The Tales of Draconic Warlock

I stepped into the portal hoping that it could lead me to a fortune.

When I exited the portal, I was standing in what appeared to be a swamp. I directly entered a swamp. Luckily, I didn't wear any expensive clothes when I entered the portal.

I wore a simple adventure costume.

The costume consists of boots, pants, a vest, a belt and an overcoat. Except for boots and the belt, the remainder are made of cloth. Those two were made of leather.

In addition to this, I hold a staff weapon and also have accessories like rings and necklaces, which provide protection and improve my casting power.

This is what I wear when I go out to hunt monsters.

The world may have developed but the strains did too. The blood from monsters doesn't easily come off. So before entering the portal, I changed my clothes into adventure clothes, which can be cheaply replaced.

Now what remains what to explore this possible secret realm and see what resources and monsters appear in these lands.

I need some powerful monsters in order to upgrade my rank levels quickly. I hope I can find those monsters here and in abundance.

---

It has been three days. I explored quite a bit in these three days.

To make sure that the academy wouldn't become suspicious, I would return in the morning and order food for three at the same time. This is to make them think that I am busy training in seclusion and don't want to waste time ordering three times a day.

If I disappear for too long, someone will notice my absence. This is not like a cultivation novel where one would disappear for months if not for years into seclusion.

Since I am in the academy, I should appear once in a while to someone.

When the food gets delivered, I will be seen by the delivery agent. Moreover, I call home once in a while. It was more than enough for them to keep them out of my quarters while I would be busy exploring the secret realm.

Now coming to the secret realm, I believe I did hit the jackpot, though the fortune may not be as easy or high as I hoped.

I need to further explore the realm to see what this realm is about.

So far the swamps are the only landscape I came across.

There are monsters and all of them are swamp monsters, mostly crocodiles. Their skin would go for a premium, as they were known for their toughness.

The problem was the insect swarms that populated these swamps.

These are not normal insects but mutated ones. Killing them would give EXP but the loot would be very minimal and the work would be very high.

There are only two items that can looted from the insects and that is either their poison or poison needles.

Assassins and Alchemists would be very interested in the poisons, while the needles are only good for assassins.

A lot of gold can be earned from them but extracting poison and the needles from the corpses is too tiring. It's not like they would automatically appear in the Inventory after the monster was killed like in those game novels.

If it was like that, there's no need to worry how you fight but that's not how it works.

When the monster is killed, either you have to extract the resources from it or collect the corpse, which would be sold directly to a merchant. They would hire some butchers and skinners to extract the resources from the dead monster.

Unlike in games, the monster corpses with huge damage would give less profits. So it was advised to kill a monster quickly and efficiently. Destroying the corpse would yield nothing, except as fertilizer for the earth.

Insects appear in swarms and that means one has to deal with thousands of insects at the same time. The most efficient way was to use AOE attacks. The problem was using such attacks, everything would be destroyed including the insect corpses.

There is a high chance that there would be no chance of getting any corpses. Even if by chance a few corpses survive the destruction, collecting them from swamps would be a hassle.

So normally no adventurer would go out to hunt insects on their own unless it was a paid job.

Having too many monsters near a habitat would be disastrous. Adventurers were always trying to earn gold to retire and have a good life.

Hunting insect monsters is a waste of time and the yield would be too low. So the guilds or the local nobles sometimes release tasks to clear some insect nests that were too close to towns or major highways, through which trade happens.

Though there would be no loot, when such tasks appear, the adventurers take the tasks as most of the time they could be cleared using some Ice AOE attacks, which are very good at clearing crowd monsters.

For their trouble, they would be awarded a lot of gold.

The problem was that there was no one releasing such a task for gold to clear these insect nests that I stumbled upon. I had to clear them for no gains at all.

Sure they give some EXP but that's it and it is very small for each insect, though collectively it is a huge chunk if I was still in Tier-3 or below.

With me at Tier-5, this EXP doesn't satisfy my levels. The level number doesn't move for such small changes, especially now that my level has crossed thirty.

I need to find if there any monsters that can fill up the EXP bar quickly or has to abadnon this place and search another realm soon enough.

---

Two weeks later...

It took me two weeks to find something useful from this hellhole.

The swamps would kill the mood to life, forget about hunting the monsters there for earning and increasing your power. Unless those monsters attack, no sane person would attack swamp monsters.

People prefer to fight on land. Even a Tier-9 person likes to have battles on land but they know that if their battles happen on land, there would be irreversible damage to the land. Sure the land would heal itself in time but that wouldn't happen for centuries.

In these centuries, people still have to live on land.

If there are fights between Tier-9 everywhere, then in a few years there will be no land that supports living.

Moreover, healing a piece of land means taking the energy from somewhere. There would be severe changes in the environment of the world.

So it was an unwritten rule that Tier-8 and above shouldn't fight on land, especially Tier-9 people. To make it better, most of the time, Tier-9 wouldn't even fight properly but their lackeys do.

The battle's outcome would be decided by their lackey's strength. Of course, it has to be accepted by the two parties before the battle.

No one would cultivate a Tier-9 or become a Tier-9 to be like an Idol. They are the defenders of the kingdoms and empires. So keeping their battles out of the war would always not be a possibility.

Even though the Tier-9 people like to keep the fight between them short and try to contain them to the sky, it is not their domain. When the battle lasts long, knowingly or unknowingly these fights would be dragged on to the land.

This was because, by birth and genetics, humans are land-based beings. Even if they get the ability to fly or swim freely, activities like battles are restricted if they fight in other domains.

Only when on land can they fight as they wish without any restrictions.

Anyway, what I am saying is that people like to fight on land, especially dry land, not on wetlands like swamps where moving is a nightmare, no matter the direction.

When even movement is problematic forget about fighting. It would not be just the water in the swamps that would be problematic.

The swamp monsters hiding in these swamps, overgrown trees and the horrible insects that are present everywhere flying over the swamp waters.

Swamps are a total nightmare. I wanted to abandon this secret realm but unfortunately, I spent a lot of resources to activate the portal that would lead me to this secret realm.

So in order to abandon, I needed to find sufficient resources to activate another secret realm.

Lucky for me I had to stay behind because I found a gold mine, not a literal one. What I meant was there are a lot of Tier-5 and Tier-6 monsters. There is a possibility that Tier-7 monsters are also present but I haven't encountered them as of now.

The final decision is out. I am going to make the best use of this realm and reach Peak Tier-5 before the end of the semester.

After that, I can take on a Tier-6 promotion mission, while the world would believe that I reached Tier-2, and wouldn't get too suspicious of my rank.