Way of the Knights

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Great Wood Elemental Gate, opened! That is 1 out of 9 gates to full completion.

And it seems that Raven also received an extra.

Mid-Soldier Realm, achieved as well! His strength just encountered a huge boost, and just like everyone says: Strength equals Confidence. He\'s now more confident that he would return from this trip just fine. The consciousness that he sent inside the Ent\'s core woke up. He bowed down and expressed his deepest gratitude for the Ent\'s help. In his mind he swore that he would return the kindness that he received and honor the Karma that they had together.

"Off you go now, Little One. May you and your people have a safe trip in this dangerous place."

"Thank you for your kind words, Elder."

After saying this, Raven\'s piece of consciousness withdrawn from the ent\'s core and went back to his body. He opened his eyes and stood up only to hear his joints creak with pleasure. He let out a satisfied grown and briefly did some mental calculations of his current strength.

"Due to the disparity of Cultivation Bases along with the techniques I possess, fighting anyone who reached Peak-Warrior Realm should be no problem to me. Maybe I could scuffle with Junior Knight for a little while as well. Anyways, so long as it\'s not a Veteran Knight or anything above, I am confident of escaping."

He muttered under his breath. He walked out of his tent and saw that the sun was starting to rise from the horizon. He made a quick stop at the stream to clean up his body since there are still some pieces of old skin stuck from his clothing and his body. After cleaning himself up, he noticed that his skin actually lighten visibly.

"My skin tone just cycles from bronze to fair each breakthrough, maybe I should stay out of the sun for too long from now on. Unless of course, if it\'s absolutely necessary."

He also noticed that his hair had grown to reach his waists, before his breakthrough it was only touching his elbows. Shaking his head, he tied it onto a ponytail and while some was left on the sides of his face. He also visibly grown taller too, just that round of breakthrough added at least five inches on his height. Before, he stood at least 5.9", now his height shot up to 6.2" which is very tall for a 14 year old.

Chuckling at his changes, he went back to the camp and saw that Jackson was already up. From the looks of it, he\'s planning to train with Hopper but stopped since they saw him.

Hopper went up to say hi to him while Jackson stared at him for a good moment.

"You had a breakthrough?" He asked, Raven nodded and replied.

"Yeah, I\'ve been stuck at the peak of Early-Soldier Realm for a while now, I had a sudden inspiration last night and had a breakthrough." He said while petting Hopper.

\'That\'s absurd.\' Jackson mentally thought while smiling wryly, \'When I was at his age, I wasn\'t even at Soldier Realm. And when I was at Soldier Realm, it took me 3 months to advance a minor realm. But him, and maybe his friends as well, didn\'t even took a whole month to make a breakthrough. Just how did he train?\'

"Oh right! Did you manage to orient where we go after this?" Raven asked, to which Jackson nodded.

"We didn\'t strayed far enough from the destination, the general direction of where we should go is also straight ahead from this place, so we shouldn\'t have a hard time making it back."

The journey of the team so far went like this...Not even 200 meters away from the walls of the Kingdom they faced a natural danger which is the Diamond Dust Eclipse. Making it back to the walls is simply impossible before the eclipse occured so they were forced to look for a hiding place. Luckily, Raven found a pit no too far from the main road, they used it to hide for a period of time and while they were underneath, Raven found a hidden entrance leading to somewhere unknown. After going through the tunnel, they ended up within the Ent\'s domain and now they were here.From Jackson\'s calculations, the main road isn\'t far from where they\'re at. They should make it back before noon, then their journey towards the mission site should continue.Raven played with Hopper for a while and left to prepare a meal for the team. After eating, they went ahead to do their personal stuff before regrouping to head out. They gave one final bow towards the direction of the ent and off they go towards the main road.

"We\'re out of the Ent\'s domain, that means that danger surrounds us once more. Stay alert and try not to make as much noise as possible." Jackson warned the team.The solemn atmosphere descended and everyone raised their senses to the maximum. Raven flared his spiritual sense once more to look for any signs of danger.

As they walked out of their safe haven, they already saw the devastation that the Diamond Dust Eclipse did to the area.

Fallen trees, shredded plants, brittle barks, ruined fields, corpses of unlucky beasts and more, all scattered everywhere piecing out a scene of disaster.

The land is also field with what looks to be snow but isn\'t. These are diamond dusts, or at leasts what\'s left of them, if anyone looked at them closely for a while, they will see that each piece of dust are losing their glimmer as time goes on.

This is because it\'s dispersing the energies it absorbed back to it\'s surroundings. Once it releases everything it absorbed, it will disperse into nothingness and only leave devastation around. But the energy it releases will help new life bloom on it\'s place, the purity of energies that it releases are pretty decent too so it wouldn\'t take too much time before the Wilderness is back to it\'s tip top shape.

But despite of devastation that took place, the team would have to be even careful on their tracks. 10 hours is a long time, too many things could happen in an hour much less 10. The more aggressive beasts must already been out and already laying an ambush for any unsuspected victims, specially now that some beasts must be starving already. All hell would break loose if they made one careless mistake here.

"Stop." Jackson said softly, Raven pulled the team down to hide immediately since he was also aware of why Jackson told them to stop.They ducked inside a thick bush and stared straight ahead. Raven signalled the rest to not utter any sound. He flared his spiritual sense once more and saw the scene in front of them.

A beast lied, resting in an open space. It is a four legged beast with a menacing set of fangs, a glorious red and white stripes on its body, razor sharp claws, and two small horns on it\'s head.It is Blood Burst Tiger.

Something that could place them in dire danger should it wake up.From Raven\'s guesses, this Blood Burst Tiger should be equivalent to a Peak-Warrior Realm to Half-Step Junior Knight Realm expert. But what made this beast dangerous is it\'s tendency to enter a Berserk State when it faces danger.

The Berserk Stage amplifies its striking power, speed, and ferocity by at least double, what\'s worse is that it last for a whole 10 minutes and has no side-effects. But if it\'s only this, then Jackson is more than capable of handling this. After all, he himself is a Peak-Junior Knight, and along with hopper and of course Raven, taking down this beast should he a piece of cake.

Well, what if they included the thing behind the opposite bush? It\'s very clear that this beast is a hunter, if it weren\'t Hopper, Jackson might\'ve already walked in carelessly. Raven noticed this beast at the same time as Jackson did because of the range limitation on his Spiritual Sense. The dead giveaway was a red gleam in the eyes of what\'s behind that bush, now anyone who\'s not paying will certainly miss that and it would result in their deaths. Raven flared his spiritual sense in full bloom and inspected the hiding predator closely, he even turned on his ocular technique for this.The beast behind the bush is also a four legged creature. It has a thick brown colored fur, enormous claws and deadly fangs, a wicked looking red-eyes, bulky body, and a majestic garb of red mane on it\'s neck.There is no doubt on his mind that this is a Fire-Spitting Lion. It\'s a beast that, by physical abilities alone, could rival a Junior Knight powerhouse. Add the fact that that it could also spit balls of fire or even cover its whole body in flames makes it harder to deal with. Seeing this beast here gave the idea that it should be hunting this tiger and just looking for a change to pounce on it when it was spotted by the team.

Just as when Jackson was about to signal the retreat, the bush where the lion was, shook fiercely.

\'Shit!\'