices were also severely burned.

It looked strange and unnatural.

‘Well, whoever comes through here in the future will be confused by the spiral.'

Shang summoned some spare clothes and put them on.

After that, he took hold of Sword again and walked deeper into the caves, but he avoided going further down. He didn't want to meet beasts that were too powerful.

Over the next couple of minutes, Shang searched for his next opponent, and eventually, he found them.

It was a humongous toad that nearly filled out the entire tunnel.

‘Initial True Path Stage,' Shang thought.

Without waiting, Shang immediately charged at it…

And killed it in a couple of seconds.

Now, the gigantic corpse of the toad lay before him, its head split.

There had been no fancy surprises during the fight. The toad had only summoned some huge boulders and shot them at him, and when Shang got close, the toad tried to kill him with its tongue.

Sure, the tongue had been surprisingly fast, but that was about it.

There was nothing too fancy.

After that, Shang tried to put the corpse away, but it was simply too heavy.

A tedious and disgusting process of cutting the corpse into carriable pieces commenced, and Shang finally managed to put it away.

He did his best to keep the organs in one piece.

In the end, only a pool of blood remained.

‘That was easy,' Shang thought.

Sure, the toad's body had been a level above Shang, but Shang's Affinity, speed, technique, creativity, offensive power, and explosiveness more than made up for the difference.

After the fight, Shang continued.

He had fought two True Path Stage beasts now, and he was confident that he now had a good feeling for his enemies' power.

The next beast was another Early True Path Stage beast, and Shang fought without holding back.

However, the fight also ended in just a couple of seconds.

The next one was another Initial True Path Stage beast, and Shang could feel that it was about average.

Starting with this opponent, Shang decided to get back to actually training.

Instead of making use of all of his advantages, he concentrated on only winning with his body and swordsmanship.

This entire process repeated itself a couple more times until Shang was finally done.

Nearly an entire day of hunting and fighting had given Shang 13 corpses of beasts at the True Path Stage.

‘That should be more than enough for more ore and another set of armor.'

Then, Shang exited the deeper caves again.