They sat down to wait for a while, and after around two minutes later, Baba came back. Under his arms were lots of thick and thin sticks, it was perfect to make a blunt replica of a sword. Baba dumped all of the wood in front of Ling Ru, and winked while grinning at him.

…

Due to the happy daytime, it was not scary to go hunting with Baba and the others. A huge smile was Ling Ru’s current accomplice, due to the appreciation of the item in his hand. Swinging it a few time with random gestures, he found the wooden sword to be light, comparing his strength with a normal human, the weight was air.

After leaving the cave, or Ling Ru was mentally trying to adapt to calling it home, so after they left home, the had gone through a set path into the forest. Clearly, Baba and the others was used to this place, just like how people could find their way in cities and other forests on earth. To them this forest area was the back of their hand.

Their knowledge in hunting proved to be quite astounding, the hunting spots was briefly introduced to Ling Ru by Zuo, and he described how the animals was fast to ‘regenerate’, Zuo tried his best to explain how the animals reproduced really quickly. Due to their race Zuo did not find anything wrong in sharing how they even reproduced, Ru could only show an aggrieved smile when listening to the very detailed explanation, while following the rest.

They were rotating many spots, so that there would be around two months between each spot, this made it possible for either other animals to settle down, or other animals to rest there. That way there was always some animal nearby the spots, and these spots covered a relatively large space.

“We need to be silent when covering ground between spots, the reason why the animals are not that strong, is because the territory is ruled by a few very strong animals. This way they can feel protected but also offer their services, we try to be quiet and vigilant because we know that the spots are not the territory of any of these strong animals, but we are always in the vicinity because the stronger tend to have bigger territories. All our hunting spots are place in a kind of circle, that evades four of the five territories, the fifth is the emperor.”

“The emperor of the animals in this forest, is a white skinned madath. It is nowhere near our vicinity, and rarely leaves its territory, so that’s why we’re only in the vicinity of the four lesser emperors.”

After the final explanation, Zuo went quiet and had Ru walk in front of him, so that Ru was always protected inside their formation. Ru appreciated their clever strategies, he found faith that this race might not be such a poor race. He might even be able to establish a small kingdom later, especially if he could unify a few races to increase the population and the craft.

Abandoning his thoughts, Ru knew that he kept speculating too far into the future, it would only damage him in the end. For now he should learn swordsman skills while increasing his abilities, this would strengthen him, once he was strong enough to defeat the so called emperors in this forest, they could fell the trees and use it to build houses and walls, also some plantation for food, meat is filled with protein but is not the only needed nutrition.

This time his thoughts kept racing about how he could build a huge village to improve the living environment of his new family and himself. Ru failed to stop his thought process this time, and lived himself into his story.

It was only after around half an hour of walking around, that Ru heard a slight bustle in the bushed to his right, which made him stop and pause his fascinating ‘dreams’. Vigilantly he raised his sword with both his hands, and attentively eyed the bush. This caught Zuo’s attention, and a smile showed in his face. He did not want to tell Ru what could cause such a bustle, because he found Ru very cute when he saw him being ready to take the attack.

Baba, Lon and Quan also stopped when they saw that Zuo and Ru had stopped. They aswell enjoyed seeing Ru being almost scared of the bush, they couldn’t help but smirk at each other.

The bustling continued for a few breaths of time, heavy breaths. Almost ten seconds passed in waiting while the bush bustled. Ru got a little agitated as he slowly raised his sword above his head, ready to strike down.

Suddenly, the bustling stopped, and following the quiet a figure jumped towards Ru, it was so fast that Ru never got the chance to actually to see the figure, and despite it being a little small, he still swung his sword downwards with all his power. His own strength amazed him, he could feel that his strength along propelled the sword downwards so fast that the figure was instantly bashed to the ground with a huge thud sound.

Yes, bashed. The sword was very blunt, and although he might be able to learn sword skills, the only actual use with it, was of course bashing. He imagined it was a bit better than a baseball bat, due to it having a somewhat sharper edge to guide the power in, but beyond that it was extremely similar to the prowess of a baseball bat when considering fighting.

A heavy breath left Ru as he calmed down, and when he noticed what he had just hit, he became a bit awkward. He looked at the others and noticed their half laughing postures. Lon could not help but speak.

“HAHA! Ru! You are amazing, on your first hunting trip you killed a Rannit with one hit!”

The little creature was actually dead, the amount of strength demon’s have are beyond human capabilities, even Mr. World or Mr. Olympica would stand no chance against any of the adult demons.

Scratching himself awkwardly he picked up the dead Rannit, they all took a short break where they sat down, it was also to let Ru’s nerves calm a bit. Ru had read a lot of novels, in some of them there was a way to gain power by eating the animals, but not just any part, some had a special core in their head, Ru wanted to know if the animals here had similar cores.

While they had eaten a lot of animals, they never studied them, and neither did they want to eat their brains or eyes, so the head was at most times left intact, although intact ment crushed or badly bruised due to it being the weakness of many animals.

Taking out a sharp stone, Ru controlled his emotions into a cold state, as he kept brutally hitting down on the head of the Rannit, the small greyish furred creature quickly got smeared in its own blood.

At last the fragile skull cracked open and separated the head in two. The others was very curious about Ru’s dealings, they had already grown used to his weird stuff, but they also found themselves having more fun with him around. Being brutal was a norm for demons, so him bashing open its head caused them nothing special, but the fact that he would open such a small animal’s head, it must have a reason.

Looking at the animal, Ru ripped the head more open, and tore out the brain. It was quite soft which caused him to only tear some of it out at a time, but he kept ripping it until all was gone. What surprised him was that there was a small, very small, odd stone like object beneath the brain, almost as if it had been integrated at the bottom of the brain.

When he took it out, it was very small and looked like a muddled dark grey stone, except for the weird rawness and the color, and the fact that it was in the Rannit’s head, it really could go for a normal stone.

Luckily it was very small, so at first Ru did not want to eat it, but considering it could not do any harm, he directly swallowed it.

Quan could not help but ask hesitatingly.

“Ru, what was that stone in the Rannit’s head, and why did you swallow it?”

Ru looked up and noticed them all staring at him, he controlled some of his emotions to return so that he could interact with them again in a normal manner.

“I had an idea, normally animals can use some kind of power, we have very amazing strength, but some can create fire, and water or control earth and wind. There must be some innate reason for them to be able to do it. This Rannit had minor control of wind, I could feel it because of it’s speed. So I thought, what if they had something that let them gain this small ability, like the rock in the head, it could be something useful, maybe we could gain similar abilities or gain some of its strength when eating it.”

He gave a satisfactory explanation to his ideas, this let the others look at each other and mumbled. Baba seemed to sparkle when he heard it. “We have accumulated lots of animal heads, if they all have a core and can help us grow. We have been hunting everyday for a long time, and we have a small mountain of animal cadavers nearby our cave.”

Baba was thinking rationally, if this could benefit them, would they not be able to become the strongest demons in the whole world, maybe this was how the former demon king gained his outstanding strengths.

Ru nodded and smiled, before he could elaborate on some of his ideas, he heard an announcement.

[Spirit Taotie]

Skill Level: 1/1

Experience: 1/1

Description:

Consume Fresh Spirit Cores to gain increase in strength.

Current Strength Bonus: 0.3%

The skill was so simple that it made Ru fascinated, but the word ‘fresh’ also struck him, the old cores, at least to him, would be useless. Maybe this skill would give him a higher reward for eating spirit cores in comparison to normal demons, therefore the requirement to be fresh.

Something even better was, that the skill even notified him of his current bonus in strength, it needs to be in comparison to the average strength of an adult demon. With strength training and this bonus, if he could get it to abnormal highs, it would make him become invincible in strength alone. Who needs defense when they have the power.

A sad thing was, although the skill was a skill, it could not be levelled up. This made Ru assume that the increase in strength was based on the spirit core alone, the quality and age were the first two things that he could identify as properties. The quality was simply dependant on the animal’s strength to foster the spirit core.

But with Baba, Lon, Zuo and Quan, he would be able to obtain many cores in a relatively small amount of time.