I couldn’t help but cringe at the thought of not knowing when I would be able to use the shadows again. I stood up and walked towards the wall where I kept the Scorpion-Panther heads. Seeing the Dragon and the Bear woke me up. There was no way I would get strong enough to fight those two without taking any risks, so it was time to do exactly that.

I approached the head of the first Panther I hunted, and glared at it. After thinking about it and almost back away from it, I stepped forwards and grabbed it. I had to figure out a way to drink its acid, so I could build a resistance to it, until I would be able to drink its acid directly.

I was already immune to its poison, and that was good, but the most dangerous ability of the Panther was its acid, so I needed to take advantage of it.

[Mmm… The Panther itself is immune, isn’t it? I’m sure I can improvise something.]

Having made up my mind, I walked away from the heads, geared up with ‘knives’ and ‘spears’, meaning teeth and spikes, and walked out of the cave. It was about to get late, but I didn’t give a damn. The time to play safe was over, it was time to risk it all.

I felt the tension build up inside me. All my muscles trembled, my mind imagined possible preys. I felt excited. It scared me the fact that I wasn’t scared. The instincts were taking over me and I was taking the reins of my life. Nothing would make me feel afraid or impede my way again.

I stepped onto the forest without making a noise, letting the forest embrace me. After months of walking around the forest, I had learned where to step not to make any noise, what places to avoid if I didn’t want to be seen and how fast I could be without being noticed by those who could see in a different spectrum.

Today I put all my practice in play as I drifted into the woods. I knew some things were looking at me, but those were harmless, little birds and rodents dwelling around the forest. As I walked I listened to the forest: some chirping here, a squeak over there, but nothing to worry about. That was until I heard a distinctive sound. It was like an owl, but drier, as if it was an owl which hadn’t had anything to drink for weeks.

That sound came from a Raven Owl. One of the scariest scavengers I had ever met. I mean, it was a weakling here in this forest, but on Earth? It would have probably eaten a single forest in a single week. It had an acid that was strong enough to dissolve bones; it just didn’t have any means to apply it to its preys. The Raven Owl devoured corpses as if it had an endless stomach, but the truth was that it had.

Of course it wasn’t exactly like that, it had an end, it just never filled enough to reach it. The reason was obvious. The acid in its stomach was half as strong as the Scorpion-Panther, so while he was eating, the food/corpses dissolved in its stomach and the energy from them went straight to the Raven, allowing him to keep producing acid and eating.

Although it didn’t have any means to apply the acid on its victims, its beak was strong enough to break trees, to say nothing of piercing skin, so it fed easily. The problem was that it wasn’t big enough to kill the preys it needed to sustain its high energy-consuming acid, so it had to rely on other hunters to feed. And guess which hunter he chose to follow? Yes, the damn Panther.

I mean, it’s comprehensible; the Panther usually spread some unilateral acidic saliva over its preys once dead, meaning the acid wouldn’t corrode the prey, but nothing could eat it without getting corroded. That’s it, if the one doing it wasn’t the Raven Owl, which had a strong resistance to acid, and could easily protect itself from the heavy burns the acidic saliva caused onto anything else, meaning that wherever there was a Raven Owl, there was also a Scorpion-Panther.

[Time to hunt, baby!] – I smiled and poured energy towards my body. It strengthened beyond what I had achieved previously, and I got ready. I took one of my javelins and charged lightly its tip, enough to pierce without breaking, not enough to split the body.

The second the Panther appeared in my field of vision I swung my arm and threw the spike. I probably threw it five times as fast as an Olympic javelin thrower, so maybe you can picture the spike going through the neck of the Panther and into the floor.

It was over in a split second, I hadn’t realized that they were so easily killable, I mean, I had killed seven, but still they had put me in peril. I guess taking advantage of my intelligence wasn’t such a bad idea.

After dragging the corpse back to my cave, I dissected it, collected its blood, separated its head and its tail and taken everything I could take from its body. I took a bowl full of the Panther’s blood and took it where I kept the Panther heads. I carefully opened its mouth and with the utmost care made a single acid drop to fall into the bowl.

First it hissed, as if it was eating away the blood, but after two mere seconds it stopped and the blood, which until now was dark red, turned dark green. It started eating the bowl away, but it did so slowly. [Ha! It worked! Suck it up, Scorpion-Panthers, I’m becoming immune!]

*Gulp*

[Okay… Maybe gulping it down at once wasn’t the best idea. Fuuuuuuck!]

I hurriedly sat down and used the breathing technique to carry the energy around. I immediately felt as the corrosion slowed down, and I couldn’t help but sigh with relief. Having slowed down, the corrosion couldn’t beat my regeneration, so I kept doing the full process until every single cell was full of energy. I soon realized I needed more, so I stood up, and took all the blood I had left, carried it to the heads and prepared the solution so that I would be able to digest the acid.

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After gulping all the blood at once, all I felt was pain.

***

“Mmm… Damn, such a headache.” I woke up with a sore feeling all over my body. I looked at my skin and noticed something. It was darkening. If Nighcrawler’s skin was somehow blue, and my skin before this was pale, now it had more of an ashen color to it. I felt my skin was tougher than before and I deduced it wasn’t just the color that had changed. I traced my skin with my skins, and felt its new texture. It felt rougher yet at the same time softer, as if the cells forming the skin were better structured, and the skin was now what it was supposed to be.

I took a home-made knife and tried to slice my skin. I felt resistance! Until now I had been improving my strength and even my bone toughness, but never the skin. Although I was able to pierce my skin without even strengthening the knife or my muscles, I had just had one dose of strengthening.

I went towards the newest Panther head and opened its mouth. I accomplished to make a drop surge from the maws of the head, and drop into my skin. It hissed, and corroded it, but barely. As soon as it got through, it had been consumed already.

“Ha! It worked!” – I couldn’t help but to be happy, after all, once I was immune to the acid I would be able to make use of it.

I carefully approached the head towards my mouth, and made some drops fell. I gulped them fast and tossed the head aside. I immersed myself into meditation and circulated the generated energy around my body, but mostly towards my skin. I felt even sorer than after I woke up, but I kept at it, because it didn’t hurt as much as it did before.

This all felt so unrealistic, barely a year ago, I was working as a night guard, and now here I was, hunting monsters and improving myself, had anyone told me here is where I would be a year ago, I would’ve probably punched him on the face. Don’t judge me too hard, I was going through a low point in my life.

Anyway, after refining its energy, I felt as my body improved in its acid resistance. I may or may not be immune, but at the least I wouldn’t be as harmed as I would have otherwise, at least with acids on the same level as the Panther’s, not to talk about the weaker ones.

After that, I kept drinking acid for the whole night, until I felt no improvement anymore. Of course that didn’t mean I was immune to acid, but maybe I was to the Panther’s one. There was only one way to test it, though. I stood up and took the only head that still had acid reserves. I forced its maws open and poured acid over my skin.

I felt nothing, and the acid just slipped off my arm onto the floor, where it started hissing and corroding the hard stone. I had made it, I was immune! Or at least I was immune enough that my healing finished the job, I had no way to know it, as I couldn’t stop healing, but I was happy either way, I would be able to practice different styles against the Panther now that I didn’t have to worry about getting so hurt I wouldn’t be able to move.

Well, I had to get down to business if ever wanted to be on par with the Dragon in terms of speed, so I decided I knew exactly what I was picking as my next power, the only problem? The amount of SP I had to use had multiplied by two on all the powers. It seems the more powers I got, the more expensive getting powers got. I understood it though, the SP was supposed to influence my soul, but the stronger my soul was, which it became by acquiring powers, the harder it became to improve, so I needed more Soul Points.

Quicksilver’s power was already expensive in the first place. A power that not only increased your physical speed but also increased accordingly your mind speed had to be, because increasing both meant that the time would actually slow down to me, or something similar. It cost 60.000 damned points even before all powers doubled its cost, so now I had to accumulate 120.000 SP to get that.

*Sigh* “I guess it’s hunting time, but before I should correct all the stances on the Werewolf Fury, see if I can get it to the 100%, or at least high enough to reduce the hunting I will need to get all the SP.”

And so, I started again, to work on all the stances of the first three styles, to correct all its stances and to remember them all perfectly.

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I was tired of correcting stances, it had been 2 days, and I was barely half way through.190 stances in two days felt too slow, most of all because I had already corrected 78 prior to this, so they were actually only 112 stances. Maybe it was a bad call when I decided that each time I failed I would have to repeat not only from the begining of the style's stances, but from the begining of all. Now when I failed I was repeating 190 stances before I got to try the next one, even when I didn't fail on the Equilibrium style anymore.

But like hell I was going back on my decision, I had made a choice, and it was actually helping me to engrave all the training into my head, so it was worth it, just slow.

I took a break every 3 hours to practise Energy Control and Energy String, so I could perfect and improve on those too. I tried to summon the Shadows, but I couldn't reach them, and I couldn't control them anymore.

*Sigh* [I guess all I can do is wait and hope for the best.] - I resigned myself not to be able to control Shadows yet, and let the scars on the portal heal.

After my "break" which was less a break and more an exercice change, I kept training in the stances.

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After 9 days of effort, sweat, literal blood and barely 3 hours sleep in total, I had gotten all 360 stances right. The three fighting styles were perfect.

Werewolf Fury G mid tier Progress: 87.0 %

Preys devoured (Naming acording to knowledge):

- Iron Elk ( x11 ) : Improves agility and bone durability.

- Scorpion Panther ( x10 ) : Improves poison and acid resistance, stealth and agility.

- Spiked Lion ( x3 ) : Improves strength and bone durability.

- Draconic Wolf ( x6 ) : Improves speed and agility, and also skin durability.

- Fiery Ape (x5) : Improves balance and coordination, small improvement in strength.

- Gryphon (x2) : Improves eyesight, hearing, balance, speed and strength. (+4% at Angel's powers)

And "just like that", I had gotten 37.500 SP, and I hadn't even started on the Merged style. Once I had it I hoped I would get to 95% at the least, getting myself 18.500 more SP. Of course, this wouldn't get me enough points for Quicksilver's powers, but it was a start, a good start.

I readied myself, closed my eyes and recalled the guidelines of the Werewolf Fury, and for the first time, I understood the first stance of the Merged.