Desolate World

"Damn it! That skill is cheating!" Ace said in annoyance. He then stopped his attack.

Looking at the last escaping bats through the cave entrance, Ace sighed. It was a pity they couldn't kill the last two vampires. Looking at their high level, they should have good equipment. As only humanoid enemies could drop equipment, it was a rare opportunity to get some equipment.

Then Ace opened his eyes wide. His expression went ugly.

"What the heck I have thought! I'm not a robber," Ace said.

He regretted thinking that murdering because of equipment was okay. 

'They are people, damn it! Although they are vampires and NPC,' Ace blamed himself for his distorted thoughts.

In fact, he didn't regret killing the vampires and the people who were nearly transformed into vampires. Because they are from the opposite factions. If he didn't kill them today, they would continue to kidnap the refugees to turn them into vampires or worse to be consumed as food. So he didn't feel wrong with killing them. As he couldn't think of other means.

But, although it was just a flash of thought, killing them to get their equipment felt wrong in his conscience. He then recalled what he learned in school.

He had studied the history of the last war. One day, he frowned upon knowing that at that time, people were divided into hundreds of countries. And each of them thought that it was okay to harm other countries, if by doing that would make their country prosper.

Like people in his era, he felt it was strange that people before the war thought that they were different from each other just because they were from different countries. Didn't they realize that all of them were actually the same species, which was humans? 

He thought it was foolish for people to bomb other people in another country with nuclear missiles. Didn't they think that they were actually living in the same house with the name earth?

When they demolished a room in the house, there was a possibility that the house would fall apart. And what would they get by doing that? They themselves would lose the house.

He believed that his generation was the victims of the mistake of their predecessors. War was one of the earliest cultures of humankind. But, even this ugliest means must have a bottom line. Nuclear Weapons, biological weapons, and chemical weapons must not be used. As each of them was proven to damage the balance of nature. And humans couldn't live without nature's support.

'What was I thinking? It's not a time to think about human nature. Something must be wrong with my head. Uh… Whatever,' Ace groaned in his heart. He remembered it started after he couldn't get offline. He liked to think about philosophical things.

"It seems I need to get a new hobby. I daydreamed too often these days," Ace said while walking to get the loot, as many red crystals started to float above the bodies. 

For a note, since he started the journey, gathering loot had become his task after combat. As for Geo and Cloud, their task was to make sure everyone's HP was full. They had to heal anyone that was injured. Of course, as Geo could only heal monsters, he would only take care of his pets. As for the others' HP, it was Cloud's task to heal them. 

Although she seldom had to do that as Ace was too agile to be hit by enemies at least until now and Geo and Cloud as supports had never been injured. So she could only help Geo to heal his pets if they were injured.

At the moment, they tried to wake up Mila who for some reason was still unconscious. 

Ace could see they were examining her. He hoped nothing was wrong with her.

As he was approaching a body that was nearest to him he found out that the crystals were red in color. It was the first time he saw red crystals. However, he indeed had read that the loot crystal's color of intelligent creatures was red. 

He collected the content of the red crystal above a vampire servant's body. It was just 12 dirac without the monster's core. He had expected that. Because they were an intelligent race, it was impossible for them to have a monster core. And to get the equipment, he needed to… cough… undress them. 

Yes, when an NPC died, his or her equipment could be obtained directly. It was different with the players, only one or two of their things dropped after they died. 

Ace assumed that this phenomenon occurred to prevent a player from going broke after they died. This setting made players less afraid to do dangerous quests or to challenge powerful opponents.

However, for Ace whose resurrect point was in the middle of ant's territory, death was still fearful. Although, with his strength, he had a high possibility to escape that area once again, if in the special circumstance he died, he didn't want to go there again, if he could choose.

He then examined the equipment of the vampire servant. Then he had to be disappointed. The clothes that he wore were just a little bit better than his beginner clothes. And there were two long holes on the back of the tunic that the vampire servant wore. They were for their wings. 

Basically, it was unusable for him. He needed to find a tailor to fix the tunic if he wanted to wear it. But, of course, he didn't intend to do that. After all, its property was too bad for him to wear. As he had already reached level 23. However, he still took them as the humanoid's equipment was too rare. At least they could be sold in the auction at a low price, after the auction was opened.

These few days of adventuring, he couldn't level up because the experience that he needed to advance was too large. He only got 15% experience addition since he left the campsite beside the lake. He realized that Gon's statement that to advance after level 20 was too hard if he relied on hunting monsters was true.

It was because he had almost never seen monsters with levels more than 20 since he entered the forest. He had a bad premonition about this phenomenon. Maybe there were very few monsters that had reached level 20. If it was true, his leveling up speed in the future would be very arduous and slow.

He then approached the second body and opened the crystal that was hovering above the vampire's body. His eyes then opened wide. He had never imagined that he would get this thing from the vampire.

***