Who Says I’m Not a Legitimate Adventurer?

The instinct of magical beasts to bully the weak and fear the strong made it reach a decision immediately.

It prioritized the prey on the battlefield that looked the weakest and easiest to kill as its first target.

The mutated troll opened its blood-soaked maw and let out an ear-splitting roar.

Its thick lower limbs suddenly exerted force, heavy footsteps stomping across the shallows and kicking up towering sprays of water. Its enormous body charged wildly toward White Rock like an out-of-control heavy war chariot.

“Trying to get through here?”

Lance sneered, his eyes instantly sharpening.

“Did you ask me first?”

The moment the words fell—

The muscles in Lance’s legs bulged violently, and his entire body instantly transformed into a swift black shadow.

Without the slightest fear, he directly cut into the troll’s terrifying charge path.

Facing that moving mountain of flesh head-on, Lance leaped upward, his powerful waist twisting violently in midair.

His right leg compressed like a spring pushed to its absolute limit, carrying a shrill howl that tore through the air as it whipped upward from below.

The Aether Energy Pool within his body erupted with a violent burning roar at that instant.

The Aether energy infused into this strike of 【Azure Dragon Ultimate Flow · Dragon-Leaping Tail】 had been pushed completely to the limit.

“Bang!”

Lance’s right leg smashed heavily into the mutated troll’s thick waist and abdomen.

Yet he did not hear the crisp sound of bones shattering that he had imagined.

Instead, Lance felt as though he had kicked a thick solid tire.

The troll’s dark green rubber-like skin rippled outward like waves on water the instant it suffered the heavy blow.

This bizarre method of dispersing force completely swallowed the overwhelming power behind Lance’s strike.

The troll, having taken no substantial damage, let out an enraged growl.

It directly swung out its giant hand with terrifying wind pressure, smashing back toward Lance in midair.

Unable to evade in time, Lance could only swiftly cross both arms before his chest to forcibly block the attack.

A muffled explosion burst out by the lakeside.

Lance felt both arms go numb as the savage force sent him flying backward several meters.

After landing, his feet plowed two long trenches through the soft shallows before he barely stabilized himself.

Fortunately, the Dragon-Leaping Tail he had unleashed with all his strength had indeed successfully halted the mutated troll’s terrifying charge.

The witch phantom floating in midair could not help inhaling sharply when she saw the scene.

It seemed this Historical Projection Spell Formation had truly been driven into desperation by this black-haired youth.

Under normal circumstances, the monsters generated by the formation simply could not withstand his kind of martial arts.

So the formation had directly created this mutated Forest Troll that had practically stacked all its strengths into defense and monstrous regeneration.

Its sole purpose for being created was to forcibly jam Lance’s smooth grass-cutting slaughter rhythm.

To fulfill the condition of “resisting” the monsters.

After being stopped, the troll became even more frenzied.

It hammered its chest violently and let out another roar before charging at Lance once again with savage momentum, swinging its thick arms wildly.

Facing this horrifying monster that ordinary methods simply could not damage—

Lance had no intention of probing further. A trace of decisiveness flashed through his eyes.

【Dragon Form】 activated!

“Fwoosh!”

As his life force began draining at a horrifying speed—

A mass of scorching white vapor so dense it seemed tangible violently spewed from Lance’s mouth and nose.

His originally black eyes instantly contracted into dark golden vertical pupils.

The muscles of his bare upper body rapidly expanded.

Streams of molten-lava-like light coursed rapidly beneath his skin before quickly condensing into a semi-transparent layer of heavy energy dragon scales over his body.

The surrounding temperature began skyrocketing.

Even the shallow lake water beneath his feet started emitting piercing sizzling sounds from the sudden burst of heat it could not endure.

Large amounts of white steam surged upward, completely enveloping his back as it radiated terrifying pressure.

The mutated Forest Troll had already rushed before Lance amidst raging wind pressure.

It raised its right fist high overhead, the muscles in its thick arm bulging violently as it smashed downward with mountain-crushing force.

And facing that gigantic fist descending like a meteor—

Lance, now in Dragon Form, remained expressionless. Not even the slightest trace of fear could be seen within those dark golden vertical pupils.

He likewise clenched his own right fist tightly, planting both legs firmly in place without dodging as his arm exploded upward in a violent counterpunch.

【Azure Dragon Ultimate Flow · Dragon Horn Strike】

One large and one small fist, completely disproportionate in size, collided violently in midair.

Boom!

A deafening explosion echoed throughout the entire Emerald Star Lake.

A visible white shockwave erupted outward from the point where their fists collided.

The Aether burning effect attached to the dragon scales activated instantly. The troll’s thick dark green skin immediately emitted sizzling scorch sounds as unpleasant white smoke rose into the air.

Under such a terrifying collision of strength—

Not only did Lance fail to retreat even half a step, the boots beneath his feet instead sank deeply into the wet mud.

The forced Natural Armor enhancement granted by Dragon Form, stacked on top of the two powerful Specialties he already possessed, pushed the hardness of his arms to an extremely terrifying level among those of the same rank.

Under the massive recoil impact, the bones in Lance’s arms remained completely unharmed.

But the troll on the opposite side was entirely different.

The crisp sounds of the monster’s massive hand bones cracking layer by layer could clearly be heard in the air.

The intuition Lance had felt earlier had indeed been correct.

With Dragon Form fully unleashed, his overall physical capabilities had already become slightly superior even to ordinary Professional-rank Adventurers.

A troll hatchling like this, which had only barely squeezed into the threshold of the Professional Rank through mutation tricks, simply could not contend head-on against him in this inhuman state.

The witch phantom floating in the sky had already opened her mouth into a perfectly round O of shock.

She had already tried her best internally to overestimate Lance’s combat strength.

But this genius witch had never imagined—

That while still merely an ordinary person who had yet to officially advance classes, he could actually engage in a savage frontal battle against a genuine Professional-rank monster and even clearly overpower it in raw strength.

The instant he established superiority in the clash—

Lance’s follow-up attacks descended like a violent storm.

His sharp battle instincts instantly arrived at the optimal solution.

Since blunt force alone could not effectively damage that rubber-like skin, then he would simply switch to far deadlier physical tearing.

The five fingers of Lance’s left hand instantly curled inward as dense Aether energy surged to the limit at his fingertips.

【Azure Dragon Ultimate Flow · Blazing Rending Claw】

Rip—

A scalp-numbing tearing sound rang out.

Lance’s left hand sliced through the troll’s broad chest like a red-hot blade through butter, meeting absolutely no resistance.

Foul-smelling blood erupted outward.

But Lance immediately sensed the troll’s terrifying regenerative ability that defied common sense.

Almost the instant its flesh was torn apart, the edges of the wound had already begun writhing frantically as countless flesh buds intertwined in an attempt to forcibly heal it shut.

This horrifying combination of defense and regeneration would have been utterly despair-inducing for any ordinary Adventurer.

Unfortunately for this mutated troll—

The one it encountered today was Lance.

Almost at the exact same second he tore open its chest—

Lance’s fingers followed the wound inward, his steel-like fingers forcibly hooking onto the troll’s thick ribs.

Twisting his waist, he violently yanked outward with his arm.