Minori stood still, watching as the obedient troll lumbered off into the forest.
"To think they're so easy to manage with just a bit of brute-force charisma. How primitive," he muttered, a trace of amusement in his tone.
These trolls knew their leader was under his control, yet they still obeyed only the chain of command. There was no ambition, no rebellion—just instinctual submission. It wasn't stupidity. It was racial design.
"I'll be staying in this area for a while," Minori said to the trolls leader Guu, whose mind had been subdued by his mental magic. "Clear out a clean area for me."
"Understood."The massive troll responded in a low rumble, his fierce eyes clouded with obedient trance.
The spell Minori used wasn't ordinary hypnosis—it was charm-type mind control. It didn't leave the target dazed or slow-witted. Instead, it implanted an unshakable sense of loyalty toward the caster. As long as he didn't demand suicide or something that shattered core instincts, anything else could be rationalized in the trolls feeble mind.
In just half an hour, Guu had cleared a wide space and felled several trees. Minori casually used them to build a crude wooden shed for shelter.
And then he waited.
He didn't know the total troll population in the eastern Tob Forest, but gathering them all would take time. While the ordinary trolls relayed orders, Minori replenished his supplies—creating scrolls and restoring enchanted items.
With 48 MP, he could now make fourth-tier magic scrolls. Yet his priority was to restock the third-tier spell Angel Summoning, a reliable backup during emergencies.
When mana ran low, Minori switched to training—sparring with Guu in controlled combat. It was the ideal setup: Guu was strong, durable, and followed orders perfectly.
Naturally, he refrained from using curse power during training.
He knew his own weaknesses. Every major battle he'd won had involved clever tricks, spells, or advantages rooted in his Player ability. Compared to real-world warriors who had honed their bodies through constant hardship, his fundamentals were still lacking.
And so a day passed.
By the following evening, trolls began to arrive—some in groups, others individually. They'd come from all across the eastern forests, drawn by Guu's orders.
Seeing their crude shapes emerge from the trees, Minori finally let out a breath. "So they didn't run away after all."
The once-empty clearing was quickly filled with the stench of sweat, blood, and unwashed fur. From above, it would look like a miniature troll army had gathered.
Minori silently counted as they continued to arrive.
"Two hundred seventy-one trolls," he whispered, surprised by the tally. "And this still might not be all."
Rough math told him that each troll gave about 300 EXP. If he killed them all, that was over 80,000 experience—nearly three level-ups at his current threshold.
But that wasn't the plan.
"Guu," he said, turning to the charmed leader. "Gather every large beast or monster from outside the outer zone. I don't want corpses—I want them alive."
Guu nodded and relayed the order down through the troll ranks.
The hierarchy worked surprisingly well: command from Guu to normal trolls, from them to the rest. Within minutes, the horde split up and marched back into the depths of Tob Forest.
"Now," Minori muttered, "the real harvest begins."
He wasn't interested in weak prey. His orders focused on large predators, powerful magical beasts—the apex creatures of this ecosystem. Clearing them out wouldn't just feed his leveling needs. It would create an opportunity.
Even if Guu were killed, the beasts that might retaliate were already being wiped out. When the core of the forest fell quiet, Minori would control it completely.
Days passed.
Minori kept busy with scroll-making, mana storage, and sparring. Any leftover time was spent handling the captured beasts the trolls dragged back.
The average level of the beasts ranged from 12 to 17. Early on, he gained over 10,000 EXP in just three days. As expected, that rate tapered off as the forest's powerful monsters thinned out.
By the 23rd of the Ninth Month, half a month had passed.
Outside the shed, the little evil dog lay on its side, belly swollen like a drum.
"Ouuuugh."
It gave a soft, miserable whimper.
Minori glanced at it and chuckled softly. "Should've paced yourself."
In this time, the dog had been eating well—too well. No longer "little," it had grown to nearly one meter long. Its dark fur now shimmered faintly, and its twin horns had fully emerged. A threatening aura lingered around its form.
Though the trolls consumed most of the carcasses, the evil dog still had far better meals than the goblin slop it once survived on.
Bang!
Minori dropped the corpse of a three-meter-long tiger monster, its body striped and fanged.
"Eat it. Don't waste resources."
"Rrrrrgh…" The dog groaned and didn't move, clearly stuffed.
Minori ignored it. His gaze turned to the glowing blue screen before him.
[Experience Slot: 74,122 / 30,000]
In under two weeks, he had more than doubled the experience required for the next level-up. The eastern Tob Forest was nearly cleared.
But more than experience, Minori had discovered something else: a deeper understanding of the Totem Possession skill.
He had tested dozens of monsters and found that the stat increase depended on the base strength of the chosen beast. While the max increase was 50 points to a single attribute, more important was the Expertise Extraction function.
Take the tiger corpse he just dropped: it offered night vision and jungle stealth as expertise options.
Minori could pick one of them, permanently integrating it.
While not useful to him, what if the beast had been stronger?
Unlike the Empire's cursed warrior Zero, Minori could easily hunt high-level beasts. His Wild Transformation, stealth abilities, and summoned undead gave him massive mobility and tactical advantages.
As he planned his next steps—
Far to the west, a storm was brewing.
In the Baharuth Empire, news spread like wildfire.
The indomitable War King Ge Jin—the reigning champion of the imperial arena—had suddenly vanished.
This triggered chaos in the capital and confusion in the military. Morale on the front lines crumbled, rumors ran wild.
To prevent outright war, Emperor Jircniv sent one of his Four Horsemen to manage the situation. Merchant Lord Osco intervened to mediate, barely preventing conflict from boiling over.
The Empire issued a warrant—not for Ge Jin, but for the "Black-Haired Genius Alchemist" responsible for spreading the limb-restoring potion.
The same man the Empire believed had seduced their strongest warrior to defect.
And in the Kingdom of Re-Estize—
Leinas, once a wanted noblewoman, had returned and fought a duel against Warrior Captain Gazef. The result was a draw. King Ramposa III personally intervened, bestowing a national treasure on Gazef—and naming Renas a Knight of the Realm.
This turn of events sent shockwaves across borders.
Tension along the front lines escalated rapidly.
And in the quiet forest clearing, Minori watched a new monster dragged before him, eyes glowing with thought.
The world was shifting.
And he intended to stay ahead of it.