The boy’s entire body was covered in a golden light, his eyes had shifted from their original regal purple color to a primal crimson. The moon bestowed its celestial powers on his condition, caressing him with its cool light, slowly healing his wounds.

The moon’s silver tears did not fight and contrast with the golden energy and instead they equally nurtured his presence. He was not the weak child from moments ago, his entire body was going through a qualitative change. The demonic bear understood this, it had no choice but to kill the youth before he completely transformed.

With unprecedented speed, it raked at his body. It would not, or rather could not allow this change to happen. Its instincts told it that failing to stop him here would cost it its life. Its swings were so powerful that they ignited the air, causing an explosion upon contact.

The boy didn’t move. It was simply impossible for him to deny the shower of natural energy, he knew that doing so would do more damage to him than anything that the demonic bear could possibly inflict. Even as the creature’s claws threatened to rend away his life, he simply stood there, allowing the baptism of natural energy to reinforce his body.

Contact was made, the boy hadn’t moved as the demon ignited its claws. His body was stone stiff. Though he hadn’t been able to completely repel the assault, he was alive. The only wound left on his body was a long jagged scar running across his chest, the pyre had forced this newly formed injury to be cauterized. It should have hurt, so much that a child such as his enemy would surely be paralyzed in agony. Yet there he stood, solemnly laying his hand over the burnt flesh with that same damn emotionless face. For a moment it flashed with the colors of reminiscence, and a great sadness welled up beneath the mask of dull stoicness, but that didn’t last long.

The onlookers wondered what that expression that briefly existed on his face meant, for someone such as Tera who had basically raised Rune it was an unfamiliar expression. It should be impossible for someone so young to have an expression that contained such profound sadness, as if reminiscing the death of one’s past life. He seemed as if not to even recognize what should have been a near fatal wound, and instead it seemed as if the pain was a jolt that woke him up from a dream.

What could the boy do but stand there? His body was washed over by the eternal energies of the moon and the strange pulse of golden power from his connection to the world. The demonic bear knew this was its chance, if a single attack wasn’t enough it’d use two, if two wasn’t enough then ten would do, and if ten weren’t enough then it would attack ten thousand times.

The boy moved, even as the two grand streams of energy brazenly covered his body in their radiance he still managed to make a slow movement of his arm. Anyone who saw this movement would be hard pressed to think of it as an attack, it was far too slow, like the elegant stretch of a willow tree’s branch bending under the pressure of the wind. In response to the beast who relied on powerful attacks with frightening speed, Rune countered with casual stretches of his arms. The calculative skill of which was supreme, knocking away each and every one of the successive assaults from the creature.

This was a surreal sight even to the foxes who all had centuries of experience under their belts, not because of the fact that Rune was able to defend against the War Fire Grizzly. In fact, fighting a creature of that level should have been a simple matter for any Moonlight God Chaser, even one as young and inexperienced as Rune. What surprised them was the descent of the “light of evolution.” This was a phenomenon exclusive to divyne beasts and their ilk, unlike spirit beasts whose bodies are modified, or rather, mutated versions of animals which originally existed in areas with high concentrations of Prana. Divyne beasts are born as the embodiment of a specific deity’s power. Due to this, there are several species of foxes living in the village including the Brown Treadless foxes who are innately born with an affinity towards fire and strong control of their bodies’ limited reserves of senki, Star Eater foxes who specialize in crafting illusions, or even Fleeting Comet foxes who are born with a deficiency in the area of senki control but are naturally gifted in the measure of Arcane skills.

As a species of Divyne Beasts, Moonlight God Chasers are inherently different, even so far as to the methods where the two races go about creating tails in the pursuit of nine tails. Whereas a spirit beast species needs to gather large amounts of Prana into their bodies to the point of bursting, at which point the fox compresses the rampaging energy into a tail. Each time they do so the amount of Prana they need to absorb and the purity of which it must be rises up to the point where for some foxes even several centuries would not be enough time to form their last tail. However, the method for creating tails is different for Moonlight God Chasers. As a species created by the god of hunting and natural opulence, these foxes are born with what could be considered a special karma. For a child born as a divyne beast in a fox clan, the only way for them to gain a tail is to ascertain the very highest of their personal potential in one of the world’s nine natural elements.

Umi, for example, was born over three centuries ago with five tails. From the very moment of her birth she was destined to have no further accomplishments in the elements of fire, earth, metal, light, and darkness; this means that at birth she was able to control these elements with the exact same level of power and precision that she has currently. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for a Divyne beast born as a fox. She was naturally talented in the arts of light and darkness and considering that both of her parents were pure blooded God Chasers. She was able to inherit part of their legacies, effectively filling in all of the knowledge of their specialties in the aspects of life, destruction, and fire which she had low talent for regardless.

What was so shocking about this descent of the “light of evolution” was the fact that Rune was effectively a failure as a God Chaser, this stemming from the fact that he was firstly not a pure-blooded God Chaser and secondly a Variant-subspecies. As a subspecies Rune was not granted one of the most basic blessings of a Divyne beast, a tyrannically powerful body. This moment of pure light reconstructing his form could truly be considered a second birth.

The onlooking foxes had no doubt in their minds that it must have been this battle on the precipice of life and death that led Rune to going through this astounding breakthrough.

The duel between the boy and the beast continued, all the while the lights concentrated on the youth’s body were quickly beginning to dim, the restrictions on him loosening and his movements becoming more swift and fluid. From the start the Grizzly had chosen to go all out in assaulting the youth, its claws madly shredding any bit of flesh they happen to make contact with. The youth didn’t block, he paid no heed to simple injuries, following only his impulse to eviscerate the petty creature that dared to attack him.

At first with the restrictions granted by the “light of evolution” the boy’s strength was restricted so much that with the greatest of his efforts he hardly had the strength to move his arms in an attempt to counter. His previous show of skill was only possible because of two things, one being his enhanced senses which warned the youth whenever the grizzly began to move, and the powerful restrictions forced on him by the light, which restrained his body in such a way that he couldn’t draw out all of his herculean strength.

Since the light had descended, something in Rune seemed to change. He no longer acted with caution, just aggression, casually tearing the bear limb from limb with such an overwhelming ferocity that the scarlet gore became a thick mist of destruction. The blood mist wrapped itself around the young fox’s body as if to dress him before taking the form of four phantom-like tails. Out of all of the onlooking foxes only one wasn’t surprised, Daman seemed to have guessed the origin of the ghost-like tails, and further watching them he confirmed his suspicions. These tails were the answer. It wasn’t that Rune was born without tails, thereby making him a failure in the eyes of the fox-clan, but rather that his body was naturally rejecting them for some reason. It explained why after the “light of evolution” touched the young fox that the apparitions were given hazy form. The fox elder thought for a moment, a dark glimmer shone in his eye, one that no one caught sight of due to the events unfolding before them.

Rune didn’t stop, shredding off every last morsel of muscle and fatty tissue left on the beast, his body was thoroughly soaked in the Grizzly’s lifeblood. The creature itself had little time left and in a final act of desperation revealed the reasoning for its namesake as hot tendrils of fire erupted from its maw.

Yet what was this to Rune, a Divyne beast who had just been purified by the “light of evolution?” To him, this assault was just the last ditch effort of a frightened beast. Rune refused to stop assailing the creature even as each and every ligament in its body had been minced by his hands. All that was left of the creature was a ruined carcass He further bombarded the corpse with even more deft attacks till before long Rune’s carnage led him to devour the creature’s remains.

Moments later all that was left of the Two star demon beast were its bones and its core, a red gem about the size of a fingernail.

“I’ll take that as a sign that I won’t be looking for another apprentice,” Maia scoffed coldly towards her brother as she began walking towards the boy in question.

“That you won’t,” he admitted begrudgingly, his fox-like smile seeming to dim with displeasure. To Daman this entire situation was a large exercise in futility. He had known from the start that Rune would survive the battle, though his prediction included loss of a few limbs, in the long run the child would have become far stronger. Now, however, an even more spectacular result had been achieved. The child was full-bodied and had even received his birthright as a Moonlight God Chaser. Just knowing these made Daman endlessly happy, especially now that his sister had basically just admitted that she planned to take the boy in as her disciple.

An ominous roar shook the world, the child darted towards the fox clansmen at breakneck speed, the murderous gleam in his eyes growing ever stronger. Now that Rune possessed the body of a true Divyne beast, his travelling speed was monumentally faster, coupled with the fact that the foxes were only a few dozen meters away. It hardly took a minute for Rune to come in contact with the closest fox, Maia.

If only confirming visually, Maia would definitely be the weakest among the group of Foxkin. Considering she was only displaying one of her six tails and that unlike everyone else in the group, aside from Tera who sported a scarlet mane of locks. Her hair was as black as a starless night, indicating that she was not a divyne beast of the fox clan but rather a common spirit beast. It is actually rather reasonable for someone with only a shallow understanding of the foxes to perceive Maia as the weakest amongst the group.

This mistake is one that most would only have the misfortune to make once. Throughout the world there are countless tribes of spirit foxes born from the convergence of natural energies and normal animals yet this particular clan is special. The spirit foxes within this clan are all born as descendants of Divyne Beasts making them qualitatively different from your average Spirit Beast. Maia in particular is a notable irregularity as she is not only a Spirit Beast born from the matrimony of a Divyne Fox and a Spirit Fox, but she is also the inheritor of one of the clan’s few legacies, the successor to the Teumessian Fox.

Quantifying her in the same way one would any average Spirit Beast is akin to seeking death. As the boy in his frenzied state rushed closer to her, Maia revealed an exhausted expression. Even as the youth’s presence was atop her she didn’t waste the energy to match his vigorous punches, instead she avoided the blows, then grabbed onto his wrist and threw him towards Daman. The clever fox reacted immediately, molding Prana into six strips of light and capturing the lad mid-flight.