Growth

4 years have passed since the meeting and the arrogant declaration. Ray had been training hard with Arthur's guidance.

He cultivated the new sun arts Arthur had been teaching him called Solar bone refinement which allowed a person to absorb solar energy into their bones to strengthen their bones and store solar power.

The second sun art was a compliment to the first. It was called Sun skin which used the solar energy absorbed by the bones. The energy is released at night to strengthen the skin making able to resist the impacts on the body.

He also trained his body naturally using all types of exercises taught to him by Arthur. His body was more refined than any of his peers.

Today was the day he was going to the forest to fight the beasts. Although he received many warning from his mother about how dangerous the beasts were in the end he still decided to go.

She was worried sick, that her last child would lose his life. In the end she could only begrudgingly accept his choice, since she knew he was not one to change his mind.

Ray grabbed food and said goodbye to his mom Emily.

Before he walked out the door she ran over and scooped him into a tight hug and whispered.

"Be safe my dear Ray of sunshine." She let go and waved as he left.

------

He headed out the manor and to his surprise, his sister Rose was waiting for him. She wore the same type of outfit that Rebecca used to wear except it had only one pauldron, and on it was the symbol of a spear. She was 20 and she recently developed a class which was a lancer.

Classes were usually matched with the awakeners personality and element. There were some rare awakeners who had two elements and so they would have a class that could match both.

"I thought you said I'll have to do this by myself." He said sarcastically.

"Yeah, we'll big sis said I have to go with you to make sure you don't cheat." Rose said after a grumble. "Come on let's leave before I beat your ugly face in."

Arthur complied while saying nothing with an arrogant grin. They boarded an elegant carriage the was pulled by a large horse with flames for hair.

The horse moved fast but not fast enough where they couldn't see the sights.

Ray took the opportunity to look out the window at the city, since he's never been there before.

'Wow so this is how far cities have come since I've been away'

The city was mostly modern with the lack of cars and common electronics. Many people did have devices called tele-coms.

These kept track of a person's rank and allowed communication between them. They could also play live broadcasts through holograms and send emergency signals straight to the law enforcement.

They could also be linked to a person's bank account.

The building themselves were mostly made of metal and some have special plates on them to defend from the beasts.

In the Solaris kingdom the law enforcement was run by the branch with the most people: the 3rd branch. They had double the amount as the first branch so they took the task of keeping the peace.

———

Without a single word being exchanged between the two siblings the whole way they finally reached their destination.

{The outskirts of the beast territory.}

The beast territory was self explanatory, it is was the area where beast congregate. The beasts take longer to rank up but they are almost three times as strong as humans.

This makes it hard to clear them out, but they provide great resources which help humans even the playing field.

"Are you ready to go or have you gotten cold feet?" Rose asked with a snicker seeing Ray wasn't moving. However Ray was ignoring her because he was talking to Arthur.

'We need to kill a fire beast first so we can get stronger' Arthur explained how he also knew the place to find them.

Suddenly Ray spoke up. "Okay, let's go!" Ray said and took off into the forest. Which was a dense forest that surrounded the beast territory.

"About time." Rose whispered under her breath. She told the horse to wait here and took off after him.

About a half a mile into the forest, Ray decided that it was too difficult to find the beasts on the ground. He decided to climb a nearby tall tree, after making it to the top he can see above most the forest.

What he saw sent a chill down his spine.

A large chimpanzee with flames running down it's back and tail. It had charcoal black fur and red fur on its hands. It was sitting on a tree 50ft away, glaring at him with a fire in it's eyes.

'That's a [rank-F]{Master stage} flaming ape you got this.' Arthur told Ray.

Rose immediately noticed the beast and shouted to Ray. "TAKE YOUR WEAPON OUT FAST!"

Ray glanced at her. "Who said I needed a weapon?" he looked back at the chimpanzee to see it was sucking in a huge breath of air. Ray had spent a lot of time learning the types of attacks from Arthur and now he was ready to put what he learned to the test.

The monkey released it's breathe and blazing hot flames roared forward.

Ray jumped down as the flames flew over his head. It torched the top of the trees, lighting them up like torches.

He kicked off the tree and flew towards the chimpanzee. He threw his left fist forward, at the same time the ape threw his right fist forward.

As they were about to clash, Ray unballed his fist and lowered it. He caught the chimp's wrist and used the tree and momentum to throw the monkey over his shoulder and into the ground.

It flew down fast followed by Ray.

It landed with a large boom and a slight bounce. Then Ray's fist slammed into the monkey's chest causing another boom as they hit the ground.