Affinity:Chaos
chapter-43

On seeing he was surrounded, Grey tried to leap into a nearby tree. He was able to dodge the first and second barrage of attack, but being mid-air, he was unable to dodge the next attack.

He quickly used the Earth Wall technique, although it was late, it was able to help him from getting any major damage. He was knocked off course by the impact of the attacks hitting his wall.

The moment he landed back on the floor, he quickly deployed the only technique in his arsenal which wasn't a single target attack.

"Shattered Rock"

Suddenly, the nearby earth began to crack and shatter.

Three skull-sized pieces of rock flew up and began to circle around Grey's head. These three rocks were all covered with earthen specks of light, he let out a deep shout. The three rocks rapidly shot off, carrying a gust of wind with them.

"SMASH!"

Two of the three stones were able to accurately hit two wolves with one of them missing its target. The wolves who were hit cried in pain. With two of the wolves in the Arcane Plane injured, he only had to deal with the remaining six.

The others attacked with more fervor as they saw their colleagues getting injured. The wolves were able to catch up with Grey due to their fast nature.

'I need to come up with a way to deal with the ones in the Arcane Plane' Grey thought.

He was thinking of a plan to deal with the wolves as he dodged their attacks while running. If there were only two wolves in the Arcane Plane present, he was confident he could deal with them. But with over five present, he wasn't that strong yet.

Grey saw a huge tree up ahead and an idea struck him. He quickly dashed towards it, when he got close, he leaped towards it. Grey stomped heavily on the tree with his right leg while turning his body mid-air.

"Lightning Steps"

While in a vertical position, he used his movement technique added with the force he generated from rebounding off the tree. He launched back towards the charging wolves and stab both his blades into the head of the unlucky wolf which he targeted.

The wolf died on the spot with blood flowing out of his head. There were now only Five wolves remaining among the wolves in the Arcane Plane. They had outrun the wolves in the Fusion Plane.

After killing one of the wolves, Grey created a distance between himself and the wolves. The wolf he killed was one of the leaders of the pack.

Of the eight wolves that appeared, only two were in the Second stage of the Arcane Plane. The remaining six were all in the First stage of the Arcane Plane just like Grey.

The wolves stared at him with furious eyes, the last surviving leader gave a furious howl and they all charged towards Grey. Grey was overjoyed when he noticed they weren't going to use their troublesome attacks again.

Magical beasts always engage in physical battles, and due to their strong defenses, they rarely lose out to humans in terms of it. When Grey saw them coming, he held his blade in a reverse grip and charged straight at them.

After his battle with the bandits, he gained some experience and he had been able to improve his fighting abilities since he entered the mountain. He had engaged in different battles and had grown with them.

Grey dodged the attacks of the wolves, while also dealing strikes of his own. Soon, he was able to injure another two but wasn't able to deal the last strike since he was disturbed by the remaining three. The rest wolves caught up with them.

Grey immediately came up with a skill that would deal more damages to the wolves. He coated his blades with lightning, this made his attacks more destructive.

When the last leader saw his pack members being killed one by one, it immediately turned tails and ran. The surviving wolves all turned around and also escaped with their leader.

Grey caught up with the injured two at the Arcane Plane and ended their lives.

"Huuu, they're finally gone" Grey breathed heavily. He was already sweating from the battle and he had already depleted most of his elemental essence. Using the techniques over and over again was really straining.

"Thankfully they left, I don't think I would've been able to support any more techniques" Grey felt lucky since he was able to overcome this challenge.

If it were others in the same plane as he was, they wouldn't have been able to support this much use of techniques. But Grey's essence was thicker hence it was more durable.

"This is a great haul. With the cores from these three beasts, I would be able to sell them for a lot. This was the first Arcane Plane beasts cores he had acquired. He was only able to kill three of the Arcane Plane wolves with the rest escaping. The majority of his kills were those in the Fusion Plane, but he had no complaints.

Grey retraced his steps and was able to easily find the tree where he slept. He picked up his backpack and moved to a different location since the noise from the battle must have alerted nearby beasts.

He found a cave in a secluded area in the mountain, after thorough searching to ensure it was unoccupied and that his environment was safe, he found something to block the entrance of the cave. He immediately started cultivating to recover the elemental essence he lost during the fight.

The next morning, Grey was up early. He had completely recovered the essence and he even felt he made some improvements in his cultivation. He scoured the area and quickly found a pig.

A little spark of Lightning and his fire was up. He ate as much as he could to replenish his physical strength and also saved some for dinner. Unfortunately, there was no way he could take the entire meat with him.

Grey went deeper into the forest and had different battles. Things were going well for him since his main purpose of coming which was training was already going really well and he had also acquired some beast cores.

He had met humans during his journey but they had always avoided each other once they saw. Apart from magical beasts, humans were the major threats here. There are cases of people attacking each other because of greed or other reasons. Grey hadn't met anyone who attacked him but he had seen corpses of people over the course of his journey.

Some of the corpses had marks of being killed by beasts, while others, you could clearly see the traces of human attacks on their body. Grey had always known this is a place of survival of the fittest. Only the strong came could enter the deeper regions of the Misty Mountain.

Most of the people who come in here are hunters who are trying to get beast cores to sell. Getting a core from the beasts can be taxing and even very dangerous, but if they were able to ambush others who had already had some cores, they would be able to acquire more cores with lesser works.

After another two days, Grey soon passed the one hundred and fifty kilometers mark in the mountain. Now he had to be extra careful with his movements since he wasn't strong enough yet to walk freely in this part of the forest.

Although he could have reached past it sooner, he wanted to gain more training from his stay here. He would soon get to where the Lizards were said to be located in the mountain. Due to the thrill of his training, he had completely forgotten about what he heard about before entering the forest.

When he got to this part, he noticed human activity had increased and he would see groups of people or individuals within a range of every five hundred meters. Grey was very cautious with them since he didn't know them and would avoid them as much as possible.

"Arghh"

Grey heard a shout of pain coming from his left while he was walking, he stared at the direction the shout came from and went closer to know what was going on. He saw a group of youths being attacked by some beasts, three boys and two girls.

They were all in the Early stages of the Arcane Plane from the auras coming from their bodies. Grey could clearly sense the fear in them. One of the boys have been injured on his right leg and could barely stand on his own.

The two young ladies in the group were too scared to even attack. The two boys left were the only ones who were still able to fight, although barely.

The group was being attacked by four Conflagration Apes, these Apes were all fire attributes magical beasts and could deal some major damage if they get too close.

Clearly this was this group of youths' first time heading out to train, seems like they got too confident and charged all the way past the one hundred and fifty kilometers mark.

On seeing they were young students just like him, there was no way he could watch them die. He charged over while he unleashed his attack 'Shattered Rocks'.

The sudden attack distracted the Ape for some time which gave the students some breathing space. Both boys who were attacking also stopped looking in the direction the attacks came from.

"Are you crazy?, why did you stop attacking?"

They suddenly heard a shout which made them recover quickly, they capitalized on the fact that the Apes were still trying to make heads of what was going on and were able to fatally injured one of them with a combined attack.

With Grey joining in the attacks, they managed to kill one of the Apes with the others escaping. Magical beasts in the Arcane Plane are far more intelligent than those in the Fusion Plane. The first time they try to do when losing was to escape, they only try to fight to the death when they no there is no way out.

"Thank you," One of the boys said while deeply bowing to Grey.

Grey turned and looked at the youths calmly.