“How are you feeling?” Yu asks Wyn.

“Tell you the truth, I’m kind of excited,” Wyn answers, perusing the creatures ahead.

“Good! Let’s kill something already!” Mira says, oblivious to the deeper implications of the conversation.

The garden is lush green with some trees and patches of flowers here and there. The area’s bright as if there were a sun in the sky. Yu wants to ask Christine to join him, but by the time he can find her, she has taken off with a group of five other souls. Taking off, they make sure no one steals their essence by staying as far from others as possible. They keep going right until the floor’s red wall is visible, before beginning to make their way to the north barricade.

After stepping over a line of rocks, they reach a pond with sand surrounding it. On the sand, there are many crab-like creatures. These creatures are five times the size of an adult edible crab. The striking features are the scissor claws and sharp spiky legs. The crabs remind Wyn of the early weak enemies in an MMORPG.

“They look edible, so let me burn them! Meal’s on me, boys!” Mira then summons a fire pillar from underneath the sand, burning one of them to crisp. She then proceeds to laugh in enjoyment.

Yu joins in. With his crescent blade, he slashes a crab open. The dead creatures slowly disintegrate, turning into essence which gets immediately absorbed by the two. Checking their bands, the creatures they just defeated are known as the crabbos and are worth only two essence each. Tapping on the name of the water-element creature gives a short description, “Mess with the crabbo, get the stabbo!”

“Cringe,” Wyn says, while looking at Mira’s screen.

“Why are you not killing them?” Mira asks.

“I wanted to observe their behavior first, but you two stormed in too fast before I could say anything.”

Instead of attacking, Wyn squats down to take a closer look at a crabbo. The creature doesn’t strike him. The flexible leg joints allow it to scoop up sand, feasting on it with its mouth. Wyn summons a small rock and flicks it softly at the crabbo. Suddenly, the crabbo slashes at Wyn with its longer scissor claw. Anticipated, he successfully dodges backward. The crabbo quickly retrieves into the pond afterwards.

Around the same time, Mira wants to practice with her whip. She’s struggling to wield the whip with enough force to kill a crabbo. As a result, an angry mob of crabbos go after her, snipping their claws as they move. Wyn tells Mira to stand still before creating an ascending cyclone around her, blowing the mob away. They disperse after landing.

“The weight should be at the tip with the metal egg there, right? Try striking downward,” Wyn suggests.

The three leave the pond for a nearby area that has small trees spreading throughout. Mira’s goal is to break a tree with her whip or she would not proceed. Wyn and Yu also want to take this time to familiarize themselves with their weapons.

Wyn has become more comfortable with melee and ranged attacks using the chakrams, thanks to the cross handles in the middle. In lieu of relying solely on his physical strength, he wishes to boost his melee attacks with the powerful cyclone abilities going forward.

Yu, on the other hand, is making combinations out of his water attacks and his weapon. He can now jump and stay afloat with a single stronger water stream, then strike a powerful slash at landing with the blade. The strike, though, hurts his arms. While thinking of a way to reduce the impact it has on his arms, he accidentally summons a water fountain at the blade tip right after landing. This, in turn, sends his weapon flying. The unintentional discovery gives him an idea. Similarly to creating a water orb in his palm, he tries it on the blade. The blade turns blue and when he swings it, a trail of water follows. Now whenever it hits something, there’s a splash of water on impact. Wyn and Mira applaud Yu for his progress. Even then, Yu seems disappointed as he still can’t perform a water jump strike without losing grip of his blade. He can see its usefulness in clearing out enemies, more so than a splash.

Inspired by Yu, Mira attempts her own infusion attack. To gain more control of the whip, she ties a portion of it to her hand. Infusing her fire power into the metal egg creates an explosion upon impact. With that, she’s able to break several trees. The bigger ones, she sets them ablaze. She hugs Yu to express her gratitude before proceeding with an evil laugh.

“Now, let’s teach those crabbos a lesson!” Her eyes glow.

“Why do you hate crabs so much? Have you had them before?” Yu asks, only to get a friendly slap on the upper arm by Mira.

Returning to the pond, Yu and Mira are having a blast hitting the crabbos with everything they’ve learned so far. Since Wyn can’t figure how to get the weapons to work well with his elemental powers yet, he doesn’t want to fight a carapaced enemy. Rather, he looks up for something else he can fight while remaining in the same area as the other two. That’s when he comes across a peculiar slim, long-bodied white bird with an equally thin and long pointy yellow beak. The bird’s circling the pond, likely searching for a meal.

Wyn launches a cyclone at the bird. To his surprise, it dodges his attack by flying up higher. In the air, the bird spins itself at such speed that it’s starting to look like a thin drill. The bird then shoots itself directly at him. Since the miss, Wyn has been charging up for a sturdy rock pillar to launch underneath where he stands. When the bird gets close enough, he shoots himself up in the air, using the momentum from the emergence of the pillar. The beak is caught in the pillar, drilling. The pillar, although unstable on the sand, remains standing due to the weak impact and the creature’s light weight. Wyn seizes the opportunity to release the chakrams at the bird. Being his first time throwing the weapons in midair, one of them misses, while the other hits the beak then bounces off. Shortly after the attack, he suddenly realizes that he has no way to land safely. With little time to think, he opts for a downward cyclone dash aimed at the bird. He resummons the chakrams back in his hands, then crashes into the enemy, who’s still drilling the pillar. The impact is so powerful that he pierces through its body. But because it was a speedy descent, Wyn himself faceplants the sand. The rock pillar disappears the moment he kisses the sand. Yu and Mira run over to check on Wyn. As they pull him up on each side, they notice one of the chakrams is stuck on his chest. Mira tells him to dematerialize them quickly.

“It hurts a lot but I’ll live, I think. At least, I’ve learned two things from this,” Wyn speaks, softly touching the gash on his chest – the bloodless wound resembles a cut gelatin. His face also suffers from dry white abrasive wounds.

“The rock pillar can stay up for as long as I want it too, with enough concentration. The other thing is, I need to take better care of my face.”

After absorbing ten essence, it’s revealed that the cyclone bird’s called the drillbill with a useless description, “A bill that can drill.”

“We’d better not read the description from now on. What a load of crap. And was that a bill or a beak? What’s the difference? I thought it was a beak all along,” Wyn weakly yammers, after Yu and Mira lay him down by the rocks.

“Yu and I will continue slaughtering the crabbos. Will leave when you’re healed, ok?” Mira says, to which Wyn responds with an okay sign.

Wyn’s gash wound isn’t too deep. It heals within less than two hours. The team’s now on the hunt for more creatures to fight, preferably something stronger than the crabbos. Currently, Wyn, Yu, and Mira have collected ten, twenty-eight, and thirty-three essence, respectively.

“You need to catch up, grandpa!” Yu says.

“What matters is passing the test. Not too concerned yet.”

Ahead lies a sizable hill. In the middle of it is a vast hole much like a rabbit’s burrow, stretching as wide as the hill itself. This reminds Wyn of a certain movie scene, which makes him feel uneasy. Yu and Mira insist on exploring. They promise Wyn that if it gets too dangerous, they would leave immediately.

Inside is a tunnel that leads to a hall with two more branching tunnels. As they dwell deeper into the right tunnel, the light from outside disappears. Mira ties the whip around her hand and arm, so she can infuse fire into the metal egg for a makeshift light source. They reach another hall resembling a basin chamber, devoid of branching tunnels. What they see down below is a horrifying scene of rabbit-like creatures consuming each other with their long sharp teeth. Essence is sparkling all around the dry basin chamber.

“Bingo!” Yu seems excited. “I can drown them, then we can share the essence!”

“The basin is too large.” Wyn is worried.

“Kill the bastards, Yu!” Mira’s bloodlust is rising again.

“I have a bad feeling about this…,” Wyn says.

Wyn is right. No matter how many water fountains Yu creates, the water disappears too soon. Making matters worse, his fountains push several of the creatures upward. They’re by now alerted of the three’s presence. Prepared, Wyn fires a fully charged-up ascending cyclone into the basin, before grabbing both Yu and Mira and making a run for it. When they reach the first tunnel, Wyn propels everyone out with a cyclone dash. The powerful dash sends them out far from the hole.

“Lucky we have you!” Yu smiles.

“Erm guys. We’re not safe yet,” Mira remarks, pointing.

A nest of the rabbit-like creatures are seen hopping toward them ferociously. The creatures of white fur and spots of various colors, have long, sharp rabbit-like teeth. Their ears are unusually long but they look stiff. Without the ears, they’re as tall as Yu’s stomach. With them, they exceed him in height. In tandem with their fluffiness, they give off the illusion of a larger creature.

“Mira, slow them down with your fire pillars! Keep summoning one after another!” Wyn commands. “When they get close, blow them up with your whip!”

“Yu, ready your weapon. Your water jump slash should be good here.”

Wyn stands on a rock pillar, counting a total of eight creatures hopping toward them. Due to their speed, they just pass through Mira’s fire pillars. Wyn asks Mira to switch to projectiles, while he himself hurls rocks at them. The creatures’ stiff ears fold in half, then unfold to reflect away the projectiles. However, a couple of Mira’s attacks land on the bodies of two of them, setting one ablaze and slowing down the other – both still alive.

“Don’t land on them, they’ll reflect your slash. Land on the ground. Send them up with the fountain.”

Yu water jumps, then lands a slash in front of one of them. The creature’s caught in the wide fountain stream. Two unaffected creatures nearby hop toward Yu. Before they get too close, they’re sent flying by Wyn’s charged-up cyclone attack enveloping Yu. Wyn jumps down and springs from the pillar for a cyclone dash at one of the creatures, weapons in his hands. The dash rams into the creature's midbody. Though lodged, the blades don’t cut through. Wyn then extends his arms outward, slicing open the rest with force. He uses the rabbit’s dead carcass to soften the landing, but not without dematerializing the weapons first. He’s quite far away from the rest at the moment.

In the meantime, Mira is facing off two rabbits. She has been able to keep distance with non-stop explosions by whipping the ground. She manages to blow one that gets close enough to her into bits. Turning to the remaining one, miscalculated, the metal egg makes its way to the creature’s ears. The explosion goes off upon impact, but the egg is reflected upward before coming right back at her. Unable to react in time, it hits the wrist on the arm holding the weapon. And though the explosion doesn’t go off, her wrist is broken. Worst yet, the enemy is unharmed.