Chapter Sixteen: Flawless Solo Kill of the Elite in the Secret Realm!

The entrance to the cave was actually not small; it was merely that the passage, compared to the open-air canyon outside, felt much more compressed and immediate. Since the appearance of the wind elementals had not provoked the giant bear, Yi Shen was able to approach the cave entrance from afar within the canyon. This meant that, once the wind elementals were summoned, they could immediately enter and attack the giant bear together, saving seven or eight seconds of precious time.

At that moment, Yi Shen was still devising ways to see if he could toss in a few incendiary bombs or the like. However, he had already cleared out all the monsters in the canyon, leaving him with no other targets to exploit. In the end, he settled on a method to boost his efficiency: using his willpower to finely manipulate the movements of the wind elementals, thereby prolonging their existence.

The wind elementals had not inherited Yi Shen’s Mage’s Heart—their mana was limited. The most efficient approach was to drain their mana completely before their timer ran out, maximizing the damage output. Controlling three wind elementals simultaneously was a formidable challenge. Yet, effort breeds skill.

With the arrival of the third and fourth waves of wind elementals, Yi Shen gradually became adept at this technique. He even began to consciously train his control, managing to micro-manage three wind elementals at once. By the time the fifth wave entered, Yi Shen had discerned the giant bear’s attack patterns. The wind elementals survived for nearly twenty seconds, dealing a collective two hundred damage before being wiped out.

By the tenth wave, Yi Shen was attempting to exploit line-of-sight for his attacks. The three wind elementals withstood the bear’s furious roars, chipping away more than four hundred points of its health before collapsing as their timer expired.

By the twentieth wave, the giant bear’s health was already halved, and it grew increasingly frenzied. But by now, Yi Shen was well-acquainted with the terrain; barring any operational errors, he could even maneuver the wind elementals to dodge and reposition, far more agile than before.

At last, the giant bear began to sense that something was amiss. Its intelligence was limited, but it could tell these wind elementals seemed endless. It tried new skills, slamming the ground and causing rocks to fall from the cave’s ceiling, which restricted the wind elementals’ movement paths. Its fur began to harden, rendering the wind blades less effective. Yet, none of this could change its fate. For every fallen wind elemental, a new one appeared; for every one that dissipated, another took its place.

By the end, the giant bear was almost dazed. Several times, it tried to rush towards the cave entrance to uncover the source of these foes, only to be drawn back by the wind elementals’ relentless assault.

Time inched forward.

With a thunderous crash, the giant bear—with over ten thousand health—collapsed to the ground! Its hide was thick, but it simply could not withstand the thousand cuts of the wind elementals’ gradual onslaught. Even in its final moments, the bear’s dying roar was tinged with sorrow. It had never imagined it would fall to a horde of wind elementals, each wind blade chipping away a mere ten points of health, whittling it to death—such an ignoble end.

After the bear’s demise, Yi Shen commanded the wind elementals to scour the area. Only when he was certain there were no other creatures did he cautiously enter.

The giant bear’s corpse lay silently at the center of the cave, stripped of its former dominance. From the region of its heart emanated a deep emerald glow. Yi Shen rubbed his hands together, hoping his luck would be better this time.

As he approached the emerald light, a chime sounded on his system panel.

[Ding! You have slain the Icefield Giant Bear (Secret Realm Elite), gaining 421 experience points.]
[Ding! You have slain the Icefield Giant Bear (Secret Realm Elite), and obtained Bear’s Essence Blood (E).]
[Ding! You have slain the Icefield Giant Bear (Secret Realm Elite), and obtained Bear’s Tibia (E).]
[Ding! You have slain the Icefield Giant Bear (Secret Realm Elite), and obtained the Ice Crystal Belt (E).]
...

“So stingy,” Yi Shen sighed.

The emerald glow had brought him just over four hundred experience and three special items. Slaying this giant bear had taken more than half an hour, yet the experience was insufficient for a level-up—far less efficient than farming minor monsters. As for the loot, he had acquired three items in total. The first two were E-grade materials; only the Ice Crystal Belt was E-grade equipment, level fourteen—a slight consolation, at best.

Currently, Yi Shen was mostly battling monsters above his level. While this carried a sense of honor, it also meant he had to wait before he could actually equip the items that dropped. The attributes of the Ice Crystal Belt favored melee fighters; for now, he simply stowed it away, intending to reconsider it later.

...

[Ice Crystal Belt]

[Equipment Requirement: Level 14]
[Grade: E]
[Attributes: Stamina +26, Strength +33]
[Special Effect: Your melee critical hit rate increases by 5%, and attacks have a chance to deal a heavy blow for 40 damage.]
...

In truth, the giant bear’s carcass and remaining flesh likely held considerable value, but nothing could be taken out of the secret realm, so it had to be abandoned here.

“Keep working hard,” Yi Shen encouraged himself.

He believed that periods of misfortune would eventually give way to moments of extraordinary luck. Now, with wind elementals as his vanguard and multi-casting for area attacks, his monster-clearing speed would surely improve dramatically. Although this elite monster had failed to drop anything remarkable, the path ahead was now open, and he could clear the smaller monsters beyond to gather more items.

After a brief rest, Yi Shen began to advance deeper into the cave, embarking on a new journey.

...

From the moment he entered this cave, Yi Shen had essentially reached the latter half of the secret realm. This stage was no longer within the canyon’s fissures but had entered the solid rock—a massive cavern of ice crystals and sandstone. The cave was not dark; it was suffused with pearly white light, the luminous material embedded in the stone walls, as though he had entered a palace of ice and snow.

However, the deeper he ventured, the more the monsters changed. Alongside the earlier ice bramble dryads, two new types of mushroom-like monsters appeared, as well as some peculiar black snakes.

These black snakes were far more dangerous than the snow serpents Yi Shen had previously faced. They had greater health, higher attack power, a wider detection range, and could even launch ranged poison attacks.

The mushroom monsters were somewhat easier to dispatch, but not without risk—especially those that emitted sounds, which could easily attract reinforcements.

Before entering the secret realm, Yi Shen had planned to avoid such troublesome monsters. But now, with wind elementals to take the brunt, he could be more proactive. He even considered gathering the monsters together for a mass extermination.