43 Something Is Wrong

A gentle sun shined on the Blood Forest, bringing his warm touch on every plant and animal that moved in that region where even the earth had a crimson hue.

On the ground, hidden behind a thorny bush, a small rabbit was feeding on a long brown tuber, using his large frontal teeth to consume it. The sound of its continuous and rapid chewing resounded all around, making the creature somewhat nervous: the rabbit continuously looked around, moving his azure round eyes to scan his surrounding searching for danger.

Suddenly the creature seemed to sense something and rapidly looked towards the north, its long ear sticking up and its body readying to start running away. Yet, when the tense rabbit didn't see anything suspicious, it began to calm down. When it was almost going to return to his tuber, its long ears captured a swooshing sound coming from above it. The animal abruptly looked up and the last thing he saw was a grey figure, falling towards the ground.

The creature in question was a crow, a large bird that killed the small rabbit with a single talon attack. Which was strange: crows weren't supposed to be that strong, but this one was clearly not a common member of the species. Even the color of his own plumage, gray with some stripes of white and few spots of black, was incredibly particular.

The animal looked around, intelligence sparkling in its eyes, puffing his chest with a proud expression on his face. Who dared fight against it? They just needed to come forward and it would beat them to death! It even won a fight against a wildcat once! Plus, the crow felt its strength growing by the day! Now, there wasn't much that scared it.

Well, if not counting... the sneaky traitorous snake! The bird shrouded at that far memory. That demon that almost killed it when it was only an infant!

Even now, it would check its surroundings twice each time that it would go down to drink, not wanting to be surprised by another sneak attack. However, thanks to that moment, he managed to activate his ancestral memories and know who it really was.

The grey crow looked at the sun, its eyes fixing themselves on the far sphere of fire without any damage being done to them.

It then chuckled like a human being, and moved its long beak towards his prize. It was time to eat!

"Wooo"

Before the creature could take its first bite, a maddened howl echoed from behind the plants that were near it. Eyes widening in shock, the bird was petrified when it saw a bloody red wolf emerging from the thorny bush. The red wolf, a very big exemplary, was madly running around, its mouth filled with white foam and his reddened eyes filled with fear and grief.

The crow felt terror invade it: while it was sure of itself against other birds and even smaller mammals, it didn't dare to fight against a red wolf. It wouldn't dare attack a common red wolf, let alone the crazy strong one before him.

However, the wolf didn't even seem to notice the crow, running straight into a tree and crashing into the ground trembling. A low and painful wail emerged from his bloody mouth, as he tried to get up multiple times. Each time, he trembled in agony and couldn't do anything but fall down again.

The grey crow looked with horror at the strange phenomena that were happening to the red wolf, forgetting the fear that it just felt against the creature. What was causing it to behave like that? Was it a sickness?

Before long, the answer came. A shadow darted from the same direction that the wolf had emerged, placing itself right before the downed creature.

The crow, not too much far from this black figure, could see its shape and felt a shiver of fear running down its spine. A black serpent!

When it saw its eyes, the shivers of fears became tremors of terror. It was him! It was the devil! The bird wanted to take his prey and fly away, but then he remembered something. Its eyes ran to the sun for a few seconds, starting to shine with a golden hue. The bird seemed to regain confidence: it puffed his chest with pride, opening his beak, ready to issue a challenge.

However, what happened next made it close its mouth and start shaking in fear.

The red wolf summoned all his last strength, howling loudly to the clear sky and then getting up with a maddened look in his eyes. He darted toward the snake, with explosive force, his sharp fangs ready to tear the reptile apart.

The snake snickered, a pitying look appeared in his violet eyes. He didn't even move to avoid the assault. Instead, a strange silver aura started to emerge from the black scales that covered his body.

The silver light brought with it a sense of death, doom, and gloom that the crow had never experienced in its short life. Then under his petrified eyes, the wolf suddenly stopped in mid-air and then was sent flying towards the same tree that he crashed into before. The snake started hissing with an amused expression, as more silver energy formed around him and the wolf started to rhythmically move in the air and fall to the ground repeatedly.

The large bird was shocked beyond words: his eyes almost gauged out of his eye sockets seeing an adult red wolf being tossed in the air and crashed into the ground like it was nothing.

A feeble creaking sound emerged from his beak, almost an involuntary response to the bizarre scene that he was seeing.

The serpent sensed the sound, immediately moving his head towards the bird, looking at it with his violet eyes.

Under the examination of those eyes that populated his worst nightmare, the crow completely lost it: screeching in panic, the bird started to move its wings in a strange fashion, attracting the attention of the figure before him even more.

'Hmm? where did I see that thing again?' Darkscale felt some sense of familiarity when he saw a large bird moving weirdly around. It flew up for a few feet, then crashed down on the hard rock.

The strange thing was that he didn't even realize that the bird was there before hearing that sound it made. Which was very strange: normally the reptile was able to sense the presence of everyone around him.

'Maybe I was too much concentrated on training my Will Manipulation... ' thought the snake trying to find a solution on that little mystery. The crow itself didn't seem anything special: although it reminded him of something that he couldn't quite put his finger on, there really wasn't anything else that's weird about it. Well, maybe the color of the plumage.

Darkscale wanted to investigate further, but he was interrupted.

'Master, we have a problem... ' Carlelia suddenly said. The MAID hadn't talked to him in a while.

She seemed to have understood that he was pissed at her, and she stopped trying to start a conversation with him. She even stopped her old routine about how much he was in need of new souls to keep the ring operating well.

'Oh, that stupid human has finally started begging forgiveness?' It had been six days since he last saw the green haired human. He spent his time healing for a couple of days, then he began training his Will Manipulation. After his encounter with death, he had changed a bit his approach towards learning new ways to defend himself. Even if they were boring to train in, he needed them to have more tools in a fight.

In these past few days, he truly made some good advancement in his Manipulation Skills. His cultivation had proceeded well enough, even without the use of the pool of white water that was inside the Blue Cave. He actually didn't need to go to the Ghost Pond when he had so much Blood Energy available in the ground. This Blood Woods was truly an incredible place for people with his Heavenly Battleground Technique.

Sure, it wasn't like when he used it on the battlefield a week ago, but it was still the same rate of improvement of the Ghost Pond. But maybe that was only because the souls that were contained in the pool were very old.

'No... she's fine, but we are almost out of energy' announced the Artificial Intelligence.

"Again, I already told you to not use cultivator's time perception when talking to me!" he answered Darkscale annoyed. Here we go, when he finally was seeing some progress she immediately knew how to ruin it.

"Master, I am using your sense of time. It is very bad." tried to explain Carelia.

"Mine? How much is left, a week?" mockingly answered the reptile, shaking his head. Why wouldn't she just listen to him and stopped bothering him with this stupid energy quest?

"No, master... four days"

"???"