I couldn’t heavily wound or even kill a single monster of them. But this was just fine.

It was time to change my entire tactic. Instead of directly walking and killing those bull monsters like before, it was better to lay a trap of my warriors around the six sides, and take control over the basin slowly step by step.

At this moment I realised that clearing this part of the test in thirty or even forty hours would be a big achievement to me.

And that also made me realise that the next gate would even be much fiercer and harder than I initially thought.

I just underestimate this test after all, and I was paying the price here.

I bought twenty of the toxic monsters and thirty of the advanced bulls I killed here. Even with summoning these strong bulls, I didn’t act rash and kept them defending the far ranged attackers.

Then it was time to use another round of my skills.

My aim for now wasn’t to kill as many as possible, but to cross the entire basin as fast as possible. In times of cooldowns, I kept using my glaive and sometimes my shield to ensure my safety.

It took me roughly one hour to just implant my warriors around. I also spend almost half of my soul points over summoning monsters here.

In the end I had one hundred and twenty agile and toxic monsters, plus two hundred bull monsters to defend them.

As I finished setting up the trap, it was time to close the net.

“All my bulls listen up… Attack!” defending the toxic monsters wasn’t a top priority for now. As the monsters here had to be divided to fight on six fronts, I used this chance and pushed harder against them.

I didn’t sit idle. I started to use my skills one by one, especially those AOE skills. I killed and injured lots of these monsters while my warriors helped from the side.

Despite that, it took more than two hours to clear this zone. Damn! It took three hours to just clear one basin!

I always cleared a hundred basins before reaching the gate. If this kept going on, then I’d take forever to clear this place.

“I had to accelerate,” I knew there was only one way to do that, allying myself with one monster against the other.

I called back my warriors, collected my loot and summoned more to replace the lost. From the initial three hundred and twenty monsters, I lost almost twenty from dead or wounded.

The wounded warriors would take time before getting summoned again. So in other words, they were like dead to me at this point.

I sat on the fire next to one side only. Before I’d wait long enough until the two monsters would kill each other. And I’d set fire at all the tree zones.

But this time I only set fire to one zone. I aimed to use the help of the toxic monsters here, and force my way through the messy battle to accelerate the kill.

Choosing between the scaled bulls and the toxic agile monkeys? That was a hard choice to be honest.

But at least I knew how to deal fast with the toxic monsters. “Let’s aim at killing the two of them in the heat of battle,” I said to myself while stepping over the burning ground.

It was just like the first time, as the ground was really hot like hell. I had to use my liquor at this point, and also had to move forward with my shield.

After all those toxic monsters didn’t all move towards the basin yet. So once I overstepped over their territory, I attracted part of their aggro, leading to receiving many attacks.

But my shield was enough to stop them without the need to waste any skill.

“It’s showtime,” as I finally emerged from the tree zone, I was welcomed with a fierce and bloody battle between the two monsters.

Before bulls couldn’t stand against the toxic monsters for too long. But as they got scales and upgrades in their strength and defence, these bulls began to show fierce resistance against the toxic monsters.

“Shocking Glaive!” I selected one part away from the burning tree zone and used this skill at it. My glaive cleared an area of five hundred metres, yet I didn’t stop there.

I ran towards this emptied area and used another skill. “Rising Might!” The glaive worked its magic again and cleared another one hundred metres area.

Then it was time to start my fierce attack.

“Come forth! Kill these!” I summoned all my bull monsters first. I pointed towards a direction between me and another tree zone and gave the order for my bulls to go and kill the scaled bulls there.

Then as they started fighting, I called the rest of the warriors, letting them attack freely and help their comrades in arms.

At the previous basin, I was fighting alone. So I had to take the trouble and set the stage to secure my win. Yet here I had a helper.

So instead of taking all the trouble and fighting against the two deadly monsters together, I started to act as an opportunist.

I just gathered up my forces, cleared one spot and started taking any advantage once it appeared.

This might seem slower and passive. But if I told you I managed to clear this zone in less than one hour and without the need to use my strong skills except for one or two, what would you say?

Fighting in this way was really a refreshing experience to me. I didn’t expect standing on the side and hunting down your fighting enemies would be this easy and amusing.

I moved to clear the loot while another fire was burning at a new forest.

So, instead of clearing a hundred zones in fifteen hours like before, I’d end up wasting six times and even more to clear the same map.