It had been two years since his first hunt. nothing major happened, during this time.
He spent his days training and occasionally hunting with Korr. He attempted to tame a few beasts, but none stood out to him.
Like every other day, Rex trained diligently.
After finishing, he left the panda's den to search for herbs and fruits, as Korr had requested.
The area wasn't far, so Korr allowed him to go alone.
He left the den and began wandering in search of fruits and herbs.
Although he lacked proper knowledge, he could still recognize them from seeing Korr use them often.
As Rex walked through the dense trees and bushes, he scanned the area around the den, but aside from the endless stretch of trees, he found nothing.
"Should I go a little deeper?" he contemplated
"I've come all this way. Let's go a little deeper," he said, convincing himself and decided to go a little further in.
Even after going deeper into the woods, he still couldn't find anything.
"Ugh, this is getting frustrating," he let out a sharp exhale, losing his patience.
After searching for an hour, he finally noticed a similar-looking fruit that Korr wanted.
"Finally, but there's only one… whatever," he grumbled.
A single apple-like purple fruit hung from the tree. Being a few meters away from the fruit, he walked towards it.
As Rex was about to grab the fruit, he heard the bushes rustle, and from there jumped a small monster.
From the corner of his eyes, he saw it was a monkey beast.
It jumped onto the tree branch and quickly grabbed the fruit, looking at Rex for a few seconds as if to mock him, and then jumped onto other trees, distancing itself from Rex.
"Huh?" Rex was stunned for a moment and shouted abruptly, "S-stop!"
To his surprise, the beast stopped on a tree. It looked at Rex and extended its hand as if to offer the fruit.
"Can it understand my words?" he mused, softening his gaze.
Rex smiled faintly. "Thank you for giving the fru—"
As Rex extended his hand and was about to thank the beast for the fruit, the beast ate it in front of him and started dancing.
Rex blinked; he was at a loss for words.
Then snapped, "This fuc—" He bit out his words and threw the dagger he always carried with great precision and force.
With a swoosh, it flew directly toward the monkey's head.
Fearing the attack, the monkey stumbled and slipped from the tree, and the dagger slightly grazed its cheek.
However, The monkey didn't fall. It quickly used its tail to grab the branch, and hanged on the tree upside down. Its teasing increased, with the monkey making weird hand signs and noises.
"Tsk," Rex clicked his tongue and whispered in a cold voice, "Now he is asking for it."
He was getting impatient, but something clicked, and he shook his head in understanding.
"Hoooo," he exhaled slowly, calming down, and spoke under his breath. "What are you doing, Rex? It's just a brainless beast. Don't get agitated by it."
With a relaxed posture, he shrugged and looked at the beast as if it didn't matter what the beast did anymore. He would stay calm.
The monkey continued the teasing by shaking its bum and trying various parlor tricks it had honed, but nothing moved Rex.
He was like a Buddha, unmoving.
Nothing made him angry anymore. Rex was testing his own patience.
The beast also turned silent after not getting any reaction from him.
Rex smirked. "Giving up, huh?"
The beast started chewing the fruit, ignoring him.
Rex saw the beast eating its food silently. Misunderstanding that it had given up, he let his guard down.
Then, the beast threw the eaten fruit towards Rex, directly landing on his cheek.
The revenge was taken, and the beast started dancing again.
His eyes twitched, gleaming with fury. He clenched his hands and ran at full speed toward the monkey, giving it a chase.
The monkey stopped dancing and moved, maintaining some distance between them, only to stop and start teasing him again. It seemed intelligent.
Rex stopped to fetch his dagger back from the ground and started chasing again.
Rex was running on the ground, but the monkey used trees to glide through and ran away from Rex.
He used [Eye of Tamer] on the beast, but there was nothing.
[Name: ??]
[Entity: Beast]
[Species: ??]
[Bloodline: ??]
[Rank: ??]
[Potential: ??]
Just some question marks.
This back and forth happened for a few minutes, and his body started to feel heavy.
"Huff, huff," he looked for a tree and slumped down, using it as support.
"What a shitty day," he scoffed, rolling his eyes.
Catching his breath, he glanced to survey the surroundings, and before he knew it, he was pretty deep into the forest.
"Great, just perfect. Now I'm lost. This day couldn't get any worse."
He relaxed there for a few minutes and looked at the monkey, but the beast looked panicked.
Its teasing face had vanished; there was only fear, and it ran away with much more speed compared to when Rex was giving it a chase
Rex tensed and hastily stood up to leave, when...
BOOM!
A loud boom halted his movements.
He looked around and saw two magical beasts fighting each other.
It was. "beautiful," he blurted out in a hushed tone.
One was a jaguar beast, its fur coal-black with small fiery patches of red and orange flickering like living flames. Its eyes burned a smoldering crimson, exuding both rage and dominance.
Opposing it was a majestic bird. The bird was deep and vibrant purple, with arcs of lightning crackling.
Both went at each other's throats.
The jaguar shot a beam of fire from the ground.
The bird dodged with a zap and shot back an arc of lightning towards it from the sky.
The fight was breathtaking.
As they both fought fiercely, Rex slowly hid behind the trees while trying to run away from the scene.
He didn't want to be seen.
As he slowly started running backward, one of the stray attacks came toward him.
He jumped to the other side, dodging it.
Hiding behind another tree, an arc of lightning came towards him directly. His heart raced with fear.
"Fuck, are they fighting each other or targeting me?" he shuddered.
And why are they both coming towards my side?
His surroundings were leveled in a few moments, with a few trees still standing tall.
He used them to hide and run.
Their fight had burned and charred most of the surrounding trees.
The beasts were now fighting in an open clearing.
Their fight was very fierce, to say the least, but Rex concluded that the jaguar beast was much stronger, as most of the bird's feathers were charred, and the bird's lightning wasn't doing much damage to the beast.
Their attacks grew stronger and more deadly with each passing second, and again, another attack came toward him.
Unfortunately, this time for him, there was no place to go without being discovered.
All the trees around him were leveled except for a few, but this attack destroyed everything, making him visible to the beast's eyes.
As both beasts saw him, Rex trembled and freaking out.
"Fuck!" He ran desperately.
I need to find a place to hide.
His eyes darted around, searching for safety, away from this bloody battle.
His eyes widened as he saw a cave.
Rex ran without looking at anything else. His adrenaline rushed, narrowing his vision, only focusing on the cave.
Meanwhile, the bird, who also sensed him going into the cave, let out a deadly and destructive attack on the jaguar beast.
Lightning crackled like a snake and hit the jaguar.
The attack was so destructive that the jaguar beast fell unconscious.
The lightning bird's attack finished.
Its piercing gaze locked onto Rex as it dove toward him with blinding speed.
His heart skipped a beat, and Rex, who was still running towards the cave, pushed himself harder.
Feeling the dread, he quickened his pace. Holding his breath, using every ounce of his energy in each step, he finally jumped inside the cave.