While Dante was busy toying with the bears like a psychopath, Fafnir was gathering the cores of the beasts he had killed.

"The Great Shadow won again!"

"All hail the Shadow!"

The merchants, passengers, and mercenaries cheered happily for Fafnir.

Whenever the situation turned dangerous, he'd always appear out of nowhere, help them, take only the monsters' cores, and disappear.

They'd already gotten used to this. Unlike Dante's trade convoy, this one didn't hire enough mercenaries for safety, so Fafnir had to help them several times. He wasn't as strong as Dante, but still stronger than the average human by far.

They considered him a hero, a mysterious kind being. But unknown to them, he was doing all that for only two reasons. Or more accurately, two orders from his master.

'Protect Eliza…'

Fafnir's gaze fell on the saintess candidate for a brief moment.

Seeing her cheering for him with the crowd, acting as though she didn't know his identity, he couldn't help but smile.

As for the second order…

'Send more Existence Essence to my lord.'

Fafnir brought all the cores in front of him—only 10 cores—and grabbed the first one. Without hesitation, he absorbed it.

The core turned into dust, while the essence stayed in Fafnir's body without changing.

But the next second, Fafnir used his mana and spiritual energy. Then the essence disappeared entirely, as though it never existed.

But Fafnir knew—it went to Dante's core, raising his Existence Essence from 200 to 201.

That was a method Dante created to use Fafnir to farm Existence Essence.

To gain Existence Essence, Dante had to absorb it directly into his core by himself. He couldn't make Fafnir absorb it instead of him and expect it to go to his core.

But it would be a waste not to use Fafnir to gain Existence Essence, wouldn't it? So, he worked relentlessly to create a technique to send the Existence Essence from Fafnir into Dante's core.

The foundation of this technique was Shadowstep. He used the same concept of teleporting something from shadow to another shadow. Of course, Fafnir's body itself was the shadow used on that.

Then Dante took advantage of Fafnir's bond with his core. Fafnir was Dante's ability, an ability that was given from his class that came alongside his core, which meant that Fafnir was tied directly to Dante's core.

Additionally, if Fafnir ever died, he'd always return to Dante without consuming any kind of energy. This was the last part he needed to teleport Existence Essence with almost zero mana and spiritual energy consumption while ignoring the distance.

After several experiments and wasting a lot of cores, Dante had succeeded in creating this technique. And now, Fafnir could absorb the cores for Dante from anywhere in the world.

That was, in fact, one of the reasons why Dante didn't make Fafnir kill himself up to this moment.

Protecting Elizabeth was only a secondary reason currently, as she was now close to her kingdom. What he really wanted at this moment was to gain as many cores as possible from both the Northern Region and Central Region in order to advance to Rank 2.

Fafnir didn't need to learn, eat, sleep, or even create spells. He could, unlike Dante, keep fighting without any rest. With his help, even if Dante didn't do anything but sleep all day and night, it was only a matter of time before Dante reached Rank 2.

After Fafnir absorbed all the cores, he immediately disappeared, leaving the corpses for the crowd. Unknown to them, he just returned to Elizabeth's shadow.

¢¢¢

'Oh, ten cores? You're doing great.' Dante praised Fafnir while checking his own loot.

'Three elites, 14 ordinaries, and many rankless. Not bad at all.'

Some mercenaries looked at him jealously, but they couldn't do anything. The amount of monsters Dante had killed barehanded was enough to make them think ten times before talking to him, afraid that they'd provoke him by mistake.

"Mr. Dante, you were so cool!"

"Can… Can we form a team after this? Me and my spirit can be helpful for you."

Except for two mercenaries.

Emeralda and Daniel were looking at Dante with sparkling eyes, showing emotions of awe and respect.

Though the moment Emeralda asked to form a team, both Dante and Daniel glared at her sharply.

"I… I think that's a no…" Emeralda lowered her head and took a step backward.

Dante ignored her and put the cores in a bag, intending to put them in his ring when no one was looking.

He had been naive when he showed his ring in front of Skylar and the holy knights. If they had bad intentions toward him, they could have tried to force him to hand over his relic.

And now, although he was stronger than all the mercenaries here—judging by what he had seen from them while fighting the bears—he knew that they could defeat him with numbers.

Unconsciously, Dante glanced at Emeralda. She specifically had high attack power despite her weak body.

The only reason he couldn't kill the fourth elite bear himself was because of her. She had shot a wind arrow that didn't pierce—but instead severed the bear's neck.

'Anyway, now I have 80 cores and 210 Existence Essence. I need 10 more for the third boost.'

Dante couldn't hide his smile. He was getting closer to advancing to Rank 2. At this rate, it might take him only a few months, while others took years for that.

'Though, it might be a problem that the demonic energy will get the advancement stat boost as well.'

After Dante and the other mercenaries returned to the convoy, the merchants continued moving the convoy forward.

They went to the corpses and harvested them, giving a satisfying payment for the mercenaries depending on the corpses and their conditions.

Dante didn't hesitate to give a part of his money for the recipe of the food, a few kilograms of sugar, bottles of tamarind juice, and a cooking lesson.

The cook happily taught Dante a few things. It was rare for her to see a mercenary interested in cooking.

The convoy continued forward for hours and hours. Until eventually, they had to stop.

After all, they couldn't afford to endanger themselves in the dark night.

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