Shh-shh. Shh-shh.

  Evel was stopped, aiming his crossbow at the brush where the rustling could be heard. His back pressed against the rough bark of a darkwood tree, the wood biting at his spine.

  Shh-shh. Shh-shh.

  He waited patiently, his finger twitching over the trigger, and heart frantically beating.

  Pop!

  The head of a squirrel popped out. It stared at him with cheeks bulging with a nut, before quickly scurrying off.

  Haaaaa

  Evel exhaled.

  He looked up at the sky, the sun had slightly shifted. Evel guessed it had been roughly half an hour.

  Now should be a good time.

  Evel took out his compasses and normalized the black one using the red.

  He looked at the difference in where the compass had been pointing, and where it was now pointing.

  The difference was slight, but it was there.

  She seems to be running towards my right, where I had heard a waterfall earlier.

  He did some rough calculations in his mind using the triangle mathematics his mentor had beaten into him. He had never thought it would actually come up useful one day.

  However, the results weren’t very pleasing.

  Dammit, she’s definitely more than seven hours away at the pace I’m going now.

  No, this is just the most pessimistic estimation based on her constantly running at full speed this last half-hour. If she had slowed down for any reason, then she could be much closer.

  Evel had no idea her specific circumstances, but having a range put his mind at ease a little.

  With this new information, he switched his direction to be further right.

  He knew which direction Elena was running, so ideally, he’d be running to the spot Elena and Brenton would eventually reunite.

  He continued his march in silence, occasionally checking the black compass to ensure he was on the right track.

  He was tempted to use this downtime to train, but he knew that could only end poorly. After all, with his poor affinity it takes much longer than average to recover the used Energy, leaving him potentially helpless. He rejected this idea quickly.

  He continued forward, eyes scanning his surroundings, until the peaceful silence was shattered.

  “KHH—AA—AAAH!”

  A piercing, high-pitched wail of agony came from the very path Evel was following.

  He instinctively slowed down, creeping towards the source with his loaded crossbow in hand.

  Soon, he reached the edge of a wide clearing, but he wouldn’t risk stepping out into the open. He wanted the security of the forest behind him.

  He kept his body behind the safety of the rough darkwood tree as he peered around the trunk.

  At the center of this clearing was a massive darkwood tree. It was twice as thick as any other, and reached far up into the sky.

  Faint mumbling could be heard coming from behind the bark, but the words couldn’t be made out.

  As Evel circled, moving counter-clockwise around the clearing to get a better angle, his eyes went wide at the scene before him.

  Blood.

  So much blood.

  It was splattered all over the grass, as more continued to flow out.

  A dark haired girl with bronzed skin was clutching tightly onto a spear that had pierced her stomach. On her chest was an oval reflective amulet.

  Evel knew this woman. She was one of the people who had traveled with him from Yosten, he recalled her name to be Mara.

  He wanted to help her, after all, they were both from the same city! But he knew that was stupid. By staying at the camp thus far, she had knowingly put herself at risk. They owed each other nothing.

  Her mouth and eyes were agape and she took shallow pained breaths, her face filled with extreme pain.

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  “P-p-please, please, I, I”

  Mara begged with a weak airy voice, unable to form a proper sentence as she continuously bled out.

  “I-I-I don’t, I-I”

  Tears were welling in her eyes.

  Across from her, was a man with short brown hair sitting down on the grass.

  He hunched his slouched muscular shoulders slightly forward over his raised knees, his hands dangling between his shins as he stared at the grass between his feet.

  Evel couldn’t quite make out his expression.

  A light gleam appeared from Mara’s body, as it surged with forced vitality.

  She had activated her ability.

  Flesh and guts knitted together as they spilled from her ruined stomach, surging around the spearhead still lodged in her abdomen. The pulsing, wet squelch contaminated the peaceful silence around the tree.

  Yet this healing failed to address the weapon, and the renewed vitality just worked to extend her suffering.

  Her face was quivering as tears flowed down from her face.

  “P-p-please, please, please have m-m-mercy.”

  The man across from her didn’t move.

  “I-I-I have a k-kid back h-home”

  “I-I-I’ll do a-anything”

  “STOP. TALKING.”

  The man who had remained motionless finally answered in a frustrated yell, but his body remained motionless, eyes still glued to the grass beneath his knees.

  “Stop… delaying the inevitable.”

  He added, with a weaker, raspy tone.

  Evel watched in stunned silence at the scene.

  This man defeated Mara without a single injury. This was not an opponent Evel could take on.

  I need to find Elena as fast as possible.

  But Evel’s feet were heavy. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get them to move.

  His eyes stayed locked on the desperate girl, as she begged over and over for mercy as her vitality slowly depleted again.

  Leave. Now.

  Evel closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  Then, he opened his eyes with renewed focus.

  He slowly retreated, walking backwards from the clearing.

  If Evel had been thinking rationally, he might have been more meticulous in his retreat. But the shock of watching the girl cling so desperately to a life which was already forfeit clouded his mind, and the patch of dry leaves behind him slipped his notice.

  CRUNCH.

  Shit.

  The man’s head snapped up, and quickly scanned around.

  At first glance he didn’t notice anything, but when looking closely, he saw a figure running away from him.

  He looked at the woman pinned to the tree, who was still muttering, begging quietly under her breath.

  After a short second of hesitation, he grit his teeth and made a decision.

  He flared his power and the spear wrenched free from Mara’s stomach, flying back into his hands.

  The girl let out a final, hollow puff of air, too broken to even scream. Her body slumped against the roots, where she remained motionlessly on the blood-soaked grass.

  The man turned his body to the escapee and aimed. He reeled back his spear behind his head.

  Whoosh!

  He launched the spear as hard as he could, and before the spear even landed, he followed in that direction in a sprint.

  Evel, who had been running away, occasionally taking quick back glances, saw the spear spiraling towards him.

  Lacking confidence in knowing where exactly the spear would land, he jumped behind the closest tree.

  Whizz!

  The spear just missed and flew past the tree.

  As Evel got ready to start running again, the spear that flew past him flew right back into the direction it came from.

  If he can keep doing that, I’ll never be able to escape.

  I need to exhaust his Energy, or find a counterattack opportunity.

  The gears in Evel’s mind quickly turned as he came up with a plan.

  Evel took out his coil from his pouch and cut off a portion of it, holding onto it for now.

  He then focused on his core, and his imperceivable hand, Eth, appeared above his head.

  He used the Eth to grab nearby rock and placed it on a branch atop a tree.

  With his hasty preparations complete, he hid behind a different tree, and deactivated Eth.

  The brown haired man slowly approached.

  Step, step, step.

  Evel took quiet, shallow breaths as he waited.

  Soon, he could hear the man get close, within three meters.

  Evel steeled himself and activated his ability.

  His aura expanded from his body, alerting the man who quickly turned to face towards Evel and prepared to charge.

  “NOW!”

  Evel yelled, at the top of his lungs.

  Then he moved Eth to push the rock off the branch he had placed it on.

  RUSTLE!

  The rock fell off the tree and landed in a bush.

  SHIT!

  The brown haired man panicked, thinking he had fallen into an ambush and turned around quickly.

  However, when he hurriedly scanned around, he didn’t see anyone.

  Evel popped out from behind the tree and took a shot with his crossbow, aiming for the center of mass.

  “ARGHHHHHH!”

  It flew slightly off course and hit the man’s left shoulder instead, but Evel was more than satisfied with the result.

  Realizing he’d been conned, the man quickly turned back around and threw the spear at Evel, using his right hand.

  However, in pain, and lacking time and focus, he couldn’t wind up nearly as fast a throw as he previously had. This gave Evel an opportunity to duck to the side.

  WHIZZZ

  The spear whizzed past Evel, hitting a tree behind him before immediately flying back at the man.

  He’s already used his ability three times, and the second time was from a big distance, he can’t have that much Energy left!

  Evel quickly got up back on his feet.

  He dropped the cut wire he’d previously prepared on the ground and jumped backwards to make some distance. Then, he summoned Eth once more.

  The approaching man ran towards him at top speed, looking for a melee fight. He had understood that he’d run out of Energy before his opponent ran out of bolts.

  Due to the bolt at the back of his left shoulder, his mobility was greatly limited. He was forced to use his left hand purely for support and he guided the spear with his right.

  Then, as he was about a meter from Evel, something constricted around his left foot.

  His left ankle got yanked backwards lightly which disrupted his momentum and he fell down. He caught himself on the fall with his right knee, and remained focused on his target as he attempted to get up.

  This bought Evel just enough time to finish reloading his crossbow.

  TWING!

  The bolt flew towards the man and hit his left shoulder again, except this time from the front.

  “GAHHH”

  The man yelled as the pain seeped deep inside him, the impact of the hit almost topping him over.

  However, he remained focused.

  His left hand was now completely limp, but as Evel was reloading his crossbow again, he took his chance and threw his spear at Evel.

  Evel hadn’t been expecting the man to recover from the pain so quickly, but when he saw the man pull back his spear behind his head, Evel urgently dropped the crossbow, stopping the reload process, and threw his body to the side in order to dodge the spear.

  WHIZZZ

  The spear flew past Evel again, but this time there was no tree directly behind him so it went flying further into the distance.

  That’ll be more expensive for him to pull back.

  Evel willed Eth to let go of the wire and fly towards his crossbow. He needed to end this battle fast, his head beginning to grow heavy from his continued core usage.

  The man scrambled back onto his feet, kicking free of the wire. Despite the bolts buried in his shoulder, a gleam of determination could be seen in his eye.

  He flared his ability once more, but this time, the spear didn’t fly back.

  The crossbow trembled lightly.

  Then, it accelerated.

  Evel watched in horror as his weapon skidded across the dirt towards the man with the same magnetic pull he previously had on the spear. Eth’s spectral fingers swiped at empty air, missing the crossbow by a fraction of a second as it accelerated away.

  Shit.