Chapter 404: Testing

Sam looked at the beasts. The four beasts stood on four different trees as they looked at the three of them. The beasts are called Monkey Warriors. The name itself is pretty self-explanatory. They don't have any elemental abilities.

They are like normal warriors. Their lineage is also limited towards their inherent attacks, but that disadvantage was covered by something else and that is their strong physique.

Their physiques are so strong that they are comparable to high-grade metals. It is so hard to cut their bodies and even if one pummels them, they will have to take some serious damage themselves because of the strong backlash that comes from their bodies.

Apart from that, they have an innate resistance to elemental attacks, and no matter what element it is they won't work on their bodies that easily.

But this is not their main advantage. Their advantage is their incomparably monstrous comprehension of the warrior battle skills.

Coupled with their innate control over their bodies, this comprehension enables them to understand the battle skills, like sword, saber, fist, kick, movement, spear, staff, or any other form of physical battle skills easily.

All they have to do most of the time is to see the technique multiple times and they can easily replicate the skill.

All this information popped up in Sam's mind. He doesn't want to confront four of them, even if he was to team up with the other three, which is not exactly feasible, Sam doesn't want to face them in a group.

He might be able to handle two of them and if they are three, he can defend and fight to a stalemate, but if they are four, Sam only has one option.

His body glowed with golden light and he zoomed past leaving the remaining two there. The Monkey Warriors are stunned as they didn't think that Sam would move like this.

They didn't expect this at all. Two of them immediately ran after him. They are actually quite fast, so fast that they can always keep Sam in their visible range.

Sam also sensed that he was being chased. He only activated partial fusion but he is still fast. The elemental fusion is not exactly a good thing after all. It consumes a lot of energy.

Sam is frustrated as he looked at monkey warriors who are using their incredible dexterity to use the trees to their advantage. The terrain is in their favor. Sam might have copied some of the monkey moves and could move by taking advantage of the terrain, but he would never be a match to the real monkeys.

He noticed that the monkeys that are coming at him are spear user and the other one is the first user.

He is a bit relieved by the fact that only two of them are following him, not the four of them. But he doesn't want to get into close combat with them unless he was completely cornered. The damage that he could take in the battle will make him the target of others.

And lucky for him, he is always prepared because of his paranoiac overthinking. Sam stored his staff away and made sure that he is not traveling towards other people.

He took out two handguns.

As he ran continuously, he suddenly took a diversion and climbed a tree, and zoomed back towards the monkey warriors.

If the opponent is a cultivator, they would be caught off guard, but Sam noticed that the monkey warriors are extremely composed, the Fist user monkey came to a halt and stood on the ground, the spear user took him as support as he climbed up on his shoulder and jumped straight up intercepting Sam's trajectory.

This time, it is Sam who is dumbfounded. He made this move because he noticed that there are very few trees and the monkeys have to run on the ground.

He wanted to shoot the monkeys from an upper position so that their heads would be vulnerable added with the supposed element of surprise.

But to his dismay, there is no element of surprise and the monkeys even caught me off guard.

He changed his aim and shot at the spear monkey, but it didn't care. The bullets are made of metal and they barely did any damage.

The monkey didn't even bother to dodge and swung the spear, Sam increased the fusion rate and changed his trajectory. He is almost a light beam and with a thought, he diverted towards the ground barely dodging the spear swing.

He crashed into the ground, but he didn't stop, leaving a small crater which burned the surrounding grass and debris of leaves, he started running again.

He understood one thing, he either has to use the impact crystal bullets or the Energy cell bullets. Otherwise, there is no way he would be able to do any form of damage. As for close combat, his swords and claws might have some form of effect, but there is a risk of exposing his identity and also, he never used his guns much in public and only used them in few places.

Even at the beast faction, he used a sniper rifle. These handguns will come in handy for him in this test. They are also easy to hide when he is using them in battle.

He can use them to fight from his comfortable range and he doesn't have to risk revealing his identity and the rest of the major powers wouldn't have a reason to pick on the Beast faction.

At this moment, the Beast faction is his business partner so there is a need for him to make sure that they are safe and sound and kept their status as it is within the six major powers.

Sam looked at the two monkeys still following him. After running for fifteen minutes, he finally halted in his tracks. He aimed the guns at the monkeys. They are in an area surrounded by rocks and there is a river nearby.

The trees are not in the vicinity.

Sam looked at the two monkeys, who also halted in their tracks and looked at him. The Spear-monkey threw the spear straight at him. Sam easily dodged, but to his surprise, the Fist-monkey appeared right in front of him at this moment.

He crossed the distance in an instant, it is almost as fast as Phantom steps Sam used. Sam hurriedly dodged the strike and he was barely able to move back missing the punch by a hair's breadth and he aimed the gun at the Spear monkey as he shot an Impact crystal bullet which hit the spear that was running towards him.

The explosion made the spear divert the direction and the monkey's appeared puzzled for the first time. They didn't expect the bullets which they didn't even care to dodge at the first place also appeared to be changed at this moment.

After some dodging Sam finally realized how terrifying it would be to deal with these monkey warriors. They are beings of the higher plane and although he did possess a lot of theoretical knowledge about them, he doesn't know how difficult it would be.

Just based on pure estimation, he felt that he could handle two of them. But these are not average beasts and they are cooperating well.

They are even cleverer than some humans.

Sam took a deep breath after dodging some consecutive moves and spears. He decided on how to proceed and his body is surrounded by black smoke.

All of a sudden Sam disappeared from the place.

The monkeys' eyes widened and both of them are making incomprehensible sounds. But they failed to realize that a shadow is moving and appeared a bit away from them. Sam reappeared and before the monkeys could realize.

The guns are shot continuously.

The monkeys are hit by impact crystal bullets at the same point. Their flesh is so sturdy that even this spiritual energy explosion is not enough to penetrate.

But Sam didn't stop. After the initial hit, there is a continuous assault of bullets and after ten shots the first monkey is finally down.

Sam is seriously surprised. The Spear monkey is gone and only the fist monkey remained. Its defense is even more powerful than that of the Spear monkey.

Sam kept the guns away and took out the staff.

Since he confirmed that no one was near this place, he wants to see what he can do in close combat.

He swung the staff and targeted his head. The monkey dodged and went for a body blow.

There is a continuous exchange of offense and defense. The staff Sam has in his hands is made of normal Grade Six metal; it is not special in any way.

After some tough fight and taking some hits, Sam finally took down the monkey.

If anyone saw this battle from start to end, they would think that Sam is extremely stupid. Because, half of it doesn't make any sense, because if Sam could use shadow transfer, why did he bother running that far?

If he could continuously fire the gun, why did he avoid that and use a staff?

That is because Sam is not actually seeking battle with these two monkeys. The whole battle has been an experiment.

The whole battle is to gauge various aspects of the monkey warriors. Sam knew little about Monkey warriors and there is nothing he knew about how they work in groups or teams.

He doesn't know how good are their battle instincts or how good is their strategy going to be.

So, he tried to find out by himself. The first thing he did is, see how good these monkeys are at chasing. He deliberately changed the speed of his travel by varying the rate of fusion and initiated the chase. He could now estimate how good they are at preserving their energy.

Then, battle instincts. He climbed the tree and jumped back to attack them. To guess their battle instincts. But their instincts turned out to be too good to fall for his trap.

That also gave him a rough estimation of their trust between them, their teamwork is impeccable.

He wanted to see how much of an advantage the shadow transfer and guns would be and how effective the bullets would be.

Finally, he estimated his normal defensive capabilities against the monkey's attacks and also his brute force attacks with a normal metal staff on the monkey.

He gauged all the factors of the monkey warriors that could affect his battles and survival in the near future.