Long Tian had been climbing for the past ten minutes. The mountains that separated the rings got increasingly taller as the deeper one went.
The one separating the tenth ring from the outside was barely a kilometer tall, easily climbable. But the one he was scaling right now was over 8 kilometers tall at its lowest point, where he would be passing thought.
As Long Tian was moving through the snow, using the super naginata for support in the most inclined parts of the climb.
Just as he was reaching the final part of the climb, Long Tian heard a sound that he had heard multiple times before.
"Bleat!"
'Mountain Goats!'
Long Tian rapidly looked up. These goats were purely white and were capable of easily traversing these mountains. They attacked anything that tried to cross them.
Long Tian continued upwards while paying more attention to his surroundings.
He had not removed the armor, so he should blend more easily with the snow background just like the goats did.
He continued his journey up the mountain for 5 more minutes, hearing the goats sounds increasingly closer.
As he reached the top of the lowest point between two mountains, he saw something akin to a valley completely covered in snow.
As it was still day and the sky was clear, the brightness caused some discomfort in him, but his fitness was high enough for his eyes to not be blinded.
He could see thousands of goats in this valley. They appeared to be watching something, as they all stood in place looking deeper towards the valley, from where loud sounds of collision and bleats were coming from.
Long Tian strained his eyes a little and managed to see that in the middle of the valley, there were two giant goats fighting each other.
The other goats formed a circle around them, with the mutant ones closer and the weaker ones behind them.
The two goats were five meters tall and 7 long. Their horns were extremely long and had white details on their points, just like the one on his armor.
They were bashing their heads against each other, making their horns collide and producing loud sounds.
After observing the somewhat bizarre scene for a few seconds, Long Tian finally understood what was happening.
'Territorial dispute.'
There were too many goats here. There were more than 300 mutant goats and thousands of lower ranked ones, completely filling the valley. This was too much to be a single band of goats.
There were two bands, each under one sacred blood goat, and now, for some reason, they were disputing this valley.
The sacred blood goats did not show signs of stopping any time soon, and he had been hearing their fight since he got close, so they would probably stay at that for a few hours at least.
'Don't have that much time to waste, time to upgrade my armor.'
So, Long Tian rested a little bit and caught his breath. Then he dashed into the middle of the goats.
While he was interested in knowing who the best goat was, he needed to pass the valley and would not mind a super beast soul armor.
As he dashed among the goats, they started noticing the white figure passing them at incredible speeds.
It started as only a few goats bleating before spreading throughout the entire band.
By the time Long Tian reached the center of the goat formation, all goats were screaming at him, which caused the two sacred bloods to stop fighting and to look at him.
Having just fought an oversized tiger, standing before the two goats did not intimidate him, even though they should not have been much weaker than the green tiger from before.
As the two opened their mouths to scream at him, Long Tian dashed towards one of them.
The targeted goat barely had to react before a black naginata blade came down upon its head, cutting through its horns but stopping a few centimeters deep into its skull.
'What a hard head!'
Long Tian though as he used the naginata to jump back as the goat started to scream in pain.
The other one did not stay still, rapidly charging towards the spot he was going to land.
Meanwhile, the hundreds of mutant goats also started charging towards him, hoping to crush the one to interrupt their leader's fight.
Long Tian, seeing the horned beast almost upon him, pointed his naginata towards the beast to reduce the impact and summoned a mutant sword in his other hand.
As the armored human was almost reaching the ground, the goat reached him, bashing its horns against the point of the naginata, it injured itself but also sent Long Tian flying.
He smashed against a dozen mutant goats' horns before stopping, using the sword to stop himself, leaving a cut on the snowy ground more than 100 meters long.
"Ouch."
That hurt quite a bit, but Long Tian did not feel anything break, so he stood up and dashed once again towards the giant goats, summoning the super naginata that had been blasted away once more.
Having learned his lesson, he decided to not face them head on, last he was blasted even farther away this time.
Falling down the mountain could be fatal even to him.
Anyway, although they were Sacred Blood, the two goats had low agility, slow to change directions once they started charging.
So, as the two sacred blood and hundreds of mutants charged towards him, Long Tian simply sidestepped the one he had attacked first and plunged his naginata on its belly.
The beast's speed did the rest, opening a particularly nasty wound that caused the goat to scream in even more pain.
However, the wound was not fatal, as it had not reached any organs.
'These goats are really tough; figures they would give out an armor.'
So, Long Tian continued waiting for them to charge him before sidestepping and injuring their abdomen or their sides.
It was not that the goats were stupid, it's just that the charge was their strongest ability, and they were too slow to react to Long Tian.
After ten more charges, the first sacred blood fell. It was the one that he had been targeting since the beginning. It fell after Long Tian became bold and feigned to jump, making it raise its head and create a gap for him to get under it.
Once beneath the beast, Long Tian just did his specialty and discovered the color of its insides.
*Ding*
[Sacred-Blood Beast Mountain Goat killed. Beast Soul of Sacred-Blood Mountain Goat gained.]
[Supreme Evolution activated. Beast Soul of Super Mountain Goat gained.]
[Eat its flesh to gain up to 100 Sacred-Blood Gene Points.]
Long Tian immediately unsummoned the sacred blood armor and put on the super one.
The armor continued to be white, but there was more fur this time, covering the chest, arms, shoulders and back. Only the abdomen and the legs did not have fur.
The helmet even had a stub on its chin that looked like a beard.
The horns were entirely white, clearly more resistant than before.
Seeing one of their leaders die, the goats started to run away before the last Sacred Blood bellowed, making all of them stop and charge with it at Long Tian once more.
Now even more protected, Long Tian became bolder and decided to meet the charge head on.
However, instead of using the naginata, he decided to use the mutant sword with the Space Sword art, as it seemed more effective for cutting things apart.
This time he did not jump. He stabbed the naginata into the ground, put his back on it and waited for the goat to reach him.
As soon as all he could see were the giant horns of the beast, he swung his blade overhead while using the Space Sword Art.
Long Tian felt a lot of resistance from the skull of the beast and was surprised, after all, he was cutting through space itself, but then he felt the resistance ease and knew he had killed it.
Sure enough, while flying through the air, he heard the notification again.
*Ding*
Long Tian ignored it and focused on landing.
Stopping himself a few hundred meters away, he saw that the goats started running away, scaling the mountain on both sides of the valley with an ease he could never achieve.
Some decided to come at him. Which prompted him to raise his sword.
It was then that he realized that the sword on his hand had broken, the blade shattered by the impact.
Undeterred, he threw it away and summoned the super naginata once again and crouched a little.
He put it above his head and decided that what worked on tigers worked on goats.
A little while later and some more bodies added to the ground, Long Tian had a free path towards the third ring.
He continued forwards, ignoring the bodies on the ground, as he did not want to stop until the first ring.
Reaching the other side of the valley, Long Tian finally saw the third ring.
It was called the Inner Forest of Death.
The trees were much taller and thicker than in the fourth ring. The forest was denser, and Long Tian could already see mutant beasts from up the mountain, which was a little unexpected, as the rings should not be this crowded.
Getting down was always easier than getting up, so Long Tian took only a few minutes to basically safely fall down the mountain.
Reaching the ground, Long Tian barely started walking towards the trees when a bear came running towards him.
It was two meters tall and three and a half long. It was a mutant small green bear.
Rapidly killing it, Long Tian was surprised to see three more appear.
With a confused face, Long Tian continued killing them.
He could barely walk ten meters of forest without encountering mutant beasts.
Small Green Bears and Ambusher Boars were everywhere.
He saw corpses of beasts all around and sounds of beasts fighting coming from all directions.
'What the hell is happening? The forums never mentioned something like this.'
He thought, remembering everything he could about the last three rings.
The third ring was supposed to be populated with about the same number of beasts as the seventh one, but instead of primitives, there were mutants.
But this felt like there were thousands of mutant beasts just in the surrounding forest, not to mention deeper inside.
As he was walking and killing, Long Tian suddenly felt himself get stuck into something.
Looking towards the ground, he saw a green web beneath his feet.
"Shit."
Long Tian rapidly jumped back as a massive spider that looked made out of wood fell exactly where he was standing before.
The spider's eight legs were fifteen meters long, thick and sharpened, its tips looked more like the tip of spears, penetrating the ground easily.
The body of the spider was the size of a van, its giant mouth opening and closing as it looked at him.
'Thank god I am not afraid of spiders.'
Long Tian thought with relief before using his naginata to defend himself.
He parried a leg that came down to impale him but had to dodge back as another came from the side, trying to bisect him.
Then, a massive web came at a massive speed from the mouth of the spider.
Long Tian continued jumping back, dodging the web.
The spider continued firing webs at him until he put a good distance between them and the spider stopped attacking him.
As it ran towards him with those scary legs, Long Tian dashed towards it.
The spider was extremely agile, managing to block him before he could get beneath its body.
It fired a web every time he became entangled with its legs, not giving him time to do anything.
Getting caught in these webs was a recipe to get killed.
He knew that these spiders had a period of cooldown, during which they could not fire webs.
After coming from different angles and not managing to get past its legs, Long Tian decided to overpower it in a frontal confrontation.
To do so, he first lured the spider towards a spot where it could only attack him with two legs at the same time.
Then, he attacked it continuously until it ran out of web.
Then, after attacking and parrying its legs once more, Long Tian put his entire strength into the naginata, pushing back the spider more and more before there was a sudden crack.
"Screech!!"
The spider made a loud sound as its two legs cracked in the joints; their control lost. Taking advantage of the opening, Long Tian jumped at the spider's body and slashed down with the naginata.
The spider was about to shoot another web when he managed to get the naginata about halfway through its body before stopping.
But that was enough, and the spider fell dead, all but two of its legs contracting.
*Ding*
[Sacred-Blood Beast Wood Spider killed. Beast Soul of Sacred-Blood Wood Spider gained.]
[Supreme Evolution activated. Beast Soul of Super Wood Spider gained.]
[Eat its flesh to gain up to 100 Sacred-Blood Gene Points.]
The beast soul of the Wood Spider was a rare type of beast soul, a Crossbow, but it only launched webs.
The ones he had before were all mutant beast souls, and they were made of something that looked like wood and shot a light green web.
After testing this one, it launched a web that looked like wood. It still looked made out of wood, but the wood was darker and just holding it, he knew he was not able to damage it.
He tried slashing the web and almost lost his naginata, having to put a lot of force just to take it out of the web.
Continuing his journey, Long Tian was using the same strategy with another sacred blood wood spider when he heard a loud roar.
"Roar!"
It was extremely loud, but it was clear that it came from far away.
Surprisingly, it caused the spider to visibly flinch, becoming scared.
This caused Long Tian to have a realization.
'I finally get what is happening with these crazy beasts.'