"I was careless..."

The dark knight hanging in the air cursed himself for his naivety.

`Everything happend in an instance...if it werent for my preparations, I might have become what the humans call a meat skewer.

*Crack~

As he tried to move, the barrier surrounding him showed more cracks from the penetrated spot of the blood spikes, while his dark plating created by the armors enchantment fell off. But to his luck, the blood spikes didnt penetrate his armor itself.

His barrier that till this day managed to block any attack now looked like a ball of cracked glass from the 6 blood spikes that appeared from the man's body.

What made Danzel speechless was the amount of spikes present.

Like a halo, dozen of blood spears were surrounding the man who was in the middle.

Danzel didnt even want to imagine what would have happend if all those blood spikes were concentrated on him.

If that were to happend, he would even become a true horror among those that had trypophobia.

He was lucky enough that those spikes were only touching his armor and leaving small scratches. If it wasnt for the [Greater Sense Danger] bringing him back to his sense, those scratches couldnt have been much worse.

He praised himself for reacting as fast as he did.

His mana plating around his armor had indeed saved him...even though it pierced just like his barrier.

The top part of him was thanks to his new shield still fine, but Danzel felt a headache coming as he was watching the dark plating falling to the ground.

The plating itself didnt bother him as such, as producing it was extremely simple though his armor enchantment.

What was the real issue was the runes that were destroyed!

After separating from Nersanrah and deciding to carve the runes to his armor, the first thing he tried was to see if he could abuse the enchantment to his interest.

After a few trials and failures, he found out that he could carve runes to the dark plating on top of his armor without affecting the runes of his original armor.

When he learned of that fact, he was proud of coming up with such an ingenious idea.

Of course, he was well aware that the dark armor plating wasnt sturdy enough to hold attacks of the 2nd-tier, so any runes that reinforced the dark platings themselves werent that efficient.

But that wasnt the case for the [Rune of Force], which conquered the barrier.

Once he found out about this interaction, he had imminently carved those set of rules and put a rather thin layer of dark plating on top of the runes in order to mask the runes from the sight of other people.

Essentially creating two barriers that were constantly active if the runes were already charged.

So losing these runed platings meant that he had to go through the whole process of making a new set of runes.

"Ugh...as long as I live, anything else is secondary." As soon as he finished his mumbling, the blood spikes started to shrink slowly and the blood it gathering to the man responsible for those spikes.

Seeing that, Danzel gripped the tip of a blood spike and pushed himself away, freeing him and breaking his barrier at the same time.

*Pouf~

Raising a small sand cloud from his fall, he touched the ground while standing straight. Falling at such height was nothing to him by now.

Staring as the blood was slowly being sucked under the man's clothes, he was unsure what to do.

Understanding how ignorant he was about the strength difference and that there was no hope of winning, he found it pointless of fighting.

Heck, even if that guy were only able to summon those blood spikes around him, he wouldnt know how to get past them in the first place.

Something so fast that covered such a large area was for him impossible to overcome.

While thinking of a solution, a voice stopped him from his brainstorming.

"How did you do it?" The man with the dark gray skin and pointy ears said with a frown on his face.

Being taken out from his thoughts, Danzel had finally noticed the man's race which looked similar to a race that he met one his first year of coming out of the cursed lake.

"...Dark elve?" He subconsciously said out loud, making the frown of the man in front of him grow much worse.

"You-"

Before he could finish his sentence though, he was hugged by the shoulder from behind him.

"Hey! What did I tell you of holding back against him!? If that guy didnt react, he would even be dead!" Pulling her hood from her face, her beauty stunned the most lookers.

With a pair of deep violet eyes and long silver hair combined with her dark brown skin. Her beauty was extroverted and unique. If one were to describe how she looked based on her face alone, the words cool and mature would come out rather than cute.

Being aware of the beauty in front of them, their inner desire of them couldnt help but screen her body. Even though her body was still hidden by the cloak, it couldnt hide all her curves.

Looking at the woman beside him, the light in his crimson eyes died out while his face sorted up.

"Sis, it was an accident. I didn't plan on going so hard at him. He just surprised me in the end and without thinking I..."

Nodding her head several times, she let her brother go and looked at Danzel.

Seeing him frozen in place, she walked towards him.

"Don't worry, what you showed us is enough for you to pass our test."

Hearing that put Danzel at ease.

If they made him continue taking the test, then he would even have been surrounded.

Sheathing his sword to the scabbard, he activated the enchantment of his armor to fix his dark platings. Though the runes were no more, it was better than nothing.

"Is there anything else or can I meet the necromancer."

Hearing him, the woman who looked much more of a dark blue than her brother chuckled in response.

"Yes, you can. In truth, the last test was supposed to be accepted by our leader into our group."

"The first test was supposed to cut the wheat from the chaff, while the second one seeing if you meet the minimum requirements."

"But in the end, our leader decides if you join us or not. So you would even meet him even if you didn't want to."

"I see..."

"Come, I will show you where our leader is."

Nodding his head, Danzel followed suit while trying his best to ignore the piercing gaze of the dark gray elve.

As he was walking with her, his gaze landed on a huge figure who was similar to the woman wearing a cloak to hide his body.

Noticing his gaze, the man said.

"See you later." The huge figure said as he went back to his tent.

Not sure what to make out of the words of the figure, he decided to focus on following the dark elve girl.

"This isn't the first time you see a dark elve, is it?" The dark elve said, surprising Danzel in return.

"How did you know?" Danzel asked, puzzled as to how she knew.

"I am right? Well, usually people who see dark elves stand to gaze more at us, so I kinda figured out that you might have met a member of my race."

Before the discussion could be continued, the two arrived in a large tent.

Signaling Danzel to stop, the dark elve pointed to the tent.

"Wait here for a bit, I will notify him."

"I can wait." Danzel said with indifference.

Disappearing inside the tent, after a few minutes the dark elve came out.

"He will shortly pick you up in a few minutes. So you will have to wait for a bit longer." She said in an apologetic tone.

"It's fine, I don't mind."

"Mhm, alright then. If you manage to join us let's introduced ourselves." She said as he patted him on the shoulder, which looked kinda awkward with how tall he was.

Seeing her leaving, Danzel refocused on the tent in front of him.

Using [Eyes of the Damned], he was able to perceive 2 members of the living inside the tent.

'So he isn't alone?'

After a while of waiting outside, Danzel felt the people inside the tent moving.

Not a second later, the tent opened up.

"!!!"

Upon seeing the one who came out of the tent, Danzel was surprised.

The man had dark brown skin and a cloak which was a much darker brown. If one didn't look carefully, the cloak could be seen as pure black.

With a bald head covered in tattoos and some ragged bandages covering his mouth, the most noticeable trait of him was his eyes which were resembling that of a blind person.

The figure itself was surrounded by a sinister aura.

But his appearance and aura weren't the reason why Danzel was surprised.

It was because one of his traits as undead didn't activate upon being in front of the man.

And that trait was none other than the hate of living.

"You..."

The necromancer in response also frowned upon realizing what the other party's identity was.

But before any of them could say something, behind the necromancer a little girl together an old man came out. The two, in particular, had some unique clothing.

The little girl who noticed Danzel, had her eyes opened.

"Ahhh! It's the baddy who gave us the fish!" She yelled in surprise while pointing her finger toward him.