Only about a week later, shortly after Kai came back and Emerald decided to go next, Mel and Clare were debating about who should evolve first since they were both ready.  They were about to play sticks and webs to decide when Jelin found them and suggested Clare for the one simple and selfish reason of Emerald already being gone and him not liking to be left alone these days.

Both Clare and Mel knew what evolutions they wanted next so there wasn't much of a reason to pay attention to the options and Clare didn't really need him to be there for the half a second it would take her to start her evolution.  Instead, he went to talk to Kai about what all she had seen while away.  She was currently with the humans so it would be a good chance to check on their training, too.

The humans were running around and laughing, other than Ain, as Jelin arrived and it took him a second to realize that Kai was chasing them.  As they started to run around a tree, Lei jumped down from where she was hidden above into their midst.  Most of them dodged out of the way but Ain and one of the boys seemed to miss their chance.

Ain didn't seem to know what to do other than try to stop and backpedal but the boy made an interesting decision to dive under Lei, reach up, and start doing something to her underside that obviously made her uncomfortable.  Ain, on the other hand, although no longer being looked at by Lei, now had to face Kai.  The other children that had gotten away soon showed up to help both of the ones that had gotten trapped.

Two of them went for sliding low kicks at each of Lei's back legs to help the boy under her get back out where the three could face her together.  On the other side, all of the remaining children were trying to give Ain a chance to get out from between the two monsters by throwing fistfuls of dirt and rocks at Kai.  

It was an interesting fight at least and Jelin could tell that the girls were holding back quite a bit against the humans but the humans still put on quite a show and proved innovative in their ways of trying to deal with each situation.  Only Ain didn't ever seem to quite know what to do.  Of course, his girls were just too powerful and managed to win the little semi-fight in the end.

Jelin decided that it was a good time to interrupt and walked up while giving them a round of clapping.

"That was very fun to watch.  You guys did an amazing job.  Both sides.  In fact, I think that, if any of you want to, in about a month or so I might let some of you go on a little errand for me."

"Just an errand?  We do those all the time, though..."

"Haha.  Oh no.  I'm not talking about one of Ain's errands.  I meant out into the forest where you'll have to fight creatures and stuff."

"Oooh. Yay!" "No!"

"Okay, Ain.  What's the problem this time?" <And if you try to say that I'm putting the children in danger, I'll be sorely tempted to start keeping you away from them.  I've obviously prepared for them to be safe and can't just say that to them or they'll lose their excitement.>

"I...because...fine..."

"Great!  Now that that's settled, make sure you guys really get good, okay?  Kai, I'd like to talk with you about your little adventure when you have a moment.  Also, Ain, I think I might have a couple suggestions to help you out here: learn the [Identify] skill and find yourself a weapon.  You're not a monster and obviously have no intention to try and be one so don't act like your body alone can do the same things."

Kai quickly alighted on his shoulder and he stepped away a little so that he wouldn't interfere with whatever they did next.  He tried to get as many details from Kai as he listened to her story about her time watching the large creatures in the deeper forest.  She didn't find anything like their equivalent of an elephant graveyard but she did find their natural predator.

From how she described it it seemed to be a flock of bats or something that appeared and ate one of the creatures to death.  She already warned Emerald about them, too.  They didn't seem interested in her though and only appeared that one night.  Since she returned almost immediately after, she wasn't sure if the bones were still there so Emmy would have more information when she returned.

Jelin thanked her for the story and let her go back to helping the humans train while he started walking around in thought.  If those bats were mindless monsters, kind of like Zaer's drones or his rat, then he wouldn't mind seeing if he could get a few as additional familiars.  In addition, as far as he remembered bats liked to live in caves, so there was a chance of some caverns around that area.

If they could find out whether the bats were monsters or not and where they lived then it might help solve a lot of the worries he'd been having recently.  It would be a little sad to have to completely ruin a natural cave and destroy the ecosystem but just finding one would mean they might be able to get some stone from around the same area.  As Jelin let his thoughts run away with ideas and hopes, he mindlessly moved his body and put what little thought he could spare into training his class skills some more.

At some point while he was thinking and doing random things, the lunch call came and he looked at his status before closing it only to notice that his class area said 'Scout' in it.  He had been trying to act like he thought various classes would act and practice the things they would do while in human form so he didn't remember exactly what he had done to achieve disguising himself as a scout.  It was pretty easy to turn it back to his normal class as it only took a thought but he couldn't make it turn back as easily.

That made him feel happy through lunch for actually managing to do what he wanted to get his class for.  He tried the rest of the afternoon to remember how he had done it or exactly when but didn't actually try it.  He wanted to wait until the morning to actually try since he felt he should focus his actual work on digging and because he hoped that a night's sleep would help him figure it out easier.

He spent the next few mornings working on his class.  He managed to figure out how to disguise it as a 'Scout', 'Hunter', 'Psychic', 'Formist' (whatever that was), and, oddly, 'Royal'.  Once he figured out with the first three that it wasn't as based on what class he was trying to be but on what classes matched his actions at the moment he was trying to change it, he started just trying various things to see what classes it made it look like he had.

The formist class seemed to have something do with his shifting, which he filed away as something to try and learn more about later, while he accidentally turned it to royal in some random way that he couldn't fully figure out.  No matter what he tried to do, though, he couldn't get it to change to some kind of magic class.  He thought of it as good news, though, since he now had three types of experiments to work on with clues about their answers instead of feeling completely clueless about all of it.

Emmy was supposed to be back the next day so he went to sleep that night feeling accomplished and happy in general.  The next morning was even better in a way since they all woke to the cracking sound that he was familiar with even if he hadn't heard it directly in some time.  They all woke up fully and Jelin walked over for the normal check up.