Training Daren

Daren was up all night reading the cultivation manuals. He started his cultivation and by the time it was morning, he had cultivated up to the fifth brown rank. This was very impressive for someone that did not have an ounce of cultivation the night before.

Licht, Midas, and Daren got ready to leave, and since there were only two dracohorses, Licht chose to create the carriage like he normally did. Both Licht and Daren got in the carriage, while Midas got on top and they departed towards the elven kingdom, Belzoheim.

Since they were moving by carriage, they were slower than when they were going toward the bandits hideout. After several hours, they were back on track so they continued on their merry way.

Creatures of the brown rank that they saw were too strong for Daren to face as they were in the eight brown ranks or even ninth. They finally came across a rabbit-like beast, the same species as the one Licht and Midas killed for dinner the night when they were first attacked by Gabe and his reinforcements.

The beast was a carnivorous dust bunny. They were sixth-brown rank beasts, that came with jagged teeth, its size was about that of a big dog or a hyena. It was also an earth-variable attribute beast that used dust for attack and to confuse its prey.

As Midas saw the beast, he told Daren that it was time to learn combat. He then brought out several weapons from the soul space, they were swords, sabers, axes, daggers, chain and sickle, etcetera.

Daren stared at all the weapons and ended up taking two blades. They were both Kodachis, a Kodachi was a short sword about the length of a forearm. Daren felt like this weapon was meant for him as he wielded it, it felt natural.

He nodded at Midas who let him sneak toward the beast. He learned a new technique called Shadow Jump. It allowed him to jump into the shadow of anything either living or non-living.

This was the first time he tried the technique and after a short pause, he jumped into the shadow of a tree, he moved from shadow to shadow till he was a meter away from the rabbit. He prepared his sword in the shadow as he could not move into the rabbit's shadow. He sprung out and struck at the rabbit but the rabbit had sharp reflexes allowing it to dodge the blade by a large margin.

He was now in a standoff against the beast. The rabbit's intelligence was quite low and it immediately lunged at Daren. Seeing such a sight Daren had a mini panic attack and froze, that freeze would have cost him his life but he had a flash of a memory and remembered what Midas told him about strength and remembered if he had been strong, he and his mother would never have been captured by the dead men bandits. In that epiphany, his shadow pushed back faster than the rabbit could attack. After reaching a considerable distance, the rabbit was confused at how fast the human escaped from its jagged teeth and was ready to attack again but this time, Daren did not waste time, he used the same technique he used to escape but this time, the skill was called shadow boost, it used a huge amount of ether energy for an instantaneous burst of speed and now he was heading toward the rabbit. The rabbit struck out with its claws and dust clouds could be seen rising from the floor. The aim of that was to blind its prey then the rabbit would attack but when the rabbit tried attacking, its prey had disappeared.

Daren was currently in the shadow of the rabbit, the dust cloud formed a huge shadow which he used to sneak into the shadow of the rabbit, and now he was waiting for the perfect moment to strike. His blade had a purple aura oozing out from it which was just his poison ether energy extending onto the blade. After what seemed like forever, the perfect opportunity came and then he jumped out of the shadow with lightning speed.

He landed on the ground and there was a fountain of blood spraying out the jugular of the rabbit. He had slit the throat of the rabbit before it could react. The rabbit still tried to attack him but it realized it could not move. It just stayed still waiting for its end to come which came in a matter of seconds. The rabbit dropped dead and then Midas walked up to Daren and said " Not bad. You made a mistake in the beginning but you rectified it almost immediately so that is a good thing"

Author's note: Licht has a master-student relationship with Midas while Midas has a master-servant relationship with Daren and Wrath who is his soul summon too.

After the rabbit died and Midas commended Daren, they continued their journey. Several miles away, a fight had occurred between two upper blue ranked beasts, one was a tiger that had flames surrounding its entire body and the other was a twelve-foot river bear. The fight was deadly as these two were apex predators in their own standing but now the river bear had intruded into the tiger's domain and attacked it unaware. The tiger was injured and chose to retreat, after running for hours it chose to stop as it was hungry, as if mother luck heard it, it stumbled upon three humans eating the flesh of a huge rabbit.

The tiger was so hungry that it threw all caution to the wing and jumped at the closest person near it which was Midas. Licht and Midas already felt the tiger when it was in range as they were always vigilant. As the tiger thought its ambush was a success, a giant chimeric beast lunged out of Midas's back and pinned the tiger to the ground as it bit into it. The tiger was already injured from the fight against the bear and exhausted from its escape, despite it being a late blue ranked beast, it stood no chance against the manticore.