Once in the throngs of the endless forest, he decided to get to work. Sakura had explained to him that he needed to be as efficient as possible. As an unranked climber, he could use his trait consecutively three times at an overall total of six times per day. So he had to slay as many monsters and in as few moves as possible.

He explored the woodlands until he eventually found a group of four forest mules.

Perfect target, he thought.

He snuck up behind them and then placed his hands on the ground.

It was time to trigger his trait.

The ground rumbled beneath him.

Max was now able to create awesome earthquakes courtesy of the rock golem he’d fought in the underground arena.

The D-rank ability rippled across the ground, tearing it apart and sending shards of stone into the flesh of the forest mules.

They screamed.

One mule escaped into the shadows of the forest. The rest were too close to dying or crippled to move further on.

A few moments later, Max was staring at three copper monster cores and a bunch of coins. He bent over and scooped them all up and dropped them into his pouch at his side.

Three out of four mules in one attack wasn’t bad, he thought to himself. If only there was a way to get more within the radius of my earthquake attack.

He thought about strategies employed in a lot of online video games. There was one game called Arcane Guild Land that the other orphans had loved and fought over to play on the one computer they had available in the group home. The game had all sorts of rules, hybrid classes, and a species of cat people who liked to get drunk a lot.

A lot of the game was all about leveling up your character and there were a lot of strategies on how to do this. Farming for experience points was what it was called.

Max’s memory of the kids playing the game, gave him an idea.

He started picking up random stones and filling his pockets with them.

Next, he went and found a group of forest boars.

He whipped a stone at them.

CLUNK!

The stone hit the forest boar right between its eyes.

The boars already had naturally angry-looking faces to begin with, but now they looked super pissed off.

They charged at Max.

Exactly as I hoped, he thought.

He started running with the monsters chasing behind him.

He sprinted away until he bumped into another crowd of forest boars.

Max threw a scattershot of stones at them and soon enough he had a stampede chasing after him.

He led the small horde of monsters right into a group of peaceful forest mules.

Max swerved around and planted his hands on the ground.

If this doesn’t work I’ve got twelve angry monsters about to devour me.

He triggered his trait.