Both Nio and the snake were vigilant of each other.
The snake was cautious. Its opponent was not necessarily weaker when it came to physical strength, mostly thanks to its size that surpassed their own by a few times.
Nio was going for the careful approach. He had already theorized on what stage of cultivation the snake was in. The Muscle tempering stage.
This stage was one of the few of the body tempering stages that caused a major power spike.
However, he was not that worried. He was bigger and could reinforce himself with not only chakra but cursed energy. He was ready. He just needed the snake to strike first.
And that it did.
The snake moved around the trunk of the tree getting into a better position where it could coil itself to prepare to launch. It chose a branch that stood at two meter of height (6 feet 6 inches). It coiled itself and narrowed its eyes seemingly timing its attack.
Not wanting to play the waiting game, Nio showed an opening, faking to step forward to attack.
The snake reacted instantly and sprang forth aiming to bite his face off.
However,
"Gotcha!"
Nio was ready.
His hands moved quickly, and his chakra surged through his fingertips. Several chakra strings appeared and moved as if they had a mind of their own. With great precision and control, the strings surrounded the snake midair and caught it before it could react.
Imprisoned by the sharp strings the snake hissed in slight pain, after all, some of the strings were the ones modified by Nio to be able to cut opponents like a small blade, however, the only thing they were able to cut was the skin of the snake which was quite mundane compared to the rest of its body.
"It seems that creating sharp chakra strings on the fly still affects their power considerably, well no worries, I wasn't planning to cut you up, snake."
Using one of his hands to firmly grasp the several strings that had caught the spider, he made a slight movement with his arm.
He was making the strings spin, along with the snake.
He kept spinning and spinning, catching speed. Although the snake wasn't unconscious, it was definitely quite nauseated.
He didn't stop until he noticed that he couldn't spin the snake faster, even if he was putting quite the effort into channeling his chakra and cursed energy onto his arm.
"It's time to end this."
Using the momentum that he had gathered by spinning the chakra strings, he slammed the snake into the ground.
The ground shattered, forming a crater. Dust kicked up and clouded Nio's vision, who for safety didn't release his chakra strings. He waited for the dust cloud to dissipate in order to evaluate the damage he had caused.
Soon, the cloud dissipated.
The snake was still alive, although unconscious. Even though its muscles and bones, as well as some other organs, were much stronger than normal, certain organs like the brain were still pretty fragile. An impact like the one Nio had caused wasn't enough to kill it nor to shatter its bones, however, it was enough to cause its brain to damage because of a head injury.
Nio approached carefully and reached for the insides of his cloak. From there he took the one thing of the little he had brought with him, besides the cloak itself.
A knife.
Without much thinking he reinforced it with both chakra and cursed energy, before stabbing it in the head. A cut wouldn't do it, he needed to piercing power of a thrust to break through the powerful muscles and bones of the emerald snake.
[Congratulations! You have killed an Emerald Snake of the Muscle Tempering Stage!]
"It was really from the Muscle Tempering Stage, huh?"
He sat down at the ground for a while, resting. Even though the battle had been short, the feeling of always being on guard as well as the feeling of killing intent directed at you was slightly exhausting.
Nio looked at the cursed energy dancing in the palms of his hands.
"It's so erratic and fearsome. I suppose adrenaline is great to boost cursed energy, huh?"
Having experienced a great dose of adrenaline as well the killing intent of a beast a few stages above him on the path of evolution, cultivation-wise, was pretty good to make him feel his cursed energy.
Although he had a good grasp of cursed energy, if he was too relaxed he wouldn't be able to properly get a hold of it. But now? He didn't know if it was the adrenaline or his newly gained experience, but he was making great progress on controlling cursed energy.
And the proof was right there.
[Cursed Energy Control - 2 / 100]
A single point.
But progress nonetheless.
"I should keep moving. It's not time to feel good about myself and my decisions. If I can't go back, this small success will mean nothing comparing to the losses."
Thinking that, he stood up and moved towards the direction he was previously walking towards.
His destination was small clearing in the shape of an egg. Or so it looked to him.
Finding the location was not that hard. He already knew the distance he needed to cover, taking into account the gate where he left and the fact that he would run in a straight line. There was no mistake, this was the place.
There were some things that caught Nio's attention. Firstly, were the true large holes that he could see. One of them was pit straight down, seemingly with no end, the other was carved on a small hill. It was a cave entrance. Both of them were, probably.
At the center of the clearing was a tree that looked oddly out of place. The trees from this forest reminded him of Oak, but the tree in the middle reminded him of those trees on jungles.
"I better hurry up and start going back, now that I know where the cave entrances are, all I need now is to know my way back."
So he decided to head into the hole carved into the hill.
As he was about to enter, when he heard a growl.
As soon as he did, the hairs in his body stood up and his instincts that not even Nio knew he had screamed for him to run.
Deciding to hear them, he extended his right hand to the right and created several chakra strings that he used to pull himself out of the way. But he wasn't fast enough.
Slash
"Argh!"
A paw full of claws was able to scratch his left arm as he was getting out of the way, this sent his focus in a disarray forcing his chakra strings to be dismissed, making him roll on the ground.
Clenching his aching arm as he stood up, Nio looked at the creature that had attacked him.
It was hard to clearly distinguish it from the night sky because of its black fur. Nio was only able to properly look at it because of the beast's eyes, they glowed with an ominous yellow light.
Nio tried to clam himself and made some effort to properly analyze the enemy. It was a black panther, a pretty big one at least. He needed to be careful, this beast was several times stronger than the muscle tempering stage snake that he had just fought moments ago.
Once again, the creature lunged forward. Even though Nio was reinforcing his eyes with chakra and cursed energy, its movements were nothing more than a blur. Once again, it was his instincts that allowed him to properly dodge the creature's attack, even if it was by a hair's breath.
He rolled on the ground and stood up in a panic before releasing a bunch of chakra strings around himself from various parts of his body.
This was the strategy that he came up with. With this panther's ridiculous speed, he wouldn't be able to keep up unless he was capable of sensing its attacks before they happened. If the panther attacked, at least one of the strings would snap, warning him.
He was breathing heavily but kept himself focused.
He needed to notice when it would attack.
A few seconds passed and there was no sign of the panther. No strings had snapped, no sudden instincts screaming. Nothing.
Until, they started screaming with everything they had.
Death.
That day, Nio felt it, his death was near him, and he had to stop it.
Turning around, he dismissed every single chakra string that he had created and instead created several of them around his arms before crossing them to defend himself.
Boom
He felt his whole body scream in pain as the panther ran into him, launching him several meter behind him.
He couldn't stop.
So he fell inside the second hole that headed inside the cave.
In a last ditch effort to save himself, he sent some strings to stop his fall. However, because of that he ended up smashing his head into the wall of the cave, losing conscience.
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Since we reached the tenth chapter, please as away your question about this story and I will answer in the end of the next chapter.
Feel free to check my other work as well, Unsealed Demonic Dragon goes to the Academy.
Thank you for reading, and see you next time.