Chapter 6: The Humbling Fight

"What the hell? Where did he learn how to fight like that and those martial techniques?" Stella asked Rick.

"I-I don't know." Rick was just as confused as his wife as to where his son learned those techniques and way to fight.

Meanwhile, Daniel was busy dissecting and learning as much as he could about the monkey's biology while making it look like he was just skinning the demonic beast. They didn't have any special rings or anything of the sort since it was a rare commodity in their small kingdom. Coming from a small town, it was practically impossible for them to even see someone with a spatial ring let alone have one. Therefore, he had to make a make-shift bag with the demonic beast skin to put the spiritual meat and fur hides in.

After the fight, Daniel could feel himself get used to his newfound strength to a whole new level. While exercising using his body weight in the clan was good to get stronger and more used to his body earlier, he is now at the point where he can do thousands of repetitions of body weight exercises without breaking a sweat. Shadow boxing can only get you so far as well, so being able to go out into the woods and being able to fight beasts to the death was helping sharpen his skills and senses and work his body in a new way. After a quick break, they head further into the mountainous terrain.

A couple hours and about 20 demonic beasts ranging from the 6th to the 9th level of body refinement later, Daniel and his family arrived at the foot of the mountain. This is where the level of difficulty of defeating these demonic beasts is a lot higher. This is because the level of demonic beasts that inhabit this area is the 1st to 4th level of Qi Gathering. Rick and Stella were a ball full of anxiety watching Daniel fight beasts that were a much higher cultivation base than himself, but he was able to solve all of the issues with ease. Therefore, even though his parents did not want to accept at first, he was able to convince them to travel deeper into the forest to the Qi Gathering demonic beasts.

Walking for a few minutes in the Qi Gathering region of the mountain forest, Daniel ran into his biggest hurdle of his young cultivation life that will teach him to humble himself a little bit. It wasn't that he was looking down on the cultivation world, it was just he didn't realize the large difference in cultivation realms when fought straight on. It wasn't luck that he was able to kill Elder Joe in town. It was more that he was able to execute a quick and clean sneak attack that ended before it began on the elder. The hurdle, or rather black bear, in front of him was not going to be killed in a sneak attack. The bear standing in front of him was standing at a height of 1.9 meters tall, with a white spot on the sternum. On Earth, this bear would be closely related to the Asian Black Bear. The bear was standing in front of Daniel and his parents, staring down the young boy with its' pitch-black eyes full of hostility for walking into his territory. At the 2nd level of Qi Gathering cultivation base and snout full of blood from a recent meal, this bear would intimidate any Body Refining cultivators to despair.

Instead of feeling intimidated, Daniel was ready for a fight. As soon as his dagger was in his hand, the bear charged at full speed on all fours. In a split second, the bear was upon Daniel, swinging its' paw to slash him apart. Daniel barely had time to raise his dagger to stop the bear's claws from slashing into him. He was then thrown into a tree a few meters away like a wreaking ball, leaving a cloud of dust behind from the clash.

Before Daniel smashed into the tree, he was able to just flip his body around to land on the tree with his feet instead of his face. The bear slightly surprised that Daniel was able to not only block the attack but to outright survive the clash, gave no breathing room for Daniel and chased after him. Daniel had a similar idea, launching off of the tree trunk at full force while coating his dagger in a mix of blue flames and thin lightning streaks. The clash left a crater a half a meter deep and 2 meters wide with Daniel getting thrown back 5 meters and the bear only 3 meters.

Watching this quick exchange, Rick and Stella could not believe what they were seeing. Based on cultivation base alone, Daniel was at an obvious disadvantage, but he was still able to take the attacks of the 2nd level Qi Gathering bear head on. Not only that, but he slightly wounded the bear on the paw, while the only damage Daniel took was a sprained shoulder due to the force of the clash.

Jumping back into the fight, Daniel decided to coat not only the dagger, but also his left hand and arm in blue flames. The temperature of the flame could also be felt to be drastically increasing. The reason for this is because Daniel was only visualizing propane burning, but now he is visualizing an oxy-acetylene torch burning.

The bear's eyes widened a bit but pushed the building fear of the flames aside and attacked Daniel once again. The bear has a tough hide that was only lightly affected by the propane flame because of the cut it received. Swinging its' paw at Daniel again, the bear thought it was finally time for Daniel to succumb to the brutal attack and die. Daniel had different thoughts though. He ducked under the swinging paw, while cutting through the bear's leg. Leaving no time for it to even realize what happened, Daniel punched the bear in the neck with his flame coated fist.

A deep, pain-riddled roar came out from the bear's throat. The area where Daniel had punched the bear was completely seared, with not a single strand of fur to be seen from its' jaw to the middle of its' chest. To end the poor suffering of the bear, Daniel pounced at the bear and buried his dagger in its' neck. After a couple of seconds of trying to suck in air through its' now seared close throat, the life left its' eyes and died.

Daniel then fell backwards on the ground while breathing heavily and holding his shoulder. According to the pain he was now feeling, he felt that those two head on clashes probably tore some of the muscles in his shoulder. He could barely move it, now that the adrenaline in his body is diminishing.

Rick and Stella had only reacted a few moments after Daniel fell, too surprised by what had just occurred. They quickly fed him a healing pill and sat down for a little while.

"What the hell was that?! How could you fight that bear like that? You could have died!" Stella cried out as she held her boy tightly.

"I just wanted to test out my strength and the strength of the bear."

After five minutes of being scolded by his parents, he quickly dissected the bear and decided to head home. Well, not so much decided as was forced to head home by his parents. Considering he was still in pain from the injury to his shoulder, which the majority of is healed just needing some rest to be back in tip-top shape, Daniel agreed with no hesitation.