Kai could no longer hear the screams of his classmates; in fact, he could no longer hear any human cries. Instead, the unnerving sound of monsters paraded all around him. In his panic, he had run as fast as he could for minutes, uncaring where, as long as it was away from that thing. Now, he was lost. Stopping he twirled around, looking for where to go next. The problem was that the entire forest looked similar. There weren’t any distinguishing details to help guide his way.

That thing shouldn’t exist in this forest. His path to his current location hadn’t been a straight path, as he tried avoiding any sounds he heard, ultimately leading to him losing his sense of direction. He wasn’t even sure he could find his way back to where the monster had been if he tried, not that he would.

His heartbeat was returning to normal, but he stayed alert. I need to get out of this damn forest.

A new sound entered his ears, closer than all the other noises in the lively forest. Crouching, he hid in the thick grass nearby. Right now, Kai hated his armor. He stuck out like a sore thumb, the white was like a lamp against the brown and green backdrop. Silently he pulled his sword out as the sound grew louder.

There is it.

With eyes of black ink and a green and yellow body lined with dark hair, the creature flew its way out from the shadows. Kai gawked at the massive stinger, pulsing out of the back end of the insectoid, its length near his own forearm. Transparent wings moved at speeds Kai could not see as they vibrated rapidly through the air, slowly carrying the insect.

1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 10... 28.

28 massive insects. All their bodies were larger than Akane. Green secretions dripped from their stingers, which occasionally dropped across leaves and tree branches. He heard a dreaded sizzle sound as he watched the leaves dissolve into nothing, and the bark melt away.

[Behemoth Bee – Foundation Level 75]

[Behemoth Bee – Foundation Level 72]

He recognized them. They were a local monster that had been discussed in his monster subjugation class. They were literally monster-sized bees that weighed as much as the average ten-year-old child.

I have too many exposed areas not protected by my armor. I can’t risk getting stung or having that drip on me. Think damnit. What did they say in class?

Heavy? Yes... Acid. Check. The easiest way to deal with them is to... make them slower or keep them at a distance since they possess no ranged attacks. His gravity could definitely do that.

Remaining frozen, Kai was ready at a moment’s notice to active his magic. They flitted around the area randomly. He saw a branch dip lightly as one bee landed on top of it. The buzzing was getting annoying, the entire area was filled with noise making it difficult to hear anything else.

Above him, he heard the dreaded sound of buzzing coming closer. Moving his eyes, he watched the bee pass him by overhead and then land on the ground two meters in front of him. He observed the curious bee dig into the ground and then move to another spot before digging once again. It jumped back into the air and hover in place looking around with its back to Kai.

It’s looking for something. Distracted, he felt something heavy land on his armored back. He hadn’t realized a bee had come from behind him. There was too much noise in the area to properly hear it. He should have been paying attention. It was a new flaw of his that he realized now he had been too reliant on his blood presence ability in his first life. His observational skills were lacking.

Through the back of his chest piece, Kai felt something scrap across his armor. With it, came the noise of a knife on a whetstone, only more metallic in nature. The stinger! He realized with wide eyes. The bee was shooting its stinger out, grinding against his armor, then dragging it back as it retracted it. For a moment he wondered if the bee was simply just sitting on him, and the scrapping was a mere coincidence.

Turning around, he saw the bee in front of him, all the black eyes were locked on him.

Pushing off, he felt the bee slide off his back by his unexpected movement. Kai lunged at the hovering bee in front of him, quickly sliding his sword through the underside of its body. It effortlessly passed through, until the tip of the blade popped out of the top. Immediately he heard a ‘ding’ signaling the quick death of the bee. Grunting, the weight of the bee fell on his sword and hand, its body entirely pinned lifelessly on the blade.

He spun around, twirling his blade in a horizontal slash, triggering [Heavy Blow] towards the bee that had once been resting on him. Either stunned or reacting too slow, his blade quickly arced into it, but instead of cutting it, his sword had turned into a club. The massive dead weight of the bee on his sword crashed into its once friend and caused it to go soaring into the air until it splattered against a tree. A ‘ding’ came a moment later. The skewered bee slid down his blade and off, its momentum arcing it through the air out of sight as it tumbled into the grass. Whipping the blade downwards, the pale-yellow blood fluid splattered against the grass.

Exposed where he stood the other 26 bees all began flying towards him from all directions.

Free of the bee’s encumbering weight, Kai activated [Domain]. The weight of all surrounding monsters and objects alike increased 100% including himself. With the burden of Kai’s ability, the bees began falling like rocks to the ground, a thump encompassing each one’s impact. Grinning viciously, Kai watched the slow bees struggle to move. Their wings feebly fluttered as they remained firmly on the ground. They couldn’t even walk away, their legs were too weak to lift them under their newfound weight. The forest shifted under the pressure but remained firm, his gravity only dragged a few leaves off the trees.

Cautiously, Kai inched his way forward towards the downed bees. They were very much still alive, just unable to move under their massive weight thanks to his gravity magic. He approached the first, staying away from the stinger in case it was baiting him in as unlikely as that was. Stabbing down, Kai struck the immobile bee right in the center of its head. The ‘ding’ resounded once more. Satisfied, he moved on. A minute later they all lay dead, yellow slime trickling out of their stab wounds.

-You have slain [Behemoth Bee – Foundation Level 63]

-You have slain [Behemoth Bee – Foundation Level 75]

…

-You have slain [Behemoth Bee – Foundation Level 71]

‘Vanguard has reached Foundation Level 47’

…

‘Vanguard has reached Foundation Level 59’

13 levels. Kai beamed. Finally, some proper levels. I need to find more of those.

The only problem was diminishing returns. Kill too many of the same enemy, and your ‘experience’ began to slow down. The same goes if you kill enemies too weak to pose a challenge, his experience would be like pebbles trying to fill a large pit. It would probably take thousands to get to the forging realm if he kept killing behemoth bees considering how easy they turned out to kill. His gravity magic was uniquely suited for countering this particular type of monster.

Health: 840/840

Stamina: 327/350

Mana: 192/350

Checking his status, he saw that only his mana had suffered so far. Domain was a very mana exhaustive spell, draining it quickly the longer he kept it going. Thankfully, his primary active skill, heavy blow, was the least mana intensive out of all of his available skills.

Unspent Attributes Available: 65

And there it is. His grin would be infectious if anyone had been around to see it. Now it was time to quickly decide where to place his attributes. The obvious choice was more mana. He was running low, and it would take a few hours to recover it too fully. Only the gods knew how long he would be stuck in this dreadful forest.

With 65 attributes available, he put nearly half into his wisdom, bringing it up to 65. It was obvious where he was going to place the rest of his attributes. Vitality, strength, and intelligence seemed to be the staple of his class at the current time, and right now they would benefit him more than endurance and dexterity. Although I need to keep my speed and reaction up or ill be in trouble. With a thought, he finished placing his attributes.

Vitality: 90 (94)

Strength: 70

Dexterity: 35

Endurance: 35

Intelligence: 60

Wisdom: 65

Health: 940/940

Stamina: 350/350

Mana: 650/650

Not a bad start, he nodded to himself. His build was beginning to take shape. Now to get out of this forest.

Suppressing a groan, he looked around once again. He had forgotten that everything looked the same. He wasn’t a scout, capable of finding clues or tracks out of the forest. Everywhere around appeared like more of the same. Rays of dim light came through the thick canopy in patches, giving light to some areas of the forest while most of it remained dim and shadowed. Perhaps it was his eyes playing tricks on him, but he could have sworn he saw a shadow move in the distance. It was unsettling enough to give him the chills. Stepping away, he avoided the bodies of the bees as he moved on in the opposite direction of the weird shadows. After about 15 meters he heard a sound, he shouldn’t have. A familiar bark.

Akane?!

Sprinting back, an odd sight greeted him. Instead of a single gluttonous fox, a skulk of foxes cluttered the area where he had been a few moments ago. Instead of the common red and orange coats he was used to seeing, they were shades of black. Some ravenously tore apart the bee’s corpses, while others lapped up at the yellow ooze. Realization dawned on Kai, they had smelled the sweet scent and had been lured to the bodies. Hiding behind one of the trees, he peeked his head out at the scene. There were even more foxes than there had been bees. How many more was difficult to say. It was somewhere between 30 to 40, but it was difficult to discern. The foxes vanished into the shadows and reappeared randomly throughout the area from another shadow, assuming it was the same fox. There were even a few juvenile foxes taking cues from the older ones who were teaching their young.

[Shadow Fox – Foundation Level 81]

Kai was a little awed. That one was a higher level than Akane who to his knowledge was the highest leveled fox in Kitsune Village. Kai continued to watch. They were cute but definitely wilder than the foxes he grew up with. A pang of homesickness hit him as he looked on, the situation was not too different than dinner at Kitsune Village. Looking over all the foxes, they averaged a higher level than the ones in his village. Perhaps that was because the ones in the village were domesticated and lazy. While these were obviously wild foxes that fought, killed, and scavenged for survival. Unlike the pampered, spoiled, lazy little gluttonous creatures that he lived with.

YAP.

Twisting his head to the source of the noise. Sitting on the ground behind him a fox regarded him. Orange eyes illuminated in the darkness, the left half of its body sheathed in shadows, almost vanishing entirely out of sight. The fox stared at him inquisitively, tilting its head as it stared into his eyes.

Crouching, Kai’s hand reached out of its own accord towards the sitting fox. Flinching ever so slightly, the fox looked ready to run at a moment’s notice. Keeping his hand steady and slow, he kept eye contact with the fox.

“Good... boy.” Kai looked down seeing the tell-tale sign of its anatomy. “You’re so adorable,” his voice went up an octave trying not to scare the cute fox.

He didn’t know why he was trying to pet a wild fox, but he felt that if he ran, it might attract their attention in a bad way. Perhaps he could make friends with the fox or even just show that he wasn’t an enemy or better yet food.

Now that the fox was closer, he closely examined it. Unlike Akane whose exquisite coat ranged in color depending on where you looked at her body, the one before him was entirely black in color. It wasn’t hard to guess the dark coat helped camouflage it against predators, and likewise helped it ambush prey throughout the creepy forest.

Kai could perceive curiosity in its eyes, but not the tell-tale sign of intelligence he saw in his village’s foxes. His hand hovered until it was a finger’s length from the fox’s face, ready to react if it tried to bite him. By holding out his hand the fox would hopefully smell him and take in his scent and then see that he was neither food nor enemy.

Taking the bait, the fox leaned forwards until it began sniffing his hand. The reaction was so violent that Kai almost attacked because he was startled. Reeling back, the fox backpedaled its little body until its butt hit another tree, unable to go back any further. Even under the cover of darkness in the shadows, Kai could perceive the shaking of the shadows. Something had startled the little fox to the point where its fight or flight survival instincts stopped working.

Kai watched shocked, unsure of what to do next. Peeking back at the others, the fox’s reaction had not gone unnoticed. They now surrounded him in a loose circle. Kai felt his back drip nervously with sweat.

Keeping his back to the tree, he tried to look for an obvious weakness in their circle. He watched as they studied him. A few had their teeth bared.

“Please don’t. I don’t want to fight you guys,” he said. His body was tense and ready to run at a moment’s notice. There was absolutely no way he could fight so many monsters at once unless his gravity worked on them like it did the bees, which he doubted.

“I like foxes even the lazy ones.”

They closed in, tightening the circle until they stopped a few meters away.

A yap came from behind him, the same sound as from before. It drew the attention of the others. A series of yaps followed. Kai couldn’t even guess what was happening or being said. This behavior was totally unlike anything he was used to.

Suddenly all the foxes turned and ran off into the shadows, vanishing as quickly as they had appeared, leaving behind the half-eaten bodies of the behemoth bees. They disappeared quickly until he couldn’t tell them apart from the shadows in the distance.

“What the fuck was that. I’m so done with this place.”