Several days later, Aris and Cera were both close to becoming High-Rank Spirit Beasts. Sadly, Aris hadn't found any worthy opponent during all this time, which frustrated him to no end. He wanted a proper fight, not a one-sided beating.
On this day, Aris and Cera felt powerful shockwaves coming from one direction. Aris immediately charged into that direction, Cera following him. These shockwaves felt powerful, and Aris knew that he would be able to have a real fight soon.
After a minute, they arrived in a clearing. What they saw shocked them.
There was a dead rhinoceros on the floor. Judging by the feeling of its body, Aris and Cera knew that this had been a High-Rank Spirit Divine Beast. This was exactly what Aris wanted to fight. Yet, it had already died. The fight hadn't even taken that long!
On top of the corpse, they saw another beast similar to them biting into the corpse.
This beast was Yersi.
By now, Yersi had also become a Mid-Rank Spirit Beast, and she had shown her power by completely decimating this rhinoceros. She wasn't even injured!
"Seems like we are not the only two of our kind," Aris said with a smirk to Cera.
Cera only looked at Yersi with battle intent. She refused to be the weakest of the three of them!
Yersi had already noticed the two of them but didn't stop eating. To her, it was like they didn't exist. Aris felt offended by this disdain. "Hey, you!" Aris shouted.
"What?" Yersi answered simply without stopping to eat.
"Are you not surprised why we look similar?" he asked with a sneer.
"You are my siblings, obviously," Yersi answered directly like it was nothing special.
Aris didn't like Yersi's dismissive conduct. "Yes, but are you worthy of being my sibling?" he asked.
"What's it to you?" she asked as she glanced at the two for the first time. "I'm not interested in leadership if that is what you want to know."
Aris was a little taken aback by that answer. Yersi was not interested in leadership? Why would she say something like that? Wasn't becoming powerful her goal?
"Why are you not interested in leadership?" Cera asked from the side. For some reason, she was very interested in Yersi. She acted completely differently from the two of them.
"What's the point of leadership?" Yersi answered. "Being the strongest among a group of beasts doesn't make you the strongest in the world. I don't care about who makes the decision in our group. I only seek power, nothing else," she said.
Aris and Cera both noticed that Yersi had said "our" instead of "your". This showed that she already saw herself as part of their group but didn't care about who would give the orders.
"What if I don't want you in my group?" Aris said provokingly.
Yersi looked at Aris more closely. After some seconds, she had seen enough and returned to eating, infuriating Aris. "Our instincts tell us to gather together, and I have no problem with that. Are you so full of yourself that you want to demonstrate your power to everyone in our group? What's the point of that?" she asked dismissively.
For some reason, Yersi's conduct managed to rub Aris in all the wrong places. It was like she was the complete opposite of him. He wanted to be the most powerful and show his power to everyone, but she didn't even seem to care about something like that. Why would she not show any concern towards his power!? Did she have no pride in herself?
"I am the leader of this group, and I want to see if you're powerful enough to join me," Aris said with narrowed eyes. "I will attack you, and if you're not able to defend yourself, you will die today. I refuse to lead a group of weaklings!"
Yersi stopped eating again as she looked at Aris. This arrogant prick was supposed to be her leader?
"I changed my mind," Yersi said suddenly, surprising Aris and Cera. "I don't want to be led by someone so arrogant. If you let your pride and emotions dictate your actions, you will only lead us to death. So, for the sake of the group's survival, I will contend for leadership with you. See it as a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the greater good."
Yersi jumped down from the corpse and turned to Aris with even eyes. Aris hated her words, and he would enjoy tearing her throat out. It didn't matter that she was his sibling. She had shown no pride in herself, and he couldn't respect such a weak-willed beast!
"I can feel that you are more powerful than me, but you, specifically, won't be able to win against me. You have a fatal weakness that will cost you your life in the future. Today, I will show you this weakness in the hope of rectifying it," Yersi said as she lifted one of her arms in front of her. "Come whenever you want."
Aris was enraged by her arrogant words! How could she possibly know his weaknesses!? Not even Aris knew his own weaknesses, so how could a beast he had just met claim that she knew them!?
BANG!
Aris exploded forward with lightning while he punched with his arm. He had learned that using his claws wouldn't do much against Yersi's powerful scales. He needed to make a blunt attack.
Whoosh!
Yet, contrary to Aris' expectations, Yersi didn't use her lightning acceleration to evade. Instead, she simply used her waist to move her upper body out of the way of the incoming attack. 'How is this possible!?' Aris thought in shock. By all intents and purposes, his attack should have been too fast to evade that easily!
Aris didn't know that Yersi had already mastered pre-dodging, a technique that was the bane against someone faster than her.
Aris was fully open now, and Yersi laid her palm on his chest.
BANG! BANG!
Her arm moved in a peculiar way to gather all her body's power. Then, lightning exploded out of her elbow as all the power hit Aris' chest.
CRACK! CRACK! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Aris' scales on his chest, as well as his ribcage, broke apart as he was flung into the distance with as much power as never before. On the way, he destroyed a lot of trees with his back, shaking his insides.
Meanwhile, Yersi's whole right arm also broke into pieces due to the insane power she had just used. Yet, that was within her expectations.
BANG! BANG!
Aris' back hit an incredibly hard rock as his body stopped. Some blood came out of his mouth as his whole body hurt immensely.
Puchi!
In no time at all, an arm suddenly appeared and penetrated Aris' chest. Aris looked down in shock as Yersi's arm grabbed something and pulled out. Aris felt as much pain as never before as Yersi pulled out his lungs and heart. Yet, she didn't pull hard enough to tear them off his body. Right now, she only held them in front of Aris so he could see them.
"You have lost," Yersi said calmly and coldly. "I only need to use a bit of power to kill you right now."
For the first time in a long while, Aris felt genuine fear and panic. Right now, his life was in the hands of another beast, and if they so wanted, they could kill him easily. He hadn't felt this helpless since he had met that mighty beast at the area's edges.
Splosh!
Yersi shoved the lungs and heart back into Aris' ribcage, turned around, and walked away.
"Do you know why you've lost?" she asked without turning to him.
Aris was still in panic as he could barely comprehend the situation. Yet, Yersi's voice made rationality return to him.
"W-why?" he asked in confusion and nervousness.
"As I've said," Yersi said, "I can feel that your Battle-Strength is more powerful than mine. You have, obviously, gone through more tempering than me. Yet, as soon as someone notices your fatal flaw, you will die. You have been lucky that you haven't met anyone able to see that flaw until now."
Meanwhile, Cera was completely shocked as she looked at Yersi with widened eyes. Aris had felt nearly insurmountable to her, but Yersi could have killed him without breaking a sweat! Yet, Yersi said that Aris was more powerful than her? How was this possible!?
By now, Aris had recovered. He looked at the open hole in his chest with narrowed eyes. 'This doesn't feel right. I know that I should have been able to win against her. My instincts told me so! I shouldn't have tak-'
And then, Aris' eyes widened. His mind started going wild as his pride wrestled with his reason. His pride told him that this fight had been unfair. It told him that he should have won and that her fighting tactics had been dirty. Who would unleash such an incredibly powerful attack at the very beginning!? This was not how fights were supposed to go!
Yet, his reason told him that there were no dirty fighting tactics. His reason told him that his pride didn't matter if he died. The fact that she won could only mean that she was more powerful than him.
Aris gritted his teeth as he wrestled with himself, but after half a minute, he relaxed and sighed.
"I have lost," Aris said in defeat. "My pride is telling me that I should be more powerful, but I can't deny the fact that I would have died if you so wanted. I shouldn't have taken you lightly."
"My pride is my weakness," Aris said with a bitter smile.
Yersi turned around and looked at Aris. Aris was surprised at what he saw. Yersi was smiling a heartfelt, warm smile. "Exactly," she answered. "You are lucky, but also unlucky at the same time. You haven't received a genuine setback yet, which has made you blind to your own flaws. Yet, genuine setbacks can also kill you."
"I've once lost a fight and used my all-out attack. Due to that, I needed to flee from here and find beasts to help me recover my power. During that time, I got my first glances of the outside world," Yersi said as she looked at the sky with longing.
"I have seen incomprehensibly powerful beasts fighting. I had to hide in caves and in the dirt just to protect myself from their shockwaves. I have seen more powerful beasts than me die to these shockwaves too. That's when I realized that being the strongest in my region is an empty goal. If any of these beasts came here, we couldn't do anything else than flee or die."
Yersi came closer to Aris and put her hand on his shoulder. "We are not the strongest. Everything in here is only tailored to our power. I'm pretty sure that we are in some special area for offspring, and as soon as we become powerful enough, we will go to the outside world."
"Having pride in our current power will make us blind to our weaknesses. Look at the beasts more powerful than you, not the weaker ones," Yersi explained.
Up in the sky, Gravis felt incredibly proud in Yersi.