Wandering between the territories of the dire wolves and bone spiders proved to be the best strategy for acquiring heart blood. It was the obvious choice as, Clay knew, it was easier to find beasts between their territories, but that wasn’t the only advantage.
No, the real advantage was that he knew that no matter if dire wolf or bone spider, each one was mutated enough to last Mia several days. It made a huge difference of having to scour the forest mindlessly in hope of finding a mutated animal that may or may not provide enough heart blood or just going to this war side and get three to four corpses which will last for the whole month.
Just about an hour after strolling along the territories, he heard the first crack, which he could tell by now belonged to a dire wolf. Quickly pushing his essence away from his ears to his legs, he pushed off to where the sound came from. Startled, Mia, struggled to keep up.
She wasn’t nearly as efficient and certainly not as quick as Clay in strengthening her body, her specialty laid in her aura, rather than her inner circulation. So she didn’t even strengthen her legs specifically, but just her whole body due to not being able to form an individual circulation.
He knew that and still didn’t tell her that he heard a dire wolf nor that he would chase it. This was how he trained her: by not telling what she had to do and force her to react on her own, to think for herself.
Of course, he made sure to slow down enough so that she doesn’t lose sight of him and always stayed in a certain distance, where she might think she will lose him if she ever slowed down, but never really will, as he always kept an eye on her. In case she got ambushed, he was confident to reach her in mere seconds by erupting the essence in his legs.
They continued like this for a while until Clay slowly slowed down once he saw the silhouette of the dire wolf or wolves to be more specific. Circulating the essence from his legs to his eyes, he saw that they were engaged with another two bone spiders, who seemed to have been caught off guard.
They might have been spotted while scouting enemy territory, as they were quite a distance off from the web infested forest. Coming to a standstill, he watched while giving Mia the time to catch up.
Eventually, Mia finally caught up with ragged breath, which would soon return to normal with her inner circulation. In the past she would have complained about him suddenly running off, but that wasn’t the first time he had done it, and she knew better than to speak with dire wolves close by.
They had incredibly sensitive ears and would immediately notice them even if they were still hundreds of meters away. Well, if they weren't occupied with fighting, they likely would have been heard or smelled long ago if the wind wasn’t turned in their favor.
This was another reason why Clay struggled so much to pinpoint where the dire wolves lived, as they always noticed him before he did. Even now, he didn’t know their exact lair, just the rough territory they frequently traversed in. Without turning, he formed a zero with his hands before closing them to a fist.
Seeing this, Mia nodded in understanding. After learning how sensitive the ears of dire wolves were, he thought it was best to decide on a few hand signs with Mia, you never knew when they might come in handy. This one meant to focus on controlling her aura and compressing it as much as possible.
Normally he would have drawn his sword by now, but this time he finally wanted to test the power of an erupted punch. So while keeping watch he moved in a steady pace to the wolves, while Mia followed behind a good dozen meters away, her crossbow loaded and ready to shoot.
One of the bone spiders just avoided another attack before landing on a string spun between two trees, which caused its body direction to overlay with his own and their eyes met, which immediately caused it to freeze. Normally it would have used the momentum of avoiding, to lunch a counterattack from the string or to jump further away to get a better angle.
Seems like the bone spiders had better sight than Clay thought, another thing to note down. Seeing the bone spider suddenly freeze in its momentum and just dangle from the single string caused the dire wolf to regroup with the others to reevaluate the situation.
Well, their senses were pretty sharp, as the dire wolves heard that something was wrong before they saw it. The rhythmic sound of crunching dirt under his feet was enough to gave himself away, not that he intended to hide. Besides having made the decision to use fear as a weapon instead of it hindering him, he never really used it so far.
This time he wanted to test something. The moment the beasts spotted him was the moment their psychology warfare of dominance began. Well for Clay, it already started the moment he decided to walk towards the beast instead of trying to sneak up on them.
He was confident in winning and by not breaking his pace he made the beasts wary. From this distance they had no idea how strong he was, he could be several times stronger than them or several times weaker, but just walking slowly towards them, made them wary, perhaps even curious.
For a few seconds, Clay just kept eye contact while continuing to keep his pace, it was a contest of who would crumble first under the pressure? Who was the first to make a move? The beasts weren’t familiar with such a situation, so they were hesitant, it gave Clay time to slowly but surly reduce the distance between them, without them making a move.
They were still deciding on whether he was a threat or prey. To fight or flight? This continued for a while until Clay was finally only a good hundred meters away and with his muscles tensing for a sprint the bulging veins on his eyes vanished as his essence moved to his legs, accumulating for the coming eruption.
On one moment he was casually walking the other he suddenly shot off, leaving his footprint in the ground, as he rushed towards his target at frightening speed. The beasts were wary of course, but do to his previous pace they weren’t prepared for the sudden burst of speed and were caught of guard.
One bone spider even fell from its string in the hurry of trying to escape, so it hastily shot a web upwards, which caused it to bounce and land on the string again before using the momentum of the fall to jump away into safety.
The other beasts were just as startled and immediately decided to flee after encountering an unknown predator, but it was far too late for that. His target was one of the bone spiders and while it was able to bounce from its web to another tree, the moment it landed a shadow enfolded behind it.
Giving it no time to react, Clay erupted the essence inside his arm and with the momentum from his jump carrying him onwards, he punched into the back of the spider, hitting one of the strings spun between the spikes. It bent, but with the essence unleashing from inside it was immediately ripped apart while his arm carried on to the exoskeleton, where his fist got buried deep into the body, pinning it to the tree.
Then the essence finally fully erupted, shredding the spider from inside out in a spiraling pattern, causing whole legs to fly off into the distance while yellow blood, guts and organs sprayed into every direction. The force traveled further into the tree, drilling a deep hole into it, shredding bark which mixed into the messy scene of flesh.
Using his enhanced legs, he pushed off the tree to stop his momentum, landing on the ground while a rain of wood, blood and flesh followed after him. Turning around he saw that the dire wolves and the remaining bone spider watched the scene and the moment he turned they ran for their life without looking back.
Looking at his bloodied arm, Clay calmly formed an inner circulation to heal. Standing between this whole mess, he was… smiling? Of course, he was smiling! This far exceeded his expectations. This wasn’t even an erupted punch at full power, and it already did so much damage. It didn’t just injure his target gravely like expected, but instead killed it instantly by practically bursting it from the inside out into tiny little pieces.
Still at awe by the power he wielded, Clay watched mindlessly as his flesh knitted itself together in seconds. Once the healing was complete, he shook the blood from his arm and removed some of the pieces of flesh and organs that clung to his clothes. Well, the mess it caused was a downside.
Suddenly remembering something, he looked over the remains of the bone spider only to exhale in defeat. The attack was powerful and performed way better than planned, maybe even too well, as with the other organs the heart and with it its blood were torn to pieces. There was no way to tell what of the yellow mess around him used to be heart blood, no that he could gather it anyway.
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Even more shocked than himself was Mia as she stood with wide open mouth besides him. She never actually saw an erupted punch, as he already mastered it once he concentrated on training his movement, and didn’t use it since.
Completely flabbergasted, she pointed at the mess and said like an exited child at Christmas, “You have to teach me that!”
“Absolutely not,” replied Clay in an instant, while still trying to get himself somewhat clean. “But you said, I should get stronger and this,” Mia stopped speaking while waving her palm over the splatted remains, “Is the power I should have right?”
Straightening his back, Clay explained, “Technically yes, but you have to find this power on your own. Erupting essence gives you for a short moment, as you saw a lot of power, but in return it requires incredibly fine control over essence and results in severe injuries. You have neither the fine control nor the regeneration to heal from the backlash.”
Pouting, she kicked the ground. “I know, but how am I supposed to learn something that gives me that much power, if I can’t control my essence properly?”
“Mia, you have all the time in the world to find your strengths and become more powerful, you still have me for a while and I will make sure to protect you until you have found the power to do so yourself, okay?” asked Clay with a smile.
“Okay, but once I have found my own power it will be several times better than yours, and then I will protect us!” exclaimed Mia confidently.
“Haha, I’m sure you will,” said Clay while trying to pat her head, which she skillfully avoided by side stepping. Damn, she was slowly getting good at that.
***
With no imminent threat appearing and Clay having mastered the eruption of essence, he became invincible in the surrounding region. This caused him to have even more time than before as he now only had to go hunting once or twice a month on the bordering territories to gather the heart blood needed for Mia.
All of this extra time was spent on tinkering on several small project and ideas, or reading more books on almost any topic at this point. During this, he still continuously trained in the use of his essence. It was getting to a point where he missed another soul he could share his thoughts with and just talk. A thirteen-year-old girl wasn’t the best candidate for the topics he wanted to discuss, especially not the one he swore to care for.
Mia on the other hand was busier than ever, as she was determined to make a power on her own. She was training a lot more and with more dedication, which helped her to grow a lot quicker, which Clay of course liked to see. Before he had to motivate Mia to train, now she was taking the initiative to improve.
They grew up so fast, was that how a father felt? Well no matter, since first testing his erupting punch another two months passed, and the golden leaves of autumn have long fallen and in just another short month winter would once again greet them. It was the third one since all of this started, and he wasn’t excited about it.
In the past, he quite liked the winter, and even if he still was able to appreciate its beauty and calming veil, having to care of his own food, clothes and shelter made it the hardest of the seasons to survive in. Especially because even beasts seemed to hibernate, so the endless war between dire wolves and bone spiders might actually come to a stop for once.
This would make getting heart blood harder again, but it wasn’t too much of a problem, he just had to look a bit harder again. There was also another idea for a new technique that constantly swirled around his head.
After having seen how powerful fear can be even without him having to do anything too grand, he wanted to test something. There was this one thing about the boar fight he had so long ago that he just couldn’t seem to understand.
Once he had discovered the aura of the boar with his own, he was consumed by something he could only describe as a nightmarish illusion. But for that to be true it felt too real, too specific. It showed him his greatest fears, those he had buried deep into his subconsciousness so that they would not hinder him in surviving.
Once he retracted his aura and condensed it, he was able to break free from this illusion and never saw it again. At first, he thought this might have just been a special ability or mutation of the boar, but the more he thought about it, the less likely is seemed.
During the short moment when both of their auras touched he could feel what the boar felt, it’s fury, untamed bloodlust but most of all its pain. He suspected he got overwhelmed by this pain, which triggered this illusion showing him his own greatest regrets, his greatest pain.
But this also meant that aura wasn’t as simple as just absorbing harmful energies, but instead could even convey emotions or who knew what else. He tried to infuse a feeling into his aura, but he had no idea how, as he didn’t even have a starting point. Emotions weren’t something he could just shift and move like his aura, so how was he supposed to control them?
Without having someone that can give him feedback if they felt something he couldn’t really test let alone train in this technique. He could of course ask Mia, but immediately decided against it. If she accidentally received an illusion like himself, she might develop even further trauma.
The girl went through too much. From losing her parents, then indirectly killing the old man which saved her, and finally waiting for her brother to rescue her only for him to never come. The risk was far too great, so he buried that idea to the back of his head for now.
Instead, he focused on the west. After dominating the bordering territories of the dire wolves and bone spiders, he felt confident enough to finally see what exactly dwelled at the bottom of the pond where the bear got eaten alive. He wanted to this before winter began, otherwise they would just bury themselves under ice again, and he couldn’t possibly fight in the water.
To not risk anything, he didn’t tell Mia about this small scouting mission. It wasn’t unusual for him to leave for the clearing to further train his movement, and that the pond also laid in that direction just made it easier.
Well, not that she paid much attention to his activities anyway, she was far too obsessed for that at the moment. So with his sword on his hips, the leather chestplate snugly strapped around his body and his mask secured on his head he went to the pond.
Once he was only a few hundreds meter away, he slowed his run and circulated the essence from legs to ears. His ability to differentiate all the different sounds and ignoring the unimportant one’s steadily improved, as it was slowly becoming the best way for him to sense his surroundings.
Enhancing his eyes was of course far easier and quicker, but they didn’t give him the advantage of being able to sense all of his surroundings. He could only see 180 degrees horizontally but could hear in a 360 degree radius. The distance he covered with his ears didn’t even come close to his eyes, but being able to hear an ambush from anywhere before it happened was too great of an advantage.
As time passed, Clay became more and more suspicious. It was far too silent in the surrounding area, normally he would hear far more animals, like the calls of birds or the buzzing of insects. Something definitely hunted in this region.
Growing ever closer to the pond, he suddenly heard a weird popping, which followed a light whipping sound from his right side. Turning to the source, a thick black tongue filled his vision as it attached itself to his armor before swiftly retracting with a slurping noise, as he was pulled along the ground. The ambush was almost completely silent, and before he could react, he felt the air rushing past him.
Immediately he flared his inner flame to its full power, as his body was filled with a seemingless endless supply of essence. At the same time he started to hold the essence in his arm, whatever beast dared to ambush him was in for a surprise.
In mere moments, the tongue retracted, and with another strong pull, he was lifted into the air and briefly saw a huge maw with two rows of serrated teeth before everything went black as he was swallowed. Once inside, the mouth directly closed as the two rows of teeth bit into the leather of his armor.
The bite itself wasn’t strong, just enough to bite into flesh but not through bone, but unexpectedly began the mouth to suddenly move left and right, causing the teeth to cut deeper into his flesh like a saw. The pain of being literally sawed into two was the worst he had the pleasure of experiencing so far.
Ripping his arm free from the sticky tongue, Clay punched upwards, releasing the essence stored within. The resulting explosion of aura not only shredded the creature from the inside, but due to the proximity to his face also slashed into his mask.
The pain caused the creature to suddenly open its mouth, tearing with it more flesh which were stuck on its teeth, while Clay pushed with his legs to escape from its maws. Seeing the light of the sun again, he stumbled backwards, and fell on the ground, while his leather armor had a huge red scar across his stomach area.
It bit right into his intestines and with no bone in its way it was able to saw deep into it. Fuck a bit longer, and he really would have been separated into two. With his regeneration, his blood directly clotted before his muscles squirmed to push the intestines back, which were about to spill out to the open.
While slowly standing up, he struggled to keep up with the pain, but seeing the bloodied creature before him at least gave him the satisfaction of having won. The body itself was actually intact, reaching his chest, but being twice as wide as him.
Both of its eyes popped out of their sockets; one flew away, while the other dangled to the side, barely hanging on by its ocular nerves. It’s light gray skin was cracked, while red flowed from beneath it.
Fuck, why did he have to meet a new threat every time he gains some confidence in his abilities. Doesn’t really matter much to hear well if the predator is almost entirely silent. Maybe if he could have determined the sound quicker to be something unusual, he would have been able to avoid this horrifying experience. Well, it didn’t matter much now, as he (again) almost died.
Who knew that toads could be so dangerous if mutated? Thank god he had his mask, otherwise his face would have taken some severe collateral damage from his own punch. The chitin from that royal ant really was something else when it came to sturdiness.
Looking at his almost completely healed stomach, a heavy sigh escaped Clay’s lips. Why couldn’t the leather be as hard as the chitin? He didn’t want to make another chestplate!