Beast-Tamer: Limitless Evolution
Chapter 107: Man Vs Beast

Chapter 107: Man Vs Beast

Man Vs Beast

Gale let out a chirp at being recognized before immediately turning his attention to the cobra that was attacking Sam.

The Cobra similarly inspected Gale, its slitted pupils becoming even thinner as it hissed threateningly at the bird. However, its body language was off. Instead of getting ready to attack, it seemed... wary.

In comparison, Gale showed no signs of attacking and simply watched the creature calmly, like he was waiting for something.

Which he was.

Half a minute later, Osho and Ellie came running through the foliage and quickly reached Sam’s side.

"Are you alright?" Ellie asked immediately as she inspected her friend. Sam just offered a small smile.

"A few scratches, nothing serious." She replied and shifted her gaze to Osho, who was inspecting the snake.

"That thing can shoot out some pretty potent acid. It’s also quite agile in close range and has high vitality," Sam explained, pointing to the wounds on its body that were slowly healing.

"It can heal faster than that, but dark affinity Mana can inhibit regeneration so, yeah." Osho nodded and absorbed the information. He also noticed that the snake had gone from wary to downright fearful, mostly due to the appearance of Ellie and Sugil.

Osho had no doubt in his mind that Sugil also possessed a bloodline, and being a snake, its effects were more tangible against other snake-like beasts. Right now, this snake seemed to be getting suppressed quite thoroughly as it failed to look in Sugil’s direction directly and kept slithering backward slowly.

"Hey Sam, mind if I kill it?" Osho suddenly asked, and the two girls looked at him curiously.

"Well, no, but the fact you asked gives me the feeling that you wanna do something abnormal," Sam replied, and Osho smiled at her before cracking his neck.

"You’d be correct in that assessment."

___

"Oh? Does he want to claim the points for himself?" Rith wondered aloud as they watched the camera pan to Osho.

After his recent displays, a lot more attention had shifted to him and those around him. So whenever he looked like he was about to do something interesting, a few Mana screens would be dedicated to showing off just that, and it seemed like this was one such situation.

"That’s a bit mean, though. I understand that he is probably stronger than his classmate, but taking her kill just like that is a bit much." Kurt spoke, but Ruth disagreed.

"If not for his intervention just now, there is a high chance she would have been eliminated. Sure, it looks like she did decent damage against the snake, considering that it’s a rank above her. But she said it herself, it has incredible vitality, she and her beast would have run out of energy before they managed to take it down." Ruth listed her points, and Kurt let out a contemplative hum.

"Well, when you put it like that, then I suppose it makes some sense... Wait, why did he walk past his beast?" He suddenly exclaimed.

Everyone watched with surprise as Osho walked past Gale towards the snake. His hands moved to his sides and each unsheathed a narrow dagger that was made of both beast bone and a special durable alloy.

Each was quite sharp, showing that these weapons were made for stabbing specifically.

Once there was about a 5-meter distance between Osho and the snake, he entered a stance and locked eyes with the snake, his gaze sharpening as he confronted the beast.

The spectators went crazy.

It was perfectly normal for a Beast Tamer to assist their beast whenever they started fighting. In fact, there were times when the Beast and Tamer performed tag attacks that chained into each other. Sam using her needles to increase the weight of and slow down the snake at the right time to create an opening for Blackie to attack was a perfect example of this, as well as Fredrick and Hydro battling against those giant ants during the Beast Tide.

It was common and accepted.

What wasn’t common was for a Beast Tamer to take the helm and fight instead of their beast.

Sure, Beast Tamers learned how to fight in case they couldn’t receive assistance from their beast, or if their beast was out of commission. However, in those situations, the Beast Tamer fighting solo was ONLY if their Beast wasn’t available.

Yet here was Osho, preparing to face a Beast at the same rank as him by himself when Gale was in top condition.

"How arrogant."

In the VIP lounge, Principal Vermont snorted.

"There is no reason for him to do such a thing at a time like this. It’s needlessly risky. Moreover, how much experience does he have? How confident is he in facing an Apprentice Rank Beast? Just because they are in the same rank? He should know that humans can’t compete with Beasts in the same rank." At this, a lot of the other VIPs voiced their agreement as they found this action pointless.

Principal Timothy said nothing, but he seemed quite invested in what was about to happen.

Only Mrs Jane knew why Osho was doing this.

’He told me he has three goals to achieve during this exam. Kill an Apprentice rank Beast by himself, kill an Adept rank Beast, and get the largest number of points by the end of the examination. Seems like he wants to do it now.’ She mused as she watched, not seeming perturbed in the least.

In the back, Lady Haggai completely ignored the Citadel Lord as she took out her tablet and once more began recording, clearly eager to see the results of this bout.

’Let’s so what you can do, potential son-in-law.’ Ellie’s father thought as he watched closely.

’Gale, don’t step in unless absolutely necessary.’ Osho instructed.

’Okay!’ Gale replied eagerly. Osho didn’t doubt the bird’s ability to ascertain if he was in danger. His perception was just that high.

HISS

The cobra let out a warning his and released its hood to make itself look bigger and scare Osho, but he hardly cared.

"Come at me." He spoke, not bothering to hide his killing intent.

Seeing that Osho wasn’t backing down, the cobra hissed again before shooting forward.

Before the introduction of Mana, cobras, specifically king cobras, could strike at a speed of 12 mph (19.312128 kph). In close range, that already was an insane speed, and required quite the extreme reaction time to avoid. With mostly cats being known for being able to react to such speeds.

After Mana appeared, though, this speed had become obsolete as even the low-end Novice rank snakes could achieve speeds quite a bit higher, and this cobra, Osho judged, was at the mid-stages of the Apprentice rank.

As for its striking speed?

Well over 100 mph (160.9344 kph)

In terms of raw speed, Osho had nothing on that. In fact, the only being in the group who could move faster than that was Gale. With Sugil possessing a slightly faster striking speed than the cobra.

Osho wasn’t Gale. But he was himself.

He was also very observant, which tied into another thing that allowed him to dodge.

Reaction time.

Osho didn’t need to be faster than the cobra. He just needed to fast enough.

As soon as he saw the Cobra coil its muscles, he moved.

A powerful air current blew past him as the massive head of the cobra missed him by centimeters.

He fortified his body with Mana, and at the same time, he poured Mana into his daggers to increase their sharpness and jabbed them into the body of the creature, bracing himself and using its momentum against it to create a long gash in its side.

Barely a second passed from this exchange before Osho dropped to the ground, and the tail of the snake whipped above him where his upper body had been a moment before.

He twisted and pushed himself upwards as another part of the snake tried to sweep into him. He dodged successfully once more, but he was now midair with nowhere to dodge.

The snake capitalized on this and once more shot forward, aiming to bite Osho in half.

However, Osho made a stepping motion, as though there was solid earth beneath him, and everyone watched with surprise as his foot seemed to come into contact with something, like some invisible platform, and he pushed off it, once more avoiding the large maw of the snake while leaving two gashes on its head.

He landed gracefully and wasted no time as he charged forward once more.

The snake faced him and opened its maw before sending a stream of acid from its fangs.

Seeing this, Osho made no move to dodge. Instead, he reached forward and grabbed, and amazingly, the ’space’ in front of him fell into his grasp as though it were a fabric.

Osho pulled it and aimed it away from his body, and the stream of acid went along its path and got redirected to the side.

The snake seemed stunned by this, something Osho took full advantage of as he focused Mana into his foot and, with a burst of speed, appeared in front of the creature and made several stabs into its body.

What Osho had done wasn’t spatial magic, but instead sky magic, and using the sky as a ’fabric’ that could be manipulated.

However, Osho did not have the expertise or the Mana capacity to perform this feat, as it would normally take quite a high mastery of Sky magic to manipulate the sky at such a low altitude.

But Osho didn’t need that, as he happened to have a beast who possessed their own localized sky around them. One that Osho was free to manipulate freely if he wanted to.

After all, there was no rule that stated Osho couldn’t also use this domain that Gale passively possessed. The only thing was that he had to stay relatively close to the bird as Gale couldn’t increase the range of this personalized sky massively.

But it was enough for this situation.

The snake hissed as Osho got a few stabs in and tried to twist its body around him, aiming to crush him.

But Osho had once again read its movements.

Before it could complete its action, Osho sent a torrent of wind into the ground, throwing up quite a bit of dust and obscuring the sight of the snake.

As soon as he did this, he immediately used Mana cloaking, and just in time as he felt the cobra’s Mana sense pass over him.

He used wind to lighten his footsteps and jumped up.

Just like the snake, his vision was obscured, but he still had his Mana sense, which the snake noticed, but it was too late as Osho landed on its head.

As soon as he did, the snake immediately started thrashing around violently, aiming to throw him off. But Osho just hardened his expression and held onto its scales in a vice grip.

Switching his grip on one of his daggers to a reverse grip, he used wind to create a drill and jabbed the weapon into its skull violently.

It dug deeply, and Osho felt it struggle even more, now throwing its body into trees and the ground, trying to crush him.

Osho hardly paid it any mind.

He poured his Mana into his daggers and the wind coating it, making it dig deeper and deeper into the snake.

The thing threw its headband and sprayed a torrent of poison into the air, intending for it to rain back down on the vile creature on its head.

There wasn’t a whole lot Osho could do about that, so he curled up his body even more while quickly creating a wind barrier over himself, needing it to buy time instead of fully blocking the attack.

Said attack came quickly as he felt his wind barrier quickly begin to get eaten through.

In response, Osho poured Mana into his dagger as it met the skull of the cobra. There was a brief pause before he roared and pushed the dagger through. As soon as it met the soft brain matter, he made the wind coating the weapon explode outwards into a series of slashes.

Its brain got shredded, and its body thrashed around for a bit longer before falling limply, blood seeping from its eyes and the hole in its skull, its jaw opening wide.

Everything was silent for a moment, then Osho hopped on the snake and used Mana to blow off the remains of its brain on his arm.

Some parts of his clothes were singed, but luckily, the defensive pieces under them stopped whatever remained of the acid from getting through and touching his skin.

He looked a bit disheveled, and his hand was bleeding from where he’d gripped the sharp scales of the snake. But otherwise, he was fine.

"Well, that was fun." He smiled before walking towards a stunned Ellie and Sam.

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