Smack!!

"Owowow! Fuck my hands ow! This fucking hurts!"

Contrary to his confidence, he just pounded his fist into an extremely sturdy tree trunk with full force, and received damage. There was no mark on the tree trunk whatsoever.

"HUH? Was my breakthrough fake?"

He tried circulating his mana in his body again, and this time, he was able to identify the exact location of his own mana crystal.

'Something in my body has indeed changed, but it wasn't my physical strength. Maybe my core was strengthened, but my physical strength did not fundamentally improve. Perhaps I should try spreading my mana inside the core to my entire body?'

As he did so, his body became wrapped in a thin layer of pale green mana, and he immediately felt much stronger. He then attempted the same motion and punched the same tree.

Pow!!

"Ow fuck! My hand still hurts!"

He shook his hand as if doing so will relieve the pain on his knuckles, but as he observed the tree trunk again, he received a pleasant surprise.

"There was a marking! Holy fucking shit! Yes I did it! At this rate, I can probably cultivate and become a God!"

Kano was walking towards him, and heard his nonsensical rambling.

"Why were you punching the tree and yelling like a retard?"

"Heheh, I've never been able to beat you in physical strength, be it running, arm wrestling or pull ups. Today is the day that I will destroy you!"

"Hoh, I'm never one to retreat from a challenge. Come!"

Both of them laid down on the ground and assumed arm wrestling positions. They grabbed each others' hands and stared at each other's eyes ferociously.

"I'm going to start the countdown, at the count of 3. 1, 2, 3!"

They exerted their fullest strength, trying to pin each other's hand down. John was circulating his body with mana, while Kano simply relied on his physical strength as usual. Despite so…

"Ugghhh! Why the fuck are you not losing!"

"Ughh! Shut up! You think your measly mana can defeat me?"

As the two were constantly showing their constipated faces from using their full strength, the competition went into a standstill; or so they thought.

'Shit, my mana is getting sucked dry!'

After 10 seconds of an even bout,  John's arm was instantly smashed down the ground, making Kano the winner.

"Hahahat! You stand no chance kid!"

"Shut up, we're the same age."

With that said, the duo finished their break and continued their journey.

The next day….

They were walking through the forest as usual. John recovered his mana considerably after resting and eating fruits. He managed to implement his mana and spread it out to his surroundings to survey. It was an extremely useful skill, which he used to detect monsters and suspicious movements.

"Dude, there's a fucking monster in front."

"That's just a rabbit, you idiot."

"Naw it ain't just a rabbit, it's a magic rabbit. What if it can summon fireballs and roast our balls?"

"Haha, you must be delusional. How can a rabbit summon fireballs and roast our balls? The most it can do is just bite us and kick us."

"But what if the rabbit was actually just in its monster form and is actually a rabbit girl? I may just fuck her."

"Stop being gross. Besides, if she has a human form, then she has human rights too. No rape."

"No cap. But I want to get its mana core, so I need to kill it anyway. No hard feelings."

"Alright man."

"You're a basketballer, so you must be good at aiming right? Help me snipe that rabbit down. It most likely runs faster than us, so we only have one chance."

"I gotchu fam."

Kano gripped his spear tightly and readied himself into a javelin throw stance.

He breathed in and out to calm himself down, and threw the spear with all his might. The spear flew at a rapid speed towards the rabbit, and it seemed that it was definitely going to hit.

All of a sudden, the rabbit perked its ears and twisted its entire body, managing to dodge the spear by a slim margin. They both thought that all hope was lost when it missed. However, the rabbit started hissing and displaying aggression. In an instant, it charged towards the pair at a lightning pace.

The two started to turn tails and ran as fast as they could.

"Holy fuck! I didn't know rabbits were so aggressive!"

"They weren't supposed to! This is a magical world, so anything could happen. Anyways, I don't have my spear, so you deal with it!"

"Fuck!"

John turned around to face the rushing rabbit and charged his body with mana. Just as he was preparing to charge forward, flames started combustion at the opening of its mouth, and sprayed forward at a small cone shape.

"Fuck fuck! Fucking Kano, you just cursed us! This rabbit breathes fire!"

"Hahaha! That is actually cool!"

Kano circled around to retrieve his spear while John was having a standoff with the rabbit. The fire rabbit pounced towards John, but he held his ground and stabbed forward.

Kweee!

To his surprise, the rabbit was actually stabbed. It squealed in pain, and started spraying its flames at John in desperation.

"Owowowow!"

John dropped the spear as that was his only option. If he continued holding the shaft, the rabbit would only spray flames in his direction and roast him to death.

The injured rabbit tried to scurry away with the spear still stuck inside it, but Kano rushed forward with his spear and ended its life with the stab on the head.

Pant.. pant….

"Hahaha! The rabbit almost 1v1ed you, and your body is charred."

John did not have any energy left to argue with him, and just plopped to the ground. Kano proceeded over to the carcass and carved out the crystal.

"Are you sure you don't want the meat? We haven't had meat for the past few days, and I'm craving for some."

"... maybe we can try out some meat."

The two gathered small sticks from the bushes and shrubs lying around. After gathering the sticks in a spot...

"Let me try a little something."

John sat in a lotus position to gather a bit of his mana back. He then tried to summon a flame out, but failed. Afterwards, he tried doing the same thing, but said "Fireball", and a small fireball appeared on his fingertips.

"Wot?"

He tried summoning without saying anything again, and it didn't work. He said "fireball" the second time, and it appeared yet again.

"It looks like chanting in this world actually works."

Crackle crackle!!

He then dipped the small little flame into the pile of sticks. It took a while for the fire to spread into the sticks, but it finally worked.

"Hahahahaha! The power of magic! Sucks that you don't have it!"

Kano pouted.

"... Screw you."

He then proceeded to fetch the rabbit, remove the 2 spears stuck in it, skinned and cleaned it as best as he could with the meager amounts of water they had. A sturdier stick was shoved through the rabbit and was left cooking in the fire. 10 minutes later…

"Is it cooked?" John salivated. He had never tasted rabbit meat before, and it was his first time eating meat in a few days. It was to be expected that he looked hasty.

"I think it's cooked. By the way, didn't the rabbit breathe fire? Do you think it can really be cooked?"

"Hmm. Let me ask you a question. If you punch someone, would they hurt?"

"Of course!"

"Then if you punched yourself, would you hurt?"

"... I get what you mean, but fuck you anyways."

Even though the rabbit was still scalding hot, the two of them peeled the meat off of it, and had their first bite. John was enthusiastic, but his mood deflated after that bite.

"Ew, this tastes bland."

"What'd you expect? We have no seasonings here. Salt would be good."

Regardless of their complaints, they finished the meat cleanly, left the rabbit skeleton there without cleaning it up, and went on their way.

10 minutes into their daily travelling, and Kano started receiving a stomach ache yet again.

"Uggh, the god damned rabbit meat! It must've possessed much higher amounts of mana than simply fruits!"

"Oooh. No wonder I felt so energetic after finishing it," replied John as he was already used to this scene. Besides, Kano was a very sturdy person, so he always ended up being fine somehow at the end of the day.

John decided to sit down and cultivate beside Kano as he was writhing around like a caterpillar.

'Hmm, now that I've ascended one level, I can sense the mana inside my body much better, and hence my mana control progressed as well. I should be able to try out some stuff successfully that I didn't before now.'

He circulated his breathing in a rhythmic tempo, and the green aura started to condense around him. Throughout the four days in the forest, he tried to manipulate the mana outside of him, but to no avail. This time however, he was able to make some mana surrounding him drift slowly in the direction he willed. This was a small, but definitive progress for him. 

Next, he tried to observe his mana core. By directing all of his attention into sensing the intricacies of the core, he made a discovery that it was as small as a tick. Furthermore, it was hollow. It seemed like it was hollow because the insides were used to store mana. The shell was composed of crystallised mana. He thought that when he absorbed the surrounding mana and condensed it, it would become part of the shell, but he couldn't confirm it because there were simply too many things he didn't know.

It had been over 2 hours. Kano was still having a stomach ache, but the frown on him was less obvious and he stopped squirming. John probed about with different methods of approaching his cultivation, but ultimately to no avail. He ended up sticking to his original cultivation technique and wasn't able to implement anything new.

"Phew, it took us until night time before my bloody stomach was able to calm down."

"Yea, looks like we're going to spend the night here."

As usual, they found a tree trunk to rest in. Right when they were going to sleep, they felt the smallest tremors in the ground gradually becoming bigger and bigger.

Grrooooowl….

They heard some deep growling noises, and the tremors became heavier and louder. It sounded as if a large monster was walking towards them. 

"H-holy fuck!"

"S-shut up John, don't make any noise, or we might just die!"

The two of them squeezed themselves into a corner of the hollow tree, praying that nothing would come in their way.

"Ugh, it's getting brighter and brighter," John whispered as he tried to block the light with his eyes.

The tremors became so loud and deafening that they were scared out of their wits. Then, they witnessed a monster greater than they've ever seen before.

It stood at a staggering 20 meters tall, and had red lightning constantly flickering around its body. Its head and paws looked very similar to a western dragon. The two golden horns attached on its head pierced diagonally forward in a striking manner, threatening to puncture the sky open.  It had dark crimson scales that glimmered from every shine of the lightning arc, and there was a long golden mane that ran all the way from the nape of its neck down to its tail. Its four limbs elegantly skidded forward and its tail swung in such a proudful manner as if it wanted the whole world to admire its majesty and beauty. If there was ever an existence that looked both terrifying and beautiful, it would be this creature.

The monster stopped for a while, and tilted its head over to the tree trunk Kano and John was hiding in. Kano was stunned and shivering out of trepidation, whereas John was simply captivated by the majesty of the monster. After a few seconds, it turned its head away and slowly walked away in the fashion it had came.

Boom… boom.. boom…

"Huff puff huff putf, o-oh my fucking god, I t-thought we were going to d-die." Kano stuttered heavily.

"Woooow… that was the coolest monster I've ever seen. I think I'm in love."

"Yo bro, what the fuck is with you and your monster fetish?"

The retarded comment that John spouted out may have been disgusting, but it served to de-escalate Kano's fear.

"Ey yo man, we gotta get out of here fast. This ain't no place for mortals like us to live in if we want to survive."

"B-but I want to see that monster again though. That monster was cool beyond imagination."

"I think that you should live long enough to see beast girls in this magical world."

".... no cap."

John secretly vowed to himself that he will become strong enough to travel around this dangerous world and visit all sorts of beast women and attempt to invite them into the bed if possible.

Although difficult, they both managed to calm their trembling hearts (for different reasons) and fell asleep.

….

 

Zzziiing!!!...

A golden portal was warped open inside a gorgeous golden room. There was a king-sized bed in the middle end of the room, with a man sipping wine on it and gorgeous female servants holding onto a silver platter of fruits, feeding him grapes by mouth.

"Master, I've come back from my mission."

An extremely beautiful woman emerged from the portal, and walked forward in an extremely seductive manner. She was wearing a golden dress that further accentuated her hourglass figure, and her long auburn hair fluttered delicately as her gait matched the haughtiness of her expression. She had a pair of sleek golden horns and a long swaying tail that was strangely attractive and alluring.

That man slowly sat up and looked at the gorgeous lady who came out of the portal with lecherous eyes. The woman felt the stinging gaze resting on her bosom, and she couldn't help but ever so slightly twitch her eyebrows.

"Mmmm, you're as beautiful as always, Lera. How goes your mission?"

"I have found all of the four Earthlings. Two of them reside in the great Katal Empire, while the other two were in the Forest of Forbidden Peace near the Encedea Empire. The former two are currently safe, but as for the latter two, they have roamed inside the region for six days. If they don't exit in the next 3 days, they will meet certain death."

"Hmmm? The Forest of Forbidden Peace has a time limit of 13 days. Their deadline was longer than expected. It looks like they didn't do much damage to the forest. What did they do?"

"They destroyed two branches off a tree, and burned sticks that were once shrubs and bushes. Lastly, they ate the fruits of the trees. In total, the forest believed that the two of them offended it four times."

The man had a small smirk, and touched his clean shaven chin as if he was pondering something.

"Interesting. Observe the forest buddies for a little longer. Help them out if they encounter any life endangering troubles or if the forest decides to take their soul."

"Master, why are you doing this? They are mere mortals, and their abilities are not even one out of a millionth of my original strength."

"Keke. Of course I'm doing this for fun. What, are you doubting my hobbies and interests?"

He released his aura, and the room suddenly became extremely suffocating. His servants grasped their necks and started gasping for air desperately. Their faces turned extremely red as they slowly started to faint onto his bed.

Lera's eyes trembled slightly and her master gave a small grin as if knowing that she had been shaken.

'This fucking cunt, I will skin him alive once my contract is over,' Lera grimaced.

"I have never doubted your decisions. I shall do your bidding, Master Loki."

Loki gave a small nod, gave a hand signal that shooed her away.

She gave a small bow, and headed back through the golden portal and disappeared from the room. Loki swirled his wine, and gave a sinister smile.

'Kekeke, the four of you shall entertain me to your best extent! Kekekek!"

His maniacal laughter reverberated throughout his grand chamber.