Chapter 7: The Big Boss Carries You Through the Plot!

In a corner, Zorn released the calamity black mist while opening his attribute panel.
……
【Astral Trace·Fighter】 (30th Anniversary Exclusive Memorial Edition) (Non-tradeable)
Level: Level 3 (9%)
【Talent】
Steel Intent·Iron Bone (SS-Grade): You possess the will and physique of steel.
【Skills】
Basic·Skull-Cracking Fist: Level 1 (10%)
Aura Mastery (Passive): Level 0 (29%)
Thousand-Stream·Storm Step: Level 0 (2%)
……
This battle with the Rat King Butch was destined to be time-consuming and prolonged.
Zorn intended to use the 【Fighter】 sequence as his primary offense and the 【Evil Spirit Sorcerer】 methods as auxiliary support.
Although it would feel a bit like scraping away health like a slow mosquito bite, scraping had its benefits.
That was to better help Zorn practice his skills and acquire "Fighter Essence."
One must know that the 【Bloodline·Lower Being·Rat King Knight】 possessed the 【Evil Spirit Knight】 sequence along with forbidden blood, and had even absorbed the Golden Rat King.
Engaging in a life-and-death battle with such a major BOSS yielded a massive profit for every additional second it lasted.
Killing the enemy was not the goal; leveling up was!
If possible, Zorn was even willing to battle Butch here for an entire day.
Feeling that preparations were complete, Zorn executed the "Thousand-Stream·Storm Step," moving with extreme speed while remaining completely silent.
After acquiring this major-school movement skill, Zorn practiced light and continuous usage during his daily routine.
This way, it consumed almost no aura while effectively increasing its level.
"Hello, Butch!"
Deep within the darkness, a voice rang out abruptly.
Rat King Butch, who was digging through and licking skeletons, suddenly raised his huge rat head and looked toward the sound.
Not far in front of him, he saw a human... no... food!
And it was food he desired immensely, carrying abundant spiritual essence.
Greedy, blood-red light flashed in the Rat King's eyes, and his entire flesh and silver-gray fur trembled with excitement.
"Ka... ra... su..."
"Ka... ra... su..."
Strange, hissing groans issued from his mouth as he launched a fierce "Knight Charge" at the food.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The darkness sounded its marching drumbeats, and the earth trembled.
Zorn swiftly sidestepped, evading the Rat King's Knight Charge.
At the same time, his Skull-Cracking Fist burst forth with a strike.
【Eternal Calamity Scourge】
A powerful interrupting and sealing forbidden art bloomed as well.
The high-speed charging Rat King Butch abruptly decelerated, and his mountainous body, the size of a room, instantly overturned on the spot, rumbling forward as it tumbled.
Finally, with a loud "bang," it crashed into the rock wall and came to a halt.
Zorn executed the Thousand-Stream·Storm Step, following closely behind at high speed.
Taking advantage of the moment before the Rat King could flip back over, he threw punches with both fists—it was time for a powerful skull-cracking moment.
Bang, bang, bang, bang……
Every punch landing on the Rat King's flesh and fur saw its power ripple outward.
It looked almost as if he were giving Rat King Butch a massage.
【Fighter】 VS 【Bloodline·Lower Being·Rat King Knight】
Scrape!
Scrape it for all it's worth!
No high numbers, no complex mechanics, pure mosquito-bite scraping!
Having officially become the 【Bloodline·Lower Being·Rat King Knight】, Rat King Butch was vastly superior in terms of defense compared to before.
The more it was like this, the more satisfied Zorn felt.
He was also worried that he might accidentally hammer the Rat King to death too quickly, in which case he would lose such a perfect "experience warehouse."
With top-tier mechanics like 【Eternal Calamity Scourge】 in hand, Zorn could seal away all of Rat King Butch's skills and abilities as the battle progressed.
Rendering his threat lower and lower until he was eventually reduced to a giant punching bag.
As a top-tier BOSS 【Evil Spirit Sorcerer】, who needed to talk about overcoming the strong with the weak?
The way to fight was to bully the weak from a position of strength, to crush them with absolute might.
If someone worked hard to develop in a low-profile manner only to still need to overcome the strong with the weak, wouldn't all that development have been in vain?

By the time Zorn arrived here, Rat King Butch was already as good as dead.
Waiting for him was simply a battle to bury him!
"Boom!"
As another punch landed downward.
Rat King Butch managed to flip himself over with great effort, and a five-meter-long bone lance smashed down fiercely.
Zorn lightly stepped backward, leveraging the force.
"Boom!"
The bone lance heavily smashed into the ground, reducing head-sized stones to absolute powder.
"Damned human, what have you done!"
Rat King Butch, shaking his head from top to bottom, roared with dual overlapping voices.
"Sending you on your way."
Zorn responded indifferently while charging forward once again.
Normally, the growth rate of a Level 1 Skull-Cracking Fist was relatively slow.
However, in the battle against the Rat King, every burst of the Skull-Cracking Fist made Zorn feel the skill growing rapidly.
At the same time, the high-intensity battle between the Fighter sequence and the Rat King caused his sequence experience to surge.
When a same-tier 【Fighter】 faced a stage-based BOSS like the 【Bloodline·Lower Being·Rat King Knight】, winning and killing the opponent in a solo battle yielded at least half a level's worth of experience.
Even with the experience-devouring black hole that was the Evil Spirit Sorcerer BOSS, the harvest remained remarkably substantial.
Closing in tightly while evading the Rat King's attacks, Zorn unleashed the Skull-Cracking Fist at full firepower once more.
Lacking the powerful skill 【Knight Charge】, the mobility of 【Bloodline·Lower Being·Rat King Knight】 Butch dropped instantly from cavalry to infantry.
His bulky, mountainous physique instead became a burden, making it difficult for him to maneuver freely.
Amidst the shifting and dodging, Zorn's offense grew increasingly fierce.
Rat King Butch clearly was not going to sit still and await his doom.
His rat tail whipped through the air continuously.
Whenever an opportunity arose, his giant rat fangs would snap forward to bite Zorn.
The human-shaped Butch fused onto the Rat King's back wielding a bone lance launched continuous attacks against Zorn as well.
Amidst the fierce mortal combat between the man and the rat king—
With a dull "thud!"
Zorn, dodging a bite from the Rat King's head, was swept flying heavily away by a strike from the bone lance.
After flying seven or eight meters, he crashed heavily into a large boulder.
Seeing this, Rat King Butch was overjoyed.
He knew all too well the frail constitutions of these humans.
Finding just a single opening, a single bite or blow, was enough to strip these Level 1 or Level 2 transcendents of most of their combat capability.
Yet this time, things were slightly different.
The human who had been sent flying flipped over and stood up as if nothing had happened.
One had to know that such a blow, even if struck against a rock wall, would shatter it with cracks; yet this human was unharmed?
"This……"
For a moment, Butch was dumbfounded.
Today's human seemed... exceptionally bizarre.
"Good job, Butch."
Zorn shook his shoulders and smiled.
The Evil Sorcerer BOSS inherently possessed extremely high health and tankiness, coupled with the Fighter's SS-grade talent 【Steel Intent·Iron Bone】 and the naturally defense-oriented "Astral Trace·Aura."
The damage from that blow existed, but it was minimal.
To Zorn, it barely chipped a sliver of health.
If health bars were truly laid bare, yours might be long, but mine wasn't far behind either.
Moreover, by utilizing Life Drain, Zorn could rapidly recover his vitality.
Daring to brawl with a BOSS bare-handed naturally meant Zorn had his own foundation of confidence.
Executing the Storm Step once more, Zorn charged forward again.
Continuing his Skull-Cracking Fist mosquito-bite attacks.
During the combat, while the skill experience of the Skull-Cracking Fist surged, Fighter Essence was continuously and steadily absorbed by Zorn, rich and pure.
On the surface, it looked like the 【Fighter】 was just scraping away health.
In reality, it was the 【Evil Spirit Sorcerer】 delivering a dimensional降维打击 (降维打击 - dimensional crushing blow).
The secretly accumulated forbidden curse 【Eternal Calamity Scourge】 continuously sealed Rat King Butch's other skills and abilities.
When the target unit was not actively casting a skill or ability, 【Eternal Calamity Scourge】 would randomly select one of the enemy's skills or abilities to seal, making it unsealable for the remainder of the battle.
As the battle dragged on, although he was occasionally knocked flying, pierced by the bone lance, or even bitten by the Rat King—
Supported by the aura of the 【Fighter Sequence】 and the health tankiness of the 【Evil Spirit Sorcerer】, along with the ability to break free, Zorn possessed a multitude of methods that resulted in a remarkably high fault tolerance.
Furthermore, whenever an opening presented itself, Zorn would use "Life Drain" on the Rat King for a massive gulp to recover his injuries.
Zorn fundamentally had nothing to fear from the Rat King's attacks.
Yet the Rat King could not ignore Zorn's attacks.
As the Skull-Cracking Fist struck continuously, the accumulated damage began to manifest.
During the first hour of the battle, the Rat King mounted fierce counterattacks, frequently dealing certain blows to Zorn and even knocking him airborne.
By the second hour of the battle, the Rat King's attacks began to lose momentum, no longer capable of causing any effective obstruction to Zorn's assault.
When entering the third hour of the battle, the Rat King began to transition into a defensive phase, constantly shifting his body to evade Zorn's strikes.
And his bone lance had long since been knocked away entirely by Zorn during this period.
When the battle entered the fourth hour, the Rat King officially entered the strategic phase of awaiting his own demise.
During this time, he had tried countless methods.
Yet every single one was calmly neutralized by that damned fighter.
Following that, he would only be met with even more violent counterstrikes.
He had exhausted every ounce of his strength, but that damned 【Fighter】 maintained an attitude of complete ease throughout.
He couldn't beat him; he genuinely couldn't beat him.
Whether it was the Rat King's abilities or the Evil Spirit Knight's abilities, every single one was firmly suppressed and pinned down by Zorn.
When one possessed numerous methods yet wasn't necessarily a match for Zorn, and watched as various abilities and skills suffered tragic seals, there was nothing left to do but wait for death.
As the battle neared its fifth hour, the Rat King, hanging on by a single breath, faced the risk of sudden death at any moment.
Under the continuous infusion and pounding of Astral Aura, while his outer fur remained undamaged, the flesh and blood inside his body had long been beaten into muddy pulp by Zorn.
He was as round and swollen as a balloon filled with water.
Now, whenever Zorn took a casual gulp, massive surges of life force poured into him continuously.
In truth, by the third hour, Zorn had already begun holding back significantly.
All of this was just to be able to fight the Rat King for a little longer.
As they entered the fifth hour, Zorn felt a hint of hunger.
To maintain his stamina and acquire aura, he accelerated the digestion of his food.
"It's about time!"
Zorn pondered inwardly.
"Do it!"
Zorn suddenly shouted in a high voice.
Hearing the voice of this terrifying human as he awaited death with lowered eyelids, the Rat King slightly raised his eyelids.
"Hehe... finally... is it coming to an end?"
Isaac, the rat catcher who had been waiting for a long time, rushed out from the corner.
Of course, even if he had just walked over slowly, the effect would have been the same.
The Rat King only wanted a swift, sudden death at this point.
"Die!"
【Heart-Hunting Strike】
Releasing a fatal blow to the enemy with the ultimate power of the hunt; every enemy killed enhanced the destructive power of the 【Heart-Hunting Strike】.
This was his growth-type skill and the key to his immense strength.
Using this skill to land the finishing blow on the Rat King would significantly increase the skill's damage output.
This strike slashed heavily down upon the Rat King's sequence core, amplified by the 【Rat Catcher's】 damage bonus against murine creatures.
At that exact instant, Zorn faintly heard the sound of a sequence collapsing.
The Rat King, whose fur was torn open, bled out blood mixed with flesh and bone fragments like a rushing flood.
"Awooo……"
Rat King Butch let out a miserable wail, and surging power erupted within his successfully slimmed-down body as he bolted toward the depths of the darkness.
"Lord Zorn, catch up to him quickly! We can't let him escape!"
Isaac cried out in alarm as he watched the Rat King's figure fleeing at top speed.
However, his movement was blocked by Zorn.
"Just follow along slowly; he won't be able to run away!"
Zorn glanced indifferently at the hurried Isaac and said.
Next up, a high-level expert will carry you through the storyline!