Danmachi- Hell’s Forge

Greed before need

As I walked through the forested floor towards the nearest metal ore deposit I finally came across some monster that were obviously newly spawned. It was a a group of four monsters, two lizardmen, a bugbear and a Gun labella. The lizardmen and bugbear were on my shopping list but the gun labella was pretty much useless to me. The giant sniper dragon fly things wings were the only part of it worth anything as they were used in alchemy but that was it. With that in mind I pointed a finger at it and a beam of erasure extended out of the tip of my finger before piercing the monster from head to tail causing it to burst into smoke as the stone was erased.-

I couldn't separate my erasure from physically touching me but I could absolutely extend it outwards so long as at least some part of the construct was touching me. It reminded a bit of that scene in terminator two where the liquid metal terminator stabbed a dude to death by extending it's metal finger. In my case though it was a beam of energy rather than a part of me that extended so far.-

With the annoying bug taken care of I was left with the two lizardmen and bugbear that roared and charged me. The lizardmen were fastest to reach me and the first to perish as I cleaved my weapons erasure edged blade through both their necks in a single smooth stroke. I ignored their bodies that fell flat mid stride and waited calmly for the lumbering form of the massive bear to get near me jaws wide in an attempt to devour me whole. I simply spartan kicked it's snout with a sickening "CRUNCH!" as it's snout broke due to it's own momentum being forcefully stopped suddenly.-

I didn't leave it alive to suffer and with a smooth swipe of my weapon decapitated it. It was admittedly rather boring how easy it was to handle these monsters and I needed minimal effort to do so. It wasn't even just a matter of skill either as after I gained RCT my sheer power was on a whole different level than before even though my stats themselves sat at the same place they had when I first leveled up to three.-

I had little doubt that if I caught one off guard I could probably even slay a level five in head on combat much less these weak level two and three monsters. All I needed was a single moment to unleash erasure and if the level five didn't escape fast enough that was it, game over for them. It wasn't all good however as RCT had a rather bad drawback to it, arrogance. Using the technique caused a sense of overinflated pride and confidence that was dangerous to have. It was almost like having a god complex forcefully layered over your existing thoughts that made you think you were invincible since you could just RCT your injuries away.-

For me it was SO much fucking worse as I didn't even need RCT to remove injuries so having it on top made my sense of invincibility way worse than it would be for any other person with RCT. I had to constantly remind myself that in front of level five and six entities I was an ant, albeit a much bigger than normal one. Shaking my head to rid myself of these thoughts I refined the hides of the monsters as well as their claws and in the bugbears case, fangs.-

I then removed the magic stones and absorbed the smoke before collecting my loot in my bag. Pulling out my metal compass I sighed when I noticed that the metal deposit I was previously headed towards wasn't being picked up anymore which meant the dungeon either moved it or an adventurer harvested it. Whatever the case it was lost to me so I could only head to the next closest deposit. This time I didn't run into any monsters and arrived at the deposit. It wasn't some grand amount of metal but a small impure mithril ore crystal hidden in the roots of a tree.-

"Hand over the metal and we'll let you walk away unharmed!" A irritating scratchy male voice yelled and I looked at the source.

It came from a greasy haired twig of a man with a greedy look on his face that was accompanied by two other men with no real distinguishing features. All of them had the crest of the Mammon familia on their chest pieces.

"You are on the wrong side of the floor to be making threats, this is the southeastern side rather than the northwestern side your familia claimed." I said coldly.

The twig dude's face screwed up into a scowl of anger "I tried to be nice but since you don't want to cooperate then don't blame me for what happens next. Get him!" he said and all three of them drew their weapons and came at me.

My gaze told me that they were thoroughly stained with sins of greed and even murder making it clear this wasn't a first for them. I judged how fast they moved and easily determined that they were all at most mid level three's and immediately lost interest in playing with them to hone my skills.-

I will admit that their teamwork was admirable as they were perfectly in sync but numbers and coordination meant nothing to me. The air moved violently as hellfire roared to life from all over my body and transformed into a massive serpent that coiled around me with it's head locked onto the three people.-

"Fuck! It's the real [black mark]! Run!" the greasy fellow yelled recognizing my signature "magic" but it was far too late to escape for them.

With a simple mental push the flame serpent shot out at them and caught them near instantly as trying to outrun normal magic was a fools errand much less my flames. They didn't even get a chance to beg for mercy before their bodies were reduced to ash while I barely managed to stop the flames from destroying their gear as well. While I doubted that anything good on these guys was obtained in a legal manner beyond maybe their chestpieces, free was free and I'll take what I can either way as payment for ridding the world of them.

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