Ikari.(2)

Akira immediately started to will himself to turn back into human form as he didn't know how to do so otherwise. At first, it wasn't working but a few seconds later, he felt his body growing smaller rapidly. Soon enough, Akira fully returned to his human form and he stood up with a smile on his face as he looked down at his naked body. He then thought, 'So that's how it feels to become a Great Ape. All I need to do now is remember this feeling without causing myself to return to the Great Ape form.'

Akira stood still with his eyes closed and tried to find that feeling once again. It took extremely long to do so as capturing that feeling without turning back into the ape was something that couldn't be done easily. He stood in that exact same spot all throughout the night as no animal dared to linger around that area. This was because the aura of the Oozaru was still radiating off of Akira.

[The next day, around mid-morning]

It was a clear day as the sun shone on upon the forest, capturing all of nature in its light. Many beasts were laying in it, some feared it but one young man looked like he was just bathing in it as he stood there unfazed by the heat. He was breathing heavily as veins popped up all over his body, signifying that his body was being strained severely. If one looked closely, they could see that his muscles had grown immensely along with a minor increase in height. Before, he was about 4'10, and now, he was around 5'3. His long black spiky hair had grown considerably as it had now stopped at his lower back. His usual bangs that covered his eyes were slightly longer, giving him a wild, beast-like appearance.

Suddenly, the veins that were popping up gradually started to recede but his new muscle atrophy stayed the same. Akira then opened his eyes and if someone else was there to see them, the first thing they would notice is that both of them were now yellow.

'I managed to reach the first stage about an hour after I started last night and after so long I finally achieved the second stage. The pain I'm enduring will be worth it when I finally master this form and make it my new 'base.' I wonder if maybe a third stage would be available when I master it? Well, I will find out in the future, for now, I'll keep training and fighting until this forest is empty.'

Akira struggled to walk at first for a short bit because of the pain but the increased number of endorphins in his body quickly solved that problem. Akira barely touched a tree as he was passing and it created a large dent, almost completely breaking the tree in half. He was surprised in his mind as he realized his strength had increased further than he had thought and he could feel himself getting stronger at every passing moment. But, regardless he continued heading towards the next set of beasts he noticed, as controlling his strength wasn't anything hard.

He could hear the beasts running from him as they sensed his malevolent aura rapidly coming closer. Akira enjoyed a good chase so he boosted through the forest with his hyperspeed, catching up to the beasts that were running from him in no time. As it turned, it was a pack of wolves that numbered around 10. They still wanted to escape as growled at Akira ferociously, watching as he walked closer to them nonchalantly. Feeling cornered, a few of them attacked him in hopes of ripping him to shreds but unfortunately, Akira punched their heads so hard that it busted open on impact.

Akira wasn't too surprised this time around as his current strength was well within his expectations. The rest of the wolves howled as they saw this and charged at him furiously, all of their eyes bloodshot with rage.

'Triple Strikes.'

Their bodies started dropping like flies as Akira kicked each of them in the head, quickly resigning to the same fate the earlier wolves had experienced. As he killed, Akira felt his bloodlust grow rapidly, as before he could even track the next set of beasts, his body seemed to be doing it for him. He let out a slight laugh as he said to himself, "I really need to keep this bloodlust under control! If I don't it wouldn't be long until I start killing people for sport. Tch, it's a good thing I'm not with Yujiro anymore as he would do nothing more than encourage me to do exactly that."

Akira picked up a few wolves and skinned them with his bare hands, making a few fur pelts that he used to cover himself. The rest of the meat he took back to the ape hideout that he had to problem cleaning up the survivors from. The hideout just mostly consisted of a few caves close to a river but he didn't need anything more than that to survive. As he put down his dinner (the wolves) and walked out of the cave, the first thing he looked for is a cliffside that he could use to train. It took a short while to find something similar as he just decided to follow the river which ended in a short but steep waterfall. Akira walked under the waterfall and got down into a Shiko-dachi karate stance, not in the least being fazed by the water pressure beating down on his body.

Akira then started to punch the underbelly of the waterfall, doing Seiken's over and over. He wasn't worried about any animals coming to take his dinner as he could hear/smell them before they even got that close so he focused his mind almost entirely on training. Akira eventually came up with a rotation of activities that would maximize the amount of time he trained and rested for daily. Every morning, around 5, he would get up and the first thing he would do is hunt beasts for about 2 hours, killing everything he can in that timeframe. Staying in his Ikari form had gotten easier as the days went on and before he knew it, he didn't realize that he was in the form anymore. As he wanted, it basically became his base.

The rest of the day was split up into all types of taekwondo, karate, and the unarmed attacks of the Moonlight Sword Style. When he wasn't training techniques, he trained in basic punches, kicks, elbows, and knee attacks. For each body part, he would do about 20,000 sets a day. The rest of the time was used to eat and rest. Eventually, Akira took his training to the next level and started to train underwater, aiming to make his hits as fast as they were on land. As he ramped the difficulty up more, he noticed that the time he could spend underwater was steadily increasing. At first, it was about 3 minutes and after about a week, that time increased to about 50 minutes. It didn't take more than several seconds to catch his breath so his training speed was still fast.

After about two months, Akira could do around 60,000 sets a day for each limb. Scars were already all over his body but the ones on his fists, knees, elbows, and feet were clearly deeper than the rest. He could stand on the bed of the river bed and fight as fast as he could on land with the water offering barely any resistance to his attacks. Most of the forest was cleared out and Akira had grown much stronger over time.

Currently, Akira could be seen standing over the corpses of a few soldiers who had been sent by the military to train there. They originally thought he was a beast with how fast he moved and had fired at him so he just retaliated accordingly. He knew the military wouldn't investigate so he had no qualms about killing them. He was shot a few times but bullets didn't do much but cause a little bit of blood to spill out which quickly healed. Looking up into the sky, Akira just laughed and left the scene, returning to his usual routine.

[1 month later]