For days, the Savannah Jungle became a laboratory to experiment death.
Dreleon watched from the shadows, his golden eyes never leaving the High-Grade Honey Badger and its two Porcupine guards.
His first attempts were failures, of course!
He tried to pick off the Porcupines first, but they were bound to the Badger like iron to a magnet.
He tried to use his spatial telekinesis to create Ghost Vibrations in the distance, hoping to trick their animalistic instincts into thinking they were surrounded.
But the Badger was a master of the air, living for at least 100 years.
Every ripple Dreleon made in space was caught by the Badger's wind-field.
The beast didn't just see motion or hear noise; it felt the movement in the air, and predicted what it was with his extensive experience.
It knew every ploy was a fake.
"He's reading the space itself," Dreleon thought, his skeletal fingers digging into the dirt.
"As long as the air is calm, he is the king of this region."
He racked his brain, discarding plan after plan.
He was a Royal Lion, but here, without his full strength or his sword, he has to be a scientist of slaughter.
He needed to find a variable the Badger couldn't control.
He needed chaos.
Finally, the solution hit him.
If the Badger's power was the wind, Dreleon would give the wind something to fear.
"Does wind fear fire?," he thought, racking his brain.
" Let's just try, see if it works; if not, then I will find another way," he finally decided.
Using his spatial telekinesis, Dreleon reached out to a cluster of dry, resin-heavy trees upwind from the clearing.
He compressed the air around the branches until the friction alone sparked a flame.
In seconds, a roar of orange fire erupted, swallowing the whole region.
He didn't let the fire spread naturally; he used his spatial bubbles to funnel the heat and smoke directly toward the bedger.
The effect was instant.
The Porcupines, despite their armor and quills, were creatures living.
The smell of smoke and the sight of a wall of flame moving with unnatural speed broke their discipline.
They panicked, their formation shattering as they ran like panicked sheep into the thicket.
The Honey Badger roared, trying to use its wind power to push the flames back, but the sheer volume of smoke and the heat-distorted air blinded its senses.
Its control over the wind-field dropped.
The air was too turbulent, too chaotic for the beast to read.
"Hahaha!
Finally!"
Dreleon didn't waste a second.
He focused his energy on the center of the fire.
Using a sphere of spatial telekinesis, he gathered a massive amount of superheated air and phosphorus-rich wood into a tight ball.
He compressed the space, and compressed it again, until the orb in his control glowed with a violent, white-blue intensity.
It was a spatial bomb of pure friction and heat.
With a mental shove, he launched the orb.
It bypassed the Badger's weakened wind-shield and detonated against its obsidian-plated armor.
BOOM!
The explosion shattered.
The Honey Badger was thrown across the clearing, half its armor blackened and cracked.
It struggled to stand, but Dreleon was relentless.
He seized the nearby trees—charred, heavy trunks—and used his spatial power to swing them like massive clubs, compressing them mid-swing to increase their density before slamming them into the beast's back.
Again and again, the explosions of wood and stone resounded through the jungle.
Dreleon realized that the charcoal from the trees worked as carbon-hardened spikes.
He grabbed handfuls of stones, infused them with the lingering fire, and sent them screaming into the Badger's weakened spots.
As the red heated stone spikes pierced it, the Badger died in the storm of heat.
It never saw a Lion.
It never saw an assassin.
In its final moments, it died thinking it had simply been caught in a freak, localized natural disaster.
And the creator of this disaster was celebrating his first win.
"Hahaha... Complete.
And easy," Dreleon panted, standing over the smoking carcass.
His skeletal chest heaved, but his eyes were bright with triumph.
He looked around at the burning jungle and frowned.
"Oh... I have to kill the fire, too."
It took him another hour, using his spatial power to snuff out the oxygen in the burning patches, until the jungle returned to a blackened, silent like a Charcoal Forest.
"Hiss... You have more or less understood my teaching," a voice rasped from the smoke.
Dreleon turned.
Emerging from the shadows of a burnt-out trunk, the Snake appeared.
She looked at the devastation—the shattered High-Grade beast, the charred earth—and she didn't look angry.
She looked satisfied.
"I will give you my 'Guide to the Unknown' once we return," she said, her sapphire eyes shimmering with a gentle, terrifying smile.
To her, burning a forest was just a minor learning mistake by a talented student.
"There is no time to rest.
It is time for the Second Pillar."
She said in a teaching tone as she stepped over the Badger's remains, her voice dropping into a tone of reverence.
"During the eras of peace, I traveled through multiple Forbidden Zones, acquiring knowledge that the world has forgotten.
One of the most priceless treasures I found is a technique of the soul."
She looked at Dreleon, her gaze piercing.
"The Second Pillar of Knowledge: Cloning."