A rather rge and fairly extravagant carriage could be seen speeding through a forest. It was being pulled by two wolves with glistening white fur, both of which were rger than your average adult horse.

  There were two males at the front of the carriage. Steering was a young man with spiky brown hair and pierg purple eyes, but his most distinctive attributes were his animal-like features. Everything from his long, pointy ears to his plump protruding lips to his golden-brown fur made him look as though he were half man and half monkey.

  Beside him was a young boy who looked no older than 10. He had long, shoulder-length curly jet-bck hair and was dressed in a pin white t-shirt and pin bck cargo pants tucked into the top of his bck boots.

  "Hunting magical beasts in the sed rank is getting too easy." The boy on the right said casually, looking off to the side at nothing in particur.

  "Then hunt rank three beasts from tomorrow." The Ape like man zily answered as he sat with oretched across the rest of the seat and the reigns leisurely hanging from his right hand.

  Aed smile appeared on the boy's face when he heard that. "Rank three beasts, huh…"

  The young boy smiliedly was Ace, and the furry man sitting zily beside him was Wukong. Their group had been travelling smoothly for two weeks now.

  At first, Wukong did as he inally pnned. He forced all three children to find their own food each day, but between Killian's ck of actual bat ability, the ease with which Ace was hunting rank one and two beasts and Alissa's willio do nothing, Wukohe o make a ge.

  From that day on, Ace was responsible for hunting enough food for the rest of the group. Killian, who had decided to choose the axe as his primary on, was told to cut wood every day whilst Ace was away, and Alissa spent that time sparring with Wukong. Well, calling it sparring was generous. Wukong would lower his strength to match hers and also use twin daggers to imitate her.

  It was during those sparring sessions that Alissa could fully appreciate how talented Wukong was. As an assassin, she'd been trained i of close bat to a very high standard, especially when it came to wielding daggers. So on their first day, when she saw Wukong wielding daggers for the first time, she could see he was an amateur. But after a few minutes, she could actually see his improvements, and after 10 minutes, he was no worse than her.

  What surprised her most was that it almost felt like she was fighting herself. Wukong had copied everything from how she held her daggers to her form when sshing and even dodging.

  After a few days, she felt as if Wukong's ability to wield a dagger had pletely eclipsed her own.

  Seeing her mood plummet, Wukong decided to expin. "In terms of actual teique, this king is, at best, equal to you. The reason this king domihe flow of the battle is experiehis king has over ten times as mubat experience as you.

  Even after this king limits his strength to match yours and uses a on he's not used to, those years of battle experience are still there. Thinking you could beat me is just pure, unwarranted arrogan your part."

  Despite his words being blunt, they seemed to work as intended. Alissa stopped trying to win and focused on learning as much as possible, and at least in terms of teique and experience, she improved far faster than she had in the past.

  Each day after they finished eating, Alissa and Killian would then start their mage training whilst the carriage moved. It took a little while for them to uand what they were doing, but with their ialent, they learnt to seheir respective elemental essences and absorb them after a few measly days.

  Whilst they did that, Ace wasn't zing around. He would sit at the front of the carriage with Wukong, asking him as many questions as possible so that he could get a better uanding of his new world.

  After he felt he'd bothered Wukong for long enough, Ace would turn his focus to his [observation hak, which still had room for improvement after his breakthrough to the 2nd rank.

  "Just try not to go a yourself killed!" Wukong said, notig Ace's appareement. "I'm the one who'll have to answer your mother if you go kick the bucket."

  "I won't!" Ace said, trying to suppress his anticipation. "By the way…"

  "Shoo shoo!" Wukong interrupted Ace as he motioned for Ace to leave. "This king hasn't got the energy to listen to your non-stop questions tonight!"

  "Tch. Fine, I'll go!" Ace said, disappearing into the back of the carriage.

  'These two are w hard as usual.' Ace thought to himself wheiced Killian and Alissa sitting cross-legged on the carriage floor, deep iation.

  "I hope you weren't troubling Mr Wukong too much?" Milianna said, looking up from the top she was halfway through knitting.

  "No trouble at all. We were just talking about my training." Aly replied.

  Lance, who was sitting beside Milianna, looked at Aot believing him but said nothing.

  Ace then took a seat beside Killian and Alissa and began his haki training.

  Land Milianna didn't have to ask to uand what he was doing. As the only people who khe truth about his abilities, they knew he was training his '[observation hak', as he called it.

  The only thing Land Milianna didn't uand was why he had access to his '[armament]' and '[observation]', but Milianna didn't.

  To that, all Ace could do was feign ignorance. How could he tell them he already knew how to use it from his past life?

  At the same time, at the front of the carriage, a curious light fshed in Wukong's eyes as Ace began training. 'What exactly is that brat up to?'

  The following day, when the carriage made its usual m stop for the kids to do their training, Ace hugged Milianna befrabbing the give he took from the assassin he killed a for his hunt.

  "Rank three beasts today, huh? This should be fun!"

  Ace appeared pletely carefree as he leisurely strolled through the forest, but the truth was he would spread his [observation] every minute or so, not only to search for his prey but also to avoid being caught off guard by anyone or anything ued.

  "There you are!"

  As Ace found his target, he shot forward, not b to hide his presence. "Finally, a real challenge!"

  It wasn't clear if it was out of excitement or hunger, but Ace licked his lips when he saw what looked like a 10-foot hippo with dark brown fur and a single horn above its eyes zing around under a tree.

  When it noticed him, the hippo hurriedly rolled to its feet and began growling. Seeing the little human igs warning, the wild hippo charged toward the child it'd decided to make lunch.

  Not daring to hold back against a beast of a higher rank than him, Ace jumped as high as he could in the air in an attempt to use gravity to increase the momentum of his attack.

  As he desded, a hint of a smile could be seen on Ace's face, 'so this is ops felt charging in with nothing but his give.'

  Ace coated the bde of his give in [hak, swinging it down with all his strength, doing his best to imitate the man he respected most from his previous life!

  But as the give and horn made tact, shock could be seen on Ace's face. "Shit, that thing's strohan I thought!"

  Despite using everything he had, Ace was still forced to take five steps back befaining his footing.

  And if that wasn't enough of a surprise, his oppo didn't take a siep back. "A magical beast of the 3rd rank is no joke."

  Whilst Ace was getting over his shock, the hippo seemed to be hesitating as it looked at the child in front of it. It expected to send the boy flying with o, but instead, the child it saw as no more than an easy meal mao stop its charge dead in its tracks.

  A magical beast's instincts teo be superior to humans. It's how they tell whether or not they should run from other more powerful beasts in the wild.

  The horned hippo's instincts told it that the ugly ape in front of it was weaker than it was, but as they were about to csh, his instincts fred up, warning it of danger, but now its instincts were once again saying the weird-looking ape was too weak to pose a threat.

  It had never experienced anything as fusing in its life and was struggling to decide whether it should escape or not, but when it saw the excitement on Ace's face as if this e was the predator and it was the prey, it growled in anger.

  "HAHAHA, E!" Ace roared iement.