Harriet also killed several nearby Blade Sparrows, then secretly put them into her backpack.
She discovered that each Blade Sparrow actually yielded four portions of bird meat, and they also dropped both wind and earth beast cores. Both types of beast cores were extremely important for territory development.
Wind-element cores could be used to make high-level backpacks, and earth-element cores went without saying. Upgrading any kind of building required a large number of earth-element cores.
With so many Blade Sparrows on the ground... how many beast cores would that be?
"Harriet, didn't your mother teach you?", Ethan said coldly, "Don't take other people's things. Otherwise, when people stop being polite to you, don't ask them to be nice."
Ethan had finally killed all the Blade Sparrows, but he discovered that the experience for the Strange Sword Style had stopped at 9998. He still needed two more Blade Sparrows to gain enough experience to level up.
He had already confirmed there were two thousand Blade Sparrows in this wave.
And before he started killing, he had checked the experience value of his Strange Sword Style. It had been 8033.
That meant... thirty-five Blade Sparrows had been killed by Harriet. Otherwise, how could his Strange Sword Style still not have leveled up?
Yet there wasn't a single Blade Sparrow corpse around Harriet.
That meant she had definitely hidden the corpses for herself, which made Ethan very unhappy.
Stealing his experience was one thing.
But she had even stolen his birds?
A trace of embarrassment flashed across Harriet's face after being exposed, but she still forced herself to argue, "I killed those birds myself. What's wrong with taking my own loot?"
"Of course there's something wrong. If you're capable, go kill them in the air yourself," Ethan sneered, "Do you know what corpse-looting means? This is called stealing."
"How is stealing kills the same as stealing?", Harriet immediately waved her hand and threw the 140 portions of Blade Sparrow meat she had secretly kept, along with 25 wind-element beast cores and 15 earth-element beast cores, onto the ground, "Fine, take them back then, cheapskate!"
"Heh!"
Ethan let out a cold laugh. He almost wanted to kill these two right now and use them to sacrifice to his sword.
He could use them directly to level up the Eight Forms of Godslaying.
But unfortunately, just as killing intent rose in him, he saw a new system notification.
[Hidden Reward - Team Reward: If all companions can be protected from dying to monster attacks during this defense stage, a hidden reward will be granted.]
"Tch!"
After seeing the notification, Ethan quietly withdrew the sword that was itching for action.
He could kill those two idiots whenever he wanted. Waiting until after this stage was fully cleared wouldn't be too late.
"Moron," Harriet cursed softly under her breath. She felt pleased with herself, convinced that Ethan had been fooled by her fake Lord Contract and didn't dare touch them.
And she had actually kept ten earth-element beast cores hidden and hadn't handed them over. Ethan didn't seem to know.
So this round wasn't a complete loss for her.
What she never expected was that Ethan simply saw her as an alternate account that helped collect resources. Once the alternate account was full, he would kill her in one go and make a huge profit.
"Collect!"
[Blade Sparrow Meat +8000]
[Earth-Element Beast Core +1428]
[Wind-Element Beast Core +1302]
[Flying Knife +5789]
'Huh?'
'Flying Knife?'
Hearing the notification for a strange item, Ethan quickly opened his backpack to take a look.
It turned out those metal feathers from the Blade Sparrows actually had a name.
They were called Flying Knives.
'This is pretty interesting.'
This wave of Blade Sparrows had yielded much more than the previous Strong Acid Ants.
At least there was meat and some throwing knives.
And the meat was bird meat.
It looked similar to chicken.
When he got back, he'd have Cook Four make a few dishes: plain sliced sparrow meat, steamed sparrow meat, braised sparrow meat, sparrow stewed with mushrooms, Kung Pao sparrow, spicy sparrow, fried sparrow meat.
'Not bad! Not bad!'
He hadn't eaten chicken in a long time.
'Tonight, chicken dinner. Great luck.'
Just after Ethan finished collecting the Blade Sparrow corpses from the ground...
The second wave of Blade Sparrows arrived.
And this wave had noticeably more Blade Sparrows than the previous one. They formed a huge dark cloud, more than half again as large as the last cloud.
'Is there three thousand Blade Sparrows this time?'
'Or even more?'
'It doesn't matter."
Ethan wasn't in a hurry to take out the Rich Man Arrow. Instead, he casually stabbed two times toward the sky with the Strange Sword Style.
[Strange Sword Style: Experience 9999/10000]
[Strange Sword Style: Experience 10000/10000]
[System Notification: Eight Forms of Godslaying, Fourth Form has reached Great Perfection.]
[Automatically Learned: Eight Forms of Godslaying, Fifth Form — Crescent Form (Experience 0/10000)]
[P.S.: All previous techniques were limited to single-sword combat, one sword against one opponent. But in life, there are always times when one person must face a crowd. Thus the Crescent Form was born. Imagine sword energy as an extension of the blade, and surrounding a group becomes easy.]
BOOM!
In an instant, countless complicated things flooded into Ethan's mind.
At the same moment, he seemed to sense the aura within the Godslayer Sword in his hand. That aura couldn't be described with words, but he could feel the path it flowed through inside the sword.
It was like the feeling of turning his mental power into a Great Fireball.
Very mysterious.
"Crescent Form!"
The moment Ethan tried to use the Crescent Form, he discovered that the aura inside the Godslayer Sword had changed.
The sword energy that had originally been circulating through the blade suddenly gathered at the tip, and as Ethan casually swung toward the sky—
Swish!
A crescent-shaped wave of sword energy flew into the air.
The feeling was like a bullet being fired from a gun, or an arrow shot from a bow, yet it also felt different.
Because in the instant before the sword energy completely left the blade, Ethan truly felt as if that sword energy were an extension of his own arm.
As though he could reach farther in that moment.
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
Countless Blade Sparrows began falling from the sky.
Just one move and Ethan saw his experience value shoot upward.
[Crescent Form: Experience 89/10000]
'Area-of-effect skills are amazing.'
One move gave almost a hundred experience points. At this rate, ten thousand experience points would only take a little over a hundred swings.
"Crescent Form!"
"Crescent Form!!"
Ethan swung his sword wildly, experiencing this new sensation!
It wasn't because he wanted to kill more Blade Sparrows or gain more experience.
He simply wanted to experience it.
To experience the wonder of this special technique that released sword energy outward.
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
Blade Sparrows fell in huge numbers, like hail.
Watching from the side, the stunned Harriet said, "What kind of sword technique is that? It can actually kill monsters from that far away?"