A few hours later

Akata stood in front of a tree, scythe in hand. He gripped the scythe with two hands and had his feet shoulder length apart. His breathing was calm and his eyes were focused. He sucked in a breath and swung out toward the tree.

The scythe seemed as if it could cut through anything in its path without any problem. The air parted ways for it, seemingly not wanting to get in the way of the weapon.

Swish!

The tree didn’t have the right to stand up to the blow of the scythe from Akata. It was cut in half cleanly without any resistance. The tree toppled over and fell to the ground with a thud.

“Hmm. My scythe arts are becoming more refined as I practice them. From what I gained from the intent of Lord Dullahan, the scythe is a weapon that is meant to sever attachments. To cut through all things. It was a weapon created for the sole purpose of separating the soul from the body.” Akata’s mind shook from this thought. Even though he had thought about this a lot, his mind was still shocked from learning this.

“If I am to get further in my skill in the scythe, I will need to keep on practicing with it. Well can’t just stand around now can I.” Akata chuckled and then walked in the direction of another tree.

Boom!

“Huh? What was that?” Akata heard a loud boom in the distance and looked over. “I thought I was alone on this island.”

“Who said you were alone on here? If you were alone that would hardly be counted as surviving. This is your real punishment.”

“Fourth Elder?” Akata yelled out. But there wasn’t a response afterwards. “So it seems that I’ll have to fight to survive. Well that’s good too, it will help me to get stronger, faster.” A smile could be seen on Akata’s face as he thought about fighting others.

Akata was a genius when it came to fighting and he loved it. If there was one thing he could do it would be to fight. However he didn’t like to fight just because he was a genius, he liked to fight because it was the only thing that truly brought him feeling. Growing up in the sect where people didn’t really care about him, Akata became somewhat apathetic towards most things. Fighting made his spirit rise with a feeling he couldn’t explain.

“Once I’m strong enough, I’ll be able to blast through the cabins and finally be on my way to the outside world. After I’m out of this, I should go see Peizhi Xiuying and Huihe Ji. Or maybe they’ll be out by the time I’m out.” A smile appeared on Akata’s face as he thought of this.

Boom! Boom!

The loud booming came closer as time passed. Akata’s eyes glowed with anticipation as, instead of waiting for it to come to him, he took a step forward to meet it. He was eager to test his new strength against an opponent.

“I hope this one is strong. It would be really depressing is this is just a weak beast that I can trample upon without trying.” He rushed forward at a fast speed. “Maybe it will be at the Fourth Grade of the Docile Rank, or the Fifth, or even the-”

BOOM!!

All of a sudden a tree came out of nowhere and crashed against Akata, sending him flying away. Akata flew of into the opposite direction that he was heading. He crashed into a few trees on the way before stopping himself. Although he wasn’t injured or hurt, Akata was surprised and a bit mad that a tree could send him flying like that.

“Who did that?!” Akata yelled out in the direction that the tree was sent flying from. He swept off the dust that was on his robes and activated his Shadowfeet technique. He rushed forward with speed that made him look like a flashing shadow.

He rushed through the trees in until he saw a beast standing in front of a tree. It was looking calmly at the tree, it looked like it only had peace in its mind. Almost no aura wafted off of it.

The beast looked like a tiger with red fur. It was about 3 meters long and had black saber teeth. Its claws were black and sharp as well, when it stood on the ground its claws dug into the ground. It had two tails that were a meter long that swung out around its body.

Akata gave a snort. “Trifling 2nd Grade Docile Rank beast.” Akata raised his scythe and swept it out towards the beast. “This should be nice training.”

The scythe flashed through the air, making it part ways. Nothing impeded its path as it rushed to the beast. The scythe had the power of separation as it closed in on the beast.

The beast turned its head to look at the incoming scythe. Its face was still as calm as ever and its aura still didn’t fluctuate. The beast slowly put up a paw to block the scythe that was heading in its direction. It opened its mouth, but instead of a roar a voice spoke out.

“Trifling 4th Grade Mortal Rank human.” It spoke calmly. Its voice reverberated throughout the forest and as it did everything in the area began to shake and tremble. It was as if his voice could control anything that was on the island, no… anything in nature.

Akata sensed that something was extremely wrong with this beast as his scythe approached it. “You can speak?! Oh no.” Akata’s eyes went wide with complete disbelief. Not only that but shock and fear washed over him as well. However even after all of that, nothing made him fear the beast. The scythe was too close to the beast to withdraw his attack so he tried his best to weaken it.

Bang! The scythe hit the palm of the beast and bounced back almost as if it were a ball. The paw of the beast didn’t have a scratch on it at all. No mark could be seen the paw, as it stood in the air, like it were still waiting on the scythe to make contact with it.

The beast gave a snort before putting its paw down. “You, a trifling human dare try to attack me? I can’t tell if you want to die or if you are just plain stupid. Please enlighten me.” The beast asked in a rather curious voice.

Akata stared wide-eyed at the beast. Even though he had tried his best to pull back the power of his scythe he could only take a bit away. About 90 percent of the strength still remained in the attack, yet it didn’t cause any damage whatsoever to the beast. Akata’s mouth was left hanging open as he was left stunned.

“Speak boy. Don’t just stand there slack jawed.” The beast once more spoke out.

“Ah!” Only then did Akata become clear minded. “Umm… I just thought that I use you as a training partner. I didn’t know that you were so strong.” Akata said sincerely while bowing. He knew that this beast in front of him was too strong for him to take on so he was respectful and courteous.

“Training partner? Hahaha! You must have thought that I was weak and were going to use me to train until you grew bored, then you were going to slay me am I right? Haha” The beast threw its head into the air and laughed out.

“Yes…” Akata said with his head low. He felt that one wrong word would lead to his immediate death. Right now, he was thinking of countless ways to get out of this situation alive, but none of them seemed to work. They either ended in his capture or his death.

“Humph. Well what am I going to do with you now then?” The beast thought for a while with its eyes closed. After a moment it opened them and spoke. “How about I make you my training partner. These trees are too decrepit. You might just hold up better than them.” The beast's eyes flashed with a bright light.

Akata took in a deep gulp as sweat began to form on his forehead. He didn’t know what to do right now. His breathing became haggard and his mind started to race with many thoughts. He unconsciously took a step back from where he was standing.

“Come now boy, let’s begin. You better defend. Haha.”

Akata turned around to see the beast behind him. The beast had appeared behind too fast for Akata to see it happen. He didn’t even feel it happen at all. “Just what level is this beast at? How can I defend against it?” Akata had worry all over his face.

Akata immediately twirled his scythe and held it out in front of him to block the strike of the beast. He pushed his cultivation base to rotate at full strength. Along with that he rotated his red and golden runes to push his power to the next level. His nature sense was put into action to be used to defend. As of this moment Akata could unleash the strength of someone at the 6th Grade of the Mortal Rank.

Bang!

The casual strike of the beast blew Akata away. He flew back coughing up multiple mouthfuls of blood as he crashed through countless trees. Soon his back hit a sturdy enough rock and stopped him in place. He coughed up another large mouthful of blood that was caused from his serious injuries. His face was extremely pale and his robes were tattered and rough. His eyes and face were listless, but he was conscious.

“Ahaha! You do last longer than these decrepit trees. Well I can’t just let such a great training partner go to waste! Ahaha. Good good. Well let’s do this again shall we. Ah! But not so soon, how about after you recover some? I’ll give you say… three hours? Yes yes that’s good enough. Well I’ll see you in three hours then.”

The beast began to walk away before stopping and saying, “Oh I forgot to mention my name. I am Tabet of the Scarlet Tiger race. You’re such a great training partner, I do hope I can learn your name when we next meet.” After that Tabet took a step and vanished.