Shadow Beast

looked towards Gary standing next to me on my right. His whole body was shaking with fear. Then when I looked in front of me, I could see that my sword was moving as well. I Couldn't believe it, I was shaking my self. Was this what it felt like to face a creature far above your own level? As much as I hate to admit it, this creature is simply out of our league and even if my mind was ready to fight my body didn't feel the same way.

The three knights were standing in front, while I was with Gary protecting the carriage behind us. The knights stood extremely still gripping their weapons tightly, waiting for the beast to make its move. Unexpectedly the magic beast didn't move a single hair it stood there watching us all carefully. It then moved it's hand slightly upwards and pointed towards the knights with its claws.

"You will never be able to beat the shadow, soon we will take over the whole land." Its voice was deep and rusty.

"The beast can talk," Bernardo looked like he just caught his wife cheating on him, he couldn't believe it.

This was a surprise to everyone there, magical beast often didn't speak, there was very few that had the intelligence. Creatures such as dragons and more humanoid beast would be able to, but never a beast like a drop bear. Perhaps the shadow was using the bear as a vessel.

"Your mission will fail, and you're loved ones will die." The bear had said this while looking towards me strangely rather than the knights that stood in front of him.

The Shadow bear Jumped around 15 feet in the air and went into the forest. There was no trace of him left.

"Why did the shadow beast let us go?" Bernardo asked.

"I think they were only intimidating us, they want to shake the kingdom up and tire us out mentally." Delbert replied.

Gary stepped up to Wilfred.

"Maybe he knew he would lose?"

"I'm afraid not, if it was a regular Drop bear king then perhaps we could take it out, but a shadow beast variant is a lot stronger. Although I Belive we could of beat it, we would have come out with losses on our side. "

Wilfred replied.

While Gary gulped at the thought of fighting the bear.

Bernardo came over and whispered in Wilfred's ear.

"It seemed to know about our mission, perhaps there is a traitor in the academy."

Wilfred didn't respond but had a concerned look on his face.

Delbert chimed in.

"They had been watching us since we had left the inn, perhaps the attack on the adventures was to get us to come towards this path. I don't think any of this is a coincidence. I knew the red boy would bring us bad luck."

I looked towards Delbert with a half-hearted smile.

"I thought you didn't believe in myths, or do you only chose to believe in them when it suits you, not much of knight are you."

Delbert came forward again ready to teach me another lesson but this time Wilfred had stopped him in time.

Wilfred looked towards me and Gary and could see Gary was covered in blood.

"You two fought well, I was surprised most people might freeze if they were in the same situation but you actually managed to defeat The drop bears. I am proud of you both."

Delbert scoffed

"They're only basic tier creatures when I was their age I could have done better."

When defeating the drop bear I had received another notification from the system.

<Basic Tier Crystal Obtained (1)>

<Would you like to absorb>

<Yes > <No >

This was a surprise to me because I hadn't seen it in a while. When I was hunting beasts in the black forest in preparation for the assessment. After obtaining three crystals from the wolfs, I seemed to have stopped receiving the notification no matter how many times I defeated beasts. It was the same as the Crazed monkeys. Perhaps it was the maximum amount of crystals I could obtain from each beast.

I decide to save the crystal for later and to hide this from other people for now. I still didn't know if this system was special to me, or something that other humans also experienced, the one thing I didn't want to do, was become a test subject of humans.

Another thought had come to my mind about the shadow beast. Why did it seem like it was directly looking towards me? Could it sense something inside me, or was it to do with this mission that the knights were on?

Before we started heading off Wilfred came to me and Gary and told us not to tell anyone we meet about the shadow beast. He didn't tell us the reason why but made us swear an oath to not tell a living soul.

After that, the group quickly wasted no time and got back on their horses and carried on heading towards Renny Town. The path was smooth from here on out and we didn't run into any more trouble. A few hours later and the knights had told us we had finally reached our destination.

We arrived at the Gate of Renny town which was surrounded by stone walls around 20 feet high in the sky. There were many soldiers and knights stationed outside and on the wall. It was very impressive for Town. It had the same level of protection as nearly any other city.

"Why so many guards?" I asked Wilfred.

"Renny town is an important base for us, we must protect the future of our kingdom without Renny town they would be no one to protect us in the future. You could say that Reny town is more important than some of Alure kingdom's City."

"Didn't you say we were far away from the border?"

"Even though Shadow beast may not appear here, and maybe one or two strays come from time to time that is not the reason for the guards. The reason for them is the Dark Guild."

"The Dark Guild?"

Gary who was sitting next to me seemed to be interested in the subject.

"I have heard of the Dark Guild. They're a group of people who wish to see the fall of alure Kingdom, the leader use to be a member of the Avrion academy council until he was banished."

Gary said with a smug look on his face. It was childish to see him acting this way. Like there was a competition going on between the two of us."

"Why was he banished?" I asked.

"Relax young ones, you will learn all about this in your education, look ahead at this town for you will be spending the next ten years of your life here, studying everything there is to be a knight."