A fight of life and death
This forest was called the Dark Night Forest, and was the largest one known to man. All around the forest were 15 big countries, but even if one was to combine them, it still wouldn't be a match to the Forest in size. That's why every country competed against each other in the forest and had thousands of hunters who would go into the forest's outskirts to practice magic, make a living, tame a pet and other things that would help them. So it wasn't shocking that Simon met some hunters, because he wasn't even near the middle of the forest. He would have to travel thousands upon thousands of kilometers to get near the center of the forest, which had plenty of King rank beasts. No one dared go near the center because the strongest person in all of the countries was only at the rookie King class, and all the other countries only had peak master ranks at best.
"Steve, John go block it's path", Adrian said and took his sword out of the sheath.
Simon tried running away, because he had the lower hand in this battle, but all of the youths quickly blocked of his escape routs.
Simon let out a terifying roar and released his chilling blue aura.
" Oh fuck, it's stronger than us", the youth named John screamed in shock.
"It's okay, there's three of us and we got it surrounded, we should be able to win. If we kill it, i think our magic would take one step forward. ", Adrian comforted his teammates. They quickly got back from the shock and took their swords out as well.
" This is a life and death situation, i can't be merciful to them just because i was a human at one point too", thought Simon.
Jack and Steve were twins and both studied wind magic, while Adrian studied electricity magic. The twins slowly came closer and suddenly both attacked with a wind slash, as if they were both the same person. Adrian wasn't sleeping too, he thrusted his sword forward which made beams of lightning come out of the sword's tip. The trio expected to kill the lynx in this classic attack of theirs.
Suddenly Simon let out a gravity field from his body, which made the two wind slashes ineffective, and then he barely dodged the lightning attack, which made the trio question if they should've attacked this lynx.
"It knows gravity magic!?", Adrian spurted out.
Everyone knew that only super strong and rare beasts studied more than one type of magic, and the trio thought that this lynx only knew cold magic, but they were shocked to see that it could use two.
No one even reacted in time as Simon abruptly jumped straight at Steve who was taken off guard and took a devastating hit as the lynx tore his throat out.
"Little brother!", Jack screamed painfully
"kahhh..blergh.. avenge me...", said Steve and died on the spot.
" noooo..... You vile beast.... I'll torture you in the most painfull ways for this!", said Jack with his eyes bloodshot.
Jack jumped straight at Simon and started swinging his sword crazily. Even with Simon's gravity field, he couldn't stop all of the attacks and felt that his front leg and shoulder started leaking cold blood.
"Gravity punch!", Simon roared in his head. Gravity punch was an attack that compressed the air into a fist, with who'm you could attack the enemy. The fist punched straight into Jack's abdomen and sent him flying. Blood started trickling from the corner of his mouth.
While they were fightin, Adrian let out more lightning bolts who got through Simon's defense, burnt and schocked him.
"Jack, it's stunned, kill it!", screamed Adrian. Jack leaped up in the air and used all of his remaining mana to strike with this one strongest blow.
" Im not dying today!", thought Simon and used his light claws ability with all of his might. The two spells cancelled each other completely, but while Jack was falling to the ground, Simon already casted another spell.
"Light spears!",screamed Simon in his head and used his most powerful light spell, which casted three beatiful spears that shot straight at Jack's vitals.
Jack tried to defend and delflected the first and dodged the second spear, but the third pierced his heart easily. He died instantly.
After Adrian saw both of his teammates dying, he started strugling and his attacks became more rushed and less effective so Simon dodged or defended against them easily. Seeing that his attacks weren't working, Adrian said desperately, " If I'm going to die, your comming with me you cursed beast!". As he said theese words, he started rushing at Simon and making the mana inside of him crooked, so he could explode himself in order to destroy anyone or anything near him.
"Shit, I've got to run!", Thought Simon, but it was already to late. " BOOOOM", there rang out a gigantic explosion, which could be compared to a high level bomb.
After a couple of minutes, the dust settled and there could be seen a big crater in which a half dead lynx layed without one of it's legs.
four days later...
Simon slowly woke up, and the first thing he felt was unbearable pain in his left leg. He saw that he no longer had two legs, only one. Everyone knew that when someone reached the high rank, he or she would be able to rebuild their fingers, but beasts had way better healing properties, so if they spent a lot of time concentrating and healing, they could rebuilt lost limbs. So Simon emediatly started iniciating the healing process.
2 months later...
Simon woke up and saw that his left leg had healed. Emediatly he felt as if he hadn't eaten for years. Although unwillingly, he ate the corpses of Jack and Steve. It was hard for him, because he was human too, but after becoming a beast, he didn't feel much for humans. When he was eating Jack's body he found that in his pocket was a letter. The letter wrote - "The Dragon city council invites you to a tournament in which people of medium to elder rank will be competing. The first to third places will be rewarded with a generous prize. The tournament will take place at the city arena, one year after getting this letter".
Simon knew that he was healing for a long time and it took time for the hunters to get here, so he realized that he had about half a year's time to get into the fourth rank's peak stage, so that he could shapeshift and participate in this tournament. He wanted the prize, because with a lot of money, he would be able to buy rare beast bloodlines to make him stronger and travel around the fifteen countries.
" I need to get stronger quickly", said Simon and started cultivating.
( Author's note: I'm mostly going to stop writing Simon said, Adrian said, etc. because most of the time it's obvious who said it :) ).