Meanwhile, in one of the areas in the outer circle, Elias and Hajin strolled through the forest before reaching an impasse, their first hurdle.

"Ready your weapon,"

Elias said out loud, stopping in front of a wide forest swamp. He looked at the scene in front of him and narrowed his eyes slightly.

Lush trees and moistened soil surrounded the forest swamp, fallen trunks, and humid bushes floating still on top of the muddy water.

A damp air spread out from the leveled forest sea, and upon a closer look, deep beneath the swamp, silhouettes of large beasts swam slowly.

"Huh, why?"

Hajin asked, feeling strangely nervous.

Hearing his shaky voice, Elias turned around to look at Hajin. He saw a puzzling sight of Hajin being unnerved with a pale face, as though afraid of something.

'Now, where did this idiot's former bravado and fighting spirit go…?'

"Fight, obviously," he added.

"Hehehe… that's a nice joke…"

Hajin chuckled nervously, taking a step back. However, moments later when he heard no response, he realized that it wasn't a joke.

"...You're not serious, are you?"

"I'm serious, now get ready. I'll count on you to kill the strongest one."

Elias nodded seriously, much to Hajin's face turning deathly pale. Seeing his abrupt change of expression, Elias was confused and curious at the same time.

Although he was the author of the novel, he was not omniscient. He was not able to accurately predict each of every character's actions and behavior.

Even more difficult, it was something out of his expertise, emotions, feelings, and empathy. Admittedly, he was horrible at those three things.

In fact, throughout his life—he never bothered to consider anyone's feelings or emotions when doing something.

'What is this man's problem...?'

In his mind, Elias always pictured Hajin to be a lax person who likes women and battles, but his current behavior was too out of character for the image he always thought of.

"Ugh… dammit… fine... you owe for me this, alright?"

Hajin whined, shaking his head. He raised his head and saw Elias' confused expression. With some shame and embarrassment, he added.

"I don't know about you, but fighting in wet places suck... My clothes are gonna get drenched, don't you feel the same? I mean, I didn't bring extra clothes..."

Even with Elias' mental composure, the answer cracked his hardened demeanor for a moment before immediately recovering.

However, that slight change wasn't able to escape Hajin's notice at all.

"Did you just smile? Haha, I saw you…"

Immediately forgetting his shame, Hajin suddenly asked smugly.

Elias ignored him and removed the necklace on his neck. He closed his eyes and inserted mana into the necklace, causing it to turn bright.

After a few seconds, the bright light vanished and the necklace was replaced by a long handgun that emitted a cold deathly air.

The necklace was called [Emperor's Wish] a unique arcana item that could transform into any existing arcana weapon of the user's choice.

Of course, the prerequisite of the transformation was that the user must have the visual image and understanding of the arcana weapon he wanted to make it work.

The better the understanding of the arcana weapon, the more accurate and precise the transformation that would take place.

For him, who was the author of the novel, it was the perfect arcana item to have!

As for where he had gotten [Emperor's Wish]—he picked it among the list of items in the [Advanced Item Selection] reward from the subquest.

'Let's see how this baby works…'

Elias held the newly transformed handgun with a small smile and pointed it at the forest swamp.

Right now, he transformed the necklace into a renowned arcana weapon—[Slaughterer]!

A handgun with extraordinary effects and terrifying origin!

In the novel, [Slaughterer] would appear once in the hands of a great ranker in the future during the demon war, killing hordes of demons and archdemons with its might.

[Slaughterer] was a versatile arcana weapon.

It had seven types of bullets, with each of them having different abilities and uses. However, most importantly, its most terrifying aspect was that it had infinite amounts of bullets!

More accurately, the handgun reloads its ammunition using the mana of the user holding it. Hence, as long as one still has mana on their mana reserves, [Slaughterer] will never run out of bullets.

"It's practically a broken arcana weapon I made on a whim,"

Elias muttered to himself, feeling strange. He was benefiting from his lazy and horrible writing, how should he feel about that?

Elias shook his head and forgot about it. Before taking action, he looked at Hajin and asked quietly.

"Are you confident in killing a beast emperor?"

"Confidence is something I don't lack at all... wait, why are you asking me that?!"

Hajin subconsciously pumped his chest confidently in a pompous manner before realizing that there was something amiss.

'It can't be..'

Thinking of something, Hajin looked at the forest swamp and widened his eyes.

"...Wait, there isn't a beast emperor here, is there?"

Elias unhurriedly took a glance at the forest swamp before explaining:

"Each route towards the inner circle has hurdles and difficulties, like this forest swamp right here. Some hurdles are less problematic though, but some are extremely dangerous, containing a beast emperor in them."

"We have two choices, we take a detour but take two or three more days to reach the inner circle, or we fight through this swamp and reach the inner circle in a day."

The higher the danger, the better the benefits.

From his previous words, Hajin immediately realized that the forest swamp in front of them was an extremely dangerous hurdle, containing a beast emperor.

"Let's change to another route…"

Bang!

However, Elias ignored his words and immediately pressed the trigger, shooting at one of the silhouettes deep in the swamp.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

However, he didn't stop there but continued to shoot more, causing a barrage of bullets to shoot through the large beasts swimming beneath the swamp.

On the surface of the muddy water, red blood erupted after each gunshot and slowly spread around.

"What the hell, you, you…"

Hajin was stunned. However, he was not able to finish his words—as the next moment, a monstrous roar echoed throughout the forest.

"ROAR!"

Elias stopped shooting and raised his brows.

In front of them, a massive thirty-foot-tall dark blue crocodile emerged from the swamp waters, creating waves as it rose.

The massive crocodile turned to look at both of them, its pair of large pupils emitting unprecedented anger and ferocity.

"Get ready!"

Elias sternly warned and patted Hajin's shoulders.

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