Killian burst forward again, and after covering a distance, spread his tendrils further to find the trails of the girls.

As he moved, the forest suddenly felt endless and his tendrils returned to him after he moved for a minute.

He stopped at the exact spot, he had killed the panthers, having the burnt smell and smear of corpses on the ground as proof.

Yet the realization creeped on him like a nightmare. The forest had changed positions, and the mangroves around that area were shorter and let sunrays into the forest.

Killian looked around his surroundings, trying to figure out if there was a spot he just didn’t remember to check before leaving for Felina, but he had been sure of his path.

"This is haunting." He kept a hand on his hip, and calmly walked down the direction Jane and Kia should’ve been.

Every second stretched horribly, because every second could mean the girls were being hurt by a monster. They might have stood even an inkling of a chance if the beasts weren’t sound resistant.

"I believe it was doomed from the start. D-Rank newbies shouldn’t be inside a B-tier realm. That is definitely an overestimation."

"Well, this is our current reality. George and the leader didn’t refute it when they were told so I doubt it wasn’t what the coordinator really wanted..." he trailed off, looking at the skies.

He never really confirmed from Evelyn if George and the Leader of Amega knew about the B-tier realm preliminary. They might’ve expected a preliminary but didn’t know which one yet.

A sound wave loud enough to crash a tree echoed ahead of him. Killian’s heart dropped but he ran towards it. Oddly enough it came from the direction behind him.

"I really hope it’s Jane and Kia alive and..." He slapped the shrubs away as he got closer, revealing their location. He stepped out of the shrubs, and the panthers turned their gaze toward him.

He glanced at Jane and Kia, up in a tree again. They both didn’t look at him, their ears burning in embarrassment. Killian exhaled.

’I should’ve known they had better survival instincts but what if these panthers were like the ones from our region that could climb? What then?’

The panthers encircled him, revealing three bigger panthers than the ones he had seen. "The injured one must’ve led you to its den."

"Yes, and all its mothers and their friends came out to chase us!" Kia pointed at the panthers as if reporting them. "And I don’t think Sound Waves work either. Unless we are still too weak for these beasts."

Jane nodded with a humbled expression.

Killian only hummed, generating fire beneath his feet. They flared up to his arms, stretching from his legs to his shoulders. The panthers closed the distance quickly and lunged in unison.

<Ablaze>

A massive cloud of fire gathered in his hands. The attack shot forward, slamming into the beasts mid-air. Killian held onto his bat as he moved towards Jane and Kia.

His eyes remained on the growling panthers but they were busy putting out the fire by rolling on the dirt. He tapped his feet and the girls slid down the tree.

He gestured forward and they sneaked out. "Let’s get to the rest. I don’t know how possible it will be to kill—"

Jane rushed back to the panthers. "Blast away!!"

Her voice cracked at the end but the results were worth it, as the waves slammed the panthers against the ground. The beasts stopped breathing when the wave velocity slowed down.

Killian closed his mouth, and shrugged. It was a worthy assist, even if these panthers felt like a C-tier beast as their resistance to the Sound Element was the only thing they had going for them.

"That makes six dead. Perhaps the rest had better luck."

"Six!" Kia frowned. "Apart from Felina, I can’t think of anyone who could’ve done better than this."

"Also it was your flames that helped just now." Jane admitted. "My waves never killed them, just pushed them away from us for a while."

"Well," Killian kept moving, hoping to ignore the question. It would be hypocritical to say he killed the three when he had insisted that the training was theirs. "Let’s meet the rest and see."

The trails they found led directly to where he had met Felina and the beast he killed still lay there. He looked ahead at where Evelyn and Felina went searching for Juda’s team.

"You two go ahead."

"Are you going to scout?"

"Something like that," he answered Jane. They ran ahead and Killian turned back, trying to retrace his steps from that point again.

"It seems that the forests starts playing tricks when I move towards the tree from here." He pointed at the path he took the last time. "It must be some sort of protective defense for its treasure."

"Hmm. I am impressed that you noticed that the tree is the reason the forest keeps moving."

Killian smiled at the Void’s compliment. "I mean, I didn’t think a tree could move but it can, if the forest tried to hide it. There was no other reason for that particular path to be so hard to find."

His tendrils reached for the dead panther beside him.

[Capacity: 189 → 201]

"We are heading there now." He calmly walked down the path he came from with Jane and Kia. Since it didn’t naturally lead to the tree, it wasn’t influenced by the forest’s protective defense.

He reached the panthers and noticed one of them had escaped. "I guess it goes down to five here. Since it’s injured, it won’t last long." His tendrils reached for the panthers as he moved.

They trailed behind him until they were done then returned under his feet.

[Capacity: 201 → 225]

[Permission To Diagnose - Mimicry?] 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

[Yes? Or No?]

Killian stopped walking, and quickly read through the notification. ’Mimicry?’ He did not have many good experiences with that innate skill.