As Kenji continued telling his story, the eyes of the little children soon began to flutter as they tried their best to stay awake.
But as the young ones that they were, sleep soon caught up to them, and they slowly drifted into Dreamland, their minds filled with the adventure of a handsome knight and his three little kids.
Immediately Kenji saw that they had fallen asleep, he slowly lifted their tiny bodies and placed them onto his shoulder.
He then walked back to the inn where he had rented a room.
As he arrived, he placed them in their beds and planted small kisses onto their heads. "Sweet dreams, you little munchkins," he said in a low and hushed voice as he closed the door to their room.
As he left the vicinity of the children, his face hardened as the air around him became stiff. "Shreya!" he called out. Almost as if responding to his call, a bright red light flew out of his forehead and landed on his shoulder.
"Yes, Kenji, do you need something?" Shreya asked, an inquisitive gaze growing on her face.
With a serious expression on his face, Kenji turned his head to the little phoenix perched on his shoulder.
"Tell me everything. Tell me everything about myself now. After I evolved, I haven't felt much of a difference, so tell me what I can and cannot do right now!"
"Why so sudden?" Shreya asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Because I might die tomorrow if I don't know."
••••••
In a grassy open area, a green stone structure stood, looking both elegant and menacing. It appeared just like a monolith, but it wasn't. It was a dungeon entrance—the same dungeon entrance Kenji was about to face the next day.
Four hooded figures suddenly appeared in this clearing. They had some kind of cage in their hands. Their formation embodied that whatever was in that cage was direly precious to them.
Suddenly, they dropped the cage onto the ground, and immediately a whimpering sound of a little fox could be heard coming from it.
"This is the dungeon entrance?" one of the hooded figures asked inquisitively.
"Yes, this is it. Now all we need to do is wait until dawn, and we can begin the sacrifice.
Once we do that, we will be imbued with dark matter energy and become the strongest of them all!" the leader of the group said, a hysterical laughter escaping his mouth.
"Good, good. This Cloud Moon Fox is really useful, and I can't believe that it is this weak. Normally, a regular Cloud Moon Fox would have broken through those bars and torn us apart," another one said, a bit of inquisitive reverence in his voice.
"Ha! That's nothing. The only reason it's like this is because those slave traders injected it with a chaos bind pill, ensuring that its powers would never be used again, but its bloodline is still very useful," the leader said with another cackle of laughter.
Inside the cage, a little pink fox with a crescent moon shape on its forehead whimpered once again as she said, "Oh great gods, please save me from this catastrophe. I, the great leader of a branch of the Snow Moon Fox legacy, have been reduced to nothing more than a sacrificial tool. Oh please, save me from this cruel fate. I promise, if someone can save me from these wicked creatures, I will give my life to them," she said, a drop of tear forming in her eyes as she prayed earnestly for the end of this cruel fate.
••••••
Back in Kenji's room, Shreya had just revealed to Kenji what he could and could not do. When he heard everything, he was so shocked that he became enraged.
"You mean to say I will never increase my ranks, and to top it all off, I have no powers until I actually tame a beast? What the hell?!" Kenji exclaimed in a fit of rage.
"Calm down, it's not really that bad!" Shreya said, trying to calm him down. Why was he freaking out so much? It's not that bad.
"Calm down?! What do you mean calm down?! Why would you tell me that I'm basically still as useless as before, and you expect me to calm down?! At least if it was before, I could have slowly increased my ranks with money, but now... Now I have no chance," Kenji said, devastated by the revelation of his weakness. It seemed the heavens didn't want him to rise.
"No, you idiot! That's not what I meant! What I meant was you won't be able to increase your rank anymore due to the fact that you are over the ranking of regular unevolved. All you really need to bring you strength is to tame and evolve your permanently contracted beasts!" Shreya said, a bit of annoyance evident as she felt like hitting Kenji on the head.
"Oh! So that's what you meant! Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Kenji said with a sigh as he shook his head, his personality immediately changing from what it was a few seconds ago.
"You fool!" the angry phoenix exclaimed, as she hit Kenji right on the head.
Pow!
"Ouch! Shreya! That hurts!"
"Whatever, just go to bed and rest. You have a long day ahead of you," Shreya said, annoyance still evident in her eyes.
She then turned back into a wisp of red light and flew into Kenji's head. She too needed to rest.
Seeing that Shreya was gone, Kenji headed over to his room and lay on the bed. With a soft sigh, a smile crept up his face. "Yuji, Miyuki, Haru, Mayumi, I, Makoto Kenji, am coming back. Get ready to receive me with open arms, as yes, I'm better than you," Kenji said, as his eyes soon closed and he drifted into a deep sleep.