Astral Dragon Monarch

Xin rubbed her eyes as she stared at the receeding back of the black haired young man.

"Was I seeing things, or did that dagger just appear out of thin air?"

Only a cultivator at the peak Rank 9 of the third stage of the higher mortal tier could disintegrate an object into nothing and manifest it at will.

"He's not one of the Overlords, is he?"

She could not even feel an infinitesimal amount of sāi emanating from the noodle boy, cutting that possibility completely out of the list, so the only reasonable possibility left was that she was seeing stuff.

'The heat must really be getting to me..'

Anyways, the noodle boy still intrigued her, more so as he was heading straight towards the parts of the beast lands where high level beasts roamer.

She withdrew her sāi aura, then abruptly stopped midway and scratched the back of her head.

"What's the point of hiding my sāi aura anyways? Its not like he can sense my energy."

Slowly but surely, Shen trailed the beast footprints, and Xin trailed Shen.

***

Shen soon found himself facing the mouth of an eerily deep cave.

A suffocatingly heavy amount of killing intent oozed out of the gaping hole, but he was unfazed.

"Its not even quarter as heavy as that of the horrid worm creature..."

It was said, that once bitten someone would become twice as shy, but after one had almost been stabbed by a sword and survived, would he then be scared of a pencil? Especially if he had a high level dagger in his palms.

"And besides, mundane level beasts are supposed to be the weakest bunch in the hierarchy.

How hard could it be?''

Shen mused to himself as he brazenly marched into the cave, not even the slightest trace of fear in his eyes.

He had a high level dagger that poisoned the enemy, what was there to be scared of?

With a high level beast weapon, killing mundane level beasts would be as easy as killing ants.

Well, that was what he thought, as a massive ant managed to notice the small human figure and began screeching at him. The size difference between the ant and him was at least two feet wide, not to mention that it had sharp mandibles and a fearsome stinger.

Shen gulped saliva down his dry throat and froze on the spot.

All of the killing intent was directed at him and him alone.

Back with the horrid eldritch creature from earlier, its killing intent and bloodlust had been directed to Xin and her group, yet it managed to affect him to a degree, however, this time there was no group of cultivators around him to handle the beast's attention, and it was up to him alone.

But, taking a rather deep breath, Shen calmed down his fluttering heart and stated back at the creature, the black Poisonous Peril clutched tightly in his palms.

Was he a melee fighter?

He had no idea.

But he did have some sort of understanding on how daggers were to be used, so he used all the strength he could muster and dashed towards the beast. He ran with lightening speed, easily crossing the distance between them in a second...

Only to realize that he had not even covered half the distance between him and the beast.

This would probably be because of his agility stat being at a meagre one.

Weak beasts like these were usually wary of humans, but today, it was inwardly thanking the heavens that it had gotten a free meal!

The humans it met were usually lightening fast and extremely strong, but this fool was barely as quick as a snail type beast.

The ant looked up at the roof of the cave once again as if to thank the heavens and bless its meal, before it dived towards Shen with hunger and bloodlust in its eyes.

"Shit..."

Shen could only curse, as the giant ant pounced on him and continuously tried to bite his head off.

Trying to push the creature off him was absolutely useless, as his strength was at rock bottom.

No.

He was the friggin transmigrator.

He had a freaking system.

"I'm... not... going... TO DIE HERE!!"

He put his arm in between the beasts mandibles and his face, while he held the other Poisonous Peril tightly in his other hand with a reverse grip.

The ant creature chewed on his now mangled hand, however his grip on the dagger in that hand did not falter one bit.

With each bite the beast took, the dagger slightly pierced into the jaw of the creature and poisoned it bit by bit.

Now, he just had to wait till the poison began to take effect in the creatures bloodstream and hope that his arm held, because once it's jaws clenched down on his face, it would be game over for him.

His heart raced faster as he lost all feeling in his arm desperately holding the beasts jaws away from his face. Almost all the flesh on his hand had been eaten up, and the bones were in then verge of crumbling from the pressure, when the creature stumbled a bit.

'Now's my chance!...'

In Shen's mind, he had swung the other dagger and cleanly sliced off the head of the ant like creature, but his body refused to move.

Time seemed to slow down and his thoughts flashed past in seconds.

Why did he feel like something bad would happen should he strike at that moment?

A nanosecond later, and his eyes widened in shock.

'Do ants even have a bloodstream?!'

The bone in his arm cracked and the beast was moments away from digging into his skull.

He had to make a decision, and quickly while he was at it.

His fist clenched tighter over the hilt of the dagger as he steeled his resolve. He was transmigrated, thus definitely he had a purpose other than dying in the maw of an ant.

An ant of all creatures!

What kind of web novel would have a protagonist die from an attack by the lowest level beast there was?

Not the kind that he would want to read, for sure.

He clenched his feet, shut his eyes tightly, and lashed out the dagger towards the middle of the creatures eyes.

A loud squelch swiftly followed and his hand was wet and slimy.

'Did it... just swallow my hand?!'