Gaming Sword Magician

The others didn't decline as they wanted to gain a privilege level. The only way to do that, however, was to complete the dungeon that laid within the center of the grizzly bear mountain range.

The group started to move ahead vigorously as they climbed up the slope to reach the top of the mountain. It wasn't hard to climb up the slope as the mages used hand signs to envelope their legs in pure mana while Shadow used battle energy to reinforce his body. Whittaker, on the other hand, has grown so amazingly strong that he didn't need to use either battle energy or mana to climb up a mere steep slope. It was like a walk in the park for him.

They were making their way to the top with incredible speed. However, just a few minutes later, Shadow motioned them to stop in their tracks.

"What's wrong?" Peter asked with a low voice as he looked at Shadow.

"I think we're being followed by something," the daughter disguise as a son of Duke William's family looked around at his surrounding as he felt someone's predatory gaze landing on his back, feeling his hair raising on end.

"You sure about that, cuz I don't see any dungeon creatures in our surroundings," Yato said after he performed some hand signs to spread his mana in the surrounding. This was a method that used mana to sense any creatures in the surrounding areas. The mana spreading from a person will send back a signal to the user if it touches another life form.

Naturally, this pure-mana spell was mentally and physically tiring and also consumed mana by the second.

"Just wait here for a while, I will go ahead and check to make sure whether an enemy is targeting us or not," Shadow said as his figure slowly blurred in their visions before he completely vanished from their sights.

"This is no different than using an invisibility talisman." Whittaker internally thought as mana invisible to the naked eye spread from his body, permeating into the surrounding in search of any traces left behind creatures that might be targeting them.

Behind one of the many lush and green trees that jutted out from the ground of the somewhat vertical slope of one of the mountains without a peak, a young dungeon creature with black furs, roughly two-fourth of a meter long, was hastily moving about, looking at the group of four carefully. Its claws and emerald eyes gleamed sharply as it prepared to pounce on them the moment they come near it.

Nonetheless, in this world, nothing goes as planned, and as luck would have it, on one hand, it was waiting for them to close to him, while on the other hand, the camouflaged grim reaper had sneaked just three steps behind itself.

Just as the phantom cat was preparing to pounce, a figure blurred into existence behind it and rained down a flurry of dagger thrust on its body.

The beast died before it even knew what trouble it has invited towards itself by targeting some peoples it shouldn't ever have.

The dungeon creature lost every hint of life, dropping down from the tree and onto the sandy ground somewhat patched with grass.

One could see multiple enormous holes on its body, three on each side and the center of its chest, and one on its head. The holes completely drilled through its bone and flesh and caused blood to seep out from the wounds and create a puddle of blood below its corpse.

"All right. A dungeon creature was really targeting us but I killed it. The trouble has been solved. So, let's move on to the peak. Then, we'll fly straight towards the dungeon entrance," Shadow said after he returned from killing the beast that dared to target them.

Flying in places inhabited by magical beasts was the same as courting death. It's because magical beasts are attracted to aerial targets without a strong aura. However, Shadow's idea made sense as they'll enter another place entirely once they pass through the entrance of the dungeon. In simpler words, even if magical beasts are attracted towards their direction they'll evade the tiresome battle by entering the dungeon.

"Not so fast, there are a group of cat-like beasts in our surroundings. I think there are about two dozens of them," Whittaker said with eyes narrowed to slits as an enormous amount of magic power burst forth from his fingers, twirling and compressing, finally condensing into the shapes of spheres.

"Pure-Mana spell: Bursting Spheres!"

Whittaker created the five sphere brimming with ferocious intent before launching the bursting sphere he had just formed towards the trees on the opposite side of their surrounding.

Whoosh!

The blue sphere whizzed towards the trees with a hissing noise and exploded upon contact with the trees. A pair of trees exploded and their wooden shrapnel pierced straight into the body of the phantom cats.

Gah! Gah!

A pair of phantom cats breathed their last after uttering a painful howl.

The eyes of his teammates opened wide and their mouths gaped as they stared at Whittaker with a look of bewilderment etched on their faces. Shadow and the others had watched all of this in awe as Whittaker destroyed multiple dungeon creatures with a casual wave of his hand, after all, and they couldn't help but gulp when they saw his actions.

"I am sure that was an upgraded form of mana bullet. But how could it be so powerful?" Peter said as he looked at the devastating the bursting sphere has caused in their surrounding. All the trees in their vicinity have been destroyed.

"Well, I kinda modified mana bullet so that it acts like a bomb, dealing a devastating amount of damage once it explodes," Whittaker said with a smile.

He was feeling quite cheeky at impressing his classmates.

"I saw you didn't use hand signs to use this pure-mana spell but how could it be? Isn't using hand sings to cast a pure-mana spell an art of universal rules," Shadow said as even he was hell a lot of surprised by seeing Whittaker use spells without executing hand signs.

Mages needed to perform hand signs if they wanted to perform a pure-mana spell no matter how high their level. But Whittaker didn't use any hand signs before casting a pure-mana spell with destructive powers.

It was amazing, to say the least!

"I can't tell you that in detail but it's something I learned in Zachary's palace," Whittaker said with a mysterious smile.

Shadow was his first and also his best friend and so he didn't want to explicitly hide something from him.

"Oh, so it's something Elder Zachary taught you," Peter said as he thought that someone like Zachary could come up with a way to cast spells without using hand signs.

"You're really lucky and fortunate to have him as your teacher," Shadow said, his words tinged with a hint of jealousy.

Even Yato and Ruth were feeling jealous of Whittaker as it was a huge fortune to become the student of a rank-10 formation master.

Thought they would've thought otherwise If only they knew how hard the inheritance trials were.

Whittaker didn't have time nor luxury to clarify this great misunderstanding as the danger was lurking around them.

"Let's move on. A lot of phantom cats are on our trail. Besides, the blood of the beasts I and Shadow just killed is going to attract them all here," Whittaker said hurriedly as he moved ahead and the group followed after him.