The farewell was once again short. This ti, the team wasn’t stopping for an extended period. They were purely landing to let Amaya and Gio off.
The mont the two were far enough away to avoid the heatwave of the engines, the plane took off again, joining its fleet as it moved towards the next mission location.
"It must be tough," Gio said as he watched them leave.
"That’s not for you to be worried about," Amaya responded, rustling his hair.
"Let’s find sowhere to set up camp first. I chose this place specifically for your training, so we’ll find a lot of good opponents as soon as we start looking."
Gio accepted her words and followed her.
They were once again in a jungle, but they were on the complete other side of the world from Haven now.
The atmosphere was hot and humid. The trees were so tall and nurous that they blotted out the sun, only allowing its light to fall in rays that cascaded onto the shadowy ground.
There wasn’t much space to walk. The overgrown brush wasn’t friendly at all. Gio could feel thorns pulling against the fabric of his pants, threatening to tear them open.
He was forced to draw his sword and cut down the brush around him as he moved to secure himself a path.
His gaze remained peeled. Now that they were in the wild, there would be more beasts present than those not.
In fact, the world around them was probably crawling with them at this very mont.
The term "mutated beast" tended to be associated with large creatures that attacked humanity viciously and brutally.
However, it was a much more encompassing term than that. It was, essentially, a replacent for "animals."
Animals still existed in the world, albeit in small numbers. Their terms and classifications were still reserved for them.
Among mutated beasts, along with those who experienced Gigantification, there were also those who did not experience any such drastic size changes.
Their bodies changed internally, empowering and evolving them.
Crunch!
Gio’s steps crunched against the ground. He knew that only so of those sounds ca from branches and leaves.
So of them ca from small insect beasts being crushed under his feet,
There was a reason he had to wear clothes that left no amount of skin exposed and unprotected. His pants flowed into his boots so smoothly that one would believe he was wearing a one-piece.
They may have been weak in body, but they were strong in power. For many of the small bugs and critters that road these vast jungles, a single bite was enough to kill a human.
They evolved to hunt beasts. Human skin wasn’t nearly as hard to pierce, and the human body wasn’t nearly as dense.
Gio was painfully aware of the number of beasts around him. His blood boiled at their scent. His instinct to hunt was being awakened by their presence.
With the sword in his hand already, he had to consciously hold himself back from chasing their scent.
’This isn’t the tower.’
He held his own arm and cald himself down, trudging through the jungle with Amaya. They traveled mostly in silence out of necessity until around half an hour passed.
They reached a small clearing inhabited by a large stele-shaped boulder and a cluster of small trees.
They looked almost like they belonged in a forest rather than a jungle. And, for them to be so conveniently in such a clearing...
"It’s not natural."
"Nice observation," Amaya imdiately said.
"Continue."
Gio nodded.
"If I’m not mistaken, there must be so kind of semi-valuable resource in that cluster of trees."
Odd sights where species uncharacteristic of certain environnts appeared within them usually entailed the presence of a natural resource.
"If we were the first ones to find it, I would question if the world is a simulation or not."
He kicked the dirt below.
"The ground is too level. The overgrowth stops too uniformly, and other than that boulder, quite literally everything else has been stripped away. That grove is so perfectly carved out that it’s impossible for it to be natural."
It wasn’t an empty clearing.
It was the ho of a beast that had the confidence to guard the resources in that cluster.
"But it’s also not strong enough to move the boulder."
Amaya nodded.
"Correct. Do you think you can figure out what beast lives here before it cos back?"
"When is it coming back?"
"Uhm..."
Amaya tapped her chin and extended her senses.
"Maybe five minutes?"
Was it five minutes away and coming or was it preoccupied? If it was the forr, her perception was impressive.
Gio walked around the clearing. He observed the tracks he saw, the claw marks in the dirt, and the habitat that had been created inside the tree cluster.
It was obviously a bear of so sort, but to determine what kind of bear...
"Hmm..."
He looked over at Amaya.
"I can narrow it down so, but I think it’s impossible for to figure out the exact species with only this much."
She expected that much. The question was...
"How much can you narrow it down?"
"It’s a bear. It has claws and isn’t strength-focused judging by the boulder and the fact that it used its claws to level the soil. It can’t be too large, maybe around eight feet tall at most..."
They were in a jungle, which helped narrow down the number of species. They were in the Wasteland, a fact that did the sa thing.
Gio knew the habitats of this world well. If they were in the region he assud they were in...
"I think it’s a beast in the Ashen Bear tree."
Ashen bears only existed in this part of the Wasteland and were known for both their sharp claws and their ability to control fire.
The latter could explain how the clearing was created so evenly, and the forr was more than obvious.
However, there were twelve known species of Ashen Bear. He had no way of distinguishing between them without seeing the beast directly.
Nevertheless, Amaya never expected that he could narrow it down to a specific type of bear. She thought he would at most say it’s a unique bear species native to this region.
But he was correct.
"It’s a Crimson Ash Bear."
Her words fell just as a mass of deep red fur barreled into the clearing.
"Let tell you sothing about Crimson Ash Bears, Gio," Amaya said as she stepped forward and put him behind her.
He felt like he could still see her grinning expression even with her face turned away from him.
"Their at is the best out of all Ashen Bears. If it’s cooked properly, it’s better than what so of the chefs up in the Upper Strata can make you."
In other words, for it to be the first beast they encountered was a blessing.
And even though this was supposed to be Gio’s hunt, she decided to show him just once how she hunted.
A great mass of aura swirled around her. The form of a Crimson Ash Bear manifested at her back.
And she charged forth.
The rest was nothing short of a spectacle.
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