5 Beast

Surprisingly Ray woke up pretty peacefully. He thought he was going to be at least questioned for what happened outside, but he slept peacefully the rest of the night. 

After getting everything ready and eating a meal, he went to Carl's room to start the journey to Mythri. 

"Hey Ray, good morning!" He said cheerful as usual. 

"Good morning."

"I assume you're here to go to Mythri, right?"

"Yes."

"Let's get the horses out and leave. Seeing as how you don't know much you might not be aware of this, but we have to be there within the next month, so we should hurry in case something goes wrong. 

"I guess we should hurry then." He replied. 

As they walked through the town, everyone purposely left him space. If he went near someone, they would hurriedly walk away. If he looked at someone, they would immediately look away, as if he was poisonous. 

"Don't worry about them." Carl chuckled. "Someone must have leaked the news out that you're a mage, and that is simply the commoners reaction to it. They are told since childhood to never disrespect a mage. It is only normal that they act like this.

"I have to warn you now though, part of the test for being admitted to Mythri is being able to get through the forest surrounding it alive. The beasts living there are no joke. Since we are friends and have each other's back, I'm sure we will have no issue though." Carl said with a smile.

"Yes, we are friends. With both of our abilities there is no way a monster can do anything to us." Ray replied back.

"You see that big forest in the distance?" Carl said while pointing ahead. "That is the Everlasting forest. It's called that because it's rumored to have existed before anything else on this planet. The deeper you go the stronger the monsters will be, since in this forest there is a lot of planar energy with it being densest at the middle. That's also why the school is built there, it's much easier to absorb planar energy."

"Interesting, you know quite a lot about mages." Ray praised him.

"This is nothing compared to some truly intelligent mages. The only reason I know this is because my father is an official mage." 

'So his father is an official mage. It's good I befriended him!' Ray glanced at Carl. 'Maybe I can even use this to gain more connections at Mythri.' Ray still didn't understand the power structure of this world, and just how common an official magus is, but he knew that the difference between him and an official magus is huge. 

"How many official mages do you think are at Mythri?" Ray asked.

"Oh, I don't even know. If I had to guess I would say it's in the hundreds. But don't think this is common around the world. For every human around the world, maybe 1 in 100,000 will be an official mage. Just to be an apprentice mage the rarity is only 1 in 1000."

"We're about to enter the forest, completely retract your aura as much as you can, the last thing we want is a beast getting attracted by your aura and mistaking you for food."

After that they silently traveled through the forest so as to not alert any animals with their sound. Having a beast find you because you couldn't completely hide your aura was one thing, but having a beast attack you because you were too loud is simply embarrassing. 

The distance from the outer edge of the forest to Mythri wasn't very long, but it ended up becoming a 2 week journey because they can't use horses to travel. Only a powerful apprentice mage, or an official magus could confidently use a horse to travel through the forest, because they didn't need to worry about the horse's noise attracting monsters. Of course, at the level of an official magus, chances are they had much better methods of travel than using a simple horse. 

Time passed by, and a week had already gone. The duo didn't encounter a single monster, yet. 

A faint shrieking sound woke Ray and Carl out of their trance. This was the first time they heard a loud noise in this forest, it was eerily silent the entire time they traveled. 

"Do you hear that?" Ray whispered to Carl.

"Yes, what is that?"

"Wait, I think it's coming towards us, it's getting louder."

"HELP ME, SOMEONE!"

"I think it's someone calling for help." Carl said.

"She's probably being chased by a monster. Let's get out of here before that stupid girl brings the monster to us."

Suddenly the screams stopped. Ray and Carl looked at each other, then quickly took off. The girl's voice ending so abruptly was definitely not a good sign. They tried to sneakily walk away, but now that they were in danger the branches decided to be so loud! 

Everything was going well, and they didn't hear the lion coming toward them, until Carl misplaced his feet while escaping. His foot landed directly on a large branch that split in half with his weight. 

*CRACK*

For a second the forest somehow became even more silent than it was before. The beast immediately roared after hearing the branch snap. 

"So it came down to this. Sorry for stepping on that branch, but now we have to work together to kill the beast." Carl quickly apologized. 

"Don't worry, I don't blame you. It was an accident." Ray assured Carl. He still felt some confidence in killing the beast after witnessing his own power, it wasn't worth getting mad over. 

"How long can you hold down the beast with your vines?"

"I think 10 seconds, but it could be less depending on how strong it is."

Within a couple seconds the beast came running through the trees to eat the new prey. It looked like a lion, but its skin was dark gray, and its fangs were double the size of an ordinary lion.

Ray cast zap towards the lion, the lightning flashed through the air and hit the lion straight on its face. It roared loudly after getting hit, a bloody hole appeared on its left eye. However the lion didn't seem to notice this at all, its speed only became quicker as it seemed to enter a berserk state. Ray's eyes widened in shock as he witnessed how little damage the zap did. He underestimated the beast! With regular humans the zap was like a punishment from zues, they couldn't do anything about it. But this lion stopped it before it even hit his bone!

It took 2 seconds to ready a zap, and Ray did not have that time available. He took out the sword which seemed useless so far because of how ridiculously powerful a simple spell was, but it would prove it's worth now. The beast decided to target Ray since the bolt that took out its left eye made it feel the most threat from him. 

The beast jumped towards Ray with its claws swiping wildly while moving towards him. Luckily Ray had been taught swordsmanship growing up as a noble, so he could defend himself a little with his sword. He raised his sword to block the lion claws, but the impact still made him go flying until he hit a tree.

"Are you okay?!" Carl shouted. 

Ray glared at him as if to say, 'Do I look okay to you?'

After hearing noise coming from Carl the lion switched his gaze to him and let out a roar. Seeing this Carl quickly used his ability to grow vines underneath the lion before it could jump on him. The vines grew to the size of a small tree within a second and wrapped around the beast's feet. The beast roared angrily and struggled as hard as it could but it couldn't budge. 

However the burden on Carl to keep the beast put wasn't a small one. He was visibly sweating and shaking. While he still had the chance, he rushed forward and tried to injure the beast's other eye with his sword, but how could it be so easy? The only reason Ray's attack hit the lion was because it was at the speed of lightning, and the lion could not dodge it. But a amateurs sword strike, that won't work so well. The lion dodged underneath the sword and tried to bite Carl. Luckily the vines held on and Carl kept his life for the moment. 

Meanwhile Ray slowly pushed himself up with his hands. 'A broken rib, and a shattered left forearm. I definitely can't survive another hit like that, I have to try to end it now.'

"Carll, I need your help with my plan."

"Spit it!" Carl shouted in a strained voice.

"Just get ready to lift us onto the trees above." Ray shouted.

The zap in his right hand had fully formed. Ray let it go straight towards the beast's remaining eye. The beast immediately roared in pain, thrashing around as it's vision went black. Seeing this Carl realized what Ray wanted to do.

"Grab onto the vine" Carl shouted.

A vine appeared from a tree and threw Ray and Carl into the air. Ray took one more look down and let his final zap go. It pushed the whole that was it's eye even further, although it couldn't break through it's thick skull bone.

He grabbed onto a branch with his remaining hand and sucked in his aura. Meanwhile the vines holding down the beast finally disappeared, and the beast let out it's loudest roar yet. It then proceeded to run into a tree, clearly it wasn't smart enough to know what just happened to it. Somehow the tree shook a little, but was otherwise unaffected. Ray and Carl were both surprised at that, they were afraid the tree would tip over. 'The trees here must also be extraordinary to be inside the Everlasting forest.'

They kept as quite as possible while the beast rampaged below. It could no longer see, as it's eyes were blown out by Ray. It also couldn't feel any aura nearby. Finally after 10 minutes of smashing into random objects the beast let out a pitiful howl and walked somewhere else. It would prebobly die soon, being wounded and now blind. But that had nothing to do with Ray.