Rise Of The Undead King

Chapter 8

Elena was still stunned, her back pressed against the rough bark of the dead tree behind her.

Even for someone who was powerful, they should have taken a while to defeat the beast. A ranked hunters came out of zone boss fights bleeding and shaking, needing expensive recovery potions just to walk straight. People with golden grade awakening serums that cost a fortune more than average household earnings for ten years would have been sweating and gasping after a fight like this.

Marcus had killed it faster than she could blink and was standing there like he had stepped on a bug.

Her system flickered weakly over her left eye as she stared at the massive corpse sprawled across the scorched earth. The two headed hound that had nearly torn her apart was completely still, its dark flames extinguished, its four glowing eyes dim and lifeless.

But what made her chest tighten with confusion was what he wasn't doing.

He wasn't even attempting to take out the crystal in the beast which was worth a million.

Elena's eyes locked onto the faint blue glow pulsing from deep inside the hound's chest. 

Everyone who went to ordinary school training knew that. Zone boss cores were everything in the hunter world. 

Guild masters quarreled amongst themselves over crystals like little children scrambling over candy. Hunters betrayed their own parties for cores worth a fraction of what was sitting inside that beast's chest right now.

People killed for crystals like this. They formed alliances, broke friendships, and risked their lives every single day just for a chance to hold a million credit core in their hands. Even commoners who had never stepped into a dungeon knew that beast crystals could change whole families, whole bloodlines.

Yet Marcus just stood there, his hands relaxed at his sides. He didn't pull out a dagger to cut open the beast's chest. He didn't even glance at the spot where the crystal would be glowing. He looked completely unbothered, like the fortune sitting inside the hound meant absolutely nothing to him.

Unless he just didn't care about the crystal which everyone freaked about.

Elena's mouth fell open slightly. Her respect was instantly heightened, cutting through her chest and replacing the irritation she had felt earlier.

To look at a million credits and not even blink and to walk away from a fortune that could feed an average household for twenty years without a second thought.

 Only someone with absolute, unquestionable power would treat a zone boss crystal like it was worthless dirt. 

She had heard whispers about elite hunters who operated on such a high level that ordinary wealth meant nothing to them, but she had never seen it with her own eyes.

This boy had to be something extraordinary. Someone who had seen so much real power that a million genuinely wasn't worth bending down for.

What she didn't know was that Marcus knew nothing about crystals as he wasn't given basic education and his parents would not let him in on anything valuable apart from scrubbing the floors.

While Henry was being dragged from one private tutor to another, guild masters rushing forward to shake his hand and offer him training contracts, Marcus had been kept entirely in the dark. His father had told him he was better off as a farmer or nonexistent instead.

 Nobody had ever sat him down to explain how beast cores worked, what they were worth, or that shadow beasts dropped them at all.

He had spent years making crude instruments and training with bags of sand because he couldn't afford real equipment.

 Since it dawned on him that if he wanted to survive this world, he could not mope around like a loser, he had focused entirely on physical conditioning and mental toughness. 

But nobody had bothered to teach him about the business side of hunting.

He simply didn't know the crystal existed.

Meanwhile, Marcus turned his attention away from the dead beast. He looked at Elena, his expression hardening into something made of pure ice.

He gave her a cold edge, his eyes passing over her torn combat gear and bleeding ribs like they were completely uninteresting to him.

"You were so sure that I was going to die after all," Marcus said, his voice dragging from boredom. "So why bother now."

The words landed like a slap. Elena flinched, remembering exactly what she had screamed at him. She had told him his blood was no longer on her hands. She had told him she wouldn't give a damn if he was torn apart by the beast.

Her eyes flashed with something sharp and curiosity rose in her veins as she looked at him more carefully. That impossible calm again.

Then a thought flashed through her mind that made her pulse quicken.

Marcus might be SSS class and he was trying to hide his abilities for some reason.

It hit her like electricity rolling throughout her body. It was the only truth she could think of that made sense. He wasn't an E ranked Mortician at all. That had to be a cover, a fake reading designed to make him look harmless while hiding something that could level a city.

Some really powerful ability could easily do that. High level cloaking skills or ancient artifacts could manipulate system readings, making a god look like trash.

 She had read about it in advanced guild manuals - certain SSS ranked abilities came with passive concealment traits that fed observers false information.

It explained everything. The impossible calm when facing death. The he subdued the beast within a few minutes and fact that he didn't care about a million credit crystal because he probably had billions sitting in private vaults somewhere.

She was immediately interested in him. 

Elena forced herself to stand up despite the pain cutting through her ribs. She couldn't afford to be arrogant anymore. She needed to fix this before it was too late.

She finally said she wanted that help he had offered her earlier.

"That help you offered me back in the forest," Elena said, dropping the cold and distant edge she usually carried around lower ranked hunters. "I want it."

Marcus looked at her for a long moment, his face carrying that impossible calm that gave absolutely nothing away. Then his expression went beyond stale, hardening into something made of ice.

He sneered.

"For someone that wanted me dead a few moments ago," Marcus replied, his tone perfectly measured and completely merciless, "I don't care if you get crushed under the weight of any beast out here."

Elena's face washed up with shock. She opened her mouth to speak, to offer him money, to apologize if she had to.

"Besides," Marcus added, turning his back on her without a second thought, "I clearly heard you saying that you could take care of yourself.”