It had been 3 hours since the group had first departed, and despite there being a few small fries on the way that weren't even worth Lloyd's attention, there was nothing but trees and skies to look at.
"I believe I see it." Hi announced while looking into the distance from the top of one of the trees she had chosen to climb.
"Its pretty scorched, so I think it would be a little hard to miss." Roderick chuckled.
They continued to walk toward where Lloyd had fought the rabbits, and while Hi and Roderick already knew what the scene looked like, the rest were frozen in surprise, unable to believe that a half-step first commandnt could create so much destruction on their own.
"Nature sure does heal quickly." Lloyd muttered to himself, yet those with heightened hearing heard his words and looked at the charred forest before them.
"Oh? I don't think this is nature's doing. I believe that the dungeon heals over ti. Give this a week, and it will look exactly the sa as the first ti you saw it." Roderick explained while touching a patch of fresh grass that seed to have been spared despite the scorched planets all around it.
"Does that an that, in a week or less, monsters are 'respawned'?" Lloyd asked.
"Maybe. I don't know yet, but if we think about it the sa way we feel about permanent dungeons, monsters aren't bred; they are spawned. While it doesn't happen much in temporary dungeons, it's not impossible."
Roderick explained.
"Squeak."
"Huh? Oh, look, it's a rabbit." Felix muttered before his hand broke a sound barrier and reached the rabbit in the blink of an eye.
"What are you doing?" Veronica asked while holding Felix's hand an inch away from the rabbit, who was still looking at Felix's incoming hand with its curious big black eyes.
"Well, the kid said he had to fight them, right? It was clearly going to lure in with its cuteness before chomping down on my head." Felix defended himself while the rest of the group, including Lachlan, face-pald.
"No. From the fact that they aren't releasing an ounce of killing intent, they are most likely a monster that only attacks you when you attack it, and thinking back to what Lloyd said, attacking one would also anger the entire colony, which would force us into killing them." Veronica explained before reaching out her hand and petting the orange-furred rabbit.
When Veronica tried to pull her hand away, the rabbit moved closer to her and rubbed its head onto her hand as if it was asking for more pats.
A red glint passed through Veronica's eye, a glint that no one other than Lloyd seed to notice.
Narrowing his eyes, Lloyd was going to say sothing, yet before he could, he watched a beautiful smile stretch across her face as she held the rabbit in her arms and squealed like a little girl.
"It's so cute!~" She screeched while Lloyd only felt a little weirded out by her sudden change, but he guessed that animals could do that to a person.
"Can I keep it?~" Veronica asked.
"Sure, why not?" Roderick answered while scratching the back of his.
"No. We have bigger things to worry about than a pet rabbit." Hi sneered while glancing at Roderick while embarrassingly shrugging.
The group continued walking for a few more hours while tracing the direction that all the rabbits had co from when Lloyd had fought them by looking at broken twigs, branches, and even footprints.
However, doing so turned out to be much harder than it seed simply because the dungeon was still healing, aning many of the footprints had disappeared, or at least the ones that were feint.
"You sure did a number on this area. What kind of spell did you release to do this much devastation?" Rex asked with a hint of excitent in his voice that sent a chill down Lloyd's spine.
"It looks like he used a fire spell. From the wounds seen on the trees, the scorched marks left behind, and the pattern of burns, Lloyd most likely used a flurry of fire bullet spells. However, such a spell would take an extrely high amount of mana to do without a magical artifact to use a middle-man.
Maybe a staff? No... Or it's a magical book with the runes and enchantnts written within it to take the toll of the mind and put it on his mana instead, allowing him to focus on making the spell more efficient rather than having to analyze it. But that wouldn't make sense, either. Lloyd isn't a mage. He is a... Mutter mutter mutter mutter mutter mutter mutter mutter..."
The group looked at Tina for a mont before shrugging. Everyone but Lloyd who was perplexed by what he was seeing. The once shy girl was now muttering her theories and ideas out loud without a care for the world.
'Is this the sa girl that would squirm every ti soone would look her in they eyes?' Lloyd asked himself with an agape mouth.
"Don't worry. She does that sotis." Rex chuckled.
"Really? She must have so passion in learning the arts of mana and everything about it." Lloyd replied, still feeling a little awkward after seeing Tina in that state.
"Yeah. I feel jealous of her drive to gain knowledge whenever I look at her." Rex sighed.
"Don't you have any passions?" Lloyd asked with a tilt of his head, yet he only received a chuckle from Rex.
"I do. Hey, I probably have the most ambitions in the entire group... I work out every single day and push my body to its brink so it can fix itself by the next day and be stronger than ever.
I work on my martial arts, ditation, and control of emotion, yet in all of those, I'm either not as good as soone else on the team, or I am the best at it but can't match the sa drive Tina shows for her interests." He explained.
'He likes her...' Lloyd imdiately concluded. He knew that expression... After all, he had seen it in the past whenever he could look in the mirror.
It was the expression of soone who was so in love with another that they would do anything to catch their attention or gain their love.
A gloomy expression passed through Lloyd's face before it imdiately went back to normal before Rex or anyone else could see it.
All good mories co to an end, and Lloyd could rember the precise date when that mory ended since it was the start of a new mory with a new family and a new group of people who cared about him much more than the last group did.
Hours passed, and everyone talked idly. While the number of monsters had seed to increase ever since eting with the first rabbit, the increase wasn't as big as they hoped, which either ant that they were very far from where the boss was, or that they were walking diagonally rather than moving in a straight line towards the boss area.
This ant that the trip would take much longer, and at the sa ti, the chances of completely missing the boss were also very high.
"Hm?" The hairs at the back of Lloyd's neck stood up while a feeling weird feeling welled up inside of him.
'We're being followed.' Lloyd concluded, yet as he tried to turn around to see what was following them, he felt a hand on his shoulder before he realized the group had gone silent.
"What are they?" Felix asked.
"I don't recognize their footsteps or sll since I've never encountered them before, but if I concentrate, I can sll a faint whiff of berries and blood." Hi explained.
"Silent footsteps. Small body. Camouflages well with the surroundings and doesn't seem to be hostile against us..." Lloyd muttered with volu that allowed everyone just about to hear him, yet instead of telling them what they were, a smirk appeared on Lloyd's face as he walked in front of Rex, disappearing from the monster's line of sight.
[Presence Concealnt]
Lloyd remained quiet, sothing he couldn't have done without [Soundless Steps].
As he stared from one of the branches he stood on, he couldn't help but smile slightly when the creature beca clear to him.
'As expected... Foxes.'
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