3 Beast Core and Growth Rate.
(It is the year 1900. He will remain isolated for a long while until he encounters the regular factions.)
Talos licked his lips as he took a deep breath breath. He focused back on his past lives sword skills as he began to heat up causing smoke to leave his body. His tail blade turned white hot as fire mana churned in his body.
The wolves noticing this paused their advance as they began to circle around him. They wanted the corpse of the ape behind him, but Talos was not looking to share. He roared a warning roar, but the leader of the small pack growled and advanced.
The other 4 advanced with him which just made Talos laugh which sounded omminous. He alone stared off the pack of wolves which were bigger than he was, but despite his small size, he was far from easy prey.
The wolves slowed down as they began to use their mana which was earth. The dark wolves were covered in what seemed to be stone armor making them more confident. They advanced in a spear formating as they planned to drive him away from his prey.
The snarled and growled to intimidate him, but Talos roared back with even more ferocity. He took a deep breath through his nose as a formless energy gathered around his tail. He squinted his eyes as he got into the zone he had found himself in a few times in his life.
Seeing how he stopped moving the alpha charged forward along with his pack. They would just kill him and eat him if he did not want to give up his prey. The alpha moved at the front of his pack as he lept in the air.
With claws extended and fangs bared the alpha could already taste the flesh of Talos. But just then Talos moved almost slowly, but he was fast. His placed his front arms on the ground and using them as a stand he spun around.
His tail blade glowed from both heat and something else. With extreme force, his blade snapped through the air and right through the alpha's neck decapitating it mid air. As the alpha lost it's head, the wolves eyes opened wide at the shock of his death.
As for the other 4 wolves they dug their claws in as they watched their leader killed. Talos turned to them and aimed his tail blade at them daring them to attack. However, the survivors ran away with their leader dead.
They were not going to risk their food when their would be easier prey to hunt. When they were gone Talos exhaled as he had used his Sword Intent for the first time in his monster body was exausting.
He was taught the art of the sword by an eastern swordmaster when he still had the urge to improve. The art of Cultivation was a derivative of Mana which used Ki instead. He had the honor of learning when the swordmaster was on his journey. Sword Intent was one of the things he had learned before his Master left him.
He remembered his Sword intructor as it was explained.
'Remember Talos, the art of the sword has levels. This is merely Sword Intent which these 'swordmasters' use. Above that is Sword Will, just by your mastery of the sword you shall be able to cut anything. True blade masters like me use Sword Heart. If you ever reach that level, I will teach you what is above that.'
He never got the chance to learn the name of what came above Sword Heart as his master left him in the middle of the night.
'I hope you are well my master.'
With that, he walked toward the left overs of the ape. It had been left out over night, but no insects had gathered on it because of his flames. It had been marked and it kept them away. Feeling a bit hungry, he took a breath and blasted the meat to heat it up once again.
Yesterday he had eatern nearly one half of the giant corpse and today he gourged himself on what remained. When all that was left was the ape's head and he felt absolutely stuffed, he picked it up in his hands.
He missed it yesterday from how tired he was, but their was something inside the head. He opened his jaws and bit into the skull cracking it open. He ripped back and exposed the brain. He reached in and dug in the brain matter before he pulled out a small marble sized stone.
It was smooth and glowing slightly.
'A beast core.'
Using his mana sense he felt that the ape did not actually have an affinity. It was a neutral Beast core so he tossed it into his mouth. When he did so, his stomach quickly burned through the flesh he ate to draw out all the energy it could.
But the Beast Core melted down and was absorbed by his body which caused him to feel energized. It's neutral vital energy flowed into his body. He closed his eyes and began to circulate his mana in his body to control the energy he was absorbing.
This only took around 10 minutes as his Adaptive Evolution skill aided him along. He could swear his stomach had gotten much stronger to faster digest what he ate. When he opened his eyes he could feel his body growing larger slowly.
It was slow, but it was visibly noticible.
'Amazing.'
He walked toward the wolf and used his mana sense to search for the Beast Core. Unlike the ape, he found it near the heart so using the hole where the head once was, he dug his hand in before pulling out the brown Beast Core.
This one was of the earth element so he swallowed it as well. Unlike the neutral one, this one was better suited to him already. He could feel the mana inside be fused into the organ in his chest where he stored moleten slag.
He felt the organ heat up slightly as the slag he had contained in their was refined by the earth mana. He could even feel his own affinity to the earth element increase which was welcome.
'I should examine my soul.'
He closed his eyes and just like he had learned sunk his consiouness within. He analyzed his soul and explored his elemental affinities. In his past life he specilized in lightning, which he still had. He just had to tap into it, but his fire affinity was now equal to his lightning affinity.
The rest were quire reduced which was fine with him as he could focus on fire and lightning with a sub affinity of earth with his new bloodline. When he stopped focusing his consiouness returned to his body.
'I will be here a while, but that is not a bad thing.'
He dragged the wolf into his den knowing that he would be making his forest his home for a time. His growth rate was rather quick, but at the same time it was not instant. He needed sleep to truly use the energy he had and he was only a little bigger than a medium dog.
He had no idea how big a Hellblade Glavenus got, but it must be massive. Once he was in his lair he dropped the wolf next to the lizard which he would save for later. He curled up and closed his eyes as he needed sleep for now to better use the energy and nutrients he ate.
Before he slept he reminded himseld that he needed to keep practising with his sword intent if he wanted to advance. He would need to change the sword style his master passed to him to suit him, and he would need to keep gathering food.
His Adaptive Evolution trate was a blessing, but he needed to eat ungoldy amounts of food or he would starve.
'Problems for future me.'
Once sleep took him he grew faster than awake and more efficiently. From here on, Talos got busy for the first time in over 15 years. The last time he trained this hard he was only 10 when his swordmaster was still training him.
---
Deep underground, in his mana vein, Talos slept. He took deep breaths instictively absorbing the ambient mana gathered by his Mana Vein and what was in the air. Unlike when he first hatched, Talos was no longer a tiny creature.
He had lived in his forest with few challangers for 2 years. In that time, he had grown into a truly powerful creature. He was 12 meters long, but he was still just a adolecent. He was bigger than a regular Glavenus would be at his age, but small compared to the regular Glavenus, not to mention the Hellblade varient.
His scales had taken a very dark red marron color with dark shinny black scales near his stomach. His back spikes had grown into massive pilars of defense, while his majestic tail blade had been refined over the years with more and better material.
With every breath he took, a powerful heat radiated off him with occasional lightning sparking from his spikes. He began to stirr awake which caused his eyes to open wide open. They were still bright gold, but surrounding it was glowing red.
(Image here)
He yawned awake as he got to his feet and began to stire awake. Over the past 2 years he had excavated a larger tunnel leading to his lair which he took to the surface. When he left the tunnel and fully surfaced he scartched his neck a bit.
He looked around where the clearing had been expanded slightly with all the trees showing cut marks where he marked his territory. Most creatures avoided the area and gave him his due do to his boundless hunger.
The forest he was in was teaming with life, it even had monsters that even he had to keep his distance from. They left him alone as he was not worth the effort as he had proven that size was not his weakness.
Monsters larger than he was had tried their luck and ended up dead so he showed them respect, and they him. For now, it was time to go on a hunt as his hunger was nearly endless. As he walked into the forest the smaller creatures hid as he was going out on his hunt.
As for the monsters that had once fought him and come out wounded, they released their auras to warn him of approaching. He roared out into the forest which was his way of accepting the warning. They did the same with their roars echoeing for countless of miles.
He had taken a large territory of 30 miles where he was king. The others had done the same with some having smaller or larger territories depending on their power. He had found his place in the food chain in his juvenile state.
'Just you wait, you will get yours.'
He walked deeper into his territory using all his senses to search for prey. His mana sense spread out from him while his eyes, nose and hearing all narrowed down his search for prey.
He ignored the small creatures that were more energy than they were worth. Instead he focused on the larger creatures that had more meat to them. Already because of his Adaptive Evolution trait, his eyes could see in the full spectrum of light, his nose was could track small scent particles for miles and his hearing could sense the smallest twitch.
He stuck his tounge out tasting the air like a snake before pressing it up against the roof of his mouth. With all his senses, he found something.
'Prey.'
He advanced through his forest with unexpected quite. His feet had developed small sound absorbing scales which meant he walked silently through the forest. He leaned forward and walked on all 4s like a bear.
Despite his front limbs being shorter than his back limbs, they were strong enough to support his weight with ease. It gave him better leverage of his tail blade which was his main weapon. He continued to narrow in on the prey item for several miles. Just as he reached the edge of his territory he found his prey.
A gigantic armored rhino. The rhinocerous was at least 20 meters long and it was browsing through the woods. Two gigantic mineral rich horns extended from it's face while it was covered in thick metal armor. Seeing it he licked his lips as this was perfect prey for him.
He was no ambush predator so he emerged from the forest and roared at the rhino. When it saw him approach, it spun around and faced him head on. It leaned forward and began to paw at the ground in a intimidation display.
Not feeling at all threathened, Talos stood up on his back legs and tensed his tail blade. He began to grind it against the ground causing it to rapidly burn. On top of the heat, purple lightning sparks danced from his horns to the base of his tail.
The rhino's mana flowed through it's horns causing it's armor to glow like the sun.
'Seems this rhino is a earth and light beast. It's just prey though.'
Talos squinted his eyes as he got into the zone and became one with his tail blade. He tensed it using the sub-brain at the base of his tail that formed because of his trait to have proper control over his blade.
He opened his mouth as the rhino lost patience and charged. It bellowed with rage as it moved fast using it's light affinity to make up for it's mass. However, to Talos it might as well be a savage brute.
He tensed his legs as his mana gathered in them before he rushed forward. Being smaller than the rhino, it was confident in fighting him, but before they clashed, he jumped into the air.
He used the rhino's giant horn as a platform and jumped directly to the size of the rhino. As he jumped down he brought down his blade on the rhino's nape. On pure instict the rhino reinforced it's nape with as much metal mana as it could.
His sword will pierced through it causing his tail blade to stop after a few inches. It survived, but it was wounded to the extreme. He pulled his blade out and backed away from the rhino as it spilled blood everywhere.
It bellowed in rage and pain as he had severed the muscles that kept it's massive head up. It's natural regeneration was nowhere fast, but if it managed to escape it would live. But, he was not going to give it that chance.
He took a deep breath and in his throat, he mixed fire and lightning mana causing his flames to take on a bright purple hugh. He expelled the mixture which erupted with the force of a rail gun and struck the wound of the rhino.
The explosion caused the already large wound to be opened up even worse. In that same moment he charged forward past the horns and with another Sword Will enhanced tail blade swipe took the rhino's head.
Once it was dead, Talos opened his mouth and using mana he caused the blood that fell on the ground and was spilling to float into his open mouth. He continued to drink the mana and nutrient rich blood until it was all gone.
He licked his lips, reached down to grab the head with one of his hands before stuffing one it horn first down the rhino's body. He walked around and grabbed one of it's legs with his front leg to drag it back home.
A successful hunt like this would keep him fed for a day or two before he needed to hunt again. But, every hunt was exciting as it was a chance to hone his sword skills and taste the many monsters of the forest.
'Wonder what this one will taste like? Good I hope.'
