Ancestral Heir System

Monster core

Monster cores are the immediate benefits gained from slaying monsters; these monster cores hold more value than you can imagine, despite coming from the same entities whose only goal is to destroy the Earth.

Liam looked at the monster cores. He knew only so much about them; this was his first time seeing one, but not his first time hearing about it.

"How can I use that to make money?" he asked Clara.

"You can sell it to CGH or those who need it. One of these monster cores can sell for at least ten thousand dollars or more, depending on the market rate," she explained.

"Oh... So cheap?"

"For this type of monster core, yes. But other monster cores from stronger monsters should sell for about one million to one billion per core. This one is barely a 1-star grade, so it has a very cheap price in the market."

Liam placed his hand on his chin and thought, 'Hmm, then I have to slay more monsters and make money quickly. I still need to pay for Oxy-689 every day; I can't laze around now.'

"Hey, now that we are done with this phase of the challenge, what are we going to do next?" he asked Clara.

"There is always a hidden path here. We have to find it and move on to the next phase. But don't you want to rest? You should have drained your strength too much after that fight. I have a quick healing potion; you can take it."

"No need. Start looking for the next path immediately. We don't have time to waste sitting around. Tell your brother to start working too." Liam's voice was commanding. At this moment, he silently claimed the title of the leader of this expedition.

Clara gulped nervously, nodded her head, and then turned to look at her brother, who kept staring at Liam surprisingly, as though he had just seen a ghost. She inwardly hissed and trotted toward where he stood, slapping his face to bring him back to reality.

Leonardo shook after the slap and set his hands in a defensive position, his eyes roving the room like a thief running from the cops.

"Get yourself together. We have to move on from here unless we want something scarier than the domeskulls."

After searching for over a minute, they finally found a small door hidden in the walls. They unlocked it with brute strength, and the three of them walked past it, arriving in the other part of the dungeon.

This part of the dungeon had a colder temperature than the other parts they had been to. It was narrower in width compared to the previous one, but here, they could hear the eerie sound louder.

They inspected the dungeon, but they saw nothing. Nonetheless, they could hear the clattering sounds that sounded like a monster moving speedily across the place.

Just then, a strange figure flashed before their eyes, moving too fast to follow.

Leonardo shivered in fear and clung tighter to Liam. Clara had a spell ready in her hands, while Liam focused more on the surroundings, noticing every slight movement he could.

At that moment, two strange figures flashed past them again, a little closer this time. They felt the breeze blow past their faces.

"It's playing with us. We have to be careful; monsters like this are usually tricky and hard to defeat... they are mostly... ahh, Leonardo, on your side," Clara warned. However, before she could complete her sentence, she saw something that caused her to yell out, alerting the others.

It was a domeskull with stranger and bigger features than the first ones they faced in the previous part. It was standing really close to Leonardo, and its mouth was wide open in a swallowing position. It was about to swallow Leonardo.

Leonardo leapt from his position, creating a small gap between himself and the monster. Clara immediately sprang into action and shot the ice shards spell she had been preparing inside the mouth of the domeskull.

The ice shards swiftly reached the domeskull's open mouth, causing the monster to roar in pain as the sharp edges pierced its fleshy tongue.

Liam used the distraction to quickly move Leonardo away from it, while Clara prepared another ice magic spell.

"Get yourself together," Liam yelled at Leonardo, who had been nothing more than a liability since they met. He couldn't even defend himself from simple attacks, and all he did was shiver whenever there was a new monster around.

Clara shot more ice shards at the domeskulls while moving backward to evade any sudden attack from it.

'Damn it, I'm running out of mana to power up my spells,' she cursed as she tossed out yet another ice shard.

The domeskull growled angrily at her, but this time she did not freeze in fear like before. She had learned a lot from Liam's show of courage in the previous battle and wasn't going to back down.

She took another step back and tossed the last of her dark shards at the domeskull, but she missed a step and was about to fall.

But just then, Liam arrived behind her and prevented her from falling.

He looked at her with a serious expression and said, "This domeskull looks stronger, and it's faster too. Do you have any spell that can hold it in place for a while so I can attack?"

"Yes, but you have to buy me some time. The spell is hard to activate and would take more than one minute," she replied.

Liam looked at the domeskull; it was stronger but didn't seem as active as the first ones. It hadn't even responded to the spells thrown at it like the first one.

"One minute, be fast."

"Okay, please be careful."

Liam nodded at her and leaped toward the domeskull, his hands already balled into fists, prepared to rain down punches on the domeskull.

However, the domeskull wasn't ready to be killed. It opened its mouth wide in Liam's direction.

Liam thought it was just a pose for eating, but he was far from the truth because at that moment, a ball of purple-colored energy started forming in its mouth.

His eyes widened in shock when he saw this. This was his first time in a dungeon, and he hadn't done his homework about monsters because he didn't have the time.

He had always thought that only dragons and drakes could use magic with their mouths because they were naturally flame-spitting monsters.

He was midair and didn't know how to fly to evade the attack. To make matters worse, he was just a few meters away and was involuntarily closing the distance at an uncontrollable speed.

'Is this how I am going to die?'