SS Awakening: My Monster Merging System!

The dagger rapidly stabbed toward the skeleton soldier’s neck bone, but the instant the Shadow Hunter attacked, more than a dozen nearby threads simultaneously tightened, accurately wrapping around the wrist holding the dagger.

The Shadow Hunter’s movements stalled for less than a second. If it had a face, it would have looked surprised by now.

Even before it could pull itself free, a black figure had already crashed down from above.

The Silverback Ape Grunt clenched both fists and smashed them heavily into the Shadow Hunter’s back.

Boom!

The ground instantly caved in. Before the Shadow Hunter could merge back into the shadows, its entire body shattered apart.

[Remaining Shadow Hunters: 29/30]

Almost at the exact moment the notification appeared, the threads Slimy had deployed in another direction transmitted another vibration.

This time, Zich did not send the Silverback Ape Grunt over.

Blood Leech quickly moved between the threads.

Just as the Shadow Hunter prepared to attack another skeleton soldier, Blood Leech suddenly lunged forward. Its sharp mouthparts pierced deeply into the Shadow Hunter’s leg while its front claws tightly latched onto its body, forcibly interrupting the Shadow Hunter’s concealment.

Two nearby undead skeleton soldiers immediately turned around, stabbing their bone blades toward its knee joints at the same time.

The Shadow Hunter swung its dagger and sent one skeleton soldier flying, but before it could launch a second attack, the Silverback Ape Grunt had already charged in from the side and shattered its chest with a single punch.

[Remaining Shadow Hunters: 28/30.]

From that moment onward, the positions of hunter and prey were completely reversed!

The four undead skeleton soldiers continuously moved throughout the forest, deliberately exposing their positions to lure out the Shadow Hunters hiding in the darkness. Slimy was responsible for locating the directions from which they appeared, Blood Leech restricted their movements, while the Silverback Ape Grunt delivered the finishing blows.

Zich remained standing in the same place, barely moving at all.

Command after command was continuously transmitted through the summoning contracts, and the entire forest seemed to transform into an enormous net that was slowly tightening.

[Remaining Shadow Hunters: 24/30.]

[Remaining Shadow Hunters: 19/30.]

[Remaining Shadow Hunters: 13/30.]

Not too long after, the Shadow Hunters noticed the threads. They no longer attacked the undead skeleton soldiers acting as bait and instead began actively destroying the surrounding threads.

However, breaking the threads would similarly expose their positions to Zich.

The instant the first thread was severed, Zich had already issued a new command.

The Silverback Ape Grunt rapidly changed direction, while Blood Leech followed the other threads and circled around to the enemies’ front. The four undead skeleton soldiers also stopped expanding the detection range and began converging inward from different directions.

Every time a Shadow Hunter severed a thread, its position was exposed once.

The faster they destroyed the threads, the faster Zich could locate them.

In less than five minutes, only eight of the thirty Shadow Hunters remained.

The remaining Shadow Hunters had clearly realized that continuing to hide was meaningless. After a brief silence, the shadows in eight different directions around Zich simultaneously began to change.

The eight Shadow Hunters abandoned their scattered attacks against his summons and prepared to directly kill Zich, who stood at the center of the detection network.

When they entered within twenty meters of Zich, the final summoning formation finally unfolded behind him.

Amid dense death energy, Iron strode out. His heavy combat boots struck the ground with a low rumble.

The reason Zich had deliberately waited until now to summon Iron was to conserve mana and avoid unnecessary maintenance consumption during the earlier search.

"Taunt."

Iron gripped his greatsword with both hands and violently drove it into the ground.

Boom!

A provocative wave of power instantly swept through the surrounding forest.

The eight Shadow Hunters that had originally locked onto Zich simultaneously changed direction. Their hostility toward Iron instantly surged, and their attack targets were temporarily forcibly redirected toward him. They rushed out of the shadows from different positions, their pitch black daggers simultaneously stabbing toward various vital points across Iron’s body.

Iron pulled his greatsword from the ground and swept its broad blade across the battlefield, sending three Shadow Hunters into wisps of smoke.

Quickly, the massive undead knight dashed forward, and in a series of quick slashes, he destroyed all the enemies.

[Third Floor Trial Completed.]

[Shadow Hunters Killed: 30/30.]

[Damage Taken by Challenger: 0.]

[Summon Losses: 0.]

[Clear Time: 00:05:47.]

[Trial Evaluation: SSS.]

[You have broken the historical fastest clear record for the third floor of the Trial Tower.]

Meanwhile, outside the Trial Tower.

The instant the third floor trial ended, the enormous black stone monument in the center of the plaza lit up once again.

Zich’s current progress changed from the third floor to the fourth floor, while the three consecutive SSS evaluations displayed behind his name caused the originally noisy plaza to instantly fall silent.

The Players Association members responsible for recording the trial data stared at the time displayed on the stone monument and subconsciously checked it several times to make sure they weren’t making any mistakes.

"The previous fastest clear time was thirteen minutes and twenty two seconds. How did he clear it so fast?"

Hearing that number, the surrounding crowd sucked in a cold breath.

Five minutes and forty seven seconds! Zich had nearly cut the historical fastest clear time for the third floor in half!

The outside world could not see the battles taking place within the independent trial spaces, so even they could not determine exactly what method Zich had used.

But one thing was already perfectly clear.

When other challengers entered the Shadow Hunting Ground, they thought about how to avoid the thirty Shadow Hunters and survive until the trial timer ended.

Zich had instead turned the entire forest into his own hunting ground.

Within the Locke family’s viewing area, the expressions of the several family members who had previously mocked Zich had become extremely ugly.

"These are only the first three floors," one of them said. "The truly difficult stages of the Trial Tower only begin after the tenth floor. Austin has already entered the third floor as well. The gap between them isn’t that large."

This time, no one around him spoke up in agreement because while he was speaking, the rankings on the black stone monument changed once again.

[First Place: Zich Grave, Fourth Floor.]

[Second Place: Austin Locke, Third Floor.]

[Third Place: Nadia Voss, Third Floor.]

[Fourth Place: Helen Magnus, Third Floor.]

At this moment, Zich had officially pulled an entire floor ahead of every other challenger.

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