Aric could hear his guardian ughing loudly in his head as he rubbed his cheek while he… remained partly mortified. How much energy did the girl use to have someone on the Wood Temper Rank’s cheek burning with pain? And what was with those echoes? It was like the woods themselves were repeating the sound for dramatic effect, constantly repeating the sound they’d just heard whilst staring at the boy with wide eyes.

  “What was that for?” Aric squealed.

  “Snap out of it, Alistair!” the girl whisper-yelled into his face, “I don’t know what sort of disappointment you got out of this but I frankly don’t care. This forest has been giving me the creeps ever since we killed this thing and I forgot to ask the st time the Purified Zone was… well, ‘purified.’ We’ve not seen any Aether Beasts and st I checked, demons are fond of eating them and…”

  “Demons eat Aether Beasts? Doesn’t it make more sense for the Aether Beasts to run away from demons instead?” Aric wondered.

  “No, Alistair. They eat them. My uncle told me a story of when he found a demon ingesting a WonderBuck. And I found that creepy since you’d need a mouth at least three times the circumference of your waist and WonderBucks shoot wind out of their horns,” the girl rambled in a panic.

  Aric’s eyes were wide as he tried to imagine what she was saying. He’d read about wonderbucks in books and heard tales of their delicious meat, but the thought of a demon trying to swallow one whole did disastrous things to his imagination. “That sounds very creepy indeed. Let me pack up the corpse of the Bone Tiger so we can get moving.”

  Aric rushed to the back of the Bone Tiger’s body where he brought his sword down on the base of its tail—which was a rather intricate and flexible chain of bones. The sword cnged and sent painful vibrations through his body before he dropped the sword to the ground.

  “Spawn of a…” the boy cursed through gritted teeth.

  “What are you doing?” Scarlett asked as she made her way to the boy with a look of curiosity.

  “The Bone Tiger told me to use its tail to scare away anything that might attack us out there. I never realised it would be so hard to…”

  Before Aric could finish his sentence, the girl yanked at the chain of bone. With a subtle squelch, the chain came loose and rolled out of the creature, ending in a unique stub, almost as if it were meant to come out of the creature’s skeleton.

  The girl gasped, “You really did talk to this thing.”

  “You doubted?”

  “I’ve heard legends. Old stories of creatures that grant hunters a part of themselves. When they do, that part breaks off them naturally, like it was never attached to them from the beginning. They are just stories though. My uncle used to tell me these things when I was having trouble sleeping,” the girl expined.

  “Is that the same uncle you that taught you about Storage Devices?” Aric wondered.

  Scarlett drew her lips into a taut line, then answered, “Yes… He was a RuneSmith.”

  “Where is he now?”

  With a sigh, she said, “He died not too long ago. Shortly before that, he told me to make my own decisions and that my life was mine to do as I please. Turns out, he was the reason the mercenary group that trained me never sent me out on… some missions.”

  Aric approached the beast and willed it into his Storage Bracelet, then put his hand around hers and said, “He sounds like a good man.”

  Scarlett raised a brow at him, “You don’t like assassins.”

  “They kill people, Scarlett.”

  “No, they are hired to kill people. They don’t ask questions and they do their jobs at the risk of their own lives. That’s what assassins do,” the girl countered.

  The boy sighed, “Maybe someday we’ll agree on something regarding assassins. For now, let’s get back to Melbourne.”

  The girl nodded and handed the tiger’s tail to Aric. Together, they rushed for the city. Aric kept his senses spread out in search of any signs of the demons the Bone Tiger had warned him about.

  His beating heart was now slowing down and was nearly fully calm when he caught sight of something bck moving through the woods. There, at the edge of his wide field of cirvoyant view, he saw it.

  Aric’s blood went cold and his breath hitched.

  Scarlett didn’t miss the sudden change. Her new form of scouting when Aric was around was to simply observe him—and she’d been watching him closely. Ever since knowing he had an ability that made scouting a lot easier, she’d even stopped scouting forward when they went out on hunts.

  “You’ve seen something, haven’t you?”

  The boy nodded.

  Scarlett swallowed, “Where is it?”

  “It’s about half a kilometre to our right,” Aric responded, “You’re not going to attack it, are you?”

  “Of course not. We’re heading straight for the Holy Barr—“

  “GRRRR…” went a feral sound, reverberating behind them.

  Aric didn’t need to look back to see the set of footprints following them behind. There was no demon there… but the footfalls and haggard breathing that came from its running were all too undeniable.

  “They’re cloaked,” Aric whispered… and that was the st he saw of Scarlett.

  The assassin girl shot off like a bullet, running faster than Aric had ever seen in his life.

  “Wait for me,” Aric bolted as well.

  [ It’s nice to watch adventurers run for their lives ] Alia mused.

  Aric saw Scarlett at the edge of his vision and lost all words. [ It’s called adrenaline, Aric. A result of the innate instinct of self-preservation, something I wish you had. ]

  The boy shook his head and made a run for it. Aether rushed through his system, pushing him to new heights. At some point, he was zipping through the woods faster than he could tell where the trees were. The woods groaned as the demons surrounding them surged with the determination to kill them.

  Melbourne’s Holy Barrier was still quite a distance away. There was no time to waste. The abominable beasts were scattered throughout the woods, now rushing to cut him off as he ran.

  Trees bent, branches swayed and it felt as though the very world around them was screaming in repulsion as the Tainted Ones ravaged the pure nds.

  Aric stowed the Bone Tiger’s tail only for a second before pulling it back out. It was enough time for the demons to gain the confidence to disable whatever was cloaking them.

  Dotting the woods like flies on the body of a dead cat, demons of all shapes and sizes filled the woods—like a pgue, each grotesque figure turning their attention to the fleeing pair. ‘What are this many demons doing in the Purified Zone?’ he panted.

  He brandished the chain of bone and allowed his body to step into the agile Dance of the Serpent.

  Time seemed to for the boy, then his body grew light…

  …and everything changed.

  This was the first time Aric was using a weapon fundamentally different from a bde. He’d used the Dance of the Mantis before with daggers but that change had been obvious. This one was less so.

  Aric’s breath slowed and his eyes saw more than he normally did. For the first time in his life, this dance felt right. The chain of bone allowed him the slithering flexibility of a Serpent’s coils. Three demons dove from the trees, aiming to catch him as he dashed under them.

  Without slowing down, the bde danced among them, its chain coiling around them and caressing their unsuspecting bck hides as the boy executed a series of impossible gymnastics that embodied the movements of a great serpent coiling around its prey.

  It was like time had frozen to watch an elegant dancer perform.

  The sword sang and five demons were shredded to pieces and destroyed by the soul-attacking capabilities of the bde before any of them had the time to understand what was happening.

  Aric tugged on the bde and pulled it to himself, getting ready for the next wave. In the next moment though, his face went pale. He was shooting forward very fast but even then, he hadn’t expected this.

  Two kilometres ahead, through the cirvoyant faucet of Thomper’s power, he noticed someone who shouldn’t have been close to him. Scarlett was sitting on the ground struggling with what appeared to be a stubborn vine.

  When Aric willed the vine to let go, he reeled back, a thundering headache hammering as a result.

  [ That vine caught her on purpose. It’s been infected by Dark Magic. You’ll have to cut it physically. ]

  Demons crawled through the trees and surrounded the stranded former assassin. She pulled bdes seemingly out of nowhere and thwarted the eager demons with a few expert throws and cuts… and while Scarlett was still as deadly as ever, she was still scared. It was written all over her face as she struggled. Why else would she have left Aric so fast if not for fear?

  Aric couldn’t tell how long it would be before she was completely overwhelmed. Not to mention the fact that more demons were coming.

  ‘It’s not even nighttime,’ he breathed.

  [ Demons have nothing against the sun other than the fact that it exposes them when they would like to hunt in darkness—unrestrained. ] Alia’s voice rumbled.