Joining the knights?

Several hours had passed since John had fainted, even so he had already made progress into the new realm. It was the energy comprehension realm, where the cultivator would have to use their familiar to comprehend the type of energy that the familiar used. Seeing as the familiar Han had was literally himself, the master servant contract was extremely strong and intricate allowing for Han to use the full power of the familiar without having to slowly build a relationship with it.

As Han was sleeping several beasts had already attacked him, which the tree quickly dispatched and used as fuel for its growth, unintentionally providing insights to its type of energy as it was connected into his mind.

He awoke in the clearing, but it wasn't he same area as he remembered he was now inside of an enormous crater that stretched the length of the previous corrupted zone and had a depth of 200 meters in the center and slowly got less deep the further from the center you went.

Inside his mind space he noticed that the previous empty white plain was now completely filled with the purple-ish soil and the sinister black and purple tree.

"It didn't say much about how the desired environment was created but taking it out of the real world makes much more sense than having to replicate it on their own". With that said he decided to head back home since he had taken back the rest of himself and no longer had a use for the location.

In the location of where a normal persons last set of ribs were, a dark ominous, undulating sphere resided. At the current time the sphere was only the size of a penny, but it was still growing. This sphere was what cultivators called their dantion and it start to develop once they had reached the second realm, it's composition relied on the familiars energy and how well the cultivator was able to replicate the properties. In this department Han had a severe advantage over his peers and it was his connection with the tree, they had the strongest connection even possible at the beginning of the second realm.

Now that Han had advanced to the second realm his body was about three times as fast as it previously was. So instead of taking numerous hours to get back it only took a couple. Han had studied a lot of medieval history and had read a lot of web novels with a similar plot, which meant that since there were monsters that populated the world that there must also be knights to protect the simple town folk who lived in bliss of the terrifying creatures just outside of the town wall.

Han quickly made his way to the barracks where the knights stayed and found exactly what he thought he would. He found the knights lounging around a fire pit just out the back of their barracks, some were sparing each other or practicing on training dummies and some were simply eating and drinking their time away.

Han knew that he had to get in the knights favor before trying to enter their ranks, so he started to help the knights doing stuff like getting them food, getting them water and helping them clean in the area around the fire. Sometimes he even acted as a training dummy just to get them to reveal their martial arts and skills.

He quickly learned several different techniques and practiced them in secret after the day was over. He had managed to steal two different weapons one was a compact bow that used energy to make arrows and the other was a scythe. The bow was hard to use since he only had a tiny bit of "breath" at his current level and the sythe was an entirely different story since there was only two knights that even used scythes and they weee hard to convince to duel but with enough patience he was slowly learning how to use his sythe and bow.

He continued this process for several months with none being the wiser. Through his tactics he had found out that there was an entrance exam for the knights in five months. He doubled down his efforts and learned everything from the knights he could. With his techniques practicing by himself didn't work as a long term way of mastering the skills. He had to start fighting beasts.

Slowly a figure traveled through the forest quietly and efficiently, not drawing any notice to himself as he crept up on his opponent. Having watched the knights practicing their bow abilities, Han had copied them the best he could. Drawing back the bowstring energy left his considerably larger dantion and formed an arrow that quickly soared through the air and critically hit his opponent. A larger lion turned to look at him while it's hind leg was destroyed, most of the muscle had been severed in the upper region of it leg. This wound substantially decreased its speed.

Han put away the bow and pulled out his scythe and charge at his opponent. With the extended reach he got from the scythe, he was able to slice open the lions side while barely dodging the paw coming down on him. He slammed the handle into the ground, propelling him out of the lions reach. Blood tainted the ground under the lion, none of this mattered to Han though. He immediately charged back in nog allowing the lion to control the speed of the fight. Han slid under the lion and punctured it's lung as he dodged another paw thrown at him. The lion hog enraged at this punny human being able to harm it, so as Han got up he was charged from the side. Not being able to stop the lion Han braced for the imminent impact. The lion flung his through two trees and he stopped in the third, half way in the trunk. Blood dripped from his arms grow the claw he received, he tried to breathe but, his broken rib didn't help that goal. The lion collapsed from the blood filling its lungs but, Han didn't care all that much about that as he collapsed on the ground.

Slowly a tentacle slithered to the lions body, making it disappear almost instantly.