The sound was close, but not enough that he was out of all his hopes. Lucian sprang back while tightening his grip over the daggers. Regaining his balance, he quickly turned around and ran all the way in a single direction.
It wasn't just a senseless run or something stronger like fear. But just a common thought.
'The sound was muffled... There seems to be more than one this time,' he thought, frowning.
"If that's the case, I can't fight them in an open area such as this."
On his way, Lucian encountered dozens of similar spots. A half-eaten corpse lying over the ground with a small blood pool forming around it.
At first it was bearable, since he was fighting in blood not too long ago. But as he progressed, the stench grew worse. His eyes continuously scanned the ground, trying not to trip over something and lose his momentum.
Still, something seemed amiss.
"The smell is getting fouler with each second... I can't believe something such as this is normal even with such numbers of corpses."
Although it was true that there lay corpses all over the floor, the gap in between them was large enough to suppress the smells from concentrating.
It was then that his eyes noticed something rather peculiar. As he moved further, the blood around each body seemed to be in a different state.
The one he saw in the beginning, the blood was warm and fresh. But now? It was stuck to the base of the floor in sediments, drying as if it had been lying still for days.
For sure there were more than one kobold residing on that floor since Lucian himself had heard their voices. But still, even killing just a single human every day seemed too far of a stretch for idiotic gluttons like them.
Moving past one lane after another, he was about to reach the very center of the floor. The straight lines of the shelves and stranded carts ended at a certain distance. Lucian could now roughly see where the center truly was.
But he didn't decrease his speed; instead, he launched himself further away from the center. Running towards one of the stranded carts, he jumped and kicked it mid-air from the right side.
Although the cart was full, it slipped over the surface like butter due to the greasy sediments of blood.
Lucian darted his eyes to the right, waiting to see what the result of his attempt would be.
Monsters in common have little to no sense of intellect. As they're the beings who have lost their will to their own primal instincts.
As such, killing prey by any and all means necessary becomes the first priority of these low-level monsters.
But for them to act in such a systematic way, it reeked of something worse. Lucian had already noticed as the air grew incomparably heavier near the center. It was almost as if there slept a being of such power.
All of a sudden, a loud thud echoed from the center. Slight tremors began to shake the floor as Lucian found it hard to maintain his balance in the upheaval of the store. The items that were decorated over the shelves slipped off their place. While the shelves themselves fell one after another like a bunch of dominos.
Dodging each one to avoid fatal injuries, Lucian continuously moved his feet. Not long after, as the tremors began to subside, a bright light appeared right before Lucian's eyes.
The light expanded in the blink of an eye and materialized into a new system window.
---
[Congratulations! You have killed an E-rank monster, Kobold King!]
[Congratulations! You have become the first in the world to have ever defeated an E-rank monster!]
[A worldwide announcement will be made, and you will be rewarded appropriately for your achievements!]
[Would you like to announce your true name or an alias?]
---
Lucian stared at the system screen with a stern gaze. For a while ago, he had been half-expecting such a thing to happen. Although it was merely a doubt, his assumptions had been proven correct.
"So it really was about the king," he muttered under his breath as he began to slowly walk towards the center.