14 Ennemy

As always these days, Erik was practicing everything he could at the same time, like cultivating, controlling energy, moving around. He was boosting his learning speed to the max, trying to obtain power in the fastest way possible. Blaze, a fire user, also a feline, was simply relaxing as only a cat could do, sleeping on the ground by the riverside, directly assaulted by sunlight.

Thanks to Blaze, Erik was full of life energy and he could feel a lot of changes in his body. For example, his bark was unnaturally hard, now it would be much more resilient if attacked by a small animal, but Erik still didn't know if he could take on a dangerous beast like Blaze in direct combat.

Erik was going around the cat, shifting his roots in the earth to push himself in the desired direction. He felt himself have better control over his body then right when he obtained it, he was able to move in a superior way.

It was not that he had greater access to his body, just that he felt more intimate with it, as he slowly learned what were the best ways to move his limbs to go somewhere. He still felt really restricted, since he could not do any elaborate movement like sweeping the air with his branches.

At the same time as moving, Erik was compressing energy while letting it out continually, getting the feeling that his command over it was becoming better. He was not improving tremendously fast, he simply developed his skills slowly but surely, practicing with every minute he had.

It was while doing this kind of training that Erik was spotted by the hunters. They were not able to detect his core with their enhanced item, they had simply followed the indicated direction toward Blaze.

Now they had encircled the two and were analyzing the situation. Being at a distance of one hundred meters, using special items to see, they were undetectable by either the plant or the beast. Around a certain tree, they could see through their special binoculars a high concentration of the world's vitality, the air was completely full of it.

It was obvious that this tree shaped like an umbrella was not a normal one, they easily guessed that it possessed a core. The hunters could only rejoice, a plant's core was very precious, much more than a beast one. A core that an animal formed could be used to make an enhanced item of any category of energy, as long as the cultivator was talented in it, but it was nowhere as effective as the one a plant produces.

Those core would only enable one type of energy to be used, the one that filled it the most after life energy, which no normal cultivator could put in an object, as it was a mysterious energy. Even though he did not decide on the element, the cultivator didn't have to understand it to make an enhanced item. This didn't mean that skill in enhancing was not need, it could actually change the rank of the object.

What is not needed is a deep cultivation, simply talent, and experience. It was also much more powerful compared to a beast's core, so it was something you could not necessarily buy with money, you would also need enough authority.

To the hunters, it was an obligation to get the tree, as their pay would go up massively. They didn't know why it had suddenly appeared in the forest after a few weeks, but they simply put it on luck. As for the cat, it was not needed alive, they simply planned to kill it.

"Start the attack. Move them away from each other, we don't want to destroy the tree" Said the captain to his team.

Immediately, they encircled the beast, getting closer while preparing a net to weaken it. What they couldn't have planned was that Erik was not just a tree, he actually possesses a human mind. When Erik sensed the life energy of a humanoid form, he knew something was up. Rapidly, he pushed sun energy out of his body, trying to warn Blaze from what seems like a human attack.

"Such bad luck... I hope they won't go after me, but that is simply wishful thinking. I need to find a way to evade them, or I'll probably be used to make an enhanced item or something."

The cat woke up from its deep sleep and started running away from the obnoxious sun energy. It didn't want to be too much distant, just enough to stop feeling so bad. The feline was actually going straight into a hunter, who was surprised by the sudden unpleasant sensation of sun energy and the unpredictable movement from Blaze. He couldn't react in time before he got struck down by the scared beast, which looked surprised of finding a human in its path just like that.

As if the signal had been given, the fight broke out, other hunters coming to help their companion.