The annoying teenage girl repeated rubbed her forehead in pain. Before she vanished without leaving a trace.

“That’s it?” I stared at the location where the girl had vanished.

There’s no other explanation or anything else? I was sort of hoping for a more complete explanation.

Sighing to myself, I began examining the surrounding area.

Blue sky, white clouds. Single sun and green grass. Normal looking trees and bushes.

If I didn’t know better, I’d believe myself back on earth. Is this actually a type of virtual reality technology? Or was she lying to me?

Picking up a rock, I testing out my physical strength and tried crushing it.

After crushing the rock didn’t work, I threw it with all my muscle strength. Which quickly proved that my physical strength had vastly depleted. It only traveling around ten or fifteen meters a second and left a faint mark on a nearby tree.

Ahem… I didn’t use all my strength for that throw. Even so, it seems that whoever created this place debuffed my stats.

She didn’t mention that everyone’s physical strength was equal, though… Maybe they couldn’t be bothered with assessing the test taker’s physical strength and just applied a standard template?

I felt like vomiting.

This trial is too cruel. My current strength is probably somewhere around double a normal person. Yet, they expect me to find and kill ten thousand monsters or animals with this limited strength.

Bringing up the system menu, I confirmed that it only had 17 hours of battery life remaining.

I was hoping to reconnect it with another power source… But this trial has directly destroyed that idea.

Temporarily extending the time with my own mana is definitely a possibility, but that require tricking the system into accepting it and is definitely a loss making business. It’s generally far harder to collect mana into your body. To use collected mana for running a computer program that works perfectly fine on environmental mana…

I repeatedly shook my head at the idea. No way, using mana like that would only be a waste... only in a complete emergency.

Refocusing on the surrounding forest, I found myself feeling nostalgic. The environment was just too similar to Earth. Other planets always had strange looking trees, brushes, or other foreign environments.

Before traveling anywhere, I need to assess the truth of her claim that abilities and magical prowess couldn’t be used. To be honest, I don’t trust anything she said. Especially the resurrection condition when you die. She might be telling the truth, but who dares to bet on that?

A couple minutes later of testing my various powers, I felt disappointed despite knowing the result in advance. No magic or abilities worked. I couldn’t even feel an ounce of mana in my body and the only artifact in working condition was my wristband.

Nevermind my previous idea of extending the system’s battery life, even creating a small fire is impossible.

In fact, the wristband was the only supernatural power that was working. Even God-hunter didn’t seem to be anything more than an empty shell (which is extremely worrying, but I can only hope for the best).

If the wristband is still working… Maybe, the supernatural techniques from the Dream Realm will also work? For example, the <Spear Training Manual>.

I normally ignored the technique because it was too tricky to pull off in actual combat and far weaker than simply using God-hunter. No way, who made the technique difficult to pull off? Outside of combat it’s fine to mess up, but who dares to take a bet when something’s attacking you? Too risky.

Moving into a battle position, I stabbed out multiple times with my spear until I finally managed to pull of the technique.

A supernatural power shot out of the end of spear and pierced through a nearby tree causing a massive hole to appear in its center.

Haha, it worked! Good, I have a way to survive. Killing weaker monsters from afar shouldn’t be a problem with this. Let’s temporarily call this attack… piercing strike.

With more confidence than before, I set off through the woods whilst searching for any signs of life.

I found a trail and that seemed to be walked semi-constantly as plants on it had wilted.

Not an animal trail, but a human one. You can quite easily tell the difference considering there are some massive boot prints nearby.

Other test takers or NPCs? I remember that killing people also counts toward the kill count… Was she incentivizing internal fighting between test takers or does she have another goal?

I dismissed the thoughts quickly. I needed more information before arriving at a decision. Either way, without knowing their intentions, following the trial is too risky.

Before I could move onward, I heard movement. Glancing over toward the bushes, a black panther pouncing toward me with open jaws.

Instinctively, I braced my spear against the ground and point it toward the pouncing animal.

The panther vanished midair before the spear could hit it. Amidst my confusion, a massive tearing pain shot through my right arm.

The panther that had disappeared moments before had bitten down onto my upper arm with its massive teeth.

Fighting through the pain, I grabbed God-hunter out of my bag and attempted to stab the beast’s brain.

The panther released my arm before I could kill it. The beast retreated backward at supernatural speed as its tail glowed in a black light.

I gritted my teeth in pain held my now useless right arm with my other hand. The injury didn’t seem to be healing anytime soon.

Watching the panther carefully, I knew that my chances of winning were getting lower and lower.

Obviously, this isn’t a normal panther… It was some species of monster with a movement type ability.

Realizing that I felt a boiling anger flow through my body.

“Do you want to die?!” I spoke to the monster with anger seeping through my voice. A lower species such as this dared to attack me?

The panther slowly backed up, momentarily locking gazes with me. Before turning around and began retreating at a supernatural speed.

“Where do you think you’re going?!” Filled with anger, I attempted to chase the panther. Unfortunately, the panther retreated too quickly to catch up with. Filled with anger, I mentally cursed the escaping monster.

Bastard, I’ll remember this slight against me. Don’t think of getting away with this.

The bleeding pain in my arm forced me to calm down. Putting away God-hunter and walking back and picked up my spear that I’d been forced to drop because of sudden injury. Before bandaging my injury with torn off clothing.

Sighing, I realized my situation had worsened significantly. Before I had a healthy body. Now, I was injured and my regeneration speed seems to have been reduced to a normal person’s level.

Meanwhile, I still had to undergo the exact same trial. How was I supposed to kill 10,000 monsters when even one monster could put me into this state?

Thinking about the previous encounter, I paused.

How did I even survive that panther? I was clearly the weaker party. Why did it retreat? Was it merely scared off because of my aggressive attitude and anger?

Filled with confusion, I felt as though I was missing something important.

Actually… why did I feel angry when I realized that it was a monster? It’s normal for monster to attack, whether that means humans or other monsters.

Monsters are in a society where the weak perish and nourish the strong. The intelligent races usually care about ensuring the survival of weaker members of their species, but monsters certainly don’t.

This cultural difference is mainly due to their reproductive differences. While monsters can have children, they usually don’t bother.

Monsters are constantly born over time from environmental mana. For a long time that meant that it was impossible for monsters to go completely extinct. New monsters of every species would constant be born wherever mana conditions allowed it. This resulted in a culture where monsters were more likely to kill other members of their species than help them.

Of course, when the system stopped new monsters from forming, it became possible for monsters to go extinct.

Meanwhile, the intelligent races were forced to care about the weaker members of their species. They were evolved from various animals and inherit trait from those animals. If the strong in their race didn’t protect the weaker majority, those races would go extinct.

…And I’m ranting on again. I should be actually working on surviving, not ranting on about history.

Sighing, I refocused on the situation at hand.

In the absence of other evidence, statistically, it’s likely that the average strength of monsters around here is around that panther’s level.

If true, and monsters are on that level, I must be missing an important clue on how to solve this trial. There’s no way a normal person could be expected to deal with monsters on that level without mana or abilities.

Staring down at the boot prints on the ground and resolved myself to follow them. While there’s certainly risk in meeting people without knowing their intentions, it’s lower than the risk of staying in the forest with a useless and bloody arm.

I’d got caught off-guard by that panther. It won’t happen again.

Speeding up my pace. I walked along the trail that I found the boot prints. After following the trail for a short while, the forest disappeared and opened up into a field. By itself, that isn’t worth mentioning. On that field, though, several soldiers were armed to the teeth with automatic guns.

After spotting the soldiers, I crouched down and hid behind some bushes. Seven soldiers and each seemed to be wearing typical military clothing.

Not test takers… unless they started with guns. Should be NPCs. They seemed focused on road leading into the forest, instead of the forest itself. In other words, they weren't here to prevent monsters from leaving the forest but stopping something from outside the forest from getting inside it.

Glancing back toward the forest, I contemplated my next actions. I've been lucky enough to not run into another monster so far… but who knows how long my luck will last?

I might be able to attract one soldier’s attention and assess the overall situation through them... No, that wouldn’t work. Their intent seems to be preventing people from entering the forest. If they know the dangers of the forest, none of them would dare to approach it alone.

No choice, I need to risk meeting them. The NPCs should be helpful, otherwise this trial is impossible. Additionally, who knows how long it would take to heal without medical treatment?

Standing up, I began to walk out of the forest. Purposefully over exaggerating a limp to play up my injuries and utilizing my spear as a walking stick.

As I limped over toward them, a soldier quickly noticed me and alerted the other soldiers around him… Who all promptly pointed all their guns toward me.

I felt like crying, do I seriously look that dangerous? Aren’t we all human? I’m clearly limping and bleeding.

---

Excerpt from Monster Encyclopedia

Spatial Distortion Panther, Entry #643

Major Abilities

-Can distort space around them to move rapidly and dodge attacks.

-Spatial traps that prevent other’s movement.

Appearance

-A standard four-legged beast appearance. *Black fur, duel eyes, and a long fur-coated tail.

This monster’s appearance doesn’t deviate from the average four-legged panther subtype, potentially as a defense mechanism. The only notable difference is their long tail can glow in a black light that can distort space and can create semi-permanent spatial traps.

*Subject to change based on environmental factors.

Interactions with the Intelligent Races

The spatial distortion panther has been hunted to almost extinction for its tail and fur coat.

While they have powerful spatial distortion abilities, their spatial distortion abilities persist after death causing their tails to be highly desired. Additionally, its fur can help reduce the aftereffects of spatial transportation. These usages are obviously in high demand with no market supply.

Even without processing, they can still have a certain effect. Although when they’re processed into an artifact the effect can be extremely impressive and have created several Star-level powerhouses.

Due to their valuable materials, whenever new monsters in this species are found they are hunted down almost immediately. Even accurately reporting their location can result in a large reward…