Dragon's Wrath: The Cursed Returnee

The treants had a scary faces on their trunks, but Ethan ignored them all. Unfortunately, not for long. The little bastards had some unexpected tricks up on their sleeves. While Ethan was charging toward one of them, he saw the monster opening its mouth, and then a purple smoke screen headed toward him.

"Poison? That is convenient…" Ethan said. "I just hope it isn't the type that attacks my nerves."

Ethan's instincts told him that he would be fine, and he trusted them. Although the smoke screen made his arms and legs burn, that didn't stop his movements. Ethan had never seen that type of poison as well, but it was poison, alright.

Congratulations! You learned the skill Poison Resistance!

Effects: Decreases the power of poison attacks by one point per level.

Lv 01 – 00/100

Congratulations! For learning a new ability without help, you received ten coins.

Congratulations! The skill Poison Resistance has leveled up!

Congratulations! For leveling up the skill you learned by yourself, and you obtained one hundred coins.

Congratulations! The skill Poison Resistance has leveled up!

Congratulations! For leveling up the skill, you learned by yourself, you obtained ten coins.

Before Ethan could split the tree in two, he received those notifications. Again, he was fine, but losing one third of his health wasn't something that Ethan wanted every time he faced those small fries.

"All right, let's dissipate the screen with the swing of my sword," Ethan said. "I can always level up this skill slowly later."

Before choosing his next target, Ethan looked around and confirmed that Emily and Ian were alright. Emily was burning the treants before they could even try to get close. As for Ian, he was just walking around, and the treants that got close suddenly enough stopped moving.

"He uses some kind of poison too… the question is, when?"

It looked like Ian's fighting style was even weirder than Ethan had imagined. Maybe it was a mix of stealth and magic that caused negative effects… but considering the times he spared with him using the sword dance, it was clear that Ian was someone who knew how to use more than a few types of weapons.

Although the number of enemies was quite high, those three finished them off quite fast. Emily was quite good at eliminating small fried at an astonishing speed. Meanwhile, Ethan not even had the chance to make use of the effect of his new sword. After a few seconds, Ian looked at the sky and saw Anna and Ivan falling. For some reason, their falling speed decreased a lot when they approached the ground. Ethan could understand Anna doing that, but he couldn't imagine how Ivan did the same thing. Anna certainly didn't help him…

Regardless, after a while, the others began to appear in groups of three. While they were falling, Ian equipped a certain ring, and then he decreased their falling speed just like the previous two did.

"Telekinesis?" Ethan asked.

"Yep," Ian said. "Pretty cool, huh?"

"For a planet dominated by monsters, this place looks pretty peaceful," Ethan said while looking around and only seeing the dead treants. "I know they got caught by surprise, but I can't believe people back on Earth suffered a massive defeat against this level of the enemy."

"They didn't. Other creatures were the ones that invaded Earth," Ian explained. "I don't know the hero who failed to save this world is, but an ordinary enemy would never be able to defeat even the most pathetic heroes. The monsters of this world are highly intelligent, and since this isn't the first expedition to pacify things, they must have secured some bases far away from the portal."

"That makes sense," Emily said. "I heard that after the creation of the dungeon, the monsters tried to invade Earth three times."

"Three times?" Ethan frowned. "They can build up a decent army pretty fast, huh? That, or…"

"Yep, time flows differently here as well," Ethan said. "Apparently, three days here equals one day back on Earth."

Emily looked displeased. She really disliked time dilatation. As for Ethan, he couldn't care less. In fact, he was a bit thankful since he would have six days to cause a lot of destruction in that world. Eventually, all of the mercenaries joined them, and maybe it was because of the high number of people or because of the concentration of magic items. Still, several creatures began to fly in their direction.

"For a flying enemy, they are pretty slow," Ethan said.

"You can begin now, ladies and gentlemen," Ivan said. "However, I would advise you to divide yourselves into three groups and head to South, East, and West. You may not like working with strangers, but this is for the best since I want all of you here back in one hour."

It looked like Ivan had some plans to the North, which was the direction those flying monsters were coming from. So, the mercenaries didn't say anything about it. Although he said it was true, the mercenaries recognized the fact that they couldn't just move in an unorganized manner. If they wanted to make as much profit as possible, they had to work efficiently. Dividing themselves into groups to fight, scout, and carry the loot. Surprisingly that really happened and even faster than the monsters arrived.

Most of the mercenaries could tell that those birds smelled trouble. Even Ethan couldn't help but frown since they only looked like oversized crows. That being said, the mercenaries spread around without hesitation.

"There is a mountain north of here which we will use as a base," Ivan declared. "You three, take them down."

"… I am bad at dealing with flying enemies," Ian let out a long sigh. "But I guess it can't be helped."

Ethan didn't like fighting in the air as well, but he had a few tricks up his sleeve now. Just like Emily, he fired several Ice Arrows toward the monsters. Although Ethan had to hit them two times to take them down, Emily could do it with a single projectile. The crows' number began to decrease pretty fast, but eventually, those monsters began to drop several small fireballs. They weren't aiming at anything, but the moment the fireballs touched the ground, they exploded… and their power wasn't something to laugh at. At the very least, each fireball had the power of a grenade, adding to the fact that each crow could fire five of those per second. It was clear that they couldn't leave those monsters alone.