Chapter 493: Nearly a Dragon

Teleporting the Shadow ant out of the arena was a last ditch attempt. If they were going to die anyway, then Ray at least wanted to annoy the Shadow ant a little by making it harder to achieve its goal.

He had never expected what was to come from teleporting the ant out of there. As soon as they entered the swampy area, both of their feet sunk in the strange water-like mud up to their knees, then a message appeared in front of Ray.

[252/1000 tasks complete]

[New skills have been acquired]

It was the system. The system only completed tasks when he saved a life, and in return he gained a new skill every time he did. There were times where he saved people's lives and he never received a new skill from it. This was because the system was originally created by Bliss who could see the future.

For each life he did save, the system could already tell whether or not Ray had affected their future enough to know they had survived.

In the arena itself there were thousands of people watching. If the Shadow ant was able to continue to fight, then the others would have done their best to try to defeat it to allow as many people from the arena to escape as possible.

If Ray's theory was right, then he quite possibly had just saved the lives of around two hundred people by simply teleporting the ant away.

A smile appeared on his face, it was only a quarter of the skills he used to have when he was a dragon, and his body was still in a humanoid shape, but he was slowly getting back to what he once was.

For a moment, he thought everything was lost and he was sure he was going to die. However after realising this fact, he had a new energy and once again was ready to fight. Standing opposite the ant, he was still in his human form.

"Let me just make myself a little more comfortable." Ray said. His transformation was cancelled and on his arms, the scales were starting to appear.

"You are not human?" The ant said, but it wasn't spoken. The voice was sent straight into his mind.

"What gave it away." Ray replied, and before the ant knew it, two water like serpents had appeared from the swamp and lashed towards the ant like a whip. Two of its hands smashed into them, getting rid of them, but when his eyes were focused on what was in front of it, the area around the ant was already starting to freeze.

Moving out of the way so that the ant wasn't stuck in one place, it seemed to step on a part of the land that started to light up and a giant explosion had appeared soon after.

Ray, now behind the beast, gave it a strong kick and several more glowing lights in the swamps water started to light up, blowing up one by one.

When the water fell back down and the mist started to settle the ant looked fine. It's strong armour was still not broken or cut anywhere, just a few marks here and there.

"You can never-"

"Shut up!" Ray said, firing a fire ball into its mouth and continuing the barrage of attacks. Although nothing was hurting the shadow ant, at the same time, the number of different skills being used, was making it nearly impossible for the ant to fight back. It could never get its footing.

Whenever the ant would come up with a strategy or a way to combat Ray, he would switch it up to something else. What was surprising was how much magical power Ray was able to hold.

This was because of a new skill, called Mana nature. Similar to mana steal, it allowed Ray to steal the mana from living plants around them, and the swamp had plenty of green life. It wasn't as effective as mana steal, but he had a clearer conscience doing this rather than affecting those he cared about.

However, even if Ray had tried to use mana steal, he wouldn't be able to at that point and he would realise that later on.

The fight between the two seemed to be going nowhere, and the shadow ant soon realised this as well.

Creating a larger distance between the two, the ant stood on top of a large boulder in the swamp.

"I don't know why a beast would want to work with humans, I'm sure you know what they have done with us, but I no longer wish to waste my time. Perhaps we will meet again in the future, what is your name."

"Ra…" Ray paused for a second, Ray was his human name, but right now he was dealing with a beast and a strong one, now that he was more like his old self than before he was finally confident enough to use his old name again. "Sen."

"Sen, I will remember that." After that, the shadow ant was gone. Even using his dragon eyes Ray was unable to see where he had gone, he had certainly disappeared or at least traveled a long distance away.

After that, Ray started to ask himself the question - where was he?

Climbing on top of the highest tree, he tried to see if he could see any human structures. If he saw something he could get his bearings in some way, but he saw nothing but different lands and not a human structure in sight.

Using his dragon eyes he saw nothing but beasts, and something worse. Quickly he climbed back down and tried to hide his presence as much as possible. Fighting the ant had actually taken a lot of his stamina and Mana.

It was best for now if he found a quiet place to rest and heal up and that's what he was currently doing.

'Is this a new continent?' Ray thought. 'Am I no longer in Bronzeland?'

There were a few things that made Ray think this. First of all, his system. Everything worked apart from being able to communicate with others. Perhaps the distance was too great. The second, was the fact he didn't recognise any of the land for miles around him.

When he was a dragon he spent all of his time on Bronzeland, never travelling too far outside from it. He had never seen the different lands he saw around him before. The third reason why he thought this was because of the level and strengths of the beasts around.

With a simple look, he could see that there were beasts far stronger than that on Bronzeland and plenty of them as well.

The weakest tier beast he could see around him was king tier beasts, and he even saw a demon tier beast. It was a tier of beast that was given to dragons, although Ray wasn't a regular dragon and could be considered even above them.

Having already used the regular teleport skill, Ray was unable to see if the teleport skill to head back to a Redwing member would work. He would have to wait a while before he could teleport again. However, as he thought about it more he realised this was the perfect opportunity for him.

There was still a little bit of time before they were meant to go on the attack with Gary. Ray thought that maybe he wouldn't be strong enough to face Gary, and maybe this was what he needed.

So he decided to stay. During his time here he started off by killing the king tier beasts. This wasn't too much of a struggle and eventually gained the points to rank up his body to the king tier level.

Next he needed to defeat an emperor tier beast. With no forger around he couldn't improve his equipment, but with his new set of skills he had acquired he didn't really need to. Ray was able to defeat beast after beast, getting his body to the emperor tier and eventually even getting to the legendary tier.

Every time he ranked up to the next stage, his body went through a painful process but he could bear it, because he knew he was inching closer to getting his body back. More and more of his dragon features would appear on his body. His body itself felt stronger, faster and better.

At legendary tier, there were now only two more tiers to go until he was at the top. Demi - god, and Demon tier. During his time in this new continent, he hadn't tried fighting them, he knew even with all his abilities, these two tiers were out of his league.

More importantly, he had gotten carried away with hunting. He had no clue how much time had passed, and now he was worried about the others. He thought maybe the gang had never left the empire.

If that was the case, then who better to teleport next to than his partner at the all kingdom tournament, Harry. These were the events that led up to Ray saving Harry's life.

*****

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