Night Ranger

On the stage, faint yellow lights were flickering.

The large curtains were slowly opening as Marvin stood at center stage as if he were doing a rehearsal on the eve of a play.

The puzzled Gwyn hid behind the curtains, watching Marvin with doubt as he faced hundreds of approaching Evil Spirits.

Although these Evil Spirits had rather ordinary strength, the number was overwhelmingly large. Why did Marvin tell him to just stand by and watch?

’Could it be to show off his strength?’ Gwyn remained perplexed.

As far as he could tell, if he participated, it would only lighten Marvin’s burden.

But it would mean something totally different in Marvin’s eyes.

His purpose when coming to Saruha was very simple, to increase his strength!

And those treasures, such as the [Rosenthal Bracelets] that he managed to get his hands on, were merely a part of the big harvest. The most important part was battle exp!

Marvin already had the Legend Advancement Manual, so as soon as he met the requirements to advance to Ruler of the Night, he could advance to Legend!

But the crucial point was that he was currently lacking experience!

Before, there was a time where Marvin didn’t spare any expense and used battle exp to level his Ranger class to Level 9. For the same reason, Shapeshift Sorcerer was Level 6. This way of distributing experience was in order to increase his strength in the short term, by receiving powerful skills and attributes, but it deviated a bit from the perfect path to becoming Ruler of the Night.

The requirements to advance from Night Walker to Ruler of the Night were clearly written in the Advancement Manual: Ranger Level 8 - Night Walker Level 10.

And Marvin’s Night Walker class was currently barely level 6. He was still so far from Level 10.

For natives, this might be a gap that they wouldn’t be able to break through in their lifetime.

Because the natives of Feinan needed constant training and enlightenment to level up. The geniuses among them might have deeper understanding toward certain classes and thus keep leveling up, but most would train for their whole lives, but stop at a certain level because of their limited talents.

But Marvin was different.

He had the [Essence Absorption System], as Mark 47 called it, and this system let Marvin avoid the bottlenecks of leveling up. As long as he kept killing, he would obtain a steady flow of experience.

In fact, thanks to the system, Marvin never had any worries about leveling.

This time, it could be considered the first instance he had entered specifically to grind for exp.

Saruha was originally known for hosting an enormous amount of Evil Spirits.

Most of the Evil Spirits themselves weren’t worth that much experience. Excluding the few 4th rank powerhouses inside, on average, each Evil Spirit would give Marvin no more than 500 exp!

But it was still a lot overall!

At that time, McKenzie Theater was already clogged up with Evil Spirits. There were at least a thousand of them eyeing Marvin!

Among them, the lowest level Evil Spirits were at the 2nd rank. These were about 70% of the army, while the 3rd ranks made up around 25%.

Only a handful of 4th rank Evil Spirits were mixed in, waiting for chances to seriously harm Marvin.

This was the plan of the two Evil Spirit Envoys to kill Marvin. It consisted of using a large amount of low level Evil Spirits to confuse him, while the real experts hid within, waiting for a chance to surprise him.

But unfortunately, their plan was bound to fail. Marvin had already taken that into account.

Moreover, since they gathered together, Marvin didn’t need to hunt the Evil Spirits one nest at a time!

Facing the ocean Evil Spirits, Marvin still showed unprecedented confidence and killing intent!

He was happy to take advantage of this opportunity to group up the Evil Spirits and farm some exp.

With two daggers in hands, Marvin’s body flashed like lightning.

On the Azure Leafs, #4 Holy Water flickered with a strange luster, emitting the strongest restraining aura against the Evil Spirits!

He could kill the 2nd rank Evil Spirits easily in one slash!

Marvin only needed to rely on his formidable experience and skill to not be locked in a fight with the stronger Evil Spirits, instead just speeding away and shaking them off.

He was doing things very differently now.

16 Constitution greatly increased his stamina. Even if there were almost a thousand Evil Spirits in the theater, Marvin believed he could kill them all.

Since that was the case, why would he need Gwyn to act and snatch his exp?

...

"Woosh!" On the stage, Marvin moved like a ghost, sliding between the gaps among the Evil Spirits.

Facing Brain Eating Monsters, Tentacle Horrors, and other relatively powerful monsters, Marvin would choose to temporarily retreat.

His tactics were very simple. He relied on his powerful Dexterity to roam around the army and get rid of the low level Evil Spirits.

None of the Evil Spirits could catch up to his speed.

Godly Dexterity allowed him to break through all attempts at encirclement before they could form completely. With that as well as his powerful Night Walker skills, he simply wasn’t worried about the Evil Spirits surrounding him.

’I’ll kill these 2nd rank Evil Spirits first!’ Marvin thought.

The Azure Leafs in Marvin’s hands flashed, and an Evil Spirit died with an anguished wail.

When Marvin started his preparations to advance to Legend, he made proper considerations. He had to save as much battle exp as he could, but where to get battle exp was an issue.

Wantonly killing without reason was definitely out of the question.

And in terms of gathering exp, killing Feinan’s monsters one by one wasn’t actually worth much. Even slaying a Dragon would at most give him 30000 exp or so.

And that was with Clarke’s unique Divine template. The previous Red Dragon gave him 16000 exp.

And to get 10000 exp, Marvin only needed to kill 20 monsters worth 500 exp each.

Thus, to level quickly in Feinan with his system, going for quantity over quality was the way.

But, the numerous evil lifeforms such as Devils, Demons, and other monsters weren’t that easy to handle.

The only species Marvin could easily handle massive amounts of at once were Evil Spirits and Ghosts, thanks to his copious stores of Holy Water.

Thus, when he left for the Dead Area of the Pambo Sea, he also thought about hunting some Ghosts to get a bit of exp.

But he hadn’t expected to come across Saruha opening while going through Ruins City, this was pretty convenient.

Since something so helpful appeared, Marvin naturally would not let it go.

"Ha!"

Night Jump!

Marvin’s body flew over the heads of numerous Evil Spirits, avoiding two Brain Eating Monsters while pouncing toward a group of low level Moss Monsters!

That group of Moss Monsters lost any courage they had when they saw Marvin tearing through them and moved back in fright.

The daggers flashed again and that group of Moss Monsters was completely annihilated.

They broke down into essence and merged into Marvin’s body, turning into battle exp!

Seeing his battle exp going up little by little, Marvin was also exceptionally excited.

This was the first time he had farmed so much exp ever since he arrived in Feinan!

He was fired up. Those sinister Evil Spirits were like cute experience packs!

He waved his daggers and kept reaping Evil Spirits!

...

In the Desolate Ancient Altar, the scenes that took place in McKenzie Theater startled and angered the two Evil Spirit Envoys!

Although they already knew that the person able to destroy the Decaying Plateau couldn’t be someone ordinary, when Marvin displayed his outstanding battle skills and physical abilities, they were deeply shocked.

"His speed... Could he already have reached [Godly Dexterity]? Impossible, he should still be only level 18 at most!"

"A Moss Monster died like this? One slash? What are those weapons? Hold on... There is the aura of Holy Water on them."

"He is more prepared than we are!"

The two brothers discussed with pale faces.

A quarter hour later, half of the Evil Spirits in McKenzie Theater had already been mown down by Marvin!

The Evil Spirit Envoys’ hearts bled!

This wasn’t the Negative Energy Plane. It was much more difficult to raise an Evil Spirit in Feinan. Only lifeforms with the purest sinister, sordid, and twisted minds could turn into an Evil Spirit.

When Evil Spirits were born, if there wasn’t any Evil Spirit Envoy to guide them, they would very easily be rejected by Feinan’s planar laws.

The two Evil Spirit Envoy brothers took advantage of the ideas left behind by the destroyed Ancient Gnomes and started breeding Evil Spirits for innumerable years until they reached these numbers.

And now, they quickly lost more than half just in this mission!

And from the look of it, the situation wasn’t optimistic!

That Marvin’s strength was abnormally frightening. He was able to easily harvest the lives of those low level Evil Spirits while cleverly avoiding the high level Evil Spirits’ attacks!

But regardless of the situation.

This couldn’t keep going!

"Wake up Sleeping Max. Now!"

The two brothers looked at each other and started to chant in a low voice.

...

In the theater, Marvin was having lots of fun farming experience when suddenly, the army of Evil Spirits started to recede like the tide.

’Eh? Change of tactics?’

At first, Marvin thought that the two Evil Spirit Envoys were temporarily changing their strategy.

But then he noticed...

It wasn’t that the Evil Spirit Envoys were telling these Evil Spirits to fall back.

The Evil Spirits were spontaneously retreating.

What were they afraid of?

Marvin chose the McKenzie Theater as the spot for the decisive battle mainly to force the Evil Spirit Envoys to take the bait.

’Did they lose their calm so quickly?’

Marvin turned and sped up, quickly getting rid of some Evil Spirits on his path as he return to the stage.

"What’s up?" asked the handsome young Vampire with a look of surprise.

Marvin’s eyes scanned all the corners of the Theater. The next instant, the faint lights dimmed!

Wind could be heard as the curtains fluttered slowly.

Gwyn only felt the cold, as if something was staring at him!

At the same time, Marvin’s faint voice echoed beside his ears:

"Have you ever heard the story of the ghost in the theater..."