Aeron quickly started to hunt in a faster manner, every day there would at least be 3 wolf packs that would wander in their territory. He knew that time was of the essence, especially after his earlier discovery.

“Arthur let’s go,” Aeron said as he rode on Claude.

Three days had passed by and this was the third Mid-Grade Wolf of the day, it was already dark, making the hunt harder, but that wouldn’t stop Aeron and his pets from hunting the wolves.

Aeron quickly had Arthur, Claude, and the other monkeys ready the ambush, and just like an elite squad, Arthur and the team executed the wolf pack in a very smooth and clean manner. Of course, Aeron still got the last hit for the Mid-Grade Wolf, Arthur quickly carried him back to the base. Daylight inside the Endless Forest was already dangerous, naturally, it would be more dangerous at night. Aeron quickly meditated to purify the foreign mana as he tasked Arthur to feed his pets and the woman. With his new hunting schedule, Aeron was unable to continue with his other routine.

“Huuu,” Aeron exhaled as he finished the purification process.

The pain was still there but after undergoing the process for almost twenty times, Aeron was already used to it. He looked around to see if everything was fine, every pet was already fed, the woman included, only one beast felt unsatisfied. Terra was looking up to Aeron as it displayed its big and pitiful eyes.

“Sorry bud, I forgot you,” Aeron said as he chuckled.

He grabbed the little turtle by the shell before continuing to Agila’s nest, where he made sure to satisfy the little bugger with his mana before sleeping. Unfortunately for Aeron, his dream was not a pleasant one, this time the dark figure came even closer to turning around, of course, Aeron tried to see whether his dreams were caused by a beast nearby through his new pet, Claude.

Claude was tasked to scan the area at night using its [Keen Eye] skill. Aeron woke up in a flurry as his body sweated bullets, the sensation of fear and danger became more apparent as time went by, the only thing Aeron could think of to remedy his situation was to level up and increase his soul’s power to that of a High-Grade Beast.

“Claude, did you find anything last night?” Aeron asked.

Even though Aeron asked, he wasn’t optimistic, and just as he expected, Claude didn’t find anything weird that night. Aeron sighed, but quickly tried to rouse himself, today, if he was able to kill three more Mid-Grade Wolves, then he could finally reach the peak of level 5, what was left afterward was breaking through level 6.

As if not to disappoint Aeron’s wishes, four packs entered their territory from two directions. Aeron quickly went to work as he hunted the first pack smoothly; the other wolves were still clueless as each pack disappeared without producing any noise.

After hunting the second pack, Aeron felt his body lacking only a small amount of mana, and another wolf would finalize his arrival to the peak of level 5. Aeron looked around and saw it had already gotten dark, the day flew by so quickly that even after all this time, he was still unused to it. When meditating, time seemed erratic, when he was in pain, time slowed to a snail's pace, but when he had gotten used to the pain or when he normally did his mediation, time would pass by quickly, it was almost like a dream.

“Arthur, bring me to the third pack,” Aeron said as he rode on Claude.

This would be the last hunt before he stopped hunting again, or hopefully rest before he got into another bout of fighting and hunting. Although his situation didn’t seem that dangerous when hunting, the threat of danger would never go away, in fact, even the giant trees put pressure on Aeron.

“Yes master,” Arthur answered as they leapt through the forest, but the situation changed when they arrived. The two packs had met up with the other pack, it seemed like the two alphas were communicating.

“Alright, Arthur, you and I will kill off the wolf on the left, while Claude, Richie, and the other black monkeys kill the other,” Aeron said.

Although he didn’t want to kill the wolf, and instead have Arthur subdue it, there was no other choice, he could not risk a Mid-Grade Wolf howl to warn the main pack, even if he was unsure whether a Mid-Grade Wolf could warn the main pack at such a distance.

Just as Aeron instructed, He and Arthur took their place to kill the Mid-Grade Wolf on the left, while Claude, Richie, and the other black monkeys positioned themselves to kill the other instantly, the other monkeys were also ready with their bows, the Low-Grade Wolves might find a way to howl, but their howl was incomparable to that of a Mid-Grade Wolf. Aeron just instructed the other monkeys to kill as quickly as they could.

Aeron took a deep breath and nocked an arrow on his bow.

“Now!” Aeron sent the signal.

Arthur lunged at the clueless Mid-Grade Wolf, his hands snapped shut the wolf’s snout as four metal blades flew out and cut off its limbs, Aeron quickly buried an arrow on its throat while feeling the mana flow inside him as the Mid-Grade Wolf died. At the same time as Arthur’s assault, Claude along with the black monkeys moved. Claude with its [Water Manipulation] skill, used its [Water Coating] as it disappeared on the spot leaving a small distortion behind. The black monkeys led by Richie were second only to Arthur when sneaking, they couldn’t use any stealth skill like Claude and the Golden Eyed Snake, but through a certain technique taught to them by their king, they were able to minimize their presence and use the dark areas to effectively hide and disappear like a shadow.

When Claude and the black monkeys heard Aeron, all of them lunged at the poor Mid-Grade Wolf, Claude went towards the jugular while the black monkeys stabbed their daggers to different parts of the wolf’s body, Richie in particular stabbed its dagger through the Mid-Grade Wolf’s eyes.

The other monkeys rained arrows to the helpless and confused wolves. Fortunately, the wolves were quickly decimated by the attack. Arthur quickly held Aeron as he brought him back to the base, the other monkeys carried back the Mid-Grade corpses and they followed behind.

Aeron quickly closed his eyes upon arrival and started the purification process, he felt his body start to fill to the brim as he reached his goal of peak level 5. Aeron was excited as he opened his eyes, now there was only another process before he could breakthrough level 6.

“This is enough for today, let’s start that tomorrow”.

Somewhere in the Endless Forest.

A feminine figure suddenly appeared through the trees.

“I’ll find you, wherever you are!”

The young woman murmured as she glanced around the area, it was at this moment that she saw a small bird flying in the sky, at first, she ignored the bird as such birds were abundant on the Endless Forest, but she found something weird when she glanced again.

“A notification bird?”

The young woman spoke a bit confused; the bird had a small bag strapped to its body but what confused her was its presence here in the Endless Forest. The bird might be a clue to what she was searching for, but the bird was flying too high and out of reach, so she had to shoot it down, a mana arrow flew from her hands and the notification bird’s left wing was clipped by the mana arrow. It quickly descended in panic as pain assaulted its small body, fortunately, the young woman caught it gently. She rummaged into the notification bird’s small bag ignoring the tiny bird’s protests and saw a memory stone inside. She picked the memory stone up and went through the memory inside.

“The wolf king was born?” the young woman spoke in surprise, what came after the information about the wolf king was the person asking the notification bird’s mark to return to the city.

“Aeron? And information about the governor’s daughter?” the young woman murmured in surprise.

She looked at the injured notification bird, she regretted shooting the bird down and injuring its wing. She could’ve made use of the bird to get to this Aeron guy, he might just be of help towards her search. Now, she had to wait for at least a week before the notification bird’s wing healed, unfortunately, a normal beast would not be able to handle mana to accelerate its regeneration, so all she could do was to feed the bird and wait for it to heal. Meanwhile, she continued her search as she brought the notification bird with her.

Back to Aeron.

Aeron woke up the very next day refreshed, now that he reached his goal, he only needed to proceed in breaking through level 6. Aeron didn’t need to hunt but he still had the monkeys patrol the areas, after all the killings that happened here, the High-Grade Wolves might just go here to check.

“What was the process again?”

Aeron tried to remember the process in his memory, level 6 could be considered the true stage where a person joined the true fighters for any beast or race. For beasts, it was a long process, people could think of Low-Grade Beasts as beasts in the larval stage, the Mid-Grade Stage was the pupal stage while reaching level 6 or turning into a High-Grade Beast became its final stage. This classification was actually built specifically for Tamers, this was because the Mortal Stage was the most crucial stage of the Tamers career, after all, for the other Professions, the most important information about beasts were if they were able to manipulate aura.

Humans too viewed level 6 with importance, the same with beasts, humans would get the ability to manipulate aura, but there was a big difference between beasts and humans regarding aura. Humans, unlike beasts, don’t have cores, beasts after evolving into a High-Grade Beasts simply had to complete the formation of their core from the base core of its Mid-Grade form.

When humans came into Gaia, it took them quite a long time before they were able to discover a path towards acquiring aura, it was an accidental discovery found by a human pioneer from a corpse of a race inside Gaia, it was recorded inside the memory stone how the race, the Arves, created a core inside their bodies. The man quickly shared his discovery towards the other humans as they started to study it and see whether it was suitable for humanity, it took them years before they formed a pseudo-core, unfortunately for humans, they could not make a true core, but the formation of a pseudo-core made humans level up to 6 and they gained the ability to manipulate aura.

Although the humans were satisfied with their discovery, someone else discovered another important information for humanity. Humanity somehow had another material to use as centralization of their aura, otherwise, just the process of leveling up to level 6 could take them years.

“The Status Plate,” Aeron said.

He remembered the process, he closed his eyes and felt inside him, the Status Plate which was orbiting around his soul was the first obstacle. Aeron concentrated his soul’s strength to try and grab the Status Tablet towards his soul. This phase was very difficult for other Professions as their soul strength only increased after leveling up to level 6, the shortest was one month and some worst cases even took 6 months.

‘Move,’ Aeron thought as he concentrated his soul into pulling the Status Plate closer.

The process was tiring and quickly depleted his soul’s strength, the Status Plate was still orbiting around his soul but it was noticeably closer compared to before.

The experience of exhausting Aeron’s soul strength was very uncomfortable, fortunately, his soul was much more powerful than normal Tamers, thus a process that might take a week or two might just take him 3-4 days. Aeron tried to meditate to restore his soul strength but it only increased the regeneration of his soul strength by a very small amount.

“Five hours,” Aeron said to himself.

It took him five hours to fill his soul strength back to its full state. Aeron tried to pull the Status Plate again and this time he didn’t fully exhaust his soul before stopping, the feeling was very unusual when his soul was fully exhausted.

This time, because he didn’t fill exhaust his soul too much, he was able to do some other activities, like weapons training.

“Master, five packs of wolves entered the territory this time,” Arthur suddenly said.

The wolves were starting to take things seriously as they sent more wolves to find out the situation in the area, unfortunately for them, Aeron was on top of a tree, while below, he filled the area with scent bushes.

“Just have the black monkeys observe them Arthur, don’t make a move, I’ve already reached my goal, so it’ll be better to let them be for now,” Aeron said as he continued training.

When he felt his soul fill up, he continued the process of pulling the Status Plate into his soul. If other Professionals knew how fast he was going, they would definitely be slack-jawed, and the number of questions would be enough to drown Aeron to death, even the strongest Professionals of humanity might turn their attention towards him if they knew.

While Tamers had a slightly stronger soul than other Professions, their souls were not as powerful as Aeron’s. Aeron continued this process for two more days before the Status Plate got near enough that the white floating fireball that was his soul, started to pull the Status Plate faster as if on drugs.

“Ahhh!” three days quickly passed by. Aeron screamed in pain as the Status Plate entered his soul.

The soul was one of the most sensitive parts of a human being. The scream alarmed Arthur who quickly had the other monkeys guard the area, Agila too was alarmed as she stared at her screaming master. Aeron felt like it took an eternity as the Status Plate entered his soul slowly, the pain started to recede after the Status Plate reached the center. Aeron suddenly felt a whirlpool-like structure form inside his soul as its absorbed mana around his surrounding as well as the mana inside his body. This was what it meant by aura being a fusion between body, mana, and soul strength.

The body was the vessel, while mana and soul strength mixed together to produce new and more powerful energy.

“Aura!” Aeron exclaimed as he felt it starting to form inside.

The whirlpool inside his soul did not stop as it absorbed more mana and produced more aura. Unnoticed by Aeron and his other pets, the unconscious woman’s finger moved slightly.