Hey everyone hope you guys like the chapter :D

I’m going to be using warrior ranks and mage ranks more often since it is a good way to compare the MC’s strength and other stuff. I will use them from now on, however not in this chapter specifically.

Remember that the ranks go like this:

Warrior 1,2,3,4,5-10

Mage 1,2,3,4,5-10

I might also add ranks for the ki practitioners too so it might be easier. Not sure yet.

-----Day 3 of competition-----

In the past couple of days we have found 4 enemy teams. But none so far that have given us a run for our money, besides the first one with the scout.

However I’m starting to think I radiate an aura of bad luck. ‘The wrong place at the wrong time’ sort of thing. And it leads me to making mistakes that could either be bad luck or sheer stupidity! Yesterday we found a small cave that looked uninhabited. Until the ‘owner’ of said establishment greets us with a hearty welcome. Straight to my face.

It was Bruce Lee reincarnated into a mini-bear. Actually I would rather fight a bear than take on this smug martial-art-looking specimen. A martial artist getting attacked by an animal that seems to know martial arts. The irony.

I didn’t even have time to contemplate the type of evolution this thing would have to go through to spin kick my face, before it was ready for more. Now I’m going to say this, I would normally be averse to killing such a cute animal. If it weren’t chopping me like a sushi chef during rush hour.

Oh and where are my friends when I need them? Rolling on the forest ground laughing until they starve or die. They would hope the former, since I’m still too confused on what’s going on to figure out their punishment.

Well, I should probably finish this before it gets too embarrassing and becomes a ‘battlefield-story’ that will become a legend of the ‘Brave Jared and his Furry Foe From Hell’. I don’t want the battle scars to prove it.

Not that it’s claws can penetrate that deep…I digress, anyways I’m laying down on my back, with it sitting on my chest, with me getting pummeled and currently pissed off. So I reach up and ‘bear-hug’ the little bastard, then morph the skin on my entire chest into dozens of spikes like a porcupine, killing it instantly. Acupuncture death complete.

Drake finally calms himself after a minute or two after I kill the small beast. Barely holding his laughter in he apologizes and adds,

“Erm, sorry Clan Hea- Jared, but when you killed it you might have wanted to do it a little more cleanly, now we can’t salvage the meat for dinner tonight…” [Drake]

Damn, he’s right. I admit I just wanted to try out that move once. I got it from remembering about pine trees and their pine cones back on Earth and also porcupines so I decided to assimilate it into my moves. Fortunately there are no small abundance of animals to hunt and cook in the mountain.

After that we just hauled Bruce Lee Jr. off into the woods and then took residence in its cave. I was expecting there to be nunchaku and some kind of wooden training dummy, but I guess my hopes were a little too high. There was a fair amount of human bones scattered about. Bruce Jr. had one hell of an appetite. Only later do I figure out the name for the animal is Chacku.

We then eat after Drake comes back with something similar to a mountain lion. I have no idea how he found it, maybe he started singing near a place that had them around. His singing is terrible. I’m not sure if it would even show up on a decibel meter…It’s loud and sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Well scratch that, it would be 30 people with nails and like 2 chalkboards. One hand for each chalkboard.

Anyways, now that I’m full and comfortable I sit in a lotus position, close my eyes and go into meditating with the ‘Resting Talonbane’ technique. I focus on my red/black strands on both arms and slowly move the ends where the fingertips are, shifting them up my arms and to my sternum.

I’ve been doing this for weeks, steadily improving my muscles over time. Today is different though. I’m going to detach the second layer. Vandel was very vague about the second layer because the previous morpher of the clan (last clan head) didn’t give much information about it. Apparently he just said it made you stronger. It’s kind of ominous and I’m hesitant to peel my strands off like an onion. But hey, like Machiavelli said: “Never was anything great achieved without danger.”

So I move my already detached layer over to the palm of my left hand to stay there while I work on the second layer. After a few deep breaths I pull on one side of the layer delicately to make sure I don’t end up causing permanent damage. The first time to peel the layer is the hardest.

The feeling is close to what it’s like to put a fishing hook on your finger and you start to pull. It puts me in a lot of pain and my reflex is to stop and try again later, however I know that I need to be prepared for the rest of the competition. Help is help, no matter the size.

Finally the layer removes itself from the dartboard-like red/black circle, leaving the other 3 layers together. Now I move the second layer to my right hand. From now on I’m going to refer to the first layer as Alpha and the second layer as Beta, since it’s easier.

Since I have Beta now, it’s time to test it out. A muscle that I haven’t been focusing on ‘upgrading’ lately is the deltoid muscle. It’s the shoulder muscle that helps provide rotation and to basically ‘watch over’ you’re other muscles of your arm and your bones when carrying heavy objects. This will aid me in maneuvering different weapons of various weight and sizes, if I don’t use morphing of course.

So I take the red strand from Beta and rotate it counter-clockwise in hopes of ‘destroying’ the muscle so I can rebuild it. Too bad it has a different idea.

Instead of destroying the muscle it starts to destroy the skin on my shoulder. The pain is worse than the muscle and it’s sizzling like bacon on a frying pan.

“AAAAAARRGHHHHHH, FUCK!!!” My incoherent yelling mixed with the mighty F-bomb scares the hell out of everyone else and Drake almost trips onto the fire when adding wood.

They all crowd around me but I don’t have time to talk to them because if I stop halfway then the skin will grow back deformed when I use the black strand. After what felt like a century of sizzling and occasional popping, I can finally use my black strand to rebuild the epidermis. I get right to it without a moments waste and turn the strand clockwise, building it back up.

After it’s finished and looks in its former state, I relax and tell everyone its fine. Drake mentions the smell of burnt skin could give us unwanted complications, but I’m too lazy to listen and really intent on seeing the fruits of my labor.

Right as I’m thinking this, there is a draft of chilly air that enters the cave. Even though my body is tough enough to just shrug it off its still enough to notice. Apparently for melody it is too because she has eyes as wide as saucers,

“Jared, you’re on fire!” [Melody] She is pointing at me with an expression as if I said: ‘open sesame’, turned around and shrugged like the door didn’t open when it actually does. Okay that’s not the best explanation but it fits the situation. Oh I rhymed, ehehe. Back to the problem at hand:

I give her an incredulous look before turning around, and well, yep I’m on fire. At least a part of me is. Care to take a guess? My shoulder or my ego? Nope my ego was deflated and shriveled up after the duel with my mini arch-nemesis earlier. Yep, the answer is my shoulder.

So out of surprise I think about how to get flames off of me. I would rather not be the group’s mobile barbeque cooker. And thus the flames actually extinguish. Then it strikes my brain like a Tibetan monk with a gong, on what exactly is going on!

Let’s try thinking: ‘It’s too damn hot in here!’…*Fzzzz* my shoulder suddenly is covered in ice. This is definitely going to be useful. It seems I don’t have to directly emit ki into and out of my shoulder and use the ‘Elemental ki’ technique. I can just think and it will do. A lazy cheat for a lazy person. My body knows me too well.

However it makes me wonder just how much Beta did to my skin. Thinking of another idea, I stretch my skin out as far as I can. Just like I guessed, my skin can stretch farther by about 4 more inches. This means now I can almost make a regular sword instead of a short sword when I morph.

Even better, it seems like my skin on my shoulder is waiting for something. It’s a different feeling, kind of unique. Like it’s watching out for something or someone. I test my theory by emitting my ki on my fingers, and converting it to ice. Then I poke my shoulder and my shoulder gets set ablaze, instantly evaporating the ice from my fingers. That’s pretty handy.

‘A sentient defense mechanism at your service!’

“Your hair is on fire…” [Ally]

She looks at me worried but at the same time holding her nose because of the smell. Meh, elves and their sensitive senses…Oh shit it is on fire!

I immediately send a thought to my shoulder and tell it to cut it out. And it does.

I swear it seemed like it was grinning. Such a thing isn’t possible right?