Chapter 7

For obvious reasons, I didn't learn everything the panther showed me. But what I learned was meaningful enough to be put to practice immediately. That is also the reason I did not suffer serious injuries after the fight.

By the time the panther began to not care about its life I already learned of its patterns and the essence behind its most useful and powerful moves. And the life and death battle afterwards occurred just at the right time.

Thus, I began to polish some of my moves, trying to incorporate the essence of the movements of the panther into the ones I use.

I was having a wonderful time learning new methods to fight, but the little fox reminded me that we are still on the run.

Thus, I had to put some effort into the real battle to end it early. Nevertheless, the panther was a worthy opponent, maybe tomorrow I would have forgotten about it.

But that is just the way it is, foes appear at every corner, some are great sparring partners and some are just prey waiting to be slaughtered; at the end of the day there can be a lot of opponents in this mountain and if you stop to even reminiscence about your past foes not even digesting what you learned from them, then you would be doomed.

In short, the panther was useful, but what I would remember is what I learned and not the panther itself.

Maybe we would even eat some panther meat later in the future.

As said before, that is how this place works.

We started sprinting again towards the horizon, trying to get out of this place before some mighty beast appeared and we ended up hunted.

Going around the forest almost in circles, planting false tracks and involving other beast to run with us was not an easy work.

After doing this almost the entire day we slumped into our territory without energy left to even move a finger.

the way back towards our house was really difficult, but we made it safely.

Just to be sure, before making our way into our house, we searched everything around our territory to make sure the lizard that was hunting us two days ago wasn't nearby, or any other animal for that matter.

So here we are, in our "safe" heaven.

If I end up choosing freedom, what I would miss the most would be this kind of days. Where I end the day after spending all my energy in an adventure with the little fox.

It may be dangerous, but it's a good way to pass the time.

Then again, it's not decided if I will leave of if I will stay here.

But sometimes thoughts like these creep into my mind.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I dont want to die if I choose to get out of the mountain if I get tired of the environment here.

Whatever reason I have now does not matter. I still have plenty of time before becoming powerful enough for the wall to recognize me.

For now, I will try to keep the little fox company and treasure the time I have with it.

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The next day we decided to see what kind of loot we got from the wall.

With all the stress from running around and not wanting to get caught by other beast, we didn't have enough time to see what loot we got.

Even the little fox didn't get enough time to see what grade the core was, as I was the one doing the battle with the panther, she was in charge of seeing if other beasts approached.

If one of us is in the middle of battle the other one must be on the lookout.

We started searching for the core in the leather bag. The majority of our loot consisted of fruits and medicinal plants so finding it was easy.

The core gave off a golden hue and it was entirely transparent, without the slightest blemish and entirely round. With nine markings or runes engraved in it.

The cores that we normally get aren't round, or at least perfectly round, and don't have any runes. So, the one who died should be on an entirely different level as the little fox.

We made a huge profit in this adventure. The little fox was even jumping around in joy.

It seems that this core could let her evolution go smoothly and could even shorten the amount needed to happen to one month from the previous one year.

That is just how ridiculously high is the amount of energy that contains this little core.

Before the little fox tries to absorb the core, I will try to see if I can obtain some useful information of the runes. Maybe it would benefit me in some way the moment I try to advance in ranks, to evolve beyond the rank of the little fox.

It would be better for the little fox to start absorbing the core as fast as possible, that way we would have more opportunities to get cores of such a fine quality and maybe I would even have more time to experiment with them.

But for the looks of it, the core we have now has such amount of energy inside that it could very well have belonged to a beast trying to evolve further up.

What was the reason it tried to ram into the wall trying to escape, we don't know. But maybe there are beast here in the middle section that can threaten beings that are almost at the pinnacle.

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I managed to persuade the little fox to give me the core to examine the runes.

Ans this proved to be more than a waste of time.

The runes here, or at least what I could discern from them, were to retain something more than energy.

And from the pulse inside, it seems to be a living thing.

Thanks to this the little fox decided to postpone absorbing this core until she gets to its same level.

It would not be a good thing if the thing living inside the core wakes up in the middle of the evolution of the fox.