Training... Again!

After filling his belly Ark decided to drink some water before then going to sleep. He was very tired both mentally and physically since it had been quite a long day, and the sleep he had gotten last time wasn't really that satisfying. But when he entered the tree he felt like there was something missing, and he knew exactly what that something was. This place didn't really feel like a home at all, and he kind of wanted to settle down for a while, therefore he decided to at least put in some sort of decoration, or well at least something similar. Since the only real thing he would actually use the tree for was sleeping he wanted to get a nice and comfortable resting spot. He decided to make this out of some soft material he could find, otherwise, he would just get some sticks and make a little camp in there.

Now you might think, why would you make a fire inside of a tree? It was quite simple really, the tree was magic resistant, so if you made a fire out of magic inside of the tree, then it wouldn't burn the tree down, this was especially the case since the fire he would make would be quite small, and the tree was very big, and there was a lot of space inside that he could make use of. Having thought of this, Ark set out yet again to gather what he wanted, but he decided that it would be for the best if he didn't venture too far from the tree since he was really drained, and he wanted to go to sleep as fast as possible.

Another reason was that he wouldn't be able to fight to the best of his abilities right now since he wasn't in prime condition. But this wasn't really that much of a concern for him.

It didn't take very long for him to find something that was very comfortable, this, however, was stuck on a sheep. This sheep looked like a very normal sheep, almost like the ones you would find on earth. The only difference was that they were all black, and they also had a pair of sharp horns. When Ark identified one of them he found out that they were quite weak. He found that most of them were under level 5, and therefore he decided to kill some of them to make a nice thing to sleep on for his new home. Since he didn't really care much for how it would look in his tree he decided that it wasn't that important to pay much attention to detail when he skinned them later on.

Having thought this all through Ark decided that he would attack with his ice element, the idea of using water and fire were thrown out of the window because of their respective properties. Fire would just burn the wool of the sheep, so that wasn't even an option he considered to begin with, and water would make the fur wet, which would make it uncomfortable to sleep on the first night. And he wanted it to be nice to sleep on right now! He was very tired after all, and he valued his sleep a lot. He also decided that the ice attack would be in the form of two saw blades, this was simply because he only wanted to kill two of the sheep, since he felt that he didn't really need more than that right now, he decided that he would form the ice into saw blades simply because he felt that it would make it easier to behead them.

Having thought this all through, the air suddenly contorted as two circular saw blades made out of ice made their ways towards their respective targets. In the next second, the sheep suddenly went into a frenzy, as their comrades' heads could suddenly be seen rolling on the ground.

When the sheep were all gone Ark trotted forwards, he then took the two sheep in his claws and dragged them to the tree. When he finally arrived ten minutes later, he just skinned the two sheep quickly before tossing the bodies into the lake, he decided to toss the bodies into the lake since he didn't want beasts and monsters to get attracted by the scent of fresh blood. There would still be a little lingering smell but he felt that the monsters that would come because of something like that would be quite weak, since the stronger beasts would want to have stronger prey, because it would help them in their growth, due to the larger amount of Mana in the stronger preys bodies.

But there were always exceptions to everything, which is why Ark decided that he wouldn't go into a very deep sleep. Just a light one, even though it wouldn't be as comfortable and nice when he woke up, it would be better since he would wake up if a beast were to actually appear. Fortunately for Ark though, there were no mishaps during the night, and he woke up the next morning feeling very refreshed. The sleeping space he had created had actually helped him a lot, he had never felt this good after sleeping before, and he felt like he had always taken his bed in his former life for granted. Right now he would do anything to experience the bliss and comfort of a bed.

Feeling good about himself Ark drank some water from the lake before heading off towards his new training ground. He didn't hurry at all, he just leisurely walked at his own pace. He wasn't very sure as to why his mood was as good as it was. It didn't really feel like he had gotten into such a great mood just from a better sleep compared to normal, but he decided to not care, he was in a great mood after all. When he finally arrived he decided to scout out the place a little more before doing anything, he wanted to be sure of most of the escape routes if he was going to train here.

He felt that it was always for the best to be safe, he would never forgive himself if he ended up dying to something very stupid, especially if it was something he could have prevented. Looking around for a bit he noticed that the surroundings were nothing worth noting. It was mostly just trees surrounding the graveyard, there was just a difference in density. Therefore he decided that he would escape towards the route he took to get here if he wanted to escape, this was mostly just because he knew that particular route pretty well now, since he had taken it a couple of times, and he had a pretty good memory.

Another good thing about the route was that there weren't as many trees there, which would help him a lot in achieving his top speed, there were however plenty of various obstacles that he could use to his advantage in a pursuit. Some of them could even help him turn the tide if the opponent wasn't that much stronger than him.

Now that he had everything sorted out, Ark decided to get started. His first targets would be the skeletons since they were the weakest. And he didn't really wanna rush too much in the pursuit of strength, he would take it a little easy in the beginning. Therefore he quickly scoped out his first target. His eyes landed on a lonely skeleton that seemed to be a little more separated from the rest, at least compared to the others. This skeleton was a little shorter as well, being around 1,5 meters tall, Ark guessed that the reason it was a little excluded was that it was weaker, therefore he decided to test out its strength first.

Since he wanted to test out its strength, he didn't use stealth when he approached it, as far as he knew it couldn't call for help, since it didn't have any vocal organs. But even if it did, he could handle it. So he just walked up to it.

Seeing a large wolf suddenly appear in front of it, the skeleton mustered up the courage to attack, at least that would be the case if it was a living organism since it wasn't alive, it couldn't feel any fear or pain for that matter. It didn't have any real weapons, so it opted to attack with a large bone it had found in the cemetery.

Ark's response to this attack was to just put up his paw to see how much damage it could do, the only thing he did was reinforce his paw with magic. In the next second Ark could feel his entire leg vibrating slightly, before going back to normal. This made him a little surprised, he expected to at least get a little damaged, or at the very least feel some pain, but he didn't, which was a very good sign. This meant that the overall strength of the monsters here would be quite low compared to their levels, they weren't even slightly comparable to Ark.

Therefore Ark decided that he would change his plan yet again, if the monsters here were that weak, it would be more worth it to just train with the ghouls from the start. Since he would earn a lot more experience if he killed them, and it didn't seem that hard. Having changed his plan Ark nonchalantly swung his claws, the skeleton didn't have enough time or intelligence to dodge the attack, and it instantly exploded into little pieces.

Hearing this explosion, some of the closer zombies and skeletons turned towards him, the ghouls were the furthest away from him, near the entrance of the tomb, so they didn't hear a thing. Seeing how he would get targeted by a lot of enemies at a time, Ark grew a little excited. This would be the fastest way of them all! If he just created a lot of chaos and attracted all of the monsters at the same time, he would be a lot more time-efficient! This, however, came with the risk of being more dangerous, but Ark didn't think it would be a problem at all since he could just use one of his strongest attacks to wipe out most of them at the same time, then he could just go back to the tree to recuperate!

Thinking of this Ark howled, this howl he released was accompanied by slight fluctuations of magic, enhancing the sound. He tried to control it so that the ghouls wouldn't hear him, however. But some of them still turned towards him, and they weren't the only ones.

Seeing at least 50 skeletons and zombies staring at him with deep scarlet eyes, Ark's heart stopped beating for a second, before quickly resuming. The killing intent the undead had released towards him had shocked him a little, it wasn't much weaker than that of the demons from earlier, this had something to do with the fact that the undead was created from dead humans or creatures who held a lot of regret and resentment in their hearts.

The darkness Mana in the air could accidentally mutate a dead human or beast into an undead, if the creature had enough resentment and hatred in their heart, the amount of darkness Mana, as well as the amount of hatred, decided the strength of the undead. But undead could also be created artificially, this was something people who strayed on the wrong path could do, or some demons. If a mage raised the dead from the ground to make them battle for him, then he would be called a necromancer. Necromancers were very feared by the common populace for a variety of reasons. The most prominent one was that they were both evil, and mostly strong. But they were also very cruel and liked to see people suffer. They could also do some terribly cruel actions just to see people despair. Like reviving someone's loved one, to then make them kill each other.

Necromancers were pretty rare though since it wasn't that easy to study the ways of a necromancer, and not a lot of people would actually want to get strong from reviving dead people, even if they strayed on the wrong path. Of course, not all necromancers were completely evil, but most were.

Seeing these undead staring at him for a little while Ark decided to go all out. He started to gather all of the fire and water Mana he could muster, both inside of himself as well as in the air. He then condensed this Mana into his claws, forming vortexes that spun at a high velocity. Since he had used this move before, Ark had a lot more control this time, as his Mana manipulation had also leveled up multiple times since then. Whilst he was continuing to gather Mana and making the vortexes stronger, the undead had started to move, their reaction time was actually abysmally slow, but they tried to make up for it in strength, which was why they were still nasty opponents, another major factor to undead's strength was the fact that they had unlimited stamina, since they were already dead.

When the undead was starting to get very close, Ark unleashed his attack. His cyan fur was wildly flowing in the currents of air that his attack brought up, his look was incredibly sharp as he guided the claw attack as close to the center of them as he could. Then there was a loud BOOM.

The aftermath of this attack was very devastating, the ground were the undead had been was completely erased. And there was fog everywhere, because of the attack the Mana in the air was very restless, as there had been such a random big explosion of Mana. Ark looked calmly at the scene before turning around, and then slowly walking away, back into the forest...