Ch17: Strange people

For the upcoming 10 days they kept a steady pace of hunting, with the other going back they decided to camp wherever they finished their hunt. During these days Ray felt like his Mana capacity reaching half it's maximum, normally it would take people longer to absorb the beast cores but because of his speed at which he absorbs it, Ray finds himself lacking beast cores most of the time.

They were again outside hunting, due to the increase in mana capacity Ray was now able to cover the majority of his body in his thunder cloak. He can simultaneously cloak his arms and legs almost doubling his speed and strength. His only weakness was that he was the lack of a good weapon.

There were 20 magic beasts, all of which looked like overgrown insects, ragin from crickets, ant and other insect-like creatures but there was one that stood out as it was much bigger than the others while its mana levels were quite high as well. While the group was contemplating whether to fight or not Ray decided he wanted to fight.

"All of you stay here, I want to fight this." Ray said before storming off, not giving the others a chance to persuade him.

The insect like leader that seemed to be a a wasp but with almost transparent wings and as big as an adult human, saw Ray running towards it. It flapped its wings once before disappearing from where it stood, seeing that Ray instantly cloaked his upper body and foot with a thunder cloak, making it's easier to perceive movements only to be disappointed as he saw nothing 'did it run?' Ray thought to himself but soon felt all alarms ringing inside his head. 'DANGER!' without hesitation he jumped to to the side.

A spatial tear flashed by his side barely scraping his school uniform. The others who saw it become alarmed as well and Lucas ran in without thinking, he knew that Ray would die if he did not help and he was not wrong.

Ray did not perceive anything, the only reason he survived was because of his thunder cloak.

seeing the others joining him Ray felt guilty, he overestimated himself and almost died, now his friends had to take a big risk when they could have just left him. Nate and Yate felt the situation to be grim but not enough to interfere, so they stayed at high alert incase anything went wrong.

Ray left the leader for Lucas to distract and went to hunt the incoming insects. Yuki and Ria both helped Lucas with distracting the spatial wasp. Ray threw a dagger at a distance which pierced the head of an ant killing it, be dodged an attack from a cricket to his left and used his remaining dagger to stab an ant to his right in the head before running to retrieve his thrown dagger. The moment he extended his arm to take the dagger out cold sweet dripped out of his back, he instantly turned back to block and attack from a wasp just like the other, luckily it was not a spatial tear or he would be dead.

Ray looked around and saw 2 more such wasps going towards the others. Seeing the incoming wasps both Nate and Yate took 1 each, even though they were stronger they could not beat the magic beasts because of the constant teleportation and the threat of the spatial tears. The situation was dire and Ray knew that if he did not do something soon they would all die there and all of it was his fault.

'Damit!' Ray cursed himself for being so cocky as he finally managed to retrieve the dagger inside the ants head. with 2 daggers in hand he ran at the wasp. The wasp flapped its wings and disappeared, Ray jumped to the side without even thinking as he dodged a spatial tear, which cut through a Cricket that Ray was in the way. seeing this a lightbulb lit up inside Ray's head. He kept dodging its attacks which in turn would kill the other bugs as collateral damage. Seeing it working Ray made his way towards the other wasps.

When Ray managed to get close to the others he shouted "Just dodge the attacks! don't fight back!" The others had no time to argue or question his decision, they just did as they were doing before, dodge. Ray went between two wasps which in turn made it so both attacked him, one used a spatial tear while the other a normal attack with its stinger. He barely dodged at the cost of one of his daggers but the spatial tear tore through one of the other wasp like it was nothing. The other who saw this implemented that strategy, Yuki and Ria went towards the other magic beasts with Lucas helping Ray out. Nate and Yate used Ray's strategy to kill one of the beasts off and fought the other one together.

In an 1 hour battle they cleaned up everything. 2 more wasp came later which were both slain by Nate and Yate. In the end they managed to kill 6 wasps and 29 insect magic beasts.

"huff...huff...Ray, ..huff.. next time you pull something like this off ...huff...we will leave you!" Yuki said, she was very angry. they were all wounded and barely managed to come out without casualties and it could have all been avoided if Ray was not so impulsive.

Ray who heard her dropped his head as he apologized "Sorry, I will be more careful next time, as an apology I won't take anything from this battle." hearing him apologize they signed but the guardians were not done yet.

"Sorry does not cut it, you almost resulted in their deaths, if they did not decide to help you, you would have been dead now!" Nate said as he held him by his uniform.

"That's enough Nate, he has learned his lesson." Yate spoke as he tried to pacify the situation.

"If everytime he learns a lesson is at the cost of his teammates lives then he is better of be alone! do you not understand the term 'team'!? HUH!? DO YOU THINK TO BE SPECIAL!? YOU WILL DIE LIKE ANY OTHER!? Nate said as he punched him in the face. He hated selfishness above everything, Ray's actions reminded him of a memory he would have rather not remembered.

"ENOUGH!" Yate spoke "What's done is done, they need to rest. Don't forget our purpose here! Wait for the teacher to come." Nate who heard him dropped Ray to the ground as they started walking towards their camp. They had called the teacher immediately when the other wasps appeared, they did not know if anything stronger would show up so they wanted to be rather safe than sorry.

On their way back Ray stayed fairly silent contemplating his actions, ever since he came to the Kilin Forest he has always been going headfirst into fights. Everything always worked out so he didn't worry, but today he had gotten a wake up call.

While Ray was thinking about his actions the others decided to distribute the loot, Lucas came out as the biggest victor from that fight. They had gotten over 200 beast cores today, 6 of which were space beast cores from the wasps but that all was not what made him the victor Aside from the beast cores a beast soul could be harvested from one of the wasps, which Lucas instantly bought.

While the were walking back they heard sounds coming from their camp. They thought it was the teacher, since Yate had told him they'd be at the camp site. To their surprise it was not the teacher, rather, there were about 4 youths and 2 children with an middle aged man behind them.

"Ah finally found you, took you long enough to come back, for a second we thought we would gain no harvest on our trip." one of the youths spoke as he stood up. Nate who heard that voice was surprised, not in a good way though. Seeing Nate's face the hooded figure took off his hood as he laughed. "Hahaha, I didn't expect to be recognized by voice alone." The hooded figure was Lion, the guy Ray met back at the academy entrance and Nate classmate and friend. "What is the meaning of this Lion, who are these people!" though nate spoke he picked up his guard, Yate also was ready to fight. Seeing them like this the middle aged man spoke up.

"Get rid of them before help arrives, we already failed to kill the others, we can't fail again!" He unsheathed a dagger as he spoke, the dagger was dark blue, it gave a chilling feel for everyone who saw it. 'That dagger has tasted blood, a lot of it.' Ray thought as he saw it.

The middle aged man disappeared from where he stood and reappeared behind Ria as his dagger streak towards her neck. Before anyone could even react a shield enveloped Ria deflecting the dagger, shattering in the process. Before Ria could even look back the middle aged man was back where he stood, furrowing his brows.

"My my, what is The Unity thinking targeting my students, I didn't expect to be cutting a few more of their heads here." Tyrant spoke as he landed in front of Nate and Yate. When he saw Lion his eyes turned cold.

"And to think a little bastard wishes to die so much."