Rise of The Demon General

As the two continued shooting at one another from range, Amon thought of something. He aimed his bow in a different direction and fired.

His bolt struck the head of one of the trapped humans. That human slumped lifelessly.

"No! What are you doing!?" The spider beast yelled.

It was as Amon had guessed. This beast needed these humans alive. Amon took another shot. Another bolt killed a second man.

"Stop it!" The beast roared. It shot its liquid frantically, but Amon was alert enough to dodge. Amon shot the third bolt.

This time, the beast came down and put itself in harm's way. It used one of its legs to slap the bolts away.

Amon threw his knife at this time. The spider beast didn't dodge. If it dodged, its prisoner behind would be hit by Amon's knife. It lifted its leg to swat the knife away. But as the knife was knocked away, a second knife followed.

This second knife had been flying in the shadow of the first. And this second knife was not the normal knife, it was the poisoned one. This poison knife stabbed deep into the spider beast's stomach. The Black Slaughter Poison immediately seeped inside.

The creature reeled from the poison.

"You…! What did you put in this knife?!" The spider beast uttered.

Amon replied by throwing another knife. This spider beast didn't die instantly after suffering the poison, meaning it was indeed a superior rank beast or it simply had high resistance against poison. There was no trick to this third knife, yet the spider beast was too weak to evade. The third knife stabbed right into the woman's face of the beast.

It trashed around with a high-pitched scream. Scurrying frenziedly around the hall. Amon didn't take any chance. He stepped away as he continued shooting using his bow. Wooden bolts riddled the beast's body before long. Its movement was getting slower until finally, it dropped to the ground.

Amon waited. When the creature didn't move for a long time, he made sure again by firing another bolt to the back of the creature's head.

No reaction.

Only then did he approach.

He retrieved his poison knife. Those knives were his ultimate trump cards. Losing one would be a huge loss. He cleaned the knives off the creature's blood, which was a disgusting and smelly dark liquid.

After that, he retrieved the normal knives and bolts. Some of the wooden bolts were broken, he only took the one he could still use. He could easily make more of these bolts later.

After finished collecting his ammunition, Amon came back to the beast's corpse.

Amon felt lucky this superior spirit beast was not a strong type. Normally one needed to be at least at the Transformation stage to be able to contend against even a lower superior beast. Probably this beast's forte was its mind attack and mind control. Since Amon managed to break free from the hallucination it created, he pretty much took out its edge.

Amon took out his Swan Dagger and started dissecting the spirit beast. Any spirit beast provided valuable parts. These were the parts that the alchemists, smiths, engravers, and pill masters of this world could use

Amon used his aether to sense these valuable parts. This was an unknown spirit beast to him, so he didn't know which parts were valuable. After a beast died, some of the aether they carried while alive remained mostly in the most valuable parts of their bodies. This was how Amon tried to identify its valuable parts.

There was a sac behind the tentacle that shot the hardened liquid. Amon felt dense aether from this sac, so he cut it out and store it in his space ring. The claws at the end of the beast's six legs also felt valuable, so Amon took them as well.

When he cut underneath the beast's woman's head, he saw something that looked like a small and deformed brain. He felt as if he had seen such a thing before. He searched his memory. After a while, he remembered. This was one of the ingredients recorded inside the 101 Primal Poison Tome.

This brain thingy was called Phantom Inducer Pouch. The liquid inside could be extracted to create one type of poison recorded in the tome, a more powerful one compared to Black Slaughter Poison. The poison was called Thousand Dream Poison. It didn't cause instant death like Black Slaughter Poison, but it induced strong hallucination. Even the Spirit stage cultivator would suffer its effect in an instant once contracted.

This was an unexpected find. But with this, Amon could confirm one thing. This dimension held some ancient ingredients that were no longer available in the outer world, such as the ingredients described inside his poison tome. He would need to search for more in the short three months he had in here.

He wondered how long had it been since he entered this dimension? The time when he was under the spider beast's hallucination could have been days for all he knew.

After finished harvesting the spider beast, Amon looked at the imprisoned cultivators around this cave. They didn't have any response, which meant they were still under hallucinations, or their minds had simply died already, leaving an empty husk of a living body.

Amon went to one of them. He slapped the person to make sure. Still no response.

He then checked their fingers. There was a space ring. As he suspected, the spider beast had no interest in these cultivators' possessions. All it was interested in was simply feeding on their minds.

Amon took the space ring off. He expected the ring to still be under ownership, hence he would need to exert some effort to break into the space within, but his mind just went in effortlessly. Probably the owner's mind was too weak already to maintain a link with this ring, hence the link simply expired on its own. Whatever the reason, Amon was glad he didn't need to waste much time.

Unfortunately, there was nothing valuable inside. It was just a few weapons and some recovery pills. There were not even aer stones inside. Amon figured this person should be just like him, getting caught by the spider beast just as he entered this dimension.

Amon went to the next one. There was a space ring as well, but no valuable items.

He continued. The results were the same. He was about to give up and leave when he finally found a space ring that had something interesting inside. From the look of it, the owner of this person was unlike the others. He must have traveled around this dimension collecting things before he was captured by the spider beast here.

Inside the ring were numerous rare herbs. Not exactly extinct ingredients unavailable to the outside world, but rare. These herbs would fetch a very high price out there. It could be used to concoct high-tier recovery pills or boost the effectiveness of cultivation pills. Even if one consumed it in its raw state, it would still help in increasing one's cultivation. And the number of herbs inside was rather abundant.

Amon transferred the content of the ring into his own. He didn't take the person's ring. Sometimes a space ring was marked. If this person was someone important, someone might recognize the ring and thus ask him questions. He didn't want that kind of attention.

He checked every person's ring inside this cave. Most were empty or contained trivial things, but a few contained valuables. Herbs, rare materials, engraved weapons, aer stones, a few martial art books, some pills, and a couple of unknown trinkets.

There were even seven Regrowth Pills. He had read about these pills. They were rare even for the nobles. These pills could help a cultivator regrow missing limbs so long as the cultivator was still alive. And from the color and smell of these pills, these were high-tiered ones. He didn't believe someone brought these precious pills here. These were treasures found in this dimension.

Amon took all those valuables. He planned to sort them out later and spare a portion to give to the White Cloud Sect. He couldn't return empty-handed, they would get suspicious.

After finishing his looting. He looked around the cave. There were several holes. He walked around each of these holes. He felt small drafts from a few of them. After feeling the wind for a while, he entered the hole that had the strongest air current.

Amon didn't even glance back at the people that were still trapped in their comatose states. Without the spider beast supplying their bodies with sustenance, they wouldn't have long to live. Their minds should still be lost in whatever dreamlike world the spider-beast had fabricated for them. Let them die while still living in that dream world. However, Amon didn't do this out of the kindness of his heart. He simply thought they were not worth his time.

Amon advanced through the cave slowly with his Swan Dagger at the ready. This was uncharted territory, there was no telling if any other dangerous creatures lurked here.

He thought it was unlikely. If there was, that creature would have come due to the commotion caused by his fight against the spider-beast. But one could never be careful enough.