Chapter 2: Lord of the Forest

“Humph… all of them were weaklings, those D rank monsters can’t even take one hit of mine even though I’ve limited myself to only using a C rank’s power” The fox responded to the two guards in an arrogant manner.

“Haha!!... The prince really is strong” One of the guards replied with an impressed expression on his face, but still keeping the fierce aura about him to scare off any other monsters trying to sneak in to the mountain.

“Any way prince, your father told us to tell you to see him as soon as you got back it seems serious” The other guard mentioned to the fox.

As soon as he heard this the fox broke down his arrogant nature and a cold sweat dripped down his back as he remembered the last time his father wanted him for something serious, as he thought back he remembered the hell like training he endured when he reached the age of one to get him ready for fighting other monsters and the lessons as every type of ‘Demon’ got drilled into his head when he was forced to remember them all.

When the guards saw that the prince was thinking about something to do with his father they showed an apologetic expression and also thinking back to when they first saw his father fight for the position of ‘Forest Leader’ a chill crept up their spine when they looked back at that scene as it shocked them back into reality only to see the space where the fox stood empty and a trail of fox prints leading into the mountain, and immediately acted as if nothing ever happened.

The instant he snapped out of his flashback he quickly dropped all of his collected Ki cores from his D rank prey and suddenly grew to 4 meters in height and 5 meters long, this was the fox’s maximum height as nine tailed foxes were very small compared to most other monsters in the forest and sprinted into the mountain not even saying goodbye to the two guards.

Entering into the mountain the previous plain rocks on the outside turned into a smooth quartz that would only belong to the richest kingdom and would make people believe they have entered a new dimension.

While the fox kept running at maximum speed up to the palace he passed at least 200 guards and all sorts of servants from the 2nd circle though all of them were human in figure so they took up less space.

The higher the fox ran the more people there were until he got to a 10 meter wide corridor with a height of 20 meters, gulping once the fox ran to the two plain black doors and opened them entering into the palace.

When the fox stepped he immediately looked up to the throne to see a seemingly old and fragile man with grayish hair growing past his shoulders and a cleanly shaven beard, the only thing to tell this old man apart from a normal human was his gold irises and 2 inch canines on both the top and bottom rows of teeth.

As he got further into the room he lowered his head as a form of respect to his father who was without a doubt the strongest in the forest and most of the ‘Demons’ idol.

5 meters before the heightened podium where the throne rested the fox laid down with his head still looking down not saying a word as it was known that his father had a very violent temper due to being a golden scaled divine python and at the X rank he could easily kill who he wanted to even if it was his own son.

As the old man looked down he saw the fox with his head down he immediately grinned and said with a hint of laughter in his voice “Elias you really don’t have to so formal to your own family” (the fox’s name is Elias and will call him this from now on).

Hearing this Elias immediately looked up to see his uncle smiling at him while thinking to himself ‘thank the ancestors I haven’t done anything to anger father… this time’ coming out of his thoughts he asked very politely to his uncle “Father I heard you wanted to see me”

“Ah yes I did… now tell me Elias what is your current Ki rank at the moment” The old man asked with a tone most people would find amusing.

Without any pauses Elias reported” My rank at the moment is at the early B rank as I ranked up 2 weeks ago, and I have begun to master some techniques in my inherited memories”

A rare impressed look was shown on the old man’s face as he said to himself ‘B rank and learning techniques already… Hmm I guess that time is growing closer’

As a smile brewed on his face he said “Good you’ve impressed me again and made it to the B rank I will give you a few B rank cores for your further progression… but remember when you reach the A rank immediately report back to me as you will be then eligible to turn into your human form and I will give you a mission which holds extreme importance”

“Yes father I wont disappoint you” with a respectful tone Elias answered and saw his father wave his hand and two purple Ki cores appeared in his hand indicating that they were B rank.

When Elias saw this scene he spied enviously at his father’s inter-dimensional ring on his right hand but without saying anything he immediately went to take the cores and retreated out of the palace and immediately descended back down to his favorite size of 2 meters long and half a meter tall to his own cave to quickly consume his new cores but he knew they would only take him to the middle of the B rank and no more due to the approaching bottleneck in his training.

As Elias walked back down the corridor he saw a 10 meter long and half a meter wide golden snake sliding its way towards the palace. Elias’s once happy face quickly darkened seeing the snake but still walked towards it saying respectively “Big brother what are you doing here?”

Turning towards Elias the snake snorted saying “Oh what have we here… it’s the fox humph as much as I want to belittle you right now I need to go meet father” sliding away towards the palace the snake chuckled to itself.

Still frowning Elias quickly left towards his cave in the left wing of the top floor of the mountain to continue training so he could gain more tails and reach his human form he always fantasized about.