A few months had passed since he had obtained the [Itadori Yuji's Physique] and [Full Concentration Breathing]. He was now officially eight years old.
Like always, his anniversary was nothing special.
He received a special gift from his mother: a small necklace with a wooden object attached in the form of a bird's wing.
Nero gifted him with a makeshift bag of the size of an adult's forearm. According to her, it was supposed to be worn in his leg, and it was meant to store something like a knife or even small supplies.
Notres, that's what 9-3-1 called himself now, just gifted him a book about cultivation bought from the library, using his own points. The book was mostly meant to talk about powerful cultivators both from the west and east, mostly the east.
Even the System gave him a gift, weirdly enough.
[Congratulations! You are now 8 years of age! Please accept this gift!]
[150 credits]
It wasn't a big sum, but it was weird that it had been gifted at all.
"Why the sudden gift?" Nio had asked.
[A participant of the Transmigrator Competition as made changes to the System Network, changing some of their protocols, the Anime System was one of the 1 325 476 Systems affected.]
"So many Systems! Just how many Systems are there, and how do you change so many systems eight years into the competition?"
[There are 9 182 736 450 systems currently online, 817 263 550 have stopped operating since the start of the competition]
[The Second Answer can be answered by using 1 500 000 credits]
"Forget it."
'It seems that some of the participants are already pretty advanced on the race. On the other hand, so many have lost their lives.'
Anyway, back to the topic, he was now eight years old and even received some presents, in this life such a thing was not really common.
So, he decided to give a present to himself, and that was the death of the Black Panther.
After a few months of going back and forth from the forest, Nio was able to understand the Black Panther.
In the area that it lived in, it was the most powerful, and it knew that. However, the Black Panther was someone who valued its strength, and therefore it stood in place, not hunting outside his own territory.
Nio theorized that the Black Panther had faced the Horned Rabbit and lost at some point.
The second creature was very elusive. Ever since that day, Nio didn't see it anywhere.
Therefore, the first target that he would face from the quest and his own list of grudges was the panther.
After these few months, he had successfully learned the Rasengan, not only that, he was finally able to use Cursed Energy outside his body pretty well, shooting blasts of cursed energy from a distance.
As practice, he even created a technique he called Cursed Strings, which was simply cursed energy shaped in the form of a string.
Right now, his most powerful attack was without a doubt the Cursed Rasengan, as he had called it. By making both chakra and cursed energy rotate in various directions and containing it, he was able to make a rasengan that used both chakra and cursed energy.
It was quite powerful.
Was he confident about this fight? A little, but not much.
His first encounter with the beast was not sufficiently clear to grasp its power, and he had grown very powerful since then.
However, from the perspective of a human looking at the sky, the moon and the sun both look the same size, when in reality they have several levels between them.
Without confronting, it directly, he couldn't be sure of its exact strength. During their last clash, their gap had been too wide to properly evaluate.
He was as prepared as he could be.
He had learned the Rasengan.
He had learned Cursed Energy Blasts.
He now possessed both [Itadori Yuji's Physique] and [Full-Concentration Breathing].
He couldn't be more ready.
'I mean, I could, but, I want to do it now, so . . .'
Shaking his head off pointless thoughts, he tried to use his bloodline to understand his chances.
His bloodline told him that the chances were not high but definitely not low, around 60% chance, it was hard to assign a number to a feeling.
The Mortal Body of Chance and Change had been a great addition to his arsenal. His reflexes had greatly improved, allowing him to sense the surrounding changes was even better than using chakra strings to scout the surroundings. Air flow, vibrations from the ground, sounds and details, nothing could change without him noticing, except of course if it were things that he couldn't really perceive, like qi, mana, heaven and earth energy, life, emotions and thoughts, since he couldn't perceive them, he couldn't sense changes in them.
It was still pretty useful anyway.
Besides that, he had successfully integrated the habit of performing a check of chance every time he needed to make a decision during battle. At first, it was hard to do it fast enough to not be a hindrance in combat, but now he could do it well enough.
He finally reached the enormous pit he had fallen in during his first night in the forest.
Using chakra, he walked up the wall in the direction of the stars in the sky.
The moonlight illuminated the clearing, there were no clouds, so the area was clearly visible.
Nio looked around cautiously, looking for his target. There was nothing.
He decided to approach the sole tree in the area.
The tree was relatively large, if compared to the average tree in the forest.
Nio stood below it and examined its branches.
It didn't take long to find his target.
The Black Panther was asleep in one of the tree's branches.
'Decided to go to bed early? To give me such a clear opening, today really is my birthday.'
Nio took a deep breath, invoking a wave of strength in his body. Reinforcing his legs with chakra and cursed energy, he lept into the air.
With a swift movement of his hand, several chakra strings shot forward, and enveloped the panther. At that very moment, the panther's eyes shot open, but it was already too late, it was already trapped.
Still airborne, Nio shifted his body to adjust himself and aimed a powerful axe kick on the beast's body. The branch broke under the power of the strike, forcing both the panther and Nio to drop into the ground.
Not wasting his opportunity, Nio took off his knife reinforced with chakra and cursed energy and aimed at the creature. Recognizing the danger, it shifted on its restraints with incredible power, successfully evading a possible fatal blow, that instead hit its back.
It roared in pain, its eyes brimming with relentless fury. Its muscles exploded with strength, breaking free from its restraints. It swiftly adjusted its position, standing at a certain distance from Nio looking for an opportunity to attack.
Nio did the same. Right now, the panther seemed a little stronger than he was, but not in a realm impossible to reach, he was confident that he could still kill it with enough skill and will.
He stabilized his breathing. Full-Concentration Breathing was different from simply controlling one's breathing. While the latter did help with several scenarios, the former was almost like a supernatural power, and it had its price. Its limit was derived from one's lung strength as well as their body's physical abilities.
Therefore, Nio needed to be careful while using it, however, with Full Concentration Breathing, he had also obtained the correct way to organize his own breathing, that was what he was doing now. He was using normal breathing techniques to extend stamina and improve focus, this greatly improved his control over chakra and cursed energy, actually.
With a burst of speed, the panther rushed forward.
'Its speed is still ridiculously high, I still have trouble keeping up.'
He reinforced his body and prepared to react to any type of attack. What came was a single swipe of the panther's claws that threatened to shred him apart.
Nio reacted as fast as he could, blocking the panther's limb before it could reach him. He followed up swiftly, aiming a powerful punch from below, aiming for the beast's jaw.
However, the panther reacted just as fast, with a swing from the other paw, it forced Nio to step back to create distance.
Once again, they were at a good distance from each other, preparing to react to the other's move, whatever it would be.
This time, Nio acted first. Reinforcing his body, he once again used Full-Concentration and charged forward. In an instant he was at the side of the panther, already in a punching motion.
In a great feat of agility, the panther dodged and counter-attacked with another swipe of its claws, just to find one of its paws stuck by various chakra strings.
The panther exercised its strength to break free, however in the single second that it took to free itself, a sudden noise could be heard in the clearing.
Like the sound of powerful of winds clashing against one another at great speeds.
Swish
Fwoosh
"Rasengan!"