Red, however, had his own intentions in accepting this challenge, the same way Aurelia seemed to have her own.

“Where are they?” he asked.

The woman pointed behind her. “That way.”

“Are they in the early Lesser Ring Realm?”

“Of course! You think I would have you kill yourself against a monster stronger than you can deal with? How would that work for me?”

That indeed made little sense, but Red still thought it wise to ask.

After clarifying these details, the youth walked over to where his sword laid. The blade was made out of dark iron, and as such, it was still undamaged even after being struck by lightning in his process of breaking through. Red, however, still hesitated to touch it.

The copper wire connected to the sword was evaporated into dust, a sign of the kind of energy that traveled through the weapon, and yet there were almost no signs of the presence of lightning on its surface. Was it lying underneath? Would it strike out once Red touched it?

The youth shook his head. It had been hours since then, and even if some energy remained, it was hard to imagine it would damage him.

He reached out and touched the hilt. Like he thought, he didn’t receive a sudden shock, but he could feel a numbing sensation spreading to his skin. The lingering energy of the lightning, still here even after so much time had passed.

His short sword was, after all, a strong conduit for Spiritual Energy, but seeing it in action made Red realize just how much potential the blade actually had.

‘I will need to look into making it into an actual Spiritual Weapon in the future.’

For now, though, it would serve him the same as always.

After collecting his sword, Red gathered and stored the remains of the formation in his bag. Even if there was no point in utilizing it again, the youth would never leave evidence of it behind. After all, this would still be an enormous deal if the world came to know about it.

Once he was done, he looked in the direction Aurelia pointed.

“They’re almost here.” the woman said.

“I know.” Red nodded. “I can feel them.”

Two fluctuations entered the range of his crimson sense. Lesser Ring Realm monsters, as he was told, but he also recognized what kind of monsters these were.

‘Bark-tree bears.’

This was one of the toughest beasts in this forest. A thick bark protected their inner body, as its name indicated, and even Lesser Ring Realm cultivators found the beasts troublesome to deal with due to their incredible defenses.

And here Red was, about to fight not one but two of them.

He looked at Aurelia with a frown.

The woman smiled. “What? If you can’t kill them, you can always run.”

The youth ignored her and looked around. Even with the woman’s provocations, he wasn’t so silly as to take these two creatures in straight forward combat. No, there was a better way to go about this, and it tied into the reason as to why he even accepted her challenge in the first place.

Red examined his surroundings, dashing straight towards the trees where the bears were coming from. He climbed up a tall tree with a single jump, something he would have been hard pressed to do before opening his Spiritual Sea. Once he was up there, Red relaxed his body and started to regulate his breathing.

His presence diminished, and the youth didn’t move even an inch. Those that looked at him might have mistaken Red for a statue, and if they weren’t paying attention, their eyes would pass his figure without noticing him. He was like one with his surroundings, unnoticed, unmoving, yet beneath the surface a lot was happening.

“An assassination technique? Really?” Aurelia’s disdainful voice reached his ears.

Since the woman stalked him for seven years, she knew what he was doing. He was using the White Beak Weapon Art, a technique consisting of merging with one’s surroundings, gathering momentum and striking your opponent before they even noticed your presence. It was an assassination art, as the woman claimed, and it was the reason Red was eager to accept her challenge in the first place.

In the past, Domeron told him this was something he would find useful even after he opened his Spiritual Sea. Red was skeptical of it at the time, as the art didn’t seem to have a manual and neither did it involve any Spiritual Energy, but he trusted the man’s words and now he had the opportunity to verify them.

With his short sword in his right hand, Red waited for the monster to approach. Amidst the tree, he saw the towering figures of two giant bears, their skins like a tree, sniffing and thudding the ground as they walked forward. Even on their fours, these beasts were almost two meters tall, and standing up, they could easily reach over four meters in height.

The youth face these bears plenty of times in the past, but only once did he fight against one at this level. Now, he didn’t have the help of his companions, and there were two of them.

Still, Red kept his composure, his muscles not moving an inch as the beasts approached. Soon enough, they were approaching the tree he was on, and judging by their grunts and body language, the bears already noticed something was wrong.

‘They can smell me.’

Of course, this was bound to happen. Red stayed in this area for hours already, and it would have been strange instead if a monster at this level wasn’t able to detect his scent in the area. However, this didn’t mean they knew his exact location at this moment, and this much was shown by how they continued to approach him without looking up.

He felt the moment approach, and the muscles in his entire body tensed. A power and potential Red never experienced before gathered in his body, as movements ingrained in his mind by more than half a decade of training lead his movements.

Red pushed against the branch he was perched over, shooting down like an arrow towards one of the bears. The wood cracked beneath his feet from the force of his movement, and that seemed to attract the bears attentions. They were too late to react, though, as Red’s figure seemingly manifested out of thin air by their side.

Despite the thick bark covering their body, these bears weren’t too different from your average bear in anatomy, and as such, they also shared the same weaknesses.

‘Behind the front shoulder, through the ribs.’

That was where a bear’s heart was.

Before even touching the ground, Red’s short sword dug into the monster’s side tip first. The blade was too short to make too much headway into such a large beast’s body, but using the momentum he gathered, the youth dug into his innards right up to his forearm.

The sword cut through flesh and bone like butter, before the youth felt it plunge into what felt like a muscle deep into its body. The heart. Red twisted his blade and tore the organ apart, pulling his arm back and out of the beast’s torso before it could even register what was happening.

Only when he was some five meters away did the bear finally let out a roar of pain. It tried to move, but its legs immediately buckled beneath its feet, pain and weakness spreading through its body. Even so, the creature struggled and looked over in Red’s direction with an angered gaze.

This was a Lesser Ring Realm monster, after all, and it had the vitality to sustain terrible injuries. Still, Red knew it was just a matter of time before it bled out, and it couldn’t even muster the strength to chase after the youth.

Its companion, however, was a different matter. It heard the roar of pain from its mate and saw the human figure with a bloodied sword and arm jumping away a second later. The bear didn’t even need time to process the situation.

It let out a roar of anger and climbed over the body of its companion to reach at Red.

“Hah! I want to see what good your assassination arts will do you now!” Aurelia’s voice reached his ear.

The youth ignored her, staring at the reddened eyes of the hulking mass of muscle and death charging in his direction. If it caught him in its sharp claws, he would still die with a single attack even after opening his Spiritual Sea.

As such, Red did the only appropriate thing in this situation.

He turned around and ran.

“What are you doing?!” Aurelia sounded furious.

“I have found out what I needed to find.” Red said.

“What about the other bear?!”

“I can’t kill it.”

“So you’re just going to run?!”

The youth’s only response was to quicken his step.

The enormous bear was even faster than him, but they were in the middle of a forest, and the creature’s prodigious size was a disadvantage for it at that moment. The beast kept knocking down trees along its way like they were nothing, but each one it came across slowed it down and allowed Red to get further away.

Not even a minute later, the youth had managed to lose the bear in the middle of the forest, and he finally slowed down. If he ran this much in the past at maximum speed, he would have felt at least winded, but right now the youth didn’t feel tired at all.

Red looked down at his arm, about to clean it, only to notice the blood had disappeared. The youth frowned, but before he could do anything, Aurelia’s angered figure appeared in front of him.

“What was the point of that?!” she asked.

Red shook his head. “You tell me. Why did you want me to fight these bears in the first place?”

The woman snorted. “You just broke through. Isn’t your blood boiling, raring to try your new abilities against an opponent?”

“You know I wouldn’t have been able to kill them, so what’s the point?”

Aurelia fell silent at this, staring at Red with an angered expression.

Even if she didn’t say anything, though, the youth could guess as to what her intentions were.

“I was under the assumption we were beyond these games.” Red said. “If you want to tell me something, then just say it.”

Aurelia’s frown deepened. “… Your foundations are lacking.”

“How so?”

“I read that cultivation manual of yours. It is brilliant, I won’t deny it, but it’s basically just a compendium of techniques and Spiritual Arts with no connective tissue between them. There’s no prevalent system.”

Red nodded. “I am aware of that, but it’s something I can figure on my own.”

“Maybe so, but how long will that take? 5 years, maybe even 10?” Aurelia shook her head. “We both know that you seem to be in a hurry here, and now there are even more threats looking after you. Do you think you can afford to take your time?”

The youth frowned. “What are you suggesting?”

“You don’t lack for most techniques, this I know, but you lack general cultivation knowledge.” the woman said. “Things we cultivators from sect have. How to breakthrough certain bottlenecks, how to prioritize which techniques to learn, how to fight… They are things we have perfected over millennia. I admire your independent will, but ask yourself this: do you have the privilege of taking the long and difficult way right now?”

“… You want to teach me?”

Aurelia smiled. “I don’t only want to teach you, Red. I want to be your guide.”