Chapter 59: Mountain Bear

The Hellhound looked more like a wolf than a dog to Kiro. Nonetheless he wanted to tame it. How can it be a puppy but be already at level 50?

Kiro activated taming.

Ding!

[Taming failed. The beast may be weakened but it's extremely proud, it bows to no one.]

Kiro sighed loudly.

"Hey, pup, you either accept me as your master or become lunch for whichever monster did this to you."

He activated taming again.

Ding!

[Taming failed...]

This went on for an hour, trying to tame was exhausting. The hellhound's HP had dropped to 5. It took a lot to refuse being tamed, if a beast can't afford it they submit, but not this one. It was stubborn.

Just then an ear piercing warcry could be heard from the mouth of the cave. Kiro used his vibrational sense to see what it was, a bear, a mountain bear. This was not good. His lips curled into a smile though.

"He's coming for you, if you won't submit I'll let him kill you. Choose."

The hellhound didn't move an inch, it locked eyes with him, looking at him dangerously and cautiously. Kiro knew this little thing wouldn't give in, and for a moment he thought about just leaving it. But the fact that it was so stubborn made it a little special to Kiro.

The mountain bear had already reached where they were, it growled dangerously as though they were intruders trying to steal its cub.

Kiro took a fighting stance, "hey, chubby, hit it with your best spell."

Ishaan was kind of pissed at the nickname, but he didn't say anything. "Hellfire" he said.

Wild purplish flames could be seen roaring, speeding towards its target. They were fist sized balls of flames, it rained hellflames on the bear.

The bear was bombarded by a myriad of fireballs. When the spell ceased, it seemed to not have done much damage, other than pissing the living hell out of the bear.

Ding!

[Congratulations user. You've achieved perfect synergy with the sentient staff, Ryu. Your usage has risen to 10.5%]

"Just a 0.5 raise? What a joke!"

The bear got up and stood on its two legs and roared louder, before it took off straight for Kiro. He quickly summoned lightning, but unlike with Isaac the bear had thick skin. He couldn't possibly have hoped to burn it into a crisp when the skill's rank was so low.

He went to punch the bear, it blocked him and swiped, creating a gash with its claws right across his chest. He crashed into the rocks nearby Ishaan. His chest looked like freshly slaughtered beef. Bones could be seen amidst the red and flesh.

"Hey, let me in. My HP is extremely low." He had to crawl to reach them.

Ishaan didn't hesitate. Kiro was banged up pretty badly. But he didn't get inside the force field just to lick his wounds, he decided this was the time to enter meditation properly.

Before that, he decided to put all 25 of his skill points to lightning Manipulation. Which raised its rank to C.

Satisfied and in pain he sat, cross legged and concentrated, hoping something would come to him.

"What are you doing?" Ishaan asked surprise on his face.

"Shhhh."

"But—"

He didn't finish that before Kiro opened his eyes and stared at him coldly. He immediately erased everything his mind wanted to say and kept shut.

Kiro went back to his meditation, he couldn't concentrate well because of the pain, so he breathed in and out slowly, hoping he could concentrate on the breaths and not the pain. It seemed to have worked because 5 minutes of this, he had entered the meditative state.

Almost immediately, the Chi skill activated and he was gathering energy from the surrounding living things. Plants, water, animals.

The energy accumulated would then be stored in his mana veins, as soon as the mana veins had some energy, the regeneration skill activated, as it purified that energy into Mana and feeding it into his body to heal.

It was a sight to see, as the wounds from his chest were slowly but surely closing.

This shocked Kiro, he almost lost concentration. In his past life, nobody had mana veins, or nobody publicly bragged about having them.

He concluded it was due to awakening his true blood, as people who awakened in his past life were few and far between.