Eryndor killed the armadimo with an Internal Fist to its head, before taking his bag and moving deeper.

    Of course, he didn’t forget to use Cognitive Scrying on the beast before killing it.

    He could feel it. He was close.

    Approximately twenty minutes later, his extended vision caught sight of another armadimo.

    It was in the middle stage of Latent realm.

    I might as well fight it.

    All this time, Eryndor had been avoiding fighting strong beasts, because...why?

    Because, if he could fight weaker beasts and still make progress, why would he take risks fighting strong beasts?

    The tournament is coming, I should have at least some amount of combat experience.

    Eryndor didn’t know what the tournament would be about. Every year it was different.

    Paulina had said that each power system would fight in a separate tournament, but when he looked up the information, in certain years when a special occasion took place, they would organize a single tournament with every power system in it.

    And these single tournaments were all special ones, rather than just one vs one matches.

    Judging from the news he had read, there might indeed be a special tournament this year.

    Apparently, one of the highest ranking members of the Human Federation had just returned from a secret realm after ten years.

    Secret realms also began appearing at the same time as the Eight Outer Domains, and the anomalies.

    They were pockets of space which could be accessed by their corresponding entry portals.

    Some secret realms were stationary, some constantly moved around, while some only moved around in a specific pattern or location.

    Eryndor dodged the path of the beast once again, but this time, he was quick to activate his Internal Fist.

    As the beast was about to roll past him, he punched it at the side, eliciting another sharp cry from it.

    The spherical ball wobbled slightly, but still held on. This time it didn’t need a tree, as the ball took a sharp turn itself, producing a rough sound of friction on the ground.

    Always on alert, Eryndor moved out of the way just as quickly.

    Being at stage five of Qi Gathering realm, his Shadowstep. under the shade of surrounding trees coupled with his mastery, was almost as fast as someone at the peak of stage six.

    Peak of stage six was equivalent to the peak of middle stage for beasts.

    Which meant Eryndor was more than qualified to beat a beast at the middle stage of the Latent realm in terms of speed unless it was a speed oriented beast.

    Due to not activating his Internal Fist on time, he could only watch as the beast rolled past him. Just as he was anticipating it would return, the beast cleanly steered through the trees and ran away.

    After a short gap caused by the unexpectedness of the situation, Eryndor quickly gave chase at a much higher speed.

    Approximately two minutes later, he was able to catch up and pummel the beast to death.

    Due to the scales being from a beast at the middle stage of Latent realm, he couldn’t harvest them, as he was still supposed to be at rank three for the rest of the team.

    Nor could he take it back to earth and exchange it there after he advanced to stage four or five. It would be easy to identify that the beast was taken from an armadimo, which didn’t exist on Earth at all.

    Eryndor took out an energy bar from his bag and munched on it as he continued on his way to find more beasts.

    In a few moments, he came across a Lariet, which was up to its usual behavior.

    The lariet was at the middle stage as well, but according to the reports, their strength was extremely high for their level.

    Which meant, for a lariet in middle stage, its strength parameter was equal to a beast at high stage.

    Shall I try them?