A great wave of wind exploded out from Kyte's body as he opened his eyes. Getting out of the breathing position, he stood up and stretched. A flash of white light appeared in his mind, and he realized...

"Low Knight stage, finally!"

"Good work. I'll let you sort out your new information, haha."

"Yup! Just two days and I'm already at Knight stage...awesome!"

Kyte did a small celebration before he settled back down onto his bed.

Currently, it was the day after Kyte took his walk around the neighborhood. It was about noon, and there was only one day left until his High School graduation. However, he doesn't necessarily care about that. Although he is forced to go.

According to the Inheritance, as well as Sol'keer, when Kyte reaches the Knight stage, he will gain the information necessary to learn the first Bloodrage skill. Not only that, but he will also learn a regular skill as well, which is a plus.

Closing his eyes, Kyte focused on his new information.

The first Bloodrage skill is called Blood Thirst, and it's exactly how Sol'keer had described it. Kyte is able to absorb the life force out of living things that have blood. Doing so increases the rate at which he improves in training, as well as his overall power. However, the power boost isn't that noticeable in the beginning. It only becomes a real help in later stages. With the more life force Kyte absorbs, the more power he will obtain basically.

The other skill, which is just a normal skill, is called Raging Palms. It sends out Internal energy which violently vibrates, causing anything to touch it to be blown apart. Also, the power of Raging Palms increases with Kyte's improvement, which is quite obvious. It won't necessarily kill anything that is about Kyte's own level in power, and of course the power of the skill decreases if used against more powerful enemies.

"Hmm, Raging Palms seems quite useful. I can't wait to try it out."

"Hmph, of course it is! It's one of the higher-tiered skills in my family's vault."

"Alright! Well first I want to try out Blood Thirst. So, I'm gonna have to check the back yard first...thankfully there's lot of space back there. There's a couple of trees and bushes as well, so hopefully something will pop up."

After waiting in his backyard for about ten minutes, he finally saw his first chance.

First thing to do is kill the bird...

He reached his hand out toward the bird and tried to control his Internal energy. During the time he was waiting he was practicing this same technique, and fortunately he successfully did it on his first try. Although he wasn't able to control it very well. A white energy spilled out from Kyte's hand and fluidly surged together to create a fist. He controlled the fist, moving it close for him to grab the bird. It didn't notice the energy at all for some reason. Either that or it was naturally scared stiff.

Kyte made a grasping motion, to which the Internal energy instantly grabbed the bird. He instantaneously increased the power in his grip and crushed the bird, making blood spray out from it's body. He dropped the corpse and let blood collect around it before beginning to train the Blood Thirst skill. He hovered his Internal energy above the blood, trying to send the signal to absorb it. However much he tried, he couldn't absorb the blood.

Huh? What am I doing wrong...

After a few more tries, Kyte decided to solidify his energy while it was in the blood and take it out that way. So, he controlled his Internal energy to enter the blood before he solidified it. After doing so, Kyte once again tried to absorb the blood. The dark red liquid suddenly disappeared into the Internal energy, signifying Kyte's success.

So the Internal energy has to be solidified in order to take out the blood. What a nuisance. I guess it gets easier with practice. Anyway, next step.

Slowly, Kyte transferred more energy over, around, and inside the blood. Suddenly, his energy started to soak up the blood, just like his cells and skeleton did when he practices with the breathing technique. This time, however, there was no wind vortex or electricity. Originally, Kyte's Internal energy was white. However, Kyte could see traces of a red color beginning to form. He could also feel a small amount of energy forming in his body, however, at the moment it was so small that it was almost unnoticeable.

Every long journey starts with the first step. Now time for Raging Palms.

Standing up, Kyte went over the information for Raging Palms before he started. Apparently, all Kyte had to do is send out his Internal energy and condense each individual thread of energy as much as possible before finally exploding the energy forward.

Well, easier said than done.

Forming a small ball of Internal energy in-front of his palm, Kyte tried to condense it as much as possible. However, doing so dries up his energy fairly quickly, so he tried to do it as fast as possible. Then, he quickly let out a burst of energy to shoot the ball forward.

-BANG-

The ball moved forward, and Kyte unconsciously made it into a palm shape. However, it only moved forward about four feet before disappearing.

...What? This is more difficult than I thought...

"Hahaha! Of course it is! But at least you got it to move forward on your first try. It's better than nothing."

"Can't you help me out here?"

"No, are you stupid? It's not possible for me to tell you the secrets of skills like this. Besides, even if I could, I still wouldn't. It's much better to learn it yourself. That is the only way that you will truly grow stronger."

"I guess you're right..."

As Kyte waited for more birds or other animals to show up, he practiced Raging Palms. Although after a few tries he ran out of energy, so he had to rest before trying again. However, the good thing was that every time he ran out of energy and rested to regain energy, Kyte felt that his energy quantity and quality improved by a very small amount. Every single improvement matters.

After about four hours, Kyte had killed nine birds. Every time he killed one he would dispose of the corpse because if a bird sees another bird corpse, it would definitely fly away.

He improved the Raging Palm technique quite a lot, although he definitely knew he was still missing something. There were several palm imprints in the ground in his backyard, and Kyte only looked at them with pride. Thinking back to how he could barely send out a stream of Internal energy just about four and half hours ago, he quietly approved of his progress.

-DING-

Suddenly, from his backyard, Kyte heard the the doorbell of his house ring.

"Who?...Me? Oh, it's probably the package dude. I remember ordering something a week or two ago.."

Quickly brushing off any dirty that was on his clothes, Kyte quickly went to the front door and looked through the peeking hole. On the other side he found...

Sarah? The last time she visited was last year...what the Hell does she want?

Kyte contemplated if he would open the door or not, but just as he was about to walk away...

"Kyte, I heard you walking to the door. You can't just leave me standing here."

-!...You sly bitch..

Opening the door, Kyte gave a faint smile before asking:

"What do you want?"

"I want to know why you left and why you haven't been to school for the past two days."

Kyte's smile quickly faded, and he said:

"You haven't even come talk to me for two years, yet you think it's fine for you to come to my house ask me why I haven't been to school? For two days? Who do you think you are? I have no need for your concerns. You can leave."

"Wait! The only reason why I haven't visited you is because the last time I came here, no one answered! I was convinced you left with your grandfather. So you've been purposefully avoiding me and the others this whole time?"

"You won't understand even if I told you. I don't need anyone to console me, I'm done with that. Nothing and no one helped me in my time of need, so I found out that I don't need anyone at all!"

"You only think like that because you didn't LET ANYONE HELP YOU!"

"Wha-! Shut the fuck up! You have no clue how I felt AND you will never know how I feel now!"

With rage building up in his chest, Kyte stretched his hand out to push Sarah away, but something more powerful came out instead...

A wave of Internal energy swept toward Sarah and pushed her off the ground back toward the street.

Shit!

"Sarah! Are you ok?!"

Kyte ran toward Sarah, but before he could reach her...

"Get away you freak!"

Kyte immediately stopped in his tracks.

"Wha...t?"

Sarah looked at Kyte with eyes full of fear and confusion. A small scratch had appeared on her left cheek, and blood could be seen on her hands and elbows.

"I was wrong about coming here. You're a lunatic!"

Kyte just stood there completely dumbfounded. His mouth gaping wide in utter confusion, he didn't know how to react to this sudden outburst at all. This person...

Is this who she really is?

"Don't ever come near me again! You should stay in that house just like you have been for the past two years!"

Oh shit...I forgot about what happened to her that year...

"No wonder even your grandfather left you...I'm leaving."

Kyte only stood there, taking in everything that had happened. Sol'keer just silently sighed, and silently laughed a little too.

Putting on a half smile, with a hint of a weird light in his eyes, Kyte thought...

It doesn't matter anymore. Since she experienced my power, I should kill her. Something like this would've happened eventually.