Azaroth's swordsmanship did not do much here since the creatures were chaotic and were not wielding swords themselves. What helped him most was his balanced feet and his quick reflexes.
He hacked at them while moving back so they would not surround him. He had killed two of the creatures now by cutting off their heads.
A claw went for his head and Azaroth dropped low before coming up with his sword. He took the creature's head off from the shoulder.
Azaroth rolled his shoulder. He had to finish this. He jumped in the middle of the monsters, twisting as he did so and lopping off heads. Three more to go. Two slashes and two heads fell. The last one took off in a run, but Azaroth's sword pierced its head.
All the while, essence had been settling on him like clothes made of fog. He got his sword, sat down, and started meditating as Kael had told him. It was easy. With a gentle mental nudge, the essence entered his core. His chaos core.
Energy filled him and Azaroth groaned as he felt all his fatigue slowly melt away. His core had changed somehow as if it had grown, but Azaroth understood none of it. He stood up. Time to start hunting again.
He met four more of the green monsters on the way and it was easy to kill them. He started keeping count in his mind, wondering what would happen to his core once he reached seventy-five.
Azaroth had to kill a total of one hundred and fifty, and he must do so without the others knowing. It was one of the reasons he wanted to move alone.
He had been running down the tunnel now for a while, occasionally meeting those green creatures and killing them. It was getting easier the more he killed and took in essence.
He had just killed his thirty-eighth when he felt a shock pass through him. Azaroth's muscles turned rigid and he froze. His chaos core was full, and not only that, the energy in the core flowed outside and covered the core. Its essence seemed to be soaked into the core.
It hit Azaroth then. The red eye had said his chaos core was half of his normal one. He did not need seventy-five monsters. He needed thirty-eight.
He checked his chaos core. It was empty, but the core itself was harder somehow, and its red and black shone. What Kael had been teaching them came to him then. "Once you fill up your core with the necessary number of monsters, you can now harvest from the environment while you keep practicing and waiting for your core to advance."
He took off running again.
"But I do not have time to wait and harvest now. I have to kill more monsters for my normal core." Azaroth frowned and stopped running.
He seemed to have reached the end of the tunnel.
The tunnel ended in a chamber-like opening with different entrances that led deeper into the cave. What stopped Azaroth and made him stare was the number of bones that littered the ground. Bones and tattered red and white clothes.
"How many Hounds had died here for this much skeleton?" Azaroth whispered, looking at the different bones. He seemed to have arrived at the lair of these creatures.
He wondered how the others were doing. It seemed Stallus had been smart when suggesting they move together. If not that he had to fill two cores, Azaroth would have used them as his tools.
Azaroth would not mind Alex joining the pile of bones though.
"Is this a testament to how strong I became after eating the technique or were the monsters just that weak?" Azaroth frowned at the bones in front of him. "Or were the other Hounds-to-be just pathetically weak?"
Azaroth was inclined to believe his last words. He knew something had been wrong since the first test. "The Hounds might hold a kill-yourself-all type of test, but I doubt they let it get so bloody as it had been with our set."
It all made sense now. If the others that Azaroth and his pack killed then were here now, they would have turned to food for the green monsters. Also, Azaroth doubted that Kael trained previous sets before throwing them into the crypt.
Though it was silent and he heard none of the creatures' cracking laughs, he knew they were there in the lair. The smell of rot and filth was strong here. The dirty smell of the creatures filled the air.
Azaroth checked his chaos core, then directed a thread of energy over his hand. A red-black wisp of energy covered his hand before dissolving.
"I need a full core." Azaroth contemplated going back out of the tunnel to choose another entrance, but he dismissed it. Here in front of him was an opportunity and he had no time to wait.
He looked around and saw a small boulder on his left. It would not shield him entirely from sight, but at least it would provide some shelter.
Azaroth walked to the boulder and sat down, leaving his bloody unsheathed sword on his lap, ready for action.
At first, he did not know what to do. "How do I take essence in the air when it is not already on me?"
Kael should be one of the most useless instructors, Azaroth thought as he closed his eyes and tried imagining the air coming towards him, imagining it entering his body. Nothing.
After some minutes of trying, he finally succeeded. He made sure his mind was blank and tried to remember the feeling of essence when he killed monsters.
That finally did the trick and essence started entering his chaos core. It was low and not the thick richness he felt when he slew monsters.
He wondered how long it would take to fill his chaos core at this rate. No wonder you cannot use it to advance your core and only for energy use.
Azaroth directed the essence to his normal core and it was like putting water on a rock and hoping the water would break it.
Azaroth returned to filling his chaos core as fast as he could.