Darius raised his head and inspected the Troll’s remaining health as well as his own.

[Blue Troll – Level 8 Monster

HP: 22/89 MP: 10/12]

[Darius Stone – Level 3 Itemancer

HP: 65/70 MP: 73/75]

So he had only suffered slight damage from that rebound. The Troll was far worse off than him, but when it turned to face him with its club in hand while Darius was still cringing over his bleeding and trembling hands, their circumstances seemed to be the reverse.

Darius sighed and suppressed the pain. His first mistake had been being arrogant enough to believe himself to be a master of close combat after learning one skill with the term ‘Basic’ in it.

What were his classes? Itemancer and Magus. As a Magus, what was he doing swinging a spear in close combat against a Troll which was a monster that excelled in close combat?

Darius removed a Common Health Potion and drank it. Its effect of recovering 25 HP was definitely overkill, but he no longer had anything weaker than that at the moment.

His hands were immediately healed by a small reddish light and he felt all his pain bleed away. The Troll, noticing Darius’ actions, roared in anger and activated another one of its skills, which was Mad Charge.

As if it had used a drug to enhance its velocity, it moved from where it stood to where Darius did at a speed a normal person would not be able to follow. Luckily, Darius’ heightened Intellect allowed his mind to react faster than his body.

The moment the Troll had braced its legs, he had foreseen what it was trying to do. As such, he quickly stabbed the butt of his spear into the ground at an inclined angle to create a makeshift trap and rolled out of the way.

The Troll noticed the spear too late and could not dodge even if it wanted to at this current speed. Its torso collided with the spear where it was easily pierced through from one end to the other.

The monster groaned in agony and crashed against a tree heavily, further exacerbating its critical state. It tried many times to rise but could not muster the strength to do so as it bled profusely over the earth.

Darius panted slightly and observed the battlefield quietly. Many trees were ruined and the area looked like… well, it looked like a Troll had gone on a rampage.

Minus the corpse of the unfortunate lioness, the area was seemingly clear. Darius understood that the battle with this Troll had been noisy and was bound to attract attention.

There might be predators or third parties waiting in the shadows to profit off their conflict. Of course Darius would account for such a thing as he had usually been the very same third party back on Earth.

However, Darius had overlooked the fact that beasts and monsters were less sapient than humans. They took territory and trespassing very seriously, and no monster or beast would dare intrude upon the known territory of a Blue Troll for fear of ending up just as the lioness had.

As such, Darius focused on the struggling monster whose HP was down to the single digits now. He wished to extract more data to fill his Bestiary so he placed his spear into his Inventory and cast Ember.

The fiery expulsion lanced the torso of the weakened Blue Troll, making it scream in agony as it reacted quite strongly. The fear in its eyes shifted from one of death to one of fire.

Darius touched his chin lightly. ‘So from this, it’s clear that such monsters are weak to fire and fear it greatly. But is it spells in general or fire in particular?’

Darius cast Sparks on the monster and watched it become electrocuted. After shuddering greatly, it lay there, unmoving and on the brink of death. Darius was sure it had about 1 HP at this point.

However, its eyes showed the fear of death and not of electricity, despite the trauma it had been put through earlier. This pleased Darius as he had found a possible racial weakness of the Blue Trolls.

He then withdrew his iron dagger and slid it lightly across the Blue Troll’s hide. He noticed that unlike his iron spear, his dagger was unable to cut too deeply into its skin when slashed.

Darius then tried to pierce it but was only able to get a surface wound despite his Strength. It was not because the iron dagger was of poor quality, but because the Troll itself seemed resistant to slashing and piercing from small weapons.

That was another important fact to learn. Had Darius chosen the path of a rogue of sorts, he would have been put six feet under for sure. Quite the chilling thought.

With a sigh, the fellow struck the Blue Troll dead by ramming his dagger into its eye, and it twitched its last before becoming limp. Darius then stood over it and pondered how to deal with this carcass.

It was as obvious as day that the carcass of a monster was much more valuable than that of a beast. A hunter could kill a beast, but a monster could only be killed by an adventurer.

Even most soldiers of Andrato Kingdom likely could not face monsters. Even he himself had been sorely unequipped to deal with a monster head-on. Darius had no illusions about how he had won this fight, it was all through his initial surprise attack.

He had maximized his early battle damage as much as he could and that ended up saving his life. Had he encountered this beast while it was strutting about leisurely, he would have been forced to run or turned into meat paste.

With a sigh, he passed a hand through his hair and just kept the entire carcass into his Inventory. When he reached a town, he could find a way to deal with its existence.

Darius ignored the body of the lioness as it was not valuable to him in any realistic way and left the forest. He maintained his trajectory towards the river he had crossed yesternight, but took time to check his spoils of war after his adrenaline cooled off from the intense battle.