Gem
Every time Ryu felt that he took another step toward his goals, his body would suddenly feel alive, surging with vitality as though each one of his cells had been injected with qi to the point of nearly bursting at their seams.
He didn't even particularly care that he had killed such a talented Ancestral Beast in just a few moves. The weight of the achievement itself was practically meaningless, it was rather the deeper underbelly that rocked his soul and filled him with an overwhelming pride.
The other two griffins who had been blown away by their first exchange stood in their own locations, seemingly frozen in time. They couldn't even seem to wrap their heads around what they had seen.