Viridian Forest

Three days later...Magnus has already become quite accustomed to his new, primitive life. On the first day he hunted four Rabbit-type beast to eat and deer-type beast, he used their antlers to fashion a sharp dagger. He also had used the bones of various beast to support and act like armor together with his tough beast skin clothes.

There were times where he would feel the burning sensation again when that happens he would hunt and let the black material devour the beast. Satiating the hunger of this strange power inside of him.

Through the course of three days, Magnus never forgot to experiment and train on what he could do with the black material. The blade that he used to kill the first tiger-beast that he encountered might have been caused by the sudden danger. But with practice he now has been able to morph the black material into four other forms, excluding the small blade.

With enough concentration, Magnus is able to cover his whole forearm and turn it into a sword, though the time he would be able to use the black material is severely cut short when he used this form. Another form is a giant fist, the black material would come out of his knuckles, cover his hands and solidify, this form doesn't cut the usage time of the black material as much as the Sword form so Magnus uses this to break rocks which he uses to make small, throwing weapons.

Third, is a chain that has the length of four meters. If he made it longer then the end would not be as hard as the links closer to him. Magnus made use of this form as a way to capture his prey and to quickly shift his trajectory when he runs. Lastly, the fourth form was a Claw...covering his entire forearm and morphing the black material, making a claw instead of a sword.

Due to the blackness of the color of this material, Magnus decided to call it "Darkness"

Through patience and practice, Magnus managed to learn a few new things about the Darkness. First was that it was extremely easy to change form, it moved similarly to water but the texture was like sand. Second was that the amount of Darkness inside of him was in correlation to how much he satisfies the hunger of whatever prompts him to hunt when he feels that burning sensation.

Because his hunger would also be satiated whenever the Darkness devoured his prey, Magnus didn't need any fire to cook. The numerous beast skin that he had hunted were sufficient to keep him warm through the night, another day has gone by and Magnus sat in the cave covered in thick beast skins.

Since his life had fairly become stable, so did his mind and he started to remember how to say some basic words and count up to ten but he still wasn't able to form any coherent sentences. Sometimes he would be frustrated for not being able to remember much but even then there something that made him look forward for the future.

"Lawrence's chamber of Slaves..." The name of the slavers that took him, from here he might be able to find out the people who raided their village.

After another day of survival, Magnus slept...

When morning came, it was back to another afternoon of hunting and training. But as he moved through the forest, he felt some disturbance in the forest. Three days of hunting and consuming his prey using the Darkness slowly changed his body, strengthening it.

His senses were so sharp that he already picked up how many were there in the direction where that disturbance came.

"Five...no... Six." Magnus muttered.

He arrived three hundred meters away from the fight and even from there Magnus was able to clearly see what was happening. There was a group of five teen humans banding together to fight a Gold Fist Black Gorilla. Most of them carried a sword, with only one using a bow.

These five humans moved, two of the swordsmen attacking from the flanks and the other two from the front, lastly the archer provided cover.

Just from this, Magnus already determined that they would all die. Clearly they've underestimated the beast. If it were any other beast then their strategy might have worked but what they're facing is a Gold Fist Black Gorilla. Standing over five to ten meters tall this was a monstrous behemoth who lived within the central area of the forest.

Whatever these five did, it clearly pissed off this monster for it to chase them all the way to the outer area of the Viridian Forest.

Bam!

As Magnus was theorizing what could have happen, the battle had already started and almost at the beginning, there was already a casualty. The Gold Fist Black Gorilla, quickly slammed down its fist to the ground. From the two who attacked from the flank, one of them managed to get away while the other wasn't as lucky and got lifted into the air from the shock.

Midair he was already easy prey and the beast grabbed him and devoured him completely.

Crunch...

From the beast's mouth, crunching sound could be heard as flesh and blood dripped out. Some torn limbs even fell to the ground.

This scared the remaining four, they immediately dropped their weapons and was able to run for their lives when Magnus saw an old man flying down from the skies. His eyes widened at the sight of a person flying down as never in his wildest dreams would he even think of humans flying.

"Elder!" One of the teens said in relief and the others looked upon the old man with hopes.

They have accomplished their missions and was on their way back when the Gold Fist Black Gorilla suddenly pursued them all the way to the outer area. They've tried to put up a fight and they paid the price, one of them died. All hopes seemed lost to them but now their elder was here to rescue them.

"Stand back, you foul beast!" The elder shouted and he carried the air of a powerful, lofty figure

"Roar!" The Gold Fist Black Gorilla roared back and it's golden fist punched out towards the elder.

The elder met the beast's fist with both hands, an orange glow radiated from the elders hands which helped him block the beast's blow. Wind blew from the shock wave and the teens were blew several feet away.

The shock wave barely reached Magnus, who was three hundred meters away. This scared him as he never thought he would see the day that a human could contend with a beast as strong as the Gold Fist Black Gorilla. But strangely, he was attracted by the sight, he longed for that kind of power...the power to overthrow every opposition that came before him.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

The beast and the elder traded blow and for a while they were evenly matched but the elder then lent some powerful weapons to the teens and they began to assault the beast while the elder distracted it.

Soon enough, wounds started to accumulate on the beast and now it was in a dangerous situation. But then...

"Roaaarrr!!!"

The Gold Fist Black Gorilla issued a mighty roar that reverberated through the entire forest then everything became silent, not even the chirping of birds could be heard.

Silence lasted for a while before Magnus's ears twitched and he was completely alarmed. He quickly ran away as far as he could, he even used the Darkness, forming it into a chain to accelerate his escape.

Well you know what they say about cornered animals...they are extremely dangerous.

Rumble...

The elder was the strongest in their group and he also felt that small tremor growing stronger with each passing moment. He sweated from his forehead as he shouted at his disciples.

"Run!"

Rumble...

The tremor grew stronger and out of the forest countless beast ran out and pounced on the group of humans. It didn't matter whether they were strong or weak, their numbers were larger. The humans valiantly fought back but ultimately they were swallowed by the beast Stampede and was torn apart by the beast.

Moments after, the countless beasts all dispersed after the Gold Fist Black Gorilla growled. Not long after that it also left after a quick rest.

The forest was completely disturbed by that event that Magnus wasn't able to hunt after that without being worried about the stronger beasts still lingering around. But because he had already experienced a long term of suffering from hunger during his days as a slave, Magnus was able to bear this slight hunger.

...

Come next morning, things managed to settle down in the forest to a certain degree. Now, Magnus was able to hunt again but he didn't, he had some other plans in mind.

Rushing through the forest, he returned to the spot where those group of humans fought the Gold Fist Black Gorilla. When he arrived all he saw was a blood soaked earth, littered with torn flesh and the clothes of the dead.

Magnus scavenged through whatever he could find but all he found was three torn hands with its flesh bitten off. But he did found a ring on each of these hands, though he didn't know the value of these rings, they must've been pretty valuable since those powerful people wore them. Magnus searched for a while and he saw a cloth sticking out of the earth, it was underneath of a dead beast's corpse which the humans killed before they were outnumbered.

It seemed like it was buried in the dirt but was partially uncovered due to the stampede. When Magnus pulled it out, turns out it was a bag, half his size.

"!" When he opened it he finally understood why the Gold Fist Black Gorilla relentlessly chased those teens to the outer forest.

The content of the bag fell and it was a small, baby Gold Fist Black Gorilla and Magnus could already see that it's throat was slit open. Looks like those humans were tasked to do this but got killed doing so.

Magnus almost felt sorry for the innocent beast who lost it's child, he lost his parents but he knows that the pain that beast must've felt is probably the same as his. But Magnum wasn't able to completely immerse himself in his sadness as that burning sensation assaulted his senses again.

Though this time it was much stronger, he felt his back and the mark on his chest throbbing more than usual. He felt that the desire this time was much more precise, Magnus could faintly see a yellow light shining from the corpse of the Gold Fist Black Gorilla's chest. Even though it was faint and was about to go out, Magnus was able to see it.

He knew what he had to do and with a bit off reluctance, Magnus placed his hands on the corpse and the Darkness devoured the corpse whole, not even the skin was left.

It took a while but Magnus suddenly felt a rush of power and heat going through his entire body. The Shark mark on his left chest shone, he lifted his clothes and saw it shining before turning into a fist mark, then it turned back to the way it was.

[Golden Monkey Fist: The Innate Fist art inherited by the Gold Fist Black Gorilla race from their ancestors, the Golden Monkey. Only few of the Golden Monkey's descendants could ever unlock this art and whoever did would become king among the beast. This art allows the user to absorb and concentrate sunlight around their fist, resulting into a massive amount of energy explosion upon contact.]

Suddenly, Magnus' head felt pain and he received a strange information. He didn't know what it was exactly but it contained a strange name and the instructions on how train and use it. Though Magnus didn't know how to read, the information didn't needed to be read, he instantly understood it.

But then, another wave of pain struck his senses as he felt the new information being changed as if it was being ripped apart...being corrupted.

[Desolate Golden Fist : Devour the light of the sun, form dark flames, hot as the flames of hell, that would ravage the land and everything before you.]

It was just a short description, without any of the history found in the original Golden Monkey fist. He didn't need to understand it completely to know that this new version was a lot stronger than the original but he was still able to train the original version, this is what intrigued him, in fact the training of these two arts can go hand in hand.

Feeling extremely excited to start training even though he doesn't even know what "Martial Arts" is, Magnus gathered all valuable materials he could scavenged and went back to his cave.

When he got there, he immediately threw everything down and tried to practice the two arts. The information said to feel the warmth from the sunlight and to feel the energy within it. Guide it inside the body and into the "Meridians". Though Magnus didn't know what a "Meridian" was he felt that he could still practice "Martial Arts"

But after hours of trials, he still didn't feel the "Power" that the "Martial art" brought.

"Fool..."

Suddenly he heard a deep and sinister voice echoing in his ears. Magnus, looked around but saw no one.

"You don't even...understand what you're trying to...achieve..."

The voice echoed in his ears again, it still sounded sinister and deep but more importantly it sounded...weak. Like a candle that clings to it's last embers.