Desolate World

Because the amount of the loot was still abundant, the people who had fought in the two battles felt embarrassed to take too many. So, on average they took 5,000 dirac coins, dozens of monster cores, a few monster heritages, and blueprints.

Because there were still many of the remaining loot, they decided to divide them equally to all people who were there, even if they had been idle when the monsters attacked, or the goblins. So everyone got 1,500 dirac coins. As for the rest, they were given to Mars to build the village. 

Mars agreed, and he promised to store them in the village treasury.

After all of the loot was divided. They also talked about how they divided the carcasses of the monsters. But, because they didn't know the value of each monster's carcass, they agreed to talk about this matter after arriving at the village. 

But then Mars told his intention to buy them in the name of the village. Because with the arrival of them and many more refugees at the village in the future, they would need a lot of food. And the carcasses of the monsters were a timely rain for him. He could use them as the reserve food for the villagers.

Hearing him, most of them felt embarrassed. Although the monsters' carcasses had values, most of them could be found in the forest. And as they would live in the village, they would use the village's recourse to eat. Then, a man suggested donating them all to the village. Everyone agreed with him. Mars seemed to be touched by their generosity.

After the distribution of the loot ended, Ace came to Mars, he wanted to trade a skill crystal with one of the skill crystals that he had gotten. As Mars had said before that he had a skill crystal that can be learned by Ace.

Mars then gave him the skill crystal, and took one of the skill crystals in Ace's possession casually. 

Ace then checked the skill crystal information.

[Magic Boost]

Rarity: Rare

Description: A signature skill of an exploding caterpillar. Increasing the wearer's magic to 5 times for 5 seconds. 

Mana consumption: 40

Cooldown: 24 hours 

Learnable: Yes

Ace was shocked. He never imagined that there was a skill like this. He then imagined the monster's ability from its name. If it could really explode when its magic attribute was increased, the damage from this explosion was incredible.

He then learned it. He felt this skill was quite compatible with his Ice bullet skill. If he activated the magic boost skill first, then used the ice bullet skill, he could inflict 15 times of magic damage. If his magic attribute at the moment was 280, he would cause 4200 theoretical damage. Unfortunately, he could only use this skill one time a day. But, he was still satisfied with the skill. He then checked his personal attributes.

[Ace Nightglow]

Race: Human

Job: Joker

Level 25 Exp: 37%

HP: 2780

MP: 1530

Strength: 126 (+15)

Agility: 458 (+91)

Magic: 280

Physical Defense: 158 (+47)

Magic Defense: 168 (+7)

Vitality: 140

HP recovery: 0.7/sec

MP recovery: 1.4/sec

Traits: 

# Ultra sensitive senses: Have strengthened senses. Becoming aware of most details around the user. 

# Cat flexibility: Have a flexible body. Will not die when falling down from a high position.

# Learner: Can learn skills from external sources.

# Mana gatherer: Can get experience by gathering mana from the environment or special objects

Skills:

• Shuffle and draw: shuffle and draw your cards to and from your deck. Can do 1 time per second for each hand draw.

• Cards throw mastery (level 3): Throw cards from each hand with 14 meters effective range. Mana consumption: depends on which card is thrown.

• Leap (level 2): can jump vertically up to 6 meters. Be careful while landing, as it can cause some damage to the user if performed inappropriately. Mana usage: 5, Cooldown: 10 seconds.

• Dice and token mastery: can use a dice and 5 tokens as extra weapons.

• Bats Transformation: turns oneself into 20 small bats. The bats can not have a distance from each other for more than 200 meters. Agility +20%. Can't do any attack or skill when in this form. Each bat had a fixed 30 HP. The skill will be canceled when more than 25% of the bats are killed. Can't be activated when inflicted by a debuff. Mana consumption: 1 per second. Cooldown: 20 minutes.

• Ice Bullet: shoots an ice arrow to a target from a maximum distance of 500 meters. Dealt 300% of magic damage. Mana consumption: 100. Cooldown: 60 seconds.

• Magic Boost: Increases the wearer's magic to 5 times for 5 seconds. Mana consumption: 40. Cooldown: 24 hours. 

Looking at his Attributes, Ace nodded in satisfaction. Overall, his two major weaknesses had been solved. 

First, his lousy defense made him easily be killed. But, by having love's protection effect of the vest that was given by the old man Phil, at least he wouldn't be insta killed by his enemy's strong attack.

Second, from his battles with two fire crowns, he realized that his attacking range was too short for a spellcaster. This shortcoming was solved by his new skill 'ice bullet' which had an attacking range of 500 meters. 

And as a bonus, every 24 hours he could snipe to death any of his opponents by using magic boost skill to multiply the damage of his ice bullet skill to 15 times of his magic damage. With such high damage output, he didn't believe he couldn't kill any monster that had a similar level with him instantly.

***

The next morning, they were leaving the cave and began their journey to the lake. As usual, Ace and Geo would leave earlier to scout and clean every monster in the group's way. So the journey of more than 1200 refugees and goblins wasn't delayed.

Like usual, every 10 hours, Geo would raise 3 skeletons. Ace targeted, his son would raise a total of 40 skeletons before they reached the village. 

No monsters could hinder their journey and on the 8th day of the journey, they saw the busy villagers on the shore of the lake.

They had arrived.

***