Chapter 3 - Evolved

A week had passed since Sebastian's evolution and the other kids had made progress during their stay at Jack's mansion. They learned how to use their magical powers up to a F-rank understanding and every now and then, they would battle against each other to get a grip on their strengths and weaknesses.

Jack put each kid through a training regime that tired each kid out mental and physical. Some kids were tempted to give up but Baron would always encourage them to keep up. Seeing the Baron hype other kids up, brought joy to Jack's heart as he knew they would achieve great things.

Jack began to walk back into the mansion and went into the secret basement that held Sebastian. Upon arriving at the altar, Jack saw Sebastian standing there…. Menacingly! 

"Uhh… Sebastian, you alright there buddy? A week has passed since your evolution and everyone's been worried about you."

Walking toward Jack, Sebastian put his hand on the barrier and began to glare at Jack. Though he found it strange on how Sebastian was acting, Jack was tempted to disable the barrier but then Sebastian spoke.

"Shatter…" Sebastian said, in a quiet voice.

The barrier surrounding Sebastian had shattered, which left Jack baffled because the barrier wasn't an ordinary barrier that anyone could break. Multiple different colored auras blasted out of Sebastian's body as his different colored eyes lit up.

Jack was ready to engage in combat but the auras disappeared and Sebastian started to laugh, which caused Jack to sigh in relief. Jack slapped the backside of Sebastian's head and dragged him outside of the basement until arrived at the training grounds/courtyard. 

"Children! Look who's finally awake from his slumber!" Jack shouted loudly.

Everyone gathered around Sebastian and had looks of disbelief on their faces as his entire body changed along with his presence. The first person to approach Sebastian was Baron as he gave him a hug then Sophie. 

"Thank goodness! You're alive! When Jack said you'd be out for a whole week, we thought you would have died from something unnatural… You've changed since the last time we saw you and look at your body! You have more muscles than last time! You have to be stronger than last time!" Baron spoke, happily.

Before anyone could approach Sebastian further, Jack stood between them as a blue aura came off of his body. His blue aura surrounded Sebastian, which caused everyone to step back and gaze at him.

"What's the meaning of this?!" Sebastian asked, agitated.

"Relax, this is to protect you and your friends." Jack replied.

"To protect us? What could he do that would cause all of us harm?' A boy asked, snickering.

"Jason, you may not feel it but your body can feel the danger emitting from Sebastian's body." Jack pointed at Jason's shaking legs.

After Jack shot down Jason's attempts to provoke Sebastian, everyone stared at Jack for an answer but instead of answering he walked away with Sebastian behind him. Everyone was confused but resumed their training though they did start to chat about Sebastian's sudden transformation.

"Why am I not training with them?" Sebastian asked.

"Your case is a bit special and there's the problem with no magical powers. Your training is gonna be harder than the rest but you'll be stronger than all of the others quickly." Jack replied.

Both Jack and Sebastian arrived at another hidden door and once they opened the door, a huge amount of bloodlust caused Sebastian to kneel and to become fear-stricken. The sudden burst of bloodlust caused his mind to become a turmoil and slowly he started to become insane.

"Quiet!" Jack shouted, which caused all the bloodlust to disappear.

"What the hell was that?!" Sebastian asked, distressed.

"That was bloodlust from multiple different magical beasts. My clan captures special magical beasts and imprisons them in this dungeon."

"Why do you imprison them?"

"They provide more strength for Primordial werewolves, which is why the clan leader was hesitant to give you resources to get stronger as he thinks you'll fail to meet his expectations or go rogue. When a Primordial Werewolf eats a beast, they get the beast's strength but only a quarter of their strength and these special magical beasts aren't special for no reason as they're very rare to find throughout the land."

Both went down the stairs and once they arrived at the bottom, Sebastian saw a massive colosseum filled with multiple cages. These cages were filled with unique looking beasts and on further inspection, Sebastian found that mostly all of them consisted of B ranked and above.

"Why did you bring me down here?... Wait! You aren't gonna release them on me and have me fight them, are you?!" Sebastian asked, frightened.

"Only the weak ones will be released but other than that… Yes, I'll be releasing them besides you have some swordsmanship skills. After all, you managed to hold off that vampire from killing all of you." Jack replied, walking towards a staircase.

A large barrier surrounded the inside of the colosseum, which trapped Sebastian inside. Sebastian started to panic frantically as two cage doors opened and medium sized came out.

"The hound with the red flame dripping down its body is a hellhound while the massive deer with a bloody appearance is a wendigo. The wendigo will be your most challenging opponent as it's faster than the hellhound yet weaker than the hellhound." Jack shouted.

While Sebastian was processing the information, the wendigo and hellhound already made their move as they closed the distance between them and Sebastian. Within seconds, Sebastian found himself in an unfavorable situation and started to shake.

"Calm yourself. Find a way to find their weaknesses and use their own strength against themselves or each other." Jack spoke.

Hearing Jack's voice caused Sebastian to regain some composure but he was still frightened. The first to strike was the Wendigo with a forward lunge and using the Wendigo's momentum, Sebastian managed to dodge and slash at its arm then the hellhound lunged and nearly got a bit off his arm.

After Sebastian managed to dodge the hellhound's bite, he attempted to thrust his sword into the hellhound's neck but instead of going through the hellhound's neck. His sword deflected off the hellhound's hide and within seconds, the Wendigo had struck Sebastian's arm, causing his arm to go limp.

"I told you all the magical beasts in the colosseum were special. This wendigo's special trait is to paralyze anything it scratches within seconds but it only lasts for twenty seconds. Now, I'll be teaching you how to use one of your auras since you found out that you couldn't pierce the hellhound's hide."

Sebastian was going through a mental crisis as his arm was no longer working and both of the beasts were strategically working together and weakening his body.

"Breathe slowly and concentrate on bringing out your aura. Think of an empty blank space with nothing but a small fire increasingly getting bigger and bigger. Once you have that imagined, slowly bring it out and encase your weapon with your aura while concentrating on increasing the amount of aura going through the weapon or you could think of it as an extra limb."

Sebastian found it hard to concentrate as both of the beast's attacks were getting faster and harder to defend against with his limp arm. One of the beast's attacks were even close enough to end Sebastian's life but a blue shield appeared between his neck and the attack.

Sebastian cursed himself internally for being weak against such beasts but couldn't do anything about it but listen to Jack's advice. Sebastian imagined a dark space and thought of a small fire but before he could imagine a fire, the Wendigo had bitten his leg that caused his concentration to break.

Before the Wendigo could cause a finishing blow, a massive amount of deep crimson aura descended on the beast but this wasn't an aura but Jack's killing intent. This caused both of the beasts to freeze in fear and Jack walking into the area while shaking his head.

"Listen, if you wanna get stronger fast and defend your friends, you're gonna have to take risks even if the risk may end your life." Jack said, putting his hand on Sebastian's head and healing all of his injuries.

"We'll resume the fight but first imagine your aura then I'll stop releasing my killing intent the moment I see your aura."

After hearing those words, Sebastian immediately started to imagine a dark space and a small fire. While it may have seemed to be easy, it was harder than Sebastian could imagine as bringing the aura out was confusing and hard to form.

A few hours had passed since the fight stopped and the beasts were still frozen in fear but Jack was getting impatient. After an additional few hours, Jack's patience ran out and he looked at Sebastian but instead of seeing him working on his aura, he saw Sebastian sleeping on the ground.

"Seriously! I thought you were dedicated to becoming stronger! You better hope you can form your aura before these beasts kill you!" Jack shouted, angrily.

Sebastian woke up and saw the beasts were freed from Jack's killing intent, and got ready to face the beasts with his newly found determination. The beasts both lunged forward and bared their fangs at Sebastian but within seconds the wendigo's arm fell while the hellhound's leg fell off.

The sudden change of battle caught Jack's attention as he didn't pay attention to Sebastian's sudden change from defensive to offensive. The only problem that came from Sebastian's sudden offense was the hellhound special trait, which caused Sebastian's sword to melt into liquid metal. 

"The hellhound's special trait is turning anything that contains metal into liquid metal, which then strengthens the hellhound's body."

"Wait! When capturing the hellhound, did they lose any metal material to it?"

"Yes, purposely."

"You-"

Before Sebastian could finish his sentence, the wendigo struck quickly toward his neck and he dodged out of the way, and the Wendigo's momentum was redirected toward the hellhound's body. The hellhound was taken by surprise and reacted quickly before biting the wendigo's arm off.

He appeared beside the wendigo and slammed his fist into the wendigo's head and continued to bash his fist into the wendigo's head until there was nothing left. The hellhound watched as his ally was beaten to death then froze in fear as Sebastian's killing intent locked onto the hellhound.

"Interesting… you even unlocked your killing intent though it may be weak, it'll get stronger in the future" Jack murmured.

Walking forward, Sebastian's arm was coated in his red aura and slowly it started to sharpen until it was in the shape of a sword. With one quick strike, Sebastian ended the hellhound's life and dug into both of the beast's corpses and pulled out two crystals.

"Perfect! Your reward will be their crystals and corpses! We, Primordial werewolves, need to eat the corpses of our kills to grow stronger and the crystal is just an add-on to increase our magical capacity but I don't know how it will benefit you so try it." Jack said, showing his happy mood.

Listening to Jack's words, Sebastian began to eat both of the beast's corpses and found them to be very tasty, including the Wendigo's body even though it seemed to be rotting.