Elemental Knights

Chapter 13: Hunting in the Beast Forest (Conclusion)

That was difficult, said Keith.

He sat on top a tree branch holding a dark brown core in his hand from an D-rank centipede he killed.

His suspicions were correct, D-rank beasts were something else. Ten times as powerful, obviously he had underestimated them. There were multiple injuries on his body, and his clothes were mostly rags. When he fought E-rank beasts, he had been able to one-shot most of them and even if he didnt, couldve killed them without getting a hit on himself, the case was different for D-rank beasts. Each one had been able to land at least one major hit on him before he killed it, just like the tiger. Most of his wounds had healed due to him using the essence from the cores he collected, the most recent being slash marks covering parts of his body, (courtesy of the earth centipede).

The beast was as large as a snake with its main weapon being its whip-like antennae. Funny enough, a creature that is naturally meant to be as large as a pencil, ended up being his most difficult fight since he arrived at the border during which another thirty minutes had passed. The earth element added extra hardening to its already tough exoskeleton, and its unnatural swiftness and how it attacked with both a pair of sharp blade-like claws and its antennae made it a formidable opponent. At first Keith was clueless as to how it used the earth element, until he realized two things:

One, the centipede was practically blind and only got about by sensing movement in the air through its constantly swinging antennae, and through vibrations in the earth, which meant that if he remained perfectly still, he would be undetectable. However, after about ten seconds, Keith felt a pulse of elemental essence from the centipede and before he could think, the beast came rushing at him at full speed. Which was when Keith made his second realization.

After every ten seconds or so, the beast if not sensing any motion will use an earth pulse to try and locate its prey just like it had done to him.

It had taken a lot of planning and precision to finally kill the centipede, and looking at the core in his hands, he couldnt really say it was worth nearly losing his life. None of this was after all, but he felt that he had to do it.

After the core crumpled to dust in his hands, Keith decided to continue healing his wounds. In those thirty minutes, he had collected four more E-rank cores and three more D-rank cores, added to the two cores he collected earlier, that made five D-rank cores he had gotten and absorbed.

Keith could feel a nagging sensation in his spark that made him smile. After absorbing fourteen E-rank cores and five D-rank cores, he was finally close to a breakthrough to the third stage of the beginners plane.

Keith knew that it would be courting his own death to go deeper into the beast forest, which meant that if he were to be an adventurer, he would be a peak E- rank adventurer. Adventurers were given ranks based on the highest rank of beasts they can defeat easily. The fact that he had to struggle against meant he couldnt be at D-rank yet.

Keith decided to continue hunting at the borders where there was a mixture of basic and intermediate-tier beasts and he could be safest.

Just as Keith was about to come down and continue hunting, his spiritual senses, which had been spread out since he was on the tree, picked up something that made his blood run cold. Keith had now memorized the unique essence signature of E-rank and D-rank beasts, so he knew which beast was which. What his senses had just picked up, was not either of the two. It was much stronger, at least C-rank.

Keith felt his heart racing. If he struggled against D-rank, then undoubtedly C-rank might even kill him. Keith looked at the direction where the aura was coming from. A wolf with dark red fur stood there, its claws, mane and tip of its tail covered in blue flames. It had a gemstone embedded into its forehead with a rune symbol on it. The wolf was about thirty feet from where Keith was and it was constantly sniffing at the ground and closing in on the tree.