"How is this possible...?"
A suppressed yelp escaped One-Eyed Demon's mouth.
Although he was not a genius, even then, after refining his body again and again with Star Energy, he had managed to reach the peak of Rank 3 Stargazer; damaging his body should not have been this easy.
Although he was shocked, the situation didn't allow him to think too much. Before he could manage to gather his bearings, Astral Bone Vanguard was again on top of him, its skeleton bones pulsating with Star Energy. The skeleton raised its bony hand above and... Ripple! A slash made of compressed Star Energy shot out.
Puchi! Like a hot knife through butter, One-Eyed Demon's head was sliced off.
"What the hell was that...?" Lukas muttered out loud in surprise. He immediately got his vision back after One-Eyed Demon's death.
The gentle sunrays of the morning sun filtered through the giant iron trees to land on Lukas's face; a gentle gust of wind blew softly, caressing the surroundings.
Lukas looked at the three bodies lying on the ground. With his shoulders slumped and his head hung down, he sighed.
"It's been only one day and I have already seen death almost four... five times... No wonder the mortality in this place is high..."
From his first encounter with the Devil Tiger to this present moment, he had only managed to survive because of his quick-witted thinking and mostly luck.
"Yes, it's been purely luck... No matter how lucky, I can't keep on surviving in these situations. I need to get back to safety and think of some other plan."
This first day had been a wake-up call for him. As he was now, he was too weak to survive in the Iron Forest alone.
While thinking, a small plan started to form in his head. Relying on the talent alone is too stupid. I still need to start this so-called cultivating and start refining Star Energy to truly start walking the path of Star Warriors...
The path of Star Refiners, as the name suggested, involved absorbing the Star Energy into the body to nourish it; even a Rank One Star Refiner was multiple times stronger than ordinary humans.
It was a pretty simple process. First was to absorb the Star Energy using the Star Energy absorption technique, a reliable but slow process. The second was to use the energy present in Star Crystals to speed up the process.
While thinking of all these things, he slowly walked toward the three corpses lying on the ground. One by one he severed their heads and a few other body parts; he wanted to experiment with something.
While holding the three heads in his hands like basketballs, Lukas found himself asking a strange question: So weird, why do I not feel disgusted...?
Feeling discomfort should have been pretty normal; after all, just a few hours ago he was a completely normal human living a pretty normal life. Just seeing dead bodies caused his mind to go haywire, and now he was killing people as easy as breathing.
No matter how much he thought, nothing could explain this strange transformation, so at the moment he stopped thinking about it.
Meanwhile Astral Bone Vanguard watched his action curiously, the red flames dancing inside its hollow eye sockets twitched and turned carefully looking at Lukas's actions.
Lukas noticed this and raised the head that he was holding slightly above; the skeleton's gaze followed it closely.
"Hungry, huh...? Argh! I can't keep calling you 'thing' or 'that'... It's time I give you a name. With how you watch my actions like a loyal dog, I shall call you Tommy..."
After saying those words, a satisfied smile appeared on Lukas's face. In his previous life he wanted a dog but his father never allowed it. Moreover, there was another reason he named him Tommy: it was pretty nostalgic. Most of his childhood had been nothing short of a nightmare; during those dark days he used to play a video game with Tommy as the main lead.
Lukas didn't want to follow those memories in the new world.
With all these thoughts in his mind, he signaled Tommy to come close and assimilate with the bones of the warriors, slight anticipation bubbling in his head.
That Old Crook had some Poison Talent; it could be helpful inside the city... Lukas thought.
He had no idea what talent Little Jack had; however, it was clear it wasn't that interesting after just how easily he died. He had no interest in One-Eyed Demon's talent.
If I could get Old Crook's talent, that would be the best.
Lukas thought while Tommy started assimilating the bones one by one.
[Your skeleton Tommy absorbed the elbow of Rank 2 Star Refiner...]
[Your...]
Notifications rang in his head but nothing interesting came.
After all the hands were assimilated, Tommy started assimilating the skulls.
[Your skeleton absorbed the skull of...]
Under his highly anticipating gaze, Tommy finished absorbing all the three heads.
However, after the two skulls' absorption didn't give any positive news, he was disappointed, thinking he might not get what he was looking for.
Just then a notification buzzed in his head.
[Your skeleton has assimilated with the skull of Rank 2 Star Refiner.]
[Ding! You have learned Rare grade talent Poison Cloud.]
"Bingo!" Immediately a smile appeared on his face.
"This is it! This is what I was looking for!"
While exclaiming in his head, Lukas started going through the information and explanation that had appeared in his head; in just a glance he knew all that was needed to be known about the talent.
Poison Cloud: Summon a highly toxic cloud. The lethality depends on the amount of Star Energy used.
A simple and easy-to-use talent.
All in all Lukas was immensely satisfied with it. There was only one thing that would have made it even better: only if it was passive.
However, the looting was not over just yet. After that, Lukas quickly scanned their bodies for any items. As he expected, Lukas managed to find another pouch filled with fifty Star Crystals, so he now had a total fortune of a hundred Star Crystals.
A sizable amount for someone who had only been in the Star Dimension for such a short time.