Day 10.
Today was brutal. Way worse than yesterday. Ethan ended up clashing with four different beast groups, and each one pushed him closer to the edge.
The first group was absolute hell, maybe even the toughest group for him to fight of the day. Four C-rank Emberclaws. These things were like panthers forged in a volcano. They were sleek, fast, and armored, with flame breath that could melt through boulders. Straight-up nightmares.
Ethan knew right away he couldn't win in a straight brawl. So he went commando. He used hit-and-run tactics using Nightbane, and used three vials of explosives when the timing was just right. The battle went on for nearly three hours, and by the end, Ethan's arms were numb, his breath uneven, and his body a walking bruise, with blood flowing from his forehead. But he was victorious.
The second group that he fought was almost like a tea break in comparison. Five Ironhide Boars. D-rank. Not smart, not fast, but built like tanks. Ethan tackled them during what was supposed to be his rest window, figuring he could handle them and still catch a breather. And he did.
No abilities or explosives this time, just pure sword skills was all he needed. Quick slashes, powerful steps, and well-placed stabs under the think armor like skin of the boars. Nightbane did the job, clean and efficient. He got close to being hit a few times, but nothing serious.
Then came the third round. The weakest of the four groups. Just three D-rank Thunderback Gorillas. He knew that he could defeat them very quickly and easily, but Ethan wanted to test himself. So he put limitations on himself. No powers, no explosives. Just straight hands and swords. He even drew a small circle on the ground and challenged himself not to step outside of it. Then, he threw a rock at them to bait them into charging straight towards him.
At first it was still easy, kinda fun too. It was like a weird little challenge to take his mind off the pain. The gorillas charged at him and he would dodge it flawlessly. No matter if it was a punch, a slam or straight up biting, he was able to dodge it all.
But then the fatigue hit hard. He was already worn down from the earlier fights, and those gorillas didn't pull their punches. Their fists could crack stone. Dodging in that tight space got harder with each minute.
He had to think fast. He decided to use their weight against them, and time his dodges like his life depended on it—because it did. One slammed into the edge of the circle, and Ethan used that moment to knock its legs out and slice through its exposed back. Another came from the side, and he ducked under a fist, spinning with momentum to cut deep into its ribs. By the time the last one fell, Ethan was wheezing on the ground, completely spent.
He thought that was it for the day. He thought wrong.
While dragging himself back toward his shelter, he felt a shift in the air. Then he saw it.
Gravitor, a B-rank beast.
Short, squat, and packed with muscle under layers of stone-like hide. It had a durability that far outclassed the Ironhide Boars. But the worst part? It was able to control gravity. Way beyond anything he should be dealing with in the outer zones.
Ethan's heart was just about to explode. "What the hell is a B-rank doing out here, much less something like that?" he muttered, ducking behind a thick tree.
One step in the wrong direction, and it could turn him into a pancake, literally.
He didn't fight. Not this time. He put some Shadowmoss into his mouth. They were bitter as hell but good for masking scent and presence. Slowly he backed away, careful not to make a sound.
Every second felt like it lasted an hour. But eventually, the Gravitor lumbered off into the trees, and Ethan was finally able to limp back to his shelter.
Alive, but completely hammered.
He didn't bother with food right away. He just collapsed onto the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Muscles twitching. Mind spinning.
"Why the hell am I doing this again?" he mumbled, half-laughing, half-dying.
Still, he made it through. Somehow. Ten days in, and he was still breathing.
Day 11
Today was chaos, but not the usual, blood-pumping, near-death kind of chaos Ethan had gotten used to.
Unlike the previous days, where Ethan encountered multiple C-rank and even B-rank beasts, he did not run into a single beast above D-rank. Not one. It was weird.
"Where the hell did they all go?" he muttered, squinting into the trees like the answer might fall from a branch.
But in all honesty, he wasn't too surprised. It was still something that was within his expectation zone.
The outer zone was massive. It wasn't unusual to have days without major encounters. In fact, there were even chances of him not encountering a single beast, as it already happen once before. So with a shrug and a sigh, he just kept moving.
But, that did not mean that he had no encounter with any beast. No. In fact, today turned out to be the busiest day yet.
He ran into a whopping 31 beasts. Yeah. Thirty-one. Even if we add all the beasts he fought in the previous 10 days, even then it would not be the same.
There were many beasts that he already encountered like the Ironhide Boars, Thunderback Gorillas, Gloomhowler Hyenas. But there were new ones too.
Silverfangs: A lean, wolf-like predators with glowing silver fur and razor-sharp eyes. They moved in complete silence and fought just like assassins.
Ironhide Monkeys: A small and fast genetically modified monkey that was covered in armor-like skin. It can throw boulders like pebbles.
Duskrattle Vipers : A short-tempered snakes with black scales and tails that was filled with toxic gas.
Cragspike Lizards: A ragged reptile with jagged rock spikes on their backs. they rolled like wheels and exploded into spikes when close.
Most of the encounters were solo beasts, which was manageable. He only ran into one pack today, a group of six Gloomhowler Hyenas, and even they didn't give him much trouble.
At first, Ethan was plain bored. For the current Ethan, fighting one-on-one with D-rank beasts was easy stuff. Too easy. He used only Nightbane, and didn't even bother using his powers or traps for the first few battles. He finshed them all with quick strikes, efficient movement and clean takedowns. It was almost monotonous.
But as the numbers of fight kept rising, fatigue started to hit hard. After the tenth battle, it was like he was wrapped in a wet blanket, restricting his movement. After the twentieth beast, he finally gave in and started using his Blaze ability to wrap up fights faster.
By the time he got to beast number thirty-one, a stubborn Silverfang that just wouldn't die, Ethan was barely standing on his feet. But it was not because he was injured. No, he was actually completely untouched. There was not even a single scratch or bruise on his body, at least not one that he got today. It was actually a great feat, even if they are just D-rank beasts.
The fights weren't hard at all. They were just extremely draining.
He didn't feel this level of exhaustion even on Day 5, when he ran for his life from the 25-beast Gloomhowler pack. He was so much injured that day that he had to rest the next day too.
But today was different. That day was full of panic-filled fights. Today was just nonstop grinding. Over and over and over.
By the time the sun had set, he somehow reached his shelter, barely hanging. There were still not a single scratch on him, but he was out of breath. His lungs felt like they were on fire.
Ethan didn't even take off his clothes or eat any food. He stumbled inside, dropped to the bed like every student after school, and passed out cold.
He just slept through the night, almost like a dead man, evidence of how hard today was.
Day 12.
Ethan sat near a small fire, between two huge fallen trees, leftovers from the mess that went down earlier that morning. Above him was nothing but scorched tree bark and the broken frame of what used to be his shelter. Ash floated in the air like lazy snowflakes.
Right beside him, a few bird-like beasts lay dead and burned, their bodies cleanly cut into two. The air smelled like a weird mix of burnt wood, blood, and the meat he was roasting.
He let out a long sigh and rubbed his temple as a sharp pain stabbed through his head. Probably because of the way he was suddenly woken up.
"Damn it. What a crappy way to start the day," Ethan muttered. He grabbed a clean cloth and wiped down his precious partner, Nightbane. The blade, black as night, glinted a little in the firelight, filled with violet blood from the morning fight.
That's right. Ethan's day went downhill from the moment the sun had risen. Just when his body was finally starting to recover from yesterday's continuous fighting, the forest decided to smack him with another surprise. An aerial surprise.
Ethan was out cold, deep asleep in his make-shift bed, when a powerful gust of wind shook the trees violently and brought him back from the land of sleeping.
In a flash, he jumped up, only to see his shelter under attack by three winged nightmares—Hexarons.
Each one was massive, about the size of a mini van. Their wings were long and sharp like blades. Their bodies were covered in tough, bone-like scales, and their bird-like heads had six glowing red eyes. Every flap of their wings sent out gusts strong enough to slice tree branches like paper.
Ethan didn't waste a second. As the Hexarons were getting ready to attack, he grabbed Nightbane, which was just lying nearby on the ground since last night, and pushed himself to be on his feet.
With no hesitation he activated his ability and multiple flame spear appeared around him in the air. He then raised his right hand, and with swift movement, the spears were headed towards the screeching beasts.
The fiery spears shot through the air and hit them in a swift manner. It didn't cause much of a damage, but that wasn't the goal anyway. He needed to pull them away from his shelter as he did not want the shelter to be blown away in their fight.
And it worked. The Hexarons screeched, sharp and furious, then turned mid-air and dived straight at him.
Ethan jumped from the shelter and slid down the bark of the tree trunk, his hands and feet gripping just enough to slow him down. He hit the ground hard, rolled, then leaped back up with a push, ready to fight.
But then he heard it.
CRASH.
He looked upwards, just to see that one of the Hexarons crashed right into the shelter. It seems that while two of the Hexarons were able to change their direction, the third one was not so lucky.
Wood snapped and broke all over the place. Within seconds, his shelter was just a pile of debris.
"Oh, come on." He screamed. He was pissed. He then gritted his teeth and headed straight for the two that were coming towards him. With a slash from the blazing Nightbane, he was able to wound them instantly. He then moved his target towards the third one that was still lying on the shelter's remain and attacked it with flame spears back to back.
Each and every one of them was now angered. All three were back in the air, circling him like vultures. They all moved separately, waiting for a chance, a moment when they could strike. But Ethan wasn't stupid. He knew what they were planning with a glance. Thus, he did not give them any chance.
He switched things up. He started firing small, low-powered flame arrows instead of the big and consuming ones. It was not to meant hurt them, but to steer them. Like a pushy teammate in a game, he steered them into place, guiding their paths to fly closer together.
He kept firing these small burst of flame for quite some times. When they were leavings his line of sight, he fired. When they were too sparse, he fired. When they tried to come closer to attack separately, he fired.
"Come on... just a little more," he muttered under his breath.
The Hexarons shrieked, clearly pissed off. Then finally, they did exactly what he wanted. They charged him all at once.
A small smirk tugged on Ethan's face as his hand moved to his side to sheath Nightbane.
He dropped into a stance with his knees bent and one foot behind the other. The air swirled around him, lifting dust and leaves. Everything slowed down.
{Author note: Imagine Zenitsu's stance if it is too hard for you to imagine.}
"Alright, no more holding back," he muttered. "Let's end this, partner."
He drew the blade in one clean, fluid motion. It was a fast arc of glowing steel.
For a second, it seemed like nothing happened. The Hexarons were still mid-air, just a few dozen feet away, still screaming and approching.
Then—
SLICE.
A bright crescent wave of energy burst from the sword, ripping through the sky.
It tore straight through all three Hexarons.
No screaming. No sound.
They just froze.
And then, like puppets with cut strings, they split clean in half and dropped from the sky.
Behind them, the tall trees weren't spared either. They weren't just cut, they were sliced clean through at a sharp angle, almost like some giant had taken a sword and sliced through the forest. One by one, they started tipping over.
Crack. Thud. Thud. THUUUD.
The ground shuddered with each impact of the fallen trees, sending little vibrations up Ethan's boots.
He stayed there, down on one knee, Nightbane stabbed into the dirt in front of him like some kind of exhausted knight catching his breath after a duel.
His chest was rising and falling like crazy, and sweat was running down the side of his face in streams. For a second, everything spun around him, so he gritted his teeth and clenched his fist, forcing himself to stay steady.
"That's what you get... for picking a fight with me," he muttered, voice shaking.
He didn't move right away. He stayed in that knight-like pose for quite some times, huffing. But it was not to act cool or anything. He literally couldn't move.
That last attack had sucked the strength right out of him. It was a secrete technique of sorts if you must say. It may have not been on the same level of power as the forbidden techniques that he kept hidden, but it was still in a league on its own.
If he could, he would just spam this attack. But he could not, as this technique takes all his strength and turns it into a single strike, thus making him void of any strength for quiet some time. And in a place like the Ravagers Den, that would be like a death sentence.
So he only used it when he absolutely needed to. Or in this case, because he was pissed.
But at least, he was still here.
And those winged freaks? They weren't.