Chapter 4 Training In The Forest of Hell

As I absorbed the many essence orbs, I learned that Volaris gave me so many because the essence orbs hat little in them and progress was painstakingly slow, I had to make a choice to choose what to focus on making the most with them.

Maybe this isn't slow at all but as I have no prior experience or training before, to me right now it's slow, so I focus on just advancing my body training. By doing so I can acquire more essence from the monsters I kill to increase my grade then, I honestly can't wait to use the great sword and hunt the monsters for more essence and practice.

One week goes by, practicing the sword and absorbing the essence balls surprisingly took care of hunger and stamina, another plus, but now that I finished them all I approach the door at the end of the storage space, I am ready to go outside.

The door opens by itself as usual and I walk down another circular smooth tunnel until I see this platform made of stone. There is an amulet that is in the middle, I pick it up and the upon contact I feel a connection with the platform, like I know how do get back here when I leave no matter how far i go. This is perfect for me not getting lost.

Stepping onto it a yellow glow emerges from the platform and when the glow stops and my vision returns I am standing on a similar platform and I am now surrounded by a foggy forest, I am back in the misty forest.

With massive trees on filling up the forest I climb up one of them, with the weight of the sword my climb up a 15 meter tall tree took a little bit. I already hear furious roars a lot closer than I feel comfortable, yet delighted, there might be a battle there and I might see a chance to get some essence.

I quickly follow the sound of their battle to find a bear and a pack of nine wolves, I use my newfound strength to climb up one of the massive trees that fill this forest and jump from tree to tree until they are all in my area of absorption which is twenty meters so I can absorb whoever dies.

The bear is nine meters tall and eleven meters long with the wolves around the same height and length as the wind leopard.

The battle is flipping the forest around them upside down with their immensely destructive battle with the two different sides wielding power only found in the geniuses of the continent.

This forest is said to have creatures with the blood of the ancient beasts of old in them. It is why the protective mist fills this forest to keep what is left intact, but I don't know how true that old story is.

The wolves with lighting talent that made them fast and their attacks have very destructive potential and the bear with earth talent that made him sturdy and hard to damage, all at high-level manipulation, a bloody is dance ensuing before me and it mesmerizes me, I will surpass this level soon and I can't wait to wield such power.

A change in the fight brings me back to reality when the bear uses a clever trap by luring one of the wolves into taking a bite out of his right hind leg and when it uses its lighting magic to back off quickly there the bear removed all the dirt except the surface, the wolf fell into the pit which quickly closed in and crushed it. This all happened in a second that it was very hard to keep up.

Essence from the dead wolf that no one except me can see flows up and over into my body much more than the orbs I absorbed in the shrine. it was equal to 20 of the small shrine orbs. I was putting it all into strengthening my body.

The rest of the pack learned to be careful of the ground so he couldn't pull off that trick again, but it also made them less aggressive giving the bear a breather. Watching the fight from up above allowed me to see something moving around in the trees as well. Focusing on what was causing the activity two trees over. It shoots down onto a wolf that moved right under that tree faster than I could blink impaled the wolf with its fangs then shot back up the tree and went into hiding again.

That thing was bigger than the prison carriage, I always hated spiders and now I know it was justified and goosebumps rise all over my body from my greatest arachnophobia nightmare come to life. Shadow spiders I know we're only a little bigger than a dog, but this one was 5 meters long with the legs added and almost five meters tall counting its enormous ass.

Cold sweat ran down my back witnessing the powerful and brutal creatures of this forest that could be anywhere and kill you if you let down your guard for even a second. Finally hitting home just how dangerous this forest is.

A wave of essence travels over to me once again and I put it into my manna pool this time. I realized it will be a while before I am strong enough to use my weapon properly, even more so to be fast and strong enough to keep up and kill such creatures. I have to put off training my body and great sword for later until I can protect myself.

Magic the higher rank it is the more manna it takes to wield, but the higher rank they are also increasing their power exponentially. With S- grade magic, it takes a lot of manna to even summon a small flame or light beam. Though with such great essence I will soon have enough manna to shoot one fireball or light beam. I also can use a lot less mana and just summon a flash of light to blind my foes, learned this from my experiments during the week.

The newcomer in the battle stops it completely, the wolf pack gathers together and retreats into the forest while the bear looks at the tree with the spider, I watch as the giant spider starts quickly escaping using webs spread out to the few trees near it that I only now notice since its crawling on them.

When the spider is escaping the big brown bear thrusts into a sprint and makes it under the tree quickly with the spider quickly, then the ground looks like it starts shrinking looking like it became bouncy? And then it jumps! The now bouncy ground shooting the bear right up to where the spider is high up in the air between two trees.

The spider in an obvious panic shoots webs out covered in dark elements seeming to make them sharper tougher and stickier to try defending itself to give it a chance to escape again, but the attack does almost no visible damage to it, the bear just ignores it and smacks the spider with an overhead swipe sending it crashing down into the ground.... hard.

Boom! a large crater forms at the crash site and the bear land right on top of it, if it wasn't dead yet, it is now. Essence starts flowing into me, a little more than I got from both the wolves. This was the craziest, coolest thing I have ever seen. That bear is.... very scary I have to admit.

I decide to wisely avoid the bear if at all possible, I still want to live after all. That fight and how the bear used such creative ideas opened up a new world to me though. I started to think of new ideas on how to use my talents in battle which I am very thankful for.

But even with the two wolves and giant spider bringing my palm up I try conjuring a fireball, with only a little wisp of flame a bit bigger than my middle finger. I even became incredibly tired from using all my manna just for basically a candle flame.

Sucking the flame back into my body to get at least half my manna back, tapping into my inner monkey I start jumping from tree to tree following the earth bear to see if I can score more essence from its kills.

Just finishing eating the wolves and spider prob made him full, there might be an unlucky creature that crosses him if I am lucky.

As I am following the bear I see what I think is a large burrow in the tree I just jumped into, I hop over through the branches and get near it. Placing my back to the tree I peek inside and see a raccoon one and a half meters big sleeping inside.

Such a golden opportunity will not come often, I creep over slowly until I am right infront of it and slowly raise my sword into the air, then it opens its eyes looking right at me.

"Go broke or go home" I shout as I swing down as hard as I can. The raccoon quickly jumps back but not before a fair scratch appears on its face. The monster opens its mouth and screeches, I was already rushing towards it and was already in front swinging down a second strike.

The raccoon swings its claws to slash and block my great sword, but upon contact, my sword goes right through its hand, down its arm, and leaves through a its chest. I look in bewilderment at my sword and so does the raccoon. Damn it's sharp, Volaris gave me a really good sword.

This sword is at least close peak rank weapon, weapons armor and tools have different ranks like inferior grade, middle grade, superior grade, and peak grade. There is only one peak grade in the griffin kingdom and the royal family has it.

Turning my attention back to the raccoon and so does it, I see this unwillingness in its eyes before it falls to the ground. Another large amount of essence though not as large as the wolfs, flows into me and I put it into my body this time. I know what I said before but I didn't know how sharp this sword is, outside in the continent, all the best weapons are made with the hide, claws, and teeth of powerful creatures with ancient beast blood.

All creatures have ancient blood in them here including the raccoon, so you can see just how hard and sharp its claws are, looking back it was stupid to try to keep fighting it, or even trying to sneak attack it in the first place.

It would have overpowered me easily and it is much faster than me too, with its powerful wood talent I should be dead. My impossibly sharp sword caught it by surprise which allowed me to cat a fatal cut which is the only reason I am still alive.

I am happy that this one was alone and didn't have a family in here which is more often the case with raccoons. Then I remembered the screech it gave off and froze "What if it did have others and they were just out getting food?"

I start to immediately run when I all of a sudden hear a very familiar sounding screech very close to the tree.