Hunt of the Spiritual Beast

Inside the spiritual forest, a lone boy was walking cautiously. He was Lucas.

His attention was suddenly drawn to his right by sudden rustling sounds. He immediately turned around and faced a group of spiritual creatures called Blazing Tigers.

They were fire-based creatures with great attack power. The group was composed of six Blazing Tigers. One among them was in the early stages of E Rank, while the remaining five were at peak F Rank.

Without hesitation, Lucas withdrew a silver-coloured sword. It was a common D Rank sword that had been given to him by Rexon as a gift.

Lucas narrowed his eyes as he moved nimbly on his feet, and before any of the tigers could react, he sliced through the neck of the single F Rank tiger.

The tigers let out a ferocious howl at the death of their leader and they moved rapidly. In no time, they had surrounded Lucas.

He immediately took his fighting stance. Two tigers—one from each side—jumped towards him.

Lucas moved backwards with great agility as he raised his sword. In a swift motion, he slashed his sword vertically, decapitating another tiger by slicing its neck. The head of the tiger was completely severed from its neck.

Ignoring the other tiger that had jumped on him, Lucas leapt forward and stabbed yet another tiger between its eyes on its forehead, immediately killing it.

The remaining three tigers roared in anger. Lucas, showcasing great control, moved with swift movements and killed the remaining three tigers in no time. He all along the battle was extremely precise and had made no 'waste' movements.

Most notably, Lucas accomplished all this without any use of spiritual energy, relying solely on his impressive physical strength.

He noticed that his points had risen from 0 to 15. An F Rank spiritual beast provided 1 point, and an E Rank spiritual beast gave 10 points.

Inside the arena, on the scoreboard displaying points, Lucas rose to the top of the list with 15 points.

Immediately following behind him was Luna with 13 points, and in third place was someone with 2 points.

The audience was extremely surprised by the names of these two commoners and their strength. Their rapid increase in points in such a short amount of time attracted attention, and two of the many screens floating in the arena focused solely on these two.

At another location in the forest stood a girl. With her as the epicentre, the ground around her was charred black, and many spiritual beasts lay dead nearby.

Some of the beasts were completely burned, and their deaths were gruesome. That girl was Luna.

Unlike Lucas, she took a different approach to her battles. She was not like Lucas, who took the hard and troubling approach to do his job. Instead, she opted for a fast, swift and straightforward method.

Using her lightning element, she was burning and killing beasts as if they were nothing. She would move a certain distance and then kill some beasts using her lightning.

The sound of her lightning and the ensuing battle would draw other beasts from nearby, and for some time she would continue to kill them before moving to the next location.

While every other candidate in the forest tried to be sneaky by only engaging a few beasts head-on and avoiding larger groups, Luna was making as much noise as she could to attract the beasts toward her.

Out of the three elements with which she had an affinity, she had decided to reveal only her thunder affinity, keeping the other two—the wind element and the ice element, which was her strongest—secret.

Meanwhile, the audience, who were witnessing her bold approach combined with the strength to back it up, was stunned.

Although Lucas was leading the scoreboard with his simple and plain methods, Luna's flamboyant style was far more attractive to the spectators.

In one area, a boy was seething with fury as he looked at the rankings on his token. He was Leo Acalo, currently in 3rd position.

The Acalo were another elite family. Leo had prepared himself to top the entrance exam, and he was extremely arrogant about his talents.

With his skill and the resources of his family, he had already broken into E Rank. But now he was extremely angry and was seething with fury.

No matter how hard he tried, he was unable to overtake those two brats, and what angered him even more was the fact that they did not belong to any elite families.

Clenching his fist, he calmed himself and thought, "Get all the limelight you want. The main thing is the second round. There I will show you the difference between elites and commoners."

The hunt for the spiritual beasts continued for eight hours, until it was finally closure time.

At the end of the competition, Lucas was firmly placed in 1st position with 596 points, while Luna was in 2nd with 591 points.

The only reason Luna was behind Lucas was that she had encountered fewer spiritual beasts than he had, although both had purposely slowed down toward the end so as not to reveal too much of their powers.

In third position was Leo Acalo with 467 points, in fourth was Tim Clove—the younger brother of Natale Clove—and in fifth was Alicia Telon.

Although her family was a powerful family, they were a normal upper-tier family and were even weaker than the Wilson family.

After the time ended, everyone participating was teleported back to the arena.

Amden, meanwhile, was calmly gazing at all this. The result was no surprise to him.