The Sovereignty System

'Holy crap, I think I just found a spirit fruit that could have come straight out of a Cultivation novel!' Ben thought as he read the fruit's description.

Ben excitedly reached out to pick the only two bluish-purple fruits growing on the small tree without realizing he wasn't alone.

About thirty yards behind him to his left in a shallow cave hidden by vegetation a pair of gleaming eyes watched every move, he made.

When Ben decided to reach out and pick the fruit the watchful creature could no longer hold back.

Launching itself out of the hidden cave it quickly gained speed as it charged toward its target. Ben's attention was so complacently focused on the fruit he never saw that a profound beast had been living in this small ravine.

For the past month after this creature had discovered the Indigo Iron Fruit Tree it had waited for these fruits to properly mature.

The beast was not smart enough to know what benefits it would gain by eating the spirit fruit. It just instinctively knew that this fruit would reach the perfect ripeness in the next few days allowing it to gain the full benefit the fruit could provide thus making it stronger.

Even though Ben had Enhanced Hearing active and heard the beast charging him from behind, he was only quick enough to partially dodge the creature as it slammed into him with a glancing blow.

Slammed hard to the ground, Ben scrambled to get to his feet as he pushed himself up a large fanged mouth clamped down on his left arm.

The chain-mail armor saved him from having the beast sink its fangs into his arm, but the biting force was so strong that he heard the bones in his arm crack and creak.

[Notice] [Skill: Pain Suppression has increased! Pain Suppression Level 6!]

Ben groaned out in pain and cast [Enhanced Form] on himself. He began to slam his glowing right fist into the nose of what looked like a large feline type creature with black striped red fur.

The creature shook its head, trying to shred the flesh from, Ben's arm, causing him to feel more pain.

Landing three solid punches on the nose of the creature, he heard an audible crunch. The cat released his arm crying out in pain, which gave Ben the chance to roll away and get up from the ground.

His left arm was now throbbing in pain and he was not sure if it had been broken from the creature biting him and was thinking it must be at least fractured.

[Notice] [Skill: Pain Suppression has increased! Pain Suppression Level 7!]

With Enhanced Form still active, he jumped back to put some distance between the attacking cat and him.

Beb was not used to the extra strength that the Enhanced Form spell provided and accidentally launched himself a good twenty feet back and almost fell again when he landed.

Ben quickly cast his new spell [Mana Javelin] and tossed it at the slowly approaching cat.

The way the cat beast was crouched down it left its back exposed, allowing the javelin to pierce it near the top of its back right leg. This angered and further injured the beast causing it to growl loudly in pain.

This new injury seemed to provoke it into changing tactics and it decided to charge at, Ben again.

He wanted to take out his sword, but the creature's speed brought it within feet of him before he could act. His Enhanced Form allowed him to reach out and catch the front legs of the profound beast as it sailed through the air at him.

When he clamped down on the legs he was unaware his [iron grip] skill had activated. The weight of the creature hit him and took him off his feet while he squeezed his hold on its thrashing front legs. Ben held on as tightly as he could in an attempt to put himself out of reach of the snapping fangs.

While he was pushing the cat-like creature back it began to yelp and struggle to get out of Ben's grip. It nipped at Ben's arms while frantically trying to twist away from him.

This gave Ben the chance to roll the creature on its side and slam it against a tree next to where they were fighting. The beast seemed to be in more pain as the seconds went by, but Ben continued his death grip on the beast. He mercilessly smashed the large cat against the tree trunk without restraint.

His left arm was still in throbbing in pain, but the adrenaline-fueled by his fear and anger allowed him to continue to fight back. After slamming the cat against that tree about ten times, he heard a couple of distinctive sounds.

*Snap!*

*Snap!*

The cat screamed out in pain as both of its front legs were broken, Ben had been holding onto. The broken legs now felt like elastic in his grip without the leg bones to support them. All that Ben could feel in his hands was fleshy muscle surrounding shards of crushed bone.

When Ben understood what had happened, he twist the broken leg he was holding in his good right hand and pulled back with all his might. The sound of tearing flesh could be heard as he ripped the front leg off of the injured creature. Blood shot out like a fountain onto Ben as he released the creature.

The profound beast suddenly lost its mind with pain and began thrashing and rolling around on the forest floor in agony.

Now able to get to his feet and draw his sword with his good right arm, Ben watched and timed the movements of the trashing cat.

With a couple quick trusts when it momentarily stopped, he stabbed down and pierce his sword through its chest killing the beast.

Ben dropped his sword as he plopped onto his butt from exhaustion. As the pain in his left arm slowly returned, he began to cast mending touch on it.

He took out an apple and ate it to help regenerate his lost Qi and Mana from the battle.

He also still had the gold ring with health regeneration on his hand so between it and his Mending Touch he was able to heal his fractured arm over the next twenty minutes.

Ben stood up feeling a little better now that he caught his breath and healed his arm. When he saw the recognizable notification icon had appeared again and was flashing, he opened it.

[Notice] [Skill: Herbalist Aura Vision has increased! Herbalist Aura Vision Level 3!]

[Notice] [Skill: Analyze has increased! Analyze Level 6!]

[Notice] [Skill: Pain Suppression has increased! Pain Suppression Level 9!]

[Notice] [Spell: Enhanced Form has increased! Enhanced Form: Apprentice Level 8!]

[Notice] [Spell: Mana Javelin has increased! Mana Javelin: Apprentice Level 2!]

[Notice] [Skill: Iron Grip has increased! Iron Grip Level 5!]

[Notice] [You have learned a new skill! Grappling Level 1!]

[Notice] [Skill: Grappling has increased! Grappling Level 2!]

'Hey, take a look at this! There is nothing like a good old fashion fight to the death in the forest for some serious gains! Right? Man, this was some scary shit, I really need to get stronger.'

Ben wiped the cold sweat off his forehead when he realized how dangerous this fight was for him. Looking up, he saw the dead cat and walked over to it. He grabbed it by the back legs and drug it out into the clearing.

Ben used his skinning knife along with his passive Victus Zoologist skill to skin the beautiful looking plush red fur from the dead profound beast.

He was amazed at how much this fur reminded him of a Tiger from Earth. Even though it reminded him of a tiger there were some differences. The black stripes were much thinner on the fur and the dark blood red fur was much different from the usual light orange color of an Earth Tiger.

He sold the carcass to the system and decided to keep the fur and the creature's core.

After a battle like the one he just went through, he felt he wanted to do something special with the fur and core later on. He would keep them as a trophy to remember he needed to improve himself.

_____________________________

He was pleasantly surprised to make 500g from only selling the carcass. He could only think the creature must be a rare find. With his Victus Zoologist knowledge of this world's animal after he looked it over he could tell what the species was and the habitat it prefers to live in, but not if it were a rare hard to find creature.

With a shrug, he gave up wondering why he made so much money and stored the fur and core away in his inventory.

"Now for my real reward!" Ben said under his breath as he walked over to the fruit tree and plucked the two fruits. He stored them in his inventory and decided to make his way back to his stone tower outpost.

_____________________________

On the way back, Ben killed two weaker profound beasts and even found another spirit plant. As the forest began to grow darker he walked into the newly built tower and placed the bar across the door.

Sitting at the table, Ben brought out one of the fruits and saved the other one to see if he could scan and grow it with a Spirit Farm later. Bringing the fruit to his mouth Ben began to eat it.

It had a sweet and tart taste that reminded him of kiwis which he always had liked. In the center of the fruit, he found a round seed the size of a small gumball that he also saved in his inventory.

As Ben sat there wondering if the fruit had truly enhanced his bones, he began to feel a heat begin to spread throughout his body that continued to grow hotter.

Ben stumbled upstairs and laid down on one of the beds while grinding his teeth in pain. It felt like every bone in his body was currently being baked in an oven.

For the next thirty minutes, he lay in a pool of sweat trying not to scream out from the ever-increasing pain he felt.

Without realizing it, he had passed out from the pain and woke up a couple hours later. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a long fang embedded between the links of his chain-mail on the sleeve of his left arm. After the fight earlier and the walk back to the tower, he had not even realized it was there until now.

His Iron Grip allowed him to pull it out of the mangled area of his chain-mail armor. He placed it in his inventory and took out the stone block that he damaged while testing out Mana Javelin.

Ben wanted to repeat the test he had tried before when he hurt his hand using the Enhanced Form spell for the first time to punch a stone block. Even if he hurt his hand, Ben still wanted to gauge how much his bones had changed from the fruit since then.

Ben cast Enhanced Form and threw a hard punch out that hit the hole in the stone block. The results were like he had smashed it with a giant sledgehammer.

The stone was reduced to fist size chunks from the blow and the only damage he suffered was that his knuckles were bleeding from the scraped off skin.

When his fist had hit the stone he could feel the additional weight behind it. It felt like when you swing a heavy hammer and can feel the weight as it travels forward to drive the nail home.

Placing the stone fragments into his inventory he sat down at the table and held his arm out straight and allowed it to drop to the table without any resistance.

*Bang!*

When his arm hit the table it shook and wobbled from the blow and sounded like he had dropped a cinder block onto it.

"I guess that description was true my bones do feel like they have turned into iron now."

Just for fun, Ben opened up the system store and went through the Earth products and bought a scale like those you see in a doctor's office with the sliding counterweights for 10 gold coins.

It took him a minute to get the hang of it and when the scale balanced out it read he now weighed 256 lbs.

'I have never weighed over 185 lbs. in the past few years and now I weigh 71 lbs more. I guess this should go to show how much bone density I accumulated from the fruit. Maybe I should look for some type of RPG skill next that makes my skin more resistant to damage?' He thought with a slight smile on his face.