"That was..." Cade mumbled from behind as Aurelius launched forward.

He maneuvered through the trees like he had done so many times before, only ten times faster. The trees were reduced to nothing more than blurred colors in his eyes. The wind whistled behind him. Not even it could catch up.

The boom had been distant. Probably around ten thousand meters.

When he finally arrived on the scene, he saw a deep crater that led to darkness, and out of it, came flying a large white bird, unlike the one he'd fought once before. Its body was plump like a common bird, but its eyes were shining red dots that matched the color around its circular mouth which dripped blood.

The bird stopped after rushing out of the crater. Aurelius' brows furrowed once the bird didn't flap it wings. It was floating. No. Standing. It was materialization clear as day. Of course. The thing was a cursed beast.

Aurelius looked at the surroundings and saw a path of broken forest. What had the cursed beast fought? And for quite a while at that. The amount of damage was huge.

'Whatever. This is my chance,' Aurelius thought and was about to clasp his arms together when another emerged from the crater's darkness.

It was a ripped but huge four-legged monster with no face. The being oozed a shadowy aura and once it opened its maw, there came a deep roar from behind a set of pure white teeth. The roar seemed to echo inside Aurelius' skull.

Two cursed beasts? Fighting? How?

Then the thing leaped into the air. In return, the white bird swung its winds in a pattern and a series of blades shot off. The shadowy creature had to dodge, but it didn't. It simply went on ahead and the ethereal blades broke against its skin.

Aurelius breathed deeply. It was what Aurelius had done with his arms once. When he took the enhancer against the twins, he'd coated his hands in essence unconsciously. He had tried repeating it after the fact, but it had been impossible. What he had done that day was outside the restrictions of essence usage. It wasn't a shield, nor was it reinforcement. It was nothing. Nothing but essence. But that wasn't possible. It made no sense.

Aurelius started circling the area as the two curse beasts wrecked everything in sight. The white bird hadn't moved, simply shooting off ethereal blades with a technique that seemed to resemble the one Gabriel had taught Aurelius. He had abandoned the technique since it wasn't fast enough, but the bird used it with simple movements. There was no need for the creation of the essence mass that long-range essence usage required. The bird simply materialized the blades and shot them off.

But how could a materialization move so fast? Wouldn't it just get out of control and disappear?

Aurelius looked on with wonder as the two pure naturals fought. The shadowy beast's movements were almost instantaneous. It almost looked like it wasn't moving at all. It just appeared from place to place.

Aurelius caught sight of Cade and Balgair and held up at hand. They saw him and stood back.

He needed to make things quick, so none would escape. So he waited and waited, moving to cover each time the battle got too close. Eventually, the battle slowed down. Even cursed beasts got tired. Aurelius wasn't sure if he had been noticed. He'd done his best to conceal his presence, but maybe they had seen him and just didn't care.

But he had seen them for sure. And he had learned their patterns.

The shadowy beast moved with two legs making a move first and its body staying still until the last moment when it pushed with its other two feet and launched himself. It was a kind of awkward delayed movement. But it was effective since it made its speed unpredictable.

What wasn't unpredictable, though, were the periods he took when loading each movement.

Aurelius clasped his hands together, hidden in between trees and started tracking the shadowy beast. He waited until it was facing him so that the white bird would be looking away from him.

Then Aurelius started building up essence carefully. He couldn't hold off the energy of the beam for more than a few seconds and if it shot off too soon, his advantage would be gone. He had to release it right when the chance came.

When the beast appeared in a spot to avoid an ethereal blade and stopped to launch forward, a beam shot forth, and without having a chance to react, the shadowy beast's head ripped clean off.

There was a moment of silence as trees stopped falling and the earth ceased cracking. The white bird looked on in silence, and as it was about to love to devour its prey, it became prey.

Aurelius shot forth, the ground beneath his feet cracking. Aurelius took to the air with a push from his left foot and navigated with his arms through the air while the wind fluttered his clothes.

The white bird shook and turned with a wing up, but the next thing it knew was Aurelius holding onto the back of its head as a blade gently sunk into its neck.

The materialization under its feet disappeared while its shining eyes went dull. It fell to the ground amongst the broken forest, Aurelius landing on top of its belly. When the blade in its neck disappeared, the wound became obstructed by a flood of blood.

Aurelius walked off of the beast and looked around. For hundreds of meters, there was nothing but fallen trees, and beyond that, lay a range of mountains encircling the area.

He caught sight of Cade and Balgair, walking into the scene with expressions of awe. Only then did Aurelius fully realize what he'd done. He had killed two cursed beasts like it was nothing. He was about to smile, but then there was a pang in his chest. He felt pride from killing now?

He tried to say something to Cade who approached, but his mind went blank.

"Good job," Cade said as she hopped over a tree. It seemed she had realized to grab the vials from camp after the dust cloud went up. "I can take it from here. You can go rest while I collect the enhancers. We'll have plenty left over now."

Aurelius nodded and walked off to the side. He looked up to the sky. Clouds were covering it all. The day had become gray.

"Aww, man. It's beginning to drizzle. The camp is gonna get soaked?" Balgair who had seemed to be lost in thought whined, grabbing Aurelius' attention. It was then that Aurelius felt it too. Cold droplets on his neck, like a shake awake from dreams.

"It's fine." Aurelius put up a hand. "But you were thinking about it too, right?"

Balgair knocked it off and put on a serious face. "Yeah, something is off here. We should get going as soon as possible and set up camp elsewhere."

"But how did the cursed beasts end up here?" Aurelius asked. "This is too close to Mircrest and two in the same place?" He shook his head. "It doesn't add up."

Balgair stopped breathing.

"What is it?" Aurelius asked fearfully.

"You remember what I said about exiting a little on the northwest side of the border?"

"Yeah?" Aurelius said slowly.

The issue with traveling through the least densely populated areas of Mircrest was predictability, so they had deviated from the path a little illogically just in case.

"But these beasts drew us east. And they came from the east. From the path, someone would assume us to take." Balgair looked down at his feet and then back up. "These beasts were bait. And we fell into the trap."

Aurelius froze much like Balgair. They listened to the surroundings and looked around without moving their heads.

"What's up?" Cade asked as she walked up to them. She'd probably been too busy collecting the enhancers to hear the conversation. The box in her hands now held a full set of enhancers. Eight in total. More than enough. Maybe.

Aurelius gulped and looked to the side, meeting Cade's calm eyes. "The cursed beasts might have been released by someone."

It was then that Cade froze as well. She opened her mouth, yet no words came.

Aurelius' words held much to unpack. Like the fact that they now faced a group able to restrain two cursed beasts well enough to transport them to a far-off location as well as being led by a strategic genius.

Now they had no idea what to do. Instincts said run, but if they did, might that alert someone? But if someone was listening? They would have already heard. And they had. Surely. In conclusion, they were already surrounded. They could only wait, frozen in place.

Then came applause.

If he had not predicted it, Aurelius' heart might have stopped as men who all seemed to be made of stone walked firmly out of the forest all around. The men wore black uniforms with white target circles on their chests. When he thought no more would come, their number only increased. Ten, fifteen, twenty. No. Twenty-five. No. Thirty. No!

Aurelius turned fully to see the man who approached with an unreadable expression while clapping his hands together at regular intervals.

He seemed younger than the others but still well put together with well-textured short black hair, and he had a jawline as sharp as a blade. His mouth was a straight line but expressed nothing in particular much like his eyes that were simply dark. There was no particular emotion there. An array of emotions was there for sure, but none tainted his sight. Those eyes were pure darkness simply out of nature. They were what Aurelius imagined death to be.

"You didn't disappoint me, Aurelius, Son of Ares," the man said after ceasing the applause and stopping a fair distance away from the trio. "You are strong and you are quite intelligent as well. Though my expectations were quite high, you have surpassed them," the man remarked with his hand on his chin. He then raised the hand and his lips curved into something that maybe could have been called a smile before slowly saying, "You ought to be proud. Your father would be. I am sure of it."