[Bonus chapter] Normal Environment

'What the fuck is their problem? Can't they give me a normal environment for once?'

Finally lowering his weapon, he looked around his surroundings. There was nothing out of the ordinary anywhere.

Sighing again at his sad state, Licht picked the tallest tree he could guess from the bunch around him.

Putting his sword inside the inventory, he started the climb.

At first, he used the gauntlets to dig into the dark and slowly climb up, but as the branches increased in his paths, he started to use them to climb up.

He used every branch as his foothold, and he rushed above.

After rigorous climbing for minutes, which he was now quite adept at, Licht finally reached the top.

The view from up there was quite mesmerizing. The air was somewhat scarce as the height was far greater than he had thought.

He couldn't even see many of the smaller trees from this far above.

But in contrast to the peaceful environment here, the one thing he saw in the forest was utter destruction.

Just some hundred meters away from him was a dust cloud rising. Many trees were falling like a stack of dominos.

Some were uprooted from the ground, some broken from the trunk, and some not even there, as if they had been thrown out of that particular area.

Licht couldn't think of any kind of calamity that could do this. It was his first time in this fauna.

The plants and animals on Earth were far more depleted. He hadn't seen even a single lush green tree inside the sectors he lived in.

The Earth...no, humanity was close to its inevitable doom, but the Pantheon of Ascension changed everything.

Focussing on the trees far of in the distance, Licht tried to gather any kind of information, but suddenly something unexpected happened.

'Huh?'

There was a weird sound coming from Licht's far right. It was weird and unnatural of sorts.

It felt like the sound of rattling snakes, but instead of snakes, it came from the shaking of trees.

"What is happening at the ground..." Licht pondered about what was happening, and a tremor erupted.

'Wait! Tremor up here?!' just as he thought that his footing went off as he was about to fall.

SCRATCH!

Luckily his hands dug into the trunk as he hung up at the peak.

His eyes darted towards the horizon, a big dust cloud was being raised in that direction, and he finally saw the initiator of this sound, a bear.

A giant bear, bigger than a house was running in his direction. It ran towards him in a frenzy as if it could see him even above this thick canopy of trees.

Realizing the severity of the situation, only curses came down Licht's throat. "What the hell is happening!"

"Since when did bears get this big...."

"I swear I really, really wanna have a talk with the creat-" Licht's hand detached itself from the tree he was holding on to.

Under the immense power of the bear's claw, the tree first swayed as cracking sounds came from the trunk.

Just as the second attack hit the tree, it all changed. The tree fell down with Licht's at its top.

Unhappy with the turn of events, Licht did the only thing he could do in this extreme situation.

Slowing down his descent with his bony fingers, Licht waited for the right moment and started running to the top.

With the tree falling, it was getting easy to run on it.

The more inclined the tree became, the faster Licht got. Finally reaching the top, he cursed under his breath for a moment.

"Why do I have to do these deadly antics every time..."

And then he jumped as hard as he could, crashing into another tree as the one he was previously on fell.

His body slid across the bark for a moment when it came to a still as he tightened his grip on the tree.

Both of his arms were mildly bleeding after scraping the bark again and again.

The friction between his hands and the rough bark of the tree was starting to get irritating on many levels.

Ignoring the pain coming from his hands, Licht looked at the bear. It was confused at the sudden disappearance of the human it had found.

ROAR!

It hadn't seen Licht jumping and running when the tree was falling. The only reason the bear could even find Licht was because of its extraordinary nose.

All of a sudden, the Bear roared at its unfounded prey. In a fit of rage, it broke more trees, slamming them down with its paws.

It rolled around the ground as spikes grew out of its spines, destroying every tree that came in its path.

Yet it was useless for now. The dust raised from falling down of the tree made it harder for the calamity to locate Licht.

Moving its body tumbling body, it strolled all around the fallen tree and searched for its prey.

The only breathing time Licht had was what he had now, and he certainly couldn't waste it.

In the small time frame, the giant bear was startled and confused by his disappearance. He had to devise a plan to kill it.

But this was too much, too much even for him.

The bear was bigger and more unruly than Hollow Sentinel.

The time he killed Hollow Sentinel wasn't even comparable to what he was experiencing right now.

'Curses! If I am right, which I am right now...'

'They upgrade the trial every time.'

The Sentinel was just a dumb calamity by Licht's standards, it could have ended him many times, but even then, it was still scary.

This time he was dealing with an opponent who was better than Sentinel in most aspects if not all!

He even had support from the cliffs and a lack of judgment of the Sentinel, but here, he had nothing.

Nothing except a sword and a pair of gauntlets...

Or did he have something?