Crossing over the sand dune, Lin Huang spotted a pair of ogres circling the the broken fence scanning the surroundings. One was 7 metres tall and was likely a Two-Star BlackIron while the other ogre was slightly taller at a height of 8 metres. He was likely a Three-Star BlackIron.
Lin Huang hesitated before heading towards the two sand ogres.
The two began repairing the fence and were oblivious to Lin Huang running towards them thanks to the lack of light. As a blurry figure neared them, they squinted into the distance in order to determine the identity of the figure.
Lin Huang had reached the midpoint between the dune and the village before the ogres were finally able to determine that he was a human. Abandoning their tools in a hurry, they rushed through their newly repaired fence section towards their the approaching delicacy.
As Lin Huang noticed the change in the ogres, he turned around and lured them back to the dune. By the time, Lin Huang reached the dunes, he was nearly in arms reach of the ogres.
As the ogres frantically reached out to try and grab him, he ducked as the familiar flash of blood swung at the ogres' head.
Shirou vaulted over the two ogres and as he began his descent, his Blood Wings transformed into razor sharp blades and swung at the ogres like a pair of reaper's scythes.A ogre heads decorated the desert floor as Shirou successfully ambushed one of them.
The death of his companion brought the ogre to his senses, seeing the blood red flash approach him, he raised his arms to try and block the unknown attack.
Under normal circumstances, this would have worked. Ogre's possessed an extremely thick hide and boasted an astonishing defensive prowess. Most attacks barely scratched them. However this attack came from Shirou who was nearing the strength of a BlueCopper, coupled with the enhancement of his Blood Arts, the ogre's arms were quickly severed.
However the arms did serve their purpose of protecting the ogre's head.
The ogre opened his mouth in pain as he arms fell to the ground. Lin Huang wanted to stop him the ogre from alerting the nearby village with his wails but he was clearly not in a position to do so. He was worried that this ogre's wails would alert the entire village and lure a group of ogres larger than what they could handle.
The familiar flash of blood came to the rescue once more as Shirou's Blood Blades stabbed into the ogre's gaping mouth and through the back of his head before the ogre could even make a single sound.
The light faded from the ogre's eyes as it breathed its last. Shirou removed his blade and the corpse fell to ground limply as it lost its support.
As he retracted his Blood Blade, the crimson in his eyes receded and he assumed his normal human form of a harmless teenager.
Lin Huang finally breathed a sigh of relief as the impending crisis was averted. If Shirou had acted a moment later, it would have been a disaster for the pair. Getting surrounded by 10 ogres would have spelt certain doom even for a BlueCopper Hunter. A pop up soon appeared.
[Congratulations Master, you have attained ---- Sand Ogre Monster Card fragment x2]
At the same time, white Prana began dispersing from the ogres' corpses and flowed into Shirou.
Lin Huang mentally prepared himself as he look at his Life Wheel. The amount of lit sections increased from 28 to 85. Even under his 1000% Prana consumption rate, he was able to live for at least another 8 years.
After calming himself down once more, he resumed his hunting operation. However with the previous experience, he did not dare to take any chances. Shirou's offensive power exceeded Lin Huang's expectation, being able to instantly kill an ogre before it made any noise was impressive. Despite this, he decided to only lure one ogre at a time from now on.
With the new plan set, he lured and killed 3 more ogres with Shirou's help.
By now, all the 137 empty white sections of his Life Wheel were filled. Only gray sections remained.
In this world, every person had a Life Wheel and within it were 360 sections. However each section fell into one of the two categories, a white section which could be replenished and a gray section which could not.
A majority of people possessed 100-150 filled sections at birth. This was their natural lifespan.
As time passed, the Prana within them would gradually disperse and every year, a section would have completely spent its Prana and each year a section would transform into a gray section. In this way, a person's lifespan naturally decreased by a year annually.
If a person had a disease or had a defective Life Wheel, his Prana consumption would be faster and as such his sections would get emptied faster. However this does not affect the rate at which whites turned into grays. It was always one section per year.
This was pertinent to Lin Huang's condition. Lin Huang was born with 152 white sections in his Life Wheel. After living for 15 years, this decreased to 137 sections. However thanks to his unbelievable consumption rate, he only had 2 sections worth of Prana left while the other 135 were empty white sections.
Of course, there were ways to transform a gray section into a white section. However these methods came with a steep price. Each section required 10 years worth of Prana in order to activate it transforming it into a white section. Furthermore, each section could only be activated once.
In order to become a BlackIron, one had to activate all his or her gray sections into white ones.
Even rich people had difficulty doing this, let alone poor people like Lin Huang.
A Life Crystal with 1 year worth of Prana cost 100000 credits. In order to get a 10 Year Life Crystal, one had to pay a million credits. Multiply this by the number of gray sections and average person had to activate and you would be looking at an astonishing bill of over 200 million credits.
This was why Hunters possessed such a prestigious position in this world. Even a BlackIron Reserve Hunter was highly respected.
However this limitation did not apply to Lin Huang. With his ability to absorb Prana naturally via his summoned familiars, he had just acquired a way to rapidly rise into the ranks of BlackIron.
With a hope for his advancement in sight, Lin Huang continued hunting with renew vigor.
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