Fighting a Beast!

I trained, and learned more about the herbs growing in this area in my free time. In the real world, I was spending twice as much time asleep, and doing freelance work and research was faster and easier than ever. I left my body to get information on other human settlements, and creatures in our area. I looked through several memories, as well as people's settlements and activities.

After several nights of doing viewing events and information, I had found the beginning of several different qi training methods, as well as what used a different energy.

'I assume that's magic.'

I began to learn these systems, and apply what I could to myself and other techniques. I also used them to teach a few people in our settlement, this way they could allow us to develop faster. It wasn't whole systems, but ideas and methods behind and for them which would let new ones form.

I also found several powerful demon beasts in our area, far from us, but close enough that only a few days were needed to get to them. I spent the next two years, 19 days in the real world, gathering, teaching, and training and this resulted in several benefits for the settlement.

Our settlement grew healthier as I taught new medicine, healing, and energy methods. Our overall combat strength was better, we had more job classes, and some were learning to make potions.

I also managed to get our settlement to trade with another smaller one, and I spread my knowledge around the world through dreams.

This let other clans and settlements improve faster as well, which would benefit me in the end.

Jasar and I had also improved and grown closer, with him working more on his energy techniques.

Overall, everything was looking good. I had made a house for myself upon becoming an adult, and my father seemed sad.

I looked out from it at him. It was next to his, but he still almost cried. I facepalmed, before telling Jasar my plan.

"I want to go to two places. The Valley, and cave a few days travel from here. Are you willing to help?"

"Me? Help you? Why would you ask, when you know the answer already."

"Glad to hear it!"

Jasar laughed, and we decided to leave at noon. He was now a large muscular adult, though he didn't look like a bodybuilder builder.

"I think I have some workout ideas for you when we get back."

"Yes! I've been needing something new."

We went out to the valley first. Using my god powers, I had found a vein of bronze and copper, and moved it up towards the surface. It had about a foot of dirt over it, before a large deposit would be found.

Jasar and I set out with our hunting armor, and I took a bone spear. We moved down for about an hour, before needing to turn left into the valley.

We walked over rocks and shrubbery, and after another three hours I found the spot.

"Easy as ever. Jasar, use your punching technique right there."

"Okay."

Jasar did as asked, and the dirt blew up. He repeated this until I saw the bronze, and asked him to stop.

After seeing it, I asked him to blow up whatever dirt around it. After all of this was done, I went to the bronze and usd my qi to surround a chunk. After surrounding a section, I began vibrating the parts that touched the rest as hard as I could, and broke off the metal.

“Why are we doing this?”

“This is a strong material. It’s weak compared to others like it, but better than a few of the things we have.”

Jasar simply nodded, and decided to listen to what I had said. He was used to me knowing these types of things, and was happy that things could be improved.

I continued my separation process several times, and ended up with multiple chunks of bronze ore. It was rare that tin and copper ores would form in the same place, but luckily that’s what had occurred here. I took out a large animal skin, and loaded all of the bronze chunks before getting ready to return.

“That’s everything we need.”

“Okay.”

Jasar and I set off back to the village, and returned once it was the beginning of the night.

“Well, you can return. I plan to set off tomorrow at the same time, so make sure you get some rest.”

“Okay, I’ll be ready.”

Jasar decided to return, and I brought the ore to my house and pulled out some clay in a jar.

‘Time to make some molds.’

I took the clay, and made several different molds for spear heads and swords, before setting them in an oven I had outside of my house. The others in the settlement were a bit confused when I had made it, but I was glad to have it. Once they were finished I took some bronze out, and placed coals inside. I lit the fire, and let the bronze melt into a prepared container, before casting them into the mold.

I finished up the rest of the process over the next several hours, using up some of my qi to support it. Once this was all done, I went to sleep and waited until later the next day to awake.

I cleaned myself, and took the bronze weapons from the night before out to my father.

“These are new weapons I designed, I would like you to introduce them to the others please.”

“Wha? I just woke up, and you’re- What are these made of?” He asked me, his confusion apparent.

“Bronze. It’s a metal, from the ground. We could mine it, and make weapons and armor.”

“Hmm. The shaft is a little stronger than many of the animal bones we have, and the heads are stronger than our stone weapons. I’ll look at it, thank you Juno.”

“Ok, thank you! I would like to teach the method for making and extracting the weapon and material, before I leave for today.”

“That’s fine, tell some of the elders. Also, be careful son.”

“Okay dad!”

I went to the houses of the elders, and taught them the basic process, writing some of it out onto animal skins. After that was done I took a bronze sword and went to get Jasar who was awaiting my arrival.

“So, it begins.”

“What?”

“I don’t exactly know.”

Jasar made a joke the moment I entered, and we discussed what would be needed for the trip. We packed up some bags, and said our goodbyes before setting out into the forest. I planned on finding one of the strong demons in the forest, in an attempt to communicate with it. It should be possible, as when they gained strength, their souls strength increased, thus raising their intelligence. They could also generally communicate through energy, so language wasn’t necessary.

The forest was like a forest on earth, mostly. It had normal looking trees, strange multicolored plants, berries and shrubs, and the trees were about eight feet from one another. We walked through the forest with some caution, due to the number of monsters deeper in. After a couple of hours of walking, we had started to encounter monsters somewhat frequently.

We encountered some wolves, which were quickly obliterated, and deer-like creatures with a blade like horn. These creatures were hunted for their horns, to make swords generally. Jasar handed most of them with ease, as his punch had improved significantly and it allowed him to destroy things quite a distance from him.

Several hours after entering the forest, night came and I pulled out a large animal skin and found some sticks. I made a makeshift tent, while Jasar gathered things for a fire. We set up a sort of camp, and ate some of a monster we had killed earlier.

“Where are we going?” Jasar was somewhat curious about taking a random several day trip into the forest.

“To meet a monster.” I told him bluntly.

“What?! How? Why? How do you know where it is?” Jasar asked, his worry evident.

“I found it when I was searching around. Evidence, at least. And this one should be intelligent.” I told him, continuing to eat as I explained.

“Should be? You don’t know? Intelligent?” Jasar looked a bit confused, before he laughed like he expected this, “This is just like you.”

“Haha! Really? Well, it’s true. They can have high intelligence just like humans do.” I explained to him matter of factly.

After that, he just accepted and we went to sleep. We used our qi as a sort of alarm system, so anything that got close enough would trigger it. This got annoying a couple of times, when critters came by, but overall it was effective.

We packed up the camp, and set out on our journey through the forest again. After a few hours of walking however, we heard screeching.

“Is that your monster?” Jasar whispered to me as we looked around.

“No.”

We looked into the various woods, and noticed these trees were larger and farther apart than the ones from before. While we analyzed the area, we heard loud jumping noises, and sensed a large monster circling us in the trees.

Jasar punched out into the trees, while I struck several times with my sword, firing off sword slashes of energy. Though we hit nothing directly, we destroyed a few branches and a large monster almost fell from the trees due to it. Seeing this, it jumped down before us, and we looked at it.

It was like a gorilla, but about three times the size of a human. It had what seemed like stone plates on its forearms and spine, somewhat like armor. It looked at us with anger from near some trees, ready to move when we did.

Jasa punched towards it, and it dashed to the side, before throwing a log towards us. I jumped towards it, blasting it away as Jasar continued his punches. The gorilla leaped off of a tree towards us, and we dashed away from the spot we were at. The gorilla looked to me, and prepared to dash before Jasar punched at its side, blasting it to the side.

The gorilla had a rip where it was hit, but the damage was rather minor, which showed the power of its skin. It dashed to Jasar instead, and blocked with its forearms as he punched and struck at it. It took the beating and blasts, with chips being removed from its natural defences.

As the gorilla charged at Jasar, I ran behind it to begin cutting at its back, which it quickly responded to with a smack. I blocked it, and returned to attacking it. It was being struck from the front and the back, and we were cutting into its skin at this point. Seeing this, it gathered aura and blasted out all around itself, knocking us back.

Jasar hit the floor, and it took advantage of this to leap onto him, beginning to unleash a flurry of punches and slams. Jasar blocked the attacks with his energy, and seemed to actually be thinking. Seeing this, I decided to wait with my attack.

‘He can blast us all back like that? How could I do that?’ Jasar thought to himself, as he accepted the punches with some ease.

After a bit of thinking, Jasar came across the method he would use. He gathered his qi, condensed it, and became the bomb that he usually blasted out. Doing this, he exploded and damaged the gorilla’s fists as he knocked it back.

It grabbed at a tree branch, and chucked it at Jasar like a spear, and he destroyed it with a punch. He had a thin aura around him, which seemed different than before. Jasar dashed towards the gorilla, and punched at it, destroying some of its body this time.

The gorilla jumped away a bit, but Jasar followed with his strikes. As he continued beating at the gorilla, it hit back only to have its first rebound by his aura, which exploded at the area of impact.

‘Interesting!’ I thought, as I watched Jasar complete his new technique. I had wanted to allow him the chance, so I didn’t interfere with his process. I wanted this world to develop as much as it could by itself, which included the people. Although things like spreading metal forging, techniques, and other knowledge was also interference, I was more worried about directly taking learning opportunities. I also didn’t change these things everywhere, so others would discover them on their own.

As Jasar continued his beating, I ran behind the gorilla and removed its head with a quick slice of my blade.

“Thank you for the opportunity to improve.” Jasar thanked me, as he flexed his new qi technique.

“You know it, less trouble for me.” I joked to him, as we looked at the body of the animal.

I looked at my weapon, and noticed it was slightly damaged. I had used my qi to reinforce it somewhat, and to improve its damage, so it was far better than a normal bronze sword. It would work for now, but I would try to sharpen and fix it some later tonight.

The body had strong skin and bones, which were taken and packed up after some basic cleaning. I doubted that the meat would be any good, and after Jasar cooked it I was proved right. We set up camp again after eating food from other monsters, and went to sleep.

As we were sleeping though, we felt intense unease in the middle of our rest.

“What’s that?”

I stood up immediately, followed by Jasar. We looked around, and after a little, a large nose appeared before us, with yellow glowing eyes beyond it.

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