Chapter 5

After practicing his breathing all day long, Uno ate the remains of the food he had gotten early and simply began to sleep. For some reason, he felt extremely tired, but at the same time, he had the feeling that tomorrow he would be even stronger than today. Just that thought was enough to suspect that the cause of his sudden growth was his breathing. If that was true, he could improve his status in the village and maybe even one day become the chief.

Uno had never thought before about becoming someone important, but now that an opportunity has appeared, he felt that it could be nice. But most importantly, if his breathing exercises strengthened his body and he could teach the other hunters this breathing technique, as Zeno had said, his village would benefit the most from it.

"If everyone could strengthen like that, more food would come, and more land could be claimed. The beasts would stop being such a danger and casualties would happen less often. The population would grow and maybe even the other villages would come to our stronger village. Maybe we could even explore the sea and seek the other island that the beach-village people talked about", Uno thought. "If this works, maybe we humans could become the owners of this land, maybe even the owners of the entire world…"

But while Uno was dreaming about the possibilities that that technique could bring; those thoughts were suddenly stopped by a great noise that came from outside his hut. Without knowing what was happening, he left his house to seek answers.

Immediately after he crossed the door, he began to hear cries for help and how people were running from one place to another.

"Anyone capable of using a weapon must arm themselves and go to the south gate. The rest go to the bank and take refuge there", Zeno shouted from the top of a rock.

"What the hell is happening?", Uno asked after he neared Zeno.

"We are under attack. A pack of mutated beasts led by a demon had come close to the village, and they began to kill and destroy everything they saw", Zeno explained. "A group of hunters led by Aed is trying to take down the demon, but they will need all the help that we can get, so take a weapon and get there the fastest you can."

After hearing that, Uno re-entered his hut to take his spear and run at full speed to the south gate. Thanks to his new body, he arrived much faster at the gate than he would usually do, and at the same time, he didn't feel tired.

When he arrived at the scene, he found a group of at least twenty foxes fighting with sixteen hunters, and while this number of ordinary foxes wouldn't be a problem, every one of them was bigger and stronger than normal foxes.

Even worse than that, there was an even bigger fox fighting Aed, and it seemed like he was losing because, although the beast was big, it had unexpected agility that made the fight pretty hard for the hunter.

After a quick look at the battlefield, Uno decided that he would help the hunters that were fighting two enemies at a time, so he quickly jumped in front of one of those beasts and thrust his spear through its neck.

Without looking at the amazed face of his partner, he quickly freed his weapon from the corpse of the animal as he moved to find his next prey.

As he used his weapon to attack his enemies, he felt how the heat that he had absorbed with his breath flowed all around his body, strengthening it.

In a quick succession of sneak attacks, he managed to lower the number of enemies by three, a feat that reduced the difference in numbers and gave more room for the hunters to fight.

In less than a minute, a few more hunters arrived at the scene, making the fight even easier for the humans.

But at that moment, Uno heard a scream of pain, and when he looked in the direction of the sound, he found Aed kneeling on the ground with blood covering his body and his rival standing almost unscratched in front him.