Micro’s party had ended their visit to the jade level sect of Serpent Art practitioners without accomplishing any particular goal, but they felt a collective sense of closure after it had been effectively returned to nature, no trace of it remaining. Though the threat of a hero still made Lena wary, the group quickly continued on their way. Micro wasn’t sure how to continue their journey in search of Lo, but Kira and Kolt were only getting hungrier, so Lena suggested they venture into the forest in search of food.

  “So where does food grow in this forest?” Micro asked Lena, but Kira jumped forward to answer as they walked. “Feng’s garden is a long way from here.”

  “There’s a lot of mushrooms you can eat, and some plants have roots you can stew, but I think I’m more in the mood for meat,” Kira announced happily. “We used to go hunting with our uncle all the time!”

  Kira looked back at Kolt, but he only grunted in reply, his sombre expression unchanged, despite his energy being supplemented by the pixie in his pocket. Kira rolled her eyes and turned back to Micro.

  “Well, I’ll leave it to you then. Let me know if I can help,” Micro replied to Kira. “I can start fires now, but I haven’t processed animals for consumption before. The old man dealt mostly in vegetables, so I wouldn’t know where to begin…”

  “That’s fine, just follow me!” Kira laughed, then ran ahead of the group. She began scanning the forest floor diligently while the others followed behind her.

  “Is there anything you’d like, Lena?” Micro asked the old cultivator who was quietly meditating as she walked behind.

  “My quest is only to observe your journey, and I require only the energy of the world to sustain my physical form,” Lena replied quietly. “Please continue as you see fit.”

  “Great!” Micro replied happily, then observed Kira, who soon turned back to smile at him. “You’re still welcome to join us for a snack whenever you like though!

  “This is so easy!” she celebrated. “Even though the sun can’t shine through the trees here, the energy I can see makes finding things so simple. I wish our uncle could have tried this…”

  Kira’s smile remained despite the sad memories which surfaced in her mind, and she led Micro to a tree, pointing at the bark excitedly. Micro used Spirit Vision to analyze the tree, and while he was interested in the flow of energy through the tree, he was unsure why Kira had drawn his attention to it.

  “Do you see it? There!” Kira pointed again, but Micro only shrugged.

  “A bear brushed up against this tree recently. The energy it left behind is almost like a smell!”

  “Was there a Spirit Smell Core Card?” Micro asked in surprise. “That would be interesting.”

  “I believe there is, but the child is relying purely upon her own senses,” Lena explained as she observed the tree alongside the pair. Her eyes glowed with more excitement as she watched Kira scanning the area. “Even I, as a celebrated hunter of my sect, can just barely sense the presence of an animal with such clarity. The child’s observational skills are quite impressive indeed.”

  “Thanks!” Kira replied, bowing her head humbly. “My uncle said I helped a lot on hunts. I like animals!”

  “I could eat a whole bear myself…” Kolt mumbled, his unenthusiastic voice joined by the growling of his stomach.

  “This way, then,” Kira announced, but she suddenly paused as she recalled something. “Oh, we don’t have spears…”

  “Spears?” Micro asked.

  “To hunt with,” Kira explained. “We need to kill the bear before we eat it, but if you use that attack from earlier, there won’t be any bear left to eat…”

  “That’s true…” Micro said with a frown. “Maybe I could poison it. What do you think, Blue?”

  “I’m new to eating, but eating something that died of poisoning sounds terrible,” Blue said with a loud laugh. She then flew over to Kira and stood atop her head, materializing a slingshot in her hand. “Just leave it to us, buddy.”

  “I’ve never hunted a bear before, but it sounds fun!” Blue declared. “Carry us to our prey, girl child! We shall return with meat!”

  “Enough meat to feast all winter!” Kira and Blue laughed as they ran into the dark woods, leaving Micro, Lena, Kolt, and Trill behind.

  “Why not take this opportunity to meditate?” Lena suggested to the boys.

  “That’s a good idea. I haven’t spent much time cultivating my core recently,” Micro replied. “You should practice feeling and circulating your energy too, Kolt. Trill can help you with the energy part.”

  “Okay…” Kolt sighed, then dragged his feet toward a flat area between two trees and sat down to close his eyes. Micro looked at the boy with concern, but trusted that he’d feel better after eating something. Lena had already begun meditating in earnest nearby, leaving Micro alone in the dimly lit woods. Lena looked almost like a statue as she meditated, and Kolt’s level of concentration surprised Micro.

  “I guess I’ll join them,” Micro said to himself, and he sat down to close his eyes. However, before he entered his own meditative state, a distant noise caught his attention. He opened his eyes to look around, unsure what the noise could have been.

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  Lena and Kolt appeared to be either unaware or uninterested in the noise, so Micro closed his eyes again. Once again the noise caught his ear, preventing him from relaxing.

  “I’ll be right back…” Micro said to the unresponsive pair next to him. Trill waved casually at Micro in reply, though his eyes remained closed. Micro slowly walked in the direction of the noise, finding himself walking uphill through the woods. He was confident that he could find his way back, since they hadn’t walked too far into the trees yet. His search for the source of the noise led him onward for over an hour before he heard it again. With Spirit Vision he was able to make out vague energy sources, but the forest was too dense with energy for him to discern the exact source of the sounds.

  “Get away!” a voice suddenly echoed through the woods. “No, it’s mine!”

  Micro first worried it was Kira’s, but it was a deeper voice, and he couldn’t imagine her getting into too much trouble with Blue by her side. Micro’s thoughts were soon interrupted by a tire-sized gravel golem flying through the air toward him. It crashed through several trees like they were blades of grass, sending bark and splinters flying in every direction, before narrowly missing his head as it continued down the hill and out of sight.

  “Get back—No!” the voice echoed again. “Not this time!”

  Another two gravel golems went flying down the hill, followed by several more which rolled along like stray snowballs, picking up dirt and leaves as they passed Micro.

  “That’s odd,” Micro thought aloud as he quickened his pace up the hill, following the path of destruction caused by the flying gravel golems. Finally he came to see the source of the noises which had caught his attention.

  Surrounded by dozens of frantic gravel golems, all snapping their large jaws and growling like diesel burning engines, was a young man dressed in dirty green and yellow robes who dodged and kicked the creatures as they attacked him. At least, they seemed to be attacking him at first.

  The cultivator looked to be in his late teens, though his head was clean shaven and his face was bloody. He moved gracefully while repelling the gravel golems with powerful kicks an impressively efficient defense. However, he was clearly exhausted, and his movements were looked increasingly lethargic.

  In his hand, Micro noticed a glowing green rock, more like a chunk of broken glass than an ordinary stone. It also became clear to Micro that the gravel golems weren’t attacking the young man. Rather, they were desperately attempting to eat the object he held.

  “Why don’t you just give them the green rock?” Micro called out to the bloodied young cultivator.

  “Hah?!” The young man’s head turned to face Micro, having failed to notice his presence until that moment, but the distraction put him in a precarious situation at once. A dozen gravel golems all jumped in unison at the opening left by the distracted cultivator, who could only brace himself for the inevitable.

  “That’s dangerous,” Micro said calmly as the scene unfolded, and a large ethereal shell emerged from the ground to surround the young man, deflecting the creatures which continued to jump at him despite the turtle-like armour which now protected him. “There you go.”

  The gravel golems didn’t look threatening or angry to Micro, so he hesitated to attack them. In fact, they looked excited, if not at least happy, as they jumped around the woods without any apparent destination in mind. Instead of attacking them, he decided to simply gather a large amount of energy around him as Lena often did, and it proved effective in causing them to grow visibly anxious. They started to shake and shiver, then started wandering away, forgetting their previous hunger for the small green object in the young man’s hand.

  With the area cleared of creatures in little time, Micro relaxed his energy and dispelled the Turtle Art armour he’d surrounded the young man with. Upon doing so, he was greeted with a familiar look of confusion, and the exhausted cultivator fell to his knees. A closer look at his energy revealed that he possessed a weak jade core, though his body looked much stronger than the average person’s.

  “Nice to meet you!” Micro called out as he approached the young man. “I’m Micro.”

  “You…” the young man mumbled between shallow breaths, falling to his knees as he began to relax. He bowed his head, nearly falling over as his weight shifted. “Forgive me… for my discourtesy… honourable—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it. I could see you were busy,” Micro said, attempting to bow the way he had been shown. “The way you were moving was amazing. You have a lot of control over your legs.”

  “Th—thank you…?”

  “I’ve gotten better at using my legs since getting an amber core, but I still have a lot of work to do,” Micro continued.

  “I don’t…” the boy mumbled, taking a moment to wipe some of the blood and dirt from his eyes. “I can’t under—”

  “Your muscles are also quite impressive!” Micro added. “I almost thought you were a farmer!”

  “Wait, you—your core…” The young man’s eyes widened, and he suddenly bowed so deeply that his bloody face met the ground with a thud. “To be rescued by the honourable young master, I am humbled! I cannot hope to repay you, but—”

  “Oh, I was just passing by,” Micro said, crouching down near the young man. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Arbur, of the Jade Serpent Sect!” the young man shouted, his face still touching the ground. “I do not recognize your sect’s attire. Forgive me, young master!”

  “That’s alright. I only started the sect recently,” Micro explained. “It’s called the Truck Sect. We’re efficient and reliable! Well, we strive to be…”

  “Se—Sect leader?!” Arbur replied, his anxiety only increasing. “I see…”

  “So, do you mind if I ask what you were doing up here?” Micro asked. “I hope I wasn’t intruding or anything. I know cultivators have some odd traditions, but…”

  “Your presence is by no means unwelcome! Though dying on this quest may not have been the worst fate I could hope for…” Arbur replied. “This is the third time I’ve attempted the trial. I finally found a crystal to bring home, but I was swarmed by those monsters, and…”

  “Ah, so that’s a crystal.” Micro nodded. “What is the crystal for?”

  “The disciples of our sect ascend these hills in search of ancient relics… relics of an extinct sect. Then, we are brought to the Jade Water Serpent Art Dungeon,” Arbur explained, finally daring to lift his head to speak to Micro, who was sitting comfortably nearby. “When we get back to the sect with the crystal we found, we are taught the method to absorb its energy. Then, we’re ready to challenge the dungeon. But I’m weak…”

  “That would definitely be a problem for a cultivator, huh…” Micro nodded sympathetically, though Arbur’s bloody face contorted as Micro confirmed his claim. “A lot of cultivators I’ve met seem like they’d enjoy fighting monsters until they died. That’s why I was worried you might be mad.”

  “I can hardly be called a cultivator with my abilities,” Arbur lamented. “It was all I could do to find a crystal after giving up on the quest twice before. My sect has never been more powerful. It is a golden age… but I’m currently the only inner disciple of the sect who hasn’t completed the trial yet. Even my younger brothers have all mastered the Serpent Art-”

  “Wait…” Micro suddenly said, prompting Arbur to quiet down instantly. “Is your sect… a few hours downhill from here, a little to the west…?”

  “You must have passed it on your way here,” Arbur replied, a glint of pride in his half-open eyes. “I expect you must have experienced the unparalleled hospitality of my sect…”

  “Oh dear…”