Chapter 2 out of 2. A big thanks to all the readers.

Enjoy

Chapter 11: Curo and leaving the forest

 Seeing the sudden light, Nalsers eyes turned cold. He completely entered combat mode. He pushed the little lion to the other side of the cave. the moment he shoved the little lion away, he unsheated Dreamer. The little lion was startled and scared. Seeing Nalser filled with killing intent, it didn't dare to move. After a few minutes had gone by and nothing had actually happened, Nalser calmed down. He looked at his arm and saw a tattoo that was now there. The tattoo looked like the lion in black ink. What was weird was that, the eyes were scarlet red and it had a few scarlet red stripes all over its body.

He remembered reading about this in the "How to use magic for dummies." There were two ways to tame a magical beast:

 1. To weaken it and cast a high level enslavement magic. With that the magical beast will completely submit to the master's will. This was the more common method used in this world.

 2. To earn the respect of a magical beast and have it initiate a Beast Pledge. In a Beast Pledge the beast submitted willingly. The Beast Pledge was rarely initiated ad magical beast had a lot of pride and would rather die than serve a human. Usually the Beast Pledge was gotten by coaxing a magical beast cub into submission.

Since it was rare to get a hold of a cub like this, this method was mostly forgotten. Nalser closed his eyes and he felt that he could sense the little lion in the corner. it wasn't like he could see him but it was more like an instinct that, he knew where the little one was and what he was feeling. Opening his eyes, the cold light disappeared, he went to the little guy and shrugged his shoulders. He took out a piece of jerky from his Spacial Ring and started feeding it to the little lion.

"Njaa, don't scare me like that little lion. I am not from this world, everything that takes me by surprise is a threat to me," he softly scolded the little lion, about half an hour went by and the little lion wasn't scared anymore but rather was playing with Nalsers hand. He demonstrated the hunting down techniques of a Scarlet-Eyed Black King. Nalser felt warmth from playing with the little lion. He used to have a dog he played with when he was small, it gave him a similar feeling as the current situation.

" Now then, since you are stuck with me, I guess I should give you a name. It get's annoying quite fast to keep saying little lion, little lion all the time," after saying that, he sank in deep thought. His mother had always told him that it's important to pick the right name because that person is going to be stuck with the name with the rest of their life. Having made up his mind he declared to the little lion, " From now on your name is Curo." The little lion thought for a second and started getting excited. Nalser took it as a sign that the little guy like the name.

"Now then, I guess I should get back to training. I seriously don't want to spend half my life in this goddamn forest." Having made his decision he started training again. Even though the refining of bones happened automatically, it could be sped up by diligently feeding Mana to it yourself.

Time flashed by and two months had already passed since his meeting with Curo. Curo had grown to be 30 cm long and if he stood on all fours he was about 20 cm from the ground. There were also tinges of red stripes starting to form on the little guy's body. Ohh and Curo had unique ability, he could change the size of his body.

 It was about a month about ago when Nalser opened his eyes from meditation, meditation helped concentrate better on the refining, and saw Curo as a full fledged giant beast staring right at him. He was startled and immediately used Illusion step to back up. It was then that Curo changed his body back to his original size and came scumpering back to Nalser, seeming all smug. Nalser started flipping through all the jade slip that contained knowledge on magical beast and came up with zero results. He found out one useful bit of information.

Although cross breeds between different species of magical beast did exist, they were extremely rare, All of the hybrids also have a unique ability that belongs only to them. Categorizing the little lion as a hybrid made the most logical sense to him and he didn't dwell on it for much longer.

Now that in total three and a half months had passed, Nalser had completed the first cycle. He felt that his strength had doubled. He had used a week to fully solidify himself after the cycle and grasp the full extent of his abilities. The last thing he wanted to do was to get over confident and pick a fight with someone, who he didn't stand a chance against. Feeling that, he had a good grasp on his abilities, he decided to leave the forest and go to the last human kingdom in the east before elven lands, Nulan. He had heard a lot about Nulan's architecture from Tobias. It turns out that it was majorly influenced by elven architecture and living in the city gave a calm, serene feeling. He decided to leave tomorrow morning. His destination the capital of Nulan.

Truth be told, he seriously needed to stop by the Guild and trade in monster cores for money and contribution points. Contribution point system was sort of like a guild discount system. During his stay in the forest, he regularly fought against magic beasts to get a better grasp at his abilities and gain in shights about the weaknesses of Phantom sword so he could either fix them or pay attention to them. As the sun rose up Nalser started preparing for the journey. He put on the black trousers, T-shirt, boots that he came to this world with, he fixed his army knife to his left thigh.

This was his habit, from back when he was a soldier. By putting the knife there it could be easily and quickly drawn, should the need arise. In his left hand was the sheated Dreamer and on top of his head was a small sized Curo. As he advanced through the woods in a few days he had reached the outskirts of the woods.

When he finally made it out of the woods, he took in a deep breath and said in a quiet voice, "Finally, I'm out of that damn forest. Time to start traveling the world." He had a smile on his face, as he scanned the surroundings he noticed a caravan getting closer and judging from it's direction, it seemed that it would go to the capital. He decided to hitch a ride with the caravan if possible. As the caravan grew closer, Nalser realized that it was the same caravan that gave him a lift when he first exited Kapitol.