Chapter 50! Finally! Woohoo! 50 chapters into my story...wow, never thought I would ever write this much. I wonder how many words I've typed so far. My chapters are usually 1.9k-2.4k, with a few chapters above 3k words. So I think I've typed over 100k words? That's a crap ton! Well over 300 pages (at least on Gdocs and Wordpad). Yay! Anyway, I created a thread in the "Promote Your Webnovel" section in the forum, so if any of you readers have any questions regarding me or the story, feel free to drop by and ask! I'll answer to the best of my abilities. Here's the link: Link!

Now for the chapter. Enjoy!

After resting for a few minutes, Kyte stood up and walked back over to the creature’s corpse. He examined its legs more than anything else merely because he wasn’t interested in the rest of its body.

The creature must have hardened its legs before I killed it.

Kyte used his Spirit energy to focus on the bone structure in the creature’s legs. He traced the bone up into the body and noticed that the bones were exactly the same as the legs.

So the entire skeleton system can harden and soften to allow for greater maneuverability. How does this work though?

Honestly, Kyte wasn’t expecting to discover anything from the creature. He just thought it was interesting, and, since Kyte quite liked knowledge, he wanted to at least understand the creature even slightly. It wasn’t to create countermeasures against them or anything, since he can just kill them without much difficulty. It’s just the feeling of understanding that Kyte likes so much.

Kyte breathed out a sigh of slight exhaustion. He could still feel small specks of that repulsive blood.

That happened with just one drop. I can’t imagine the reaction if I absorbed all of it. I need to be careful from now on.

He destroyed the corpse by burning it before reappearing above the camp to continue his work. Kyte estimated that it would take a few days to complete the grand formation, unfortunately. He just didn’t have enough skill with formations to create grands fast enough. He felt a bit depressed that he had to waste about half an hour every night setting up all of those formations again. And, he would have to do that for the next few nights. At least it would give him some practice.

By the time faint rays of sunlight pierced through the dense tree branches, everyone was awake. It may be due to the stress from their predicament or how early they went to sleep, but everyone seemed prepared to advance. Of course, a couple of them were quite lazy, mainly the weaker B rankers, but in reality everyone wanted to leave that forsaken forest. The temperature was beginning to noticeably decrease, so Kyte descended and created another ring of fire around everyone.

As Kyte destroyed the surrounding formations, he felt a bit depressed. He wished there was a way to carry the formation with him, but that was impossible for someone of his skill level. At that thought, Kyte discovered the idea of pre-laying the formations on paper and then expanding them onto the landscape around the campsite. However, he threw that idea out. Sometimes it was better to tough things out and get experience than take the easy way out.

Besides, Kyte knew he needed more experience if he wanted to gain power. He received his power from Sol’keer almost half a year earlier. Only half a year. Kyte’s combat experience can’t be described as...extensive. He wishes that he had more time to sit down and thoroughly research and train himself in order to prepare for the future, however, there seems to always be something that interrupts him. He really wants to learn how to forge equipment but that process would take way too long. Maybe when he reaches the Core he’ll have more time to train his techniques. Hopefully.

Anyways, Kyte led the group through the forest once again. His Spirit energy was always spread out, covering about half a mile around them and a good thirty meters below them. That wasn’t its limit but it was good enough for the situation they were in. Plus, half a mile was plenty of space for Kyte to notice anything.

The group’s peregrination was quite uneventful for the next two days. The only real occurrence was when one of the underground creatures, which Kyte gave the unoriginal name of Digger, suddenly popped up during the night and decided to sprint toward their group. Of course, before it could get to their group it was killed by a Frozen Blood formation. Kyte examined its corpse and hypothesized that it may have been sick from something. The color of its skin was the complete opposite of the normal Diggers and its eyes were a bright red rather than a clean white. Kyte wondered if it may have been a mutated type of Rabies or something along those lines.

Because of that, Kyte immediately transported the corpse far away from the group and thoroughly burned it to ashes. He positioned himself about twenty meters away from the corpse when he burned it and he used wind to blow the smoke up and in the opposite direction of the group. Since he mastered Windwalker, he obtained a slight proficiency of wind control. That and he could convert black light into wind and then use that. For some reason he had greater control over the wind converted from black light than just normal air. He was quite confused over this phenomenon but he couldn’t really question it at the moment.

It was a good idea to blow the smoke away because any trees or branches that came into contact with it began to melt. Apparently it was either highly acidic or corrosive so the trees didn’t stand a chance. It was quite a weird scene, actually. Because the tree branches were interwoven with branches from other trees, the trees actually wouldn’t fall. For example, if a tree was melted in half, the top half would just hang there because the branches were strong enough to support the weight.

“Hopefully that’s the only one.” Kyte sighed as he mumbled those words under his breath.

He traveled back to the group and told them to keep moving. He didn’t tell them about the creature’s “sickness” because, if there really was only one, there would be no reason to tell them. Besides, the creature was actually a bit weaker than normal because of it. The only danger it posed was probably its blood and other secretions. Kyte didn’t feel the need to test it because he assumed it was unnecessary. Only time will tell.

Anyways, the group continued onward for the next few hours until the sun started to set. It was no longer a bright yellow shine but rather a low orange glow that permeated through the branches. Only a small amount of light successfully penetrated into the forest below because the sun was no longer high in the sky but resting on the horizon.

Despite the decrescence of sunlight, the temperature within the forest began to rise once again. Kyte still wasn’t able to figure out why this phenomenon was occurring so he just decided to drop the pointless investigation. Besides, if he ever did figure it out, how would that help him?

After arriving at a new area, the group settled down for yet another night. Kyte laid down even more formations which, because of the previous practice, was completed slightly faster. Still took more than twenty minutes, though.

The group silently went to sleep as Kyte once again refused to rest. He was almost finished with the grand formation and he had the feeling of enlightenment which was on the tip of his tongue. He began to discover similarities between the partially-completed grand formation and the separate formations.

Several characters begin to resemble certain aspects of the characters from each individual formation. It seems as if...the characters themselves are coalescing. It’s not just the characters but also the structure. The line thickness and design insinuate the idea that the various different lines and drawings merge together to form...a new formation.

Kyte quickly flew down to a patch of open landscape and laid down the three formation on top of each other. He configured them to shine with a different color: Alert was green, Frozen Blood was blue, and Moonlight’s Eclipse was red. Kyte intensely studied the three formations as they gleamed in the darkness. He took out the paper which had the partially-completed grand formation design and compared it with the three formations on the ground.

I see it...I see it!! I see which lines merge! I see the different characters that combine! I understand now!

“Hahaha!!! Yes! Yes! I did it! Hahaha!”

Kyte did a small little dance of joy from being able to understand the theory behind the grand formation. That feeling of understanding something after so much hard work just fills him with energy and happiness. Although, collectively, it took him more than a month to reach this point, Kyte still felt ecstatic about his discovery. The longer it takes him to understand something, the happier he feels when he finally does.

However, even though he understood the theory, putting that understanding into practice is easier said than done. He still has to work out a set of guidelines to follow so that he would be able to create grand formations more easily. Once he accomplishes that, he’s pretty much already reached home base.

With that, Kyte began to work on finishing the grand formation. It became much easier to complete it now that he gained enlightenment regarding formations. He flew back over the camp to get a good view of the entire network of formations in the area.

And like this, two weeks passed.

Along the way through the forest, the group encountered almost nothing. They still did not know how much farther they had to travel to get out. However, the persevered through the stressful journey. Fortunately, due to Kyte’s continual show of power, the group had significantly calmed down compared to the start.

The further in they trekked the more frequent attacks became. At first it was the same weird centipede-like creatures that would move about in the area mainly due to curiosity. However, after several nights, they began to attack. Fortunately, the grand formation protecting the group defended them from all of the intruders. The grand formation’s power was at most double that of the individual formation network, so that made everyone feel a bit more security throughout the night.

Those weren’t the only creatures, however. About a week after Kyte gained enlightenment, he noticed that the group left the territory of the Diggers. From then on, he discovered a new type of creature that he dubbed Stalkers. These Stalkers would literally do just that, stalk.

They looked like giant mammal-type praying mantises, though they don’t have scythe arms. In fact, their arms are opposite of a praying mantis. Instead of hooking or grabbing they stab with their sword-like arms. Aside from that, they have four black, beady eyes. Two in the front and two in the back. Their fur is regularly dark green but since they can change the color of their bodies and hair they usually try to match their surroundings as much as possible. Fortunately their running speed isn’t very fast. Their attack speed is frighteningly so, though.

Kyte searched the storage necklace and estimated there to be about another two weeks of food and water left. He became slightly dispirited because even now he was giving up his share almost every single day. Most times he was using his life force, which was a ginormous amount, to sustain himself. He still had loads of life force to use so it didn’t really matter much, but he still misses real food sometimes.

Aside from those things, the only thing that Kyte had been doing was researching formations. He had created the first half of the guideline with the help of a few other grand formation experiments. He still needed time to complete and polish it enough to confidently wield it as his first tool created solely from his own hard work. This is the biggest reason why he had been skipping out on eating. He was focused on his formation theory and guideline.

Kyte thought of breaking through the layer of branches to see how much further they need to travel but when he tried to do so he was met with a powerful force of resistance. It seemed like the trees themselves were blocking Kyte from directly harming them.