Watching the thunderhoof matriarch fight with all she had to protect her herd from the enraged cracklers was quite a sight.

Lightning erupted from her horns, smashing into anything that dared move around her. It didn't matter if it was the workers or the sentinel cracklers; all were brought down by her rage.

And yet, Nick could see her flagging as the monsters focused on her. Not enough to make a loss possible, no, but enough that he started noticing openings where there had once been none.

The alphas under her command quickly filled the gap, acting as meat shields to absorb the sound attacks the cracklers kept firing, which Nick dutifully amplified, turning relatively harmless blasts into damaging blows.

Still, even the crackler nest didn't have unlimited resources, so after the last wave, things slowed down.

The matriarch breathed heavily, her flesh bruised and her movements slow, but her horns still crackled with electricity, and her eyes remained sharp, warily watching the ground.

She, too, knew that it wasn't over yet. Now for the last step. I just need a little more.

It didn't take long for the peace to shatter, as the ground started rumbling again.

For a moment, Nick worried that the queen's emergence would cause the rest of the herd to turn back, but a quick glance told him that wouldn't be an issue. Whether because they didn't see the cracklers as a threat, trusted the matriarch to watch their backs, or simply didn't care enough to turn around, the hundreds of thunderhoofs kept marching south.

He refocused as he felt the hill erupt in a shower of rocks, with the crackler queen emerging in all her glory.

"She's really quite ugly," Nick muttered, reminded of Elia's reaction. She'd been perhaps a bit too hasty, but such a massive bug evoked an instinctive response of disgust.

"But then again, she's being very helpful now, so perhaps I can let it go for once," he smiled, watching as the queen began releasing concussive sound waves toward the matriarch, having recognized her as the greatest threat.

Nick took some time weaving a wind bubble around the battlefield to avoid drawing attention with the loud noise the queen was making.

In this case, he didn't bother helping with the sound magic. She was more than strong enough on her own, and he needed the time to finish his preparations.

Omaha hunting methods didn't involve magic circles, and while Nick was tempted to carve one to give the magic some structure, he knew better now.

Spiritual magic didn't like being bound, and all he'd do was weaken the overall ritual by imposing his control over it now.

No, what he needed to do was focus on the subtler currents of the ether. He could feel the shifts now, hidden behind the chaotic emotions of the monsters fighting for their lives.

His purification had been the first step, the one that initiated the ritual, but it was only now becoming something tangible.

Wisps of golden-yellow mana began thickening at his command, enveloping the battlefield and absorbing the volatile emotions to fuel their power.

The crackler queen gradually started to be pushed back. She'd endured longer than Nick would have thought, managing to disrupt most attacks by burrowing into the ground and avoiding direct hits, but the matriarch, even in her tired state, was simply too strong. It was only a matter of time now.

Nick waited for that exact moment, sharpening his intent as he started channeling his own emotions into the spiritual construct.

The Blessed Hunt was essentially a massive summoning ritual that combined the souls of hunted beasts, the hunter's emotions, and a significant portion of the experience he gained by hunting them to create a divine storm. This construct would then be directed into him to purge his lightning gate and greatly enhance his spiritual abilities.

Nick could admit he was anxious about that last step. Facing the full might of a Greater Ritual alone would take everything he had.

Still, it was an opportunity he probably wouldn't get again, so he dug deep, summoning all the anger, bloodlust, glee, greed, and fear he'd been forced to suppress over the past few months.

Hiding who he truly was had become second nature, but that didn't mean there weren't consequences. Keeping his past life, his class, and his very magic secret. He would keep doing it, driven by necessity and a desire to avoid the fallout of being discovered, but he still felt all the emotions that accompanied that concealment.

And he finally had an outlet now.

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What he felt fighting that spearman in Lord Quack's training yard couldn't compare to this.

The magic he summoned didn't just stem from a desire to fight like it had before, nor from a survival instinct, as [Spiritual Hurricane] had. It was more primal, a scream of defiance, a release of pressure that had built up too long.

The moment the crackler queen finally fell to a massive bolt of lightning, and the thunderhoofs bellowed in victory, Nick struck.

To an outside observer, what happened next wouldn't have made sense. The monsters had been tired and battered, yes, but they were nowhere near death's door. They had survived an all-out assault and come out victorious.

One moment, they were finally relaxing and breaking the tight formation they had instinctively created, and the next, they started falling one after the other, dead.

There was no grand light show. The ground didn't shake, and the wind didn't rustle the grass. Thunderhoofs simply started dropping as an unseen force overwhelmed them, snuffing out their souls.

The calves were the first to fall. Their mana was just too unrefined, too weak to resist for any meaningful length of time.

The adults were next, lasting just long enough to realize something was seriously wrong.

Bellows and crackling bolts of lightning burst in all directions, signaling the start of the alphas' fall. They unleashed their fury at an unseen enemy they couldn't hope to understand.

They weakened initially, their breathing growing more labored as they instinctively pulled their mana back into their bodies, trying to fight, but they simply lacked the tools needed to do so.

Nick's magic howled through the ether, using the very emotions they had released previously to fuel its power, and every ounce of anxiety and fear they felt now only hastened their fall.

Eventually, they too couldn't handle it anymore, their souls shattered under the spiritual thunderstorm, too exhausted to stay strong after such a draining battle.

And so only one remained. The matriarch, to her credit, didn't fall into despair over the deaths of her herd mates. She focused her power on herself, weathering the effects of Nick's spell remarkably well.

That, unfortunately for her, exposed her to something that would have been entirely ineffective if she had been alert.

Her mind became entirely focused on resisting the shearing spiritual gales that howled around her, battering at her mind and forcing her to stay still, to concentrate completely on defense, lest they tear her soul apart.

"She truly is impressive. She learned how to resist by observing her herd die, and used that knowledge within seconds. It's almost a shame to kill her."

And yet, he still walked through the debris of the previous battle, unsheathing his dagger and feeling its hunger as new prey approached.

"You can drink her mana, but leave her soul to me," he told the remnant, earning a hiss of contentment. It had been annoyed at having to hold back during the spars, but as he'd promised, it would eat its fill soon.

I would have let it eat the entire herd if I didn't need their spirits for the ritual. I'll have to find a troll or two after I'm done here. It seemed to like those.

A moment later, Nick stopped in front of the matriarch. Even weakened, she still towered over him, and her presence was nothing to scoff at.

Nick was nearly tempted to justify himself. This was a magnificent beast, about to die solely because of his greed.

And yes, he could sugarcoat his motivations. He could say he was doing this because a herd of that size would threaten his family's lands, or that he needed the money they would bring to push his goals forward and eventually save the day against the Ultimers, but that wasn't the truth.

The truth was, Nick wanted more. He had all this power at his fingertips, yet the world had shown him just how little it was compared to real powers.

I will be among them, and someday, I will be above them.

Thus, it was without hesitation that he plunged his dagger through her left eye, into her brain. Thin wind shears sharpened the blade immensely, and its own natural magic made it easy to pierce the matriarch's battered flesh.

For a frozen moment, she opened her remaining eye in shock, abruptly torn away from her defensive meditation, and their gazes locked.

Surprisingly, he didn't see any fury or fear—just acceptance. In the wild, monsters hunt each other. Today was just another day.

Then, the howling spiritual winds found the crack opened by his dagger and tore her soul apart, pulling it every which way like a pack of hyenas, and Nick felt the ritual's power swell.

"Now for the hard part," he muttered, as he let go of the dagger and seized the spiritual storm.

Having absorbed the emotions and souls of the herd, it had grown significantly, and the addition of the matriarch had only made it even greater, so much so that Nick momentarily feared he might lose control.

But luckily, that wasn't the case. It was part of the ritual's very nature to wait, to hide and lurk, watching for a moment of vulnerability and biding its time.

When the final step of the hunt was finished, that's when Nick would need to worry. He would have to master the spiritual storm he was fostering then, but until that moment, it would obey.

Without so much as a hiccup, all that accumulated power compressed, folding into itself within the layers of reality, and coming to rest around him, like a shroud woven from souls and emotions.

table border="1" class="chapter-table" style="border-collapse: collapse"

tbody

tr

td style="width: 99.0753%"

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongCONGRATULATIONS!/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Crackler - Lv 17]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Crackler - Lv 18]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Crackler - Lv 19]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Crackler - Lv 16]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Crackler - Lv 21]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Crackler - Lv 24]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Crackler - Lv 19]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strong…/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strong../strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strong./strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 1em" /p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Thunderhoof - Lv 24]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Thunderhoof - Lv 29]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Thunderhoof - Lv 22]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Thunderhoof - Lv 31]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Alpha Thunderhoof - Lv 41]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Alpha Thunderhoof - Lv 42]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strong…/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strong../strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strong./strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Crackler Queen - Lv 47]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strongYou have participated in the defeat of [Thunderhoof Matriarch - Lv 67]/strong/p

p style="margin-bottom: 1em" /p

p style="margin-bottom: 0"strong+71.000 Exp/strong/p

/td

/tr

/tbody

/table

I knew I wouldn't receive the full amount, but it's still surprising to see such a small number. Well, I guess that makes the payoff at the end more than worth it.

Indeed, by the time he finished hunting the entire herd, Nick expected he'd have collected enough souls in his shroud to give him quite a few levels.

But then again, that wasn't what he was really after. It would be a nice bonus, he wouldn't deny it, but the overwhelming power he could feel pulsing around him at every moment was only expected to grow.

If he could absorb all of that... Well, perhaps his future ventures wouldn't be so reckless.

With a snort, he shook his head. "Now it's not the time for that. I need to start preparing for the East."

With a flick of his fingers, the numerous corpses of the cracklers and thunderhoof herd gradually lifted into the air and drifted toward him. He touched them, and they disappeared, occupying less than a hundredth of the space in his ring.