Another rockrat let out a shrill screech as it scurried towards Banda with bloodthirsty eyes, and was promptly smashed to pieces by his dark metal fist. These low grade monsters were large rodents with tough hides like stone and long crooked front teeth.

  Though slightly more durable than most within their grade, they were no match for his might. And their simple-minded approach to battle did them no favors.

  Two more lunged at him from the sides. Splitting a target’s focus was a wise tactic, but their timing was too uncoordinated for it to matter. Banda pummeled them into bloody chunks with a single punch each.

  Sharp Claw could pierce through their brittle stone bodies well enough, as he had tested, but he found simply breaking them easier and faster. His new Iron Fist art didn’t meet his standards either, but it was undeniably better than nothing.

  Banda canceled the art as he glanced over to Eres. Lacking his physical prowess, she opted for a defensive style. The rockrats slammed themselves against her shield mindlessly, and were just as mindlessly battered away by her mace when an opening showed itself.

  A rough snarl stole Banda’s focus away to the top of a small dirt hill in the distance. A large boar with a mane of quills scraped the ground with its front hooves and charged towards him.

  Banda’s right hand tensed as his nails grew long and sharper just fast enough. The Bristle Boar flexed its body just a few yards away and shot forward with a burst of speed. Banda sidestepped its sudden acceleration, striking with his clawed hand in one smooth movement.

  But at the last moment he pulled his hand away as the quills on it’s back jutted out. The boar crashed into a tree and broke it clean in half. It shook the impact off and charged at Banda again without hesitation.

  Banda’s hand slowly turned to iron as he readied himself again. The quills were sharp and he could smell the slight trace of poison on them. Nothing deadly, but he was not about to let himself get poisoned against such a weak enemy.

  He sidestepped the Bristle Boar’s sudden rush once again, and this time he dug his iron claws deep through the side of the boar as it charged past, letting its speed work against it.

  The boar slammed into a second tree, but this time fell to its back. Blood gushed out the ground along with its entrails. It stumbled towards Banda with frantic aggression but collapsed again not even halfway towards him into a spasm.

  Banda hopped over to the beast and casually crushed its skull before ripping out its core. A monster core only became physical upon its death. In many ways, it seemed much like the soul, which Banda also plundered from it.

  He poured a trace of aura through it and the core crumbled away into two blue shards. A Bristle Boar was low grade, same as the rats which Eres was already harvesting. The difference was the boar was at the peak of rank 1, which doubled the shards its core gave.

  “Let’s go.” Eres said casually, as she finished her collection.

  They had ventured out further from the town this day. Deeper in the Misty Forest and closer to one of the mountains. The number of monsters was much greater this far out into the wilderness, and thus so was their harvest of shards.

  “We can stay out all day if you’re willing to do most of the work.” Eres commented.

  Banda was, and he had planned to from the start. Eres may have been strong before, but she had lost most of her power and she refused to use her avatar on low level threats. With fewer than ten uses of her arts, she was more of a burden than a partner most of the time.

  “I’ll be far more active after we reach Rank 2.” She said, as if she could hear his own thoughts. “Power aside… aura capacity is my biggest limitation right now. Hah… Cultivation is so inconvenient compared to divinity-”

  The giant face of a bear lunged from the dense fog of the forest without warning. Destructive aura swirled in Eres’ palm as she started to lean away, but Banda slapped her hand down and stopped the beast by the nose.

  Banda pushed the bear’s head to the ground and held it in place against its bucking attempts to snap its jaw. The beast tried and tried again to no avail against Banda’s might, and eventually it quieted down.

  Banda removed his hand and the bear slunk back with guarded snarls as it tried to make itself big and threatening. It’s actions quite childlike in thought. Banda waited silently until a jolt of pain through the bear cub’s expression made it calm down with a whimper.

  He walked towards the wary cub, and placed his hand on its head. The young bear seemed to settle its aversion towards Banda a bit, but the distress remained. And Banda saw why.

  It’s hind leg was caught in a trap. One shaped like the jaws of a beast and made of metal. A human weapon, Banda suspected.

  He jumped over and pulled on it, but it was rooted deep in the ground, perhaps beneath a buried boulder. A vicious trap, one that would inflict grave wounds if a beast tried to force its way out. Fortunately for the bear, it was still so young it didn’t have the resolve to try.

  Banda grabbed the ends of the trap and wrenched it opened with feral strength. The cub groaned at the sharp jolts of pain but Banda soon broke the weapon open, and the bear pulled its leg free.

  The bear cub trotted lightly on its leg at first but soon found the courage to walk more firmly on it. It hopped over to Banda and nudged him playful with its massive head twice.

  “Go deeper in the forest. Even if it’s dangerous.” Banda told it. The seriousness of his intentions seemed to resonate with the cub as its enthusiasm died down.

  Banda pointed in the distance and pushed the cub away until it slowly galloped off in that direction. The cub stopped halfway to look back for a moment, then ran into the fog.

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  “That’s only the first, or I guess second mid grade monster we’ve found.” Eres spoke, uncaring of the tone of the atmosphere. “Kind of a waste to let it go.”

  “It’s a cub.” Banda said without much emotion himself, walking back along their path after the bear left his sight. “Lost its parents. Or got separated. It’s not a threat.”

  “That never stopped you from killing humans.” Eres pointed out, a bit confused about his savage principles.

  “They weren’t cubs.” The moment Banda finished his words he sensed something else, and moved closer to Eres in a battle ready stance.

  Soon they were surrounded by seven humans who paid no effort to hide their ill intentions. And at the helm of them was the cocky hunter from the tribute meeting, his smug gaze aimed solely on Eres.

  “Hey, beautiful. You owe me an apology, you know? I was going to look for you later, but… I guess this is just fate.” He had a way of speaking that irritated Banda immensely, but he kept his calm, waiting for the right moment.

  “The only thing you’ll get is a quick death if you don’t leave without one.” Eres snapped back. It was a weak threat, and far less convincing that he knew she could do.

  “From the two of you?” Urgu laughed. “Are you even at the peak of stage 1?”

  “Something broke out of the trap!” A large brutish man shouted out. “The blood’s fresh.”

  “Was this you?” Urgu carelessly pointed his sword at the duo as he walked closer with a smile. “That’s two apologies you owe me. But you know…”

  As Urgu spoke, the brutish man inspected the trap more closely and found it strange. By the blood on its teeth, it had caught something properly. The trap was not infallible, a monster of great strength could break out. But the trap was not uprooted, nor was it disabled. It was as if something had pulled it apart until it broke.

  “Get back!” The brutish man roared, but it was too late.

  A giant spear pierced straight through Urgu’s chest. He barely had time to cough up a mouthful of blood before Eres’ avatar pulled out the blade and bashed him away with its shield, sending him crashing into a wall of aura the man in blue robes managed to construct in time.

  Banda burst back at the same time, and clawed through an armored warrior’s neck. He jolted his head away from soaring arrow and lunged for the archer woman who shot it. She nocked another one but he shattered her skull before she had time to draw it back.

  The brutish man from before roared as his muscles swelled with bugling veins. He planted his feet into the ground and threw a punch at the charging savage, who threw a punch of his own at the man’s fist.

  “Fool!” The brute yelled as aura coated his fist.

  But Banda’s iron fist shattered his hand and mangled the rest of his arm with the impact of his raw strength. The brute’s violent yells turned to cries of agony, and Banda mauled him away into a second monk, splattering them both against a tree.

  A second archer shot an arrow at Eres which turned into two mid way, but both pathetically bounded off her avatar’s shield, leaving not even so much as a scratch.

  “Monsters!” The man yelled, more of an insult than an accusation. The last words he spoke as Eres’ spear cleaved him in two.

  The blue robed man grit his teeth as fire swirled violently before his hands. The flames molded into a sphere and shot out fast as an arrow towards Eres.

  Eres watched the soaring flames draw near, but her avatar didn’t move. Fire of her own swirled within the palm of her hand as her eyes shone with golden splendor and deep smile spread across her face.

  The orange fire in her hand turned as golden as her eyes and she blasted the fireball before her. The two flames clashed equally for but a moment, then even more shockingly the golden flames started to eat through the ball of red fire until the two arts burned out on each other.

  “That’s not possible…” The robed man stammered.

  He was at the peak of rank 1 while she was still merely at the first stage of it. And even more, his Fireball was a mid grade art while the art she chose was unmistakably the low grade Palm Blast. Even if she made it the element of fire, it should never have been able to match his.

  The man had time only for that brief line of thought before the savage lunged from his blindspot and shattered his skull, and his body fell to the ground with the others.

  Banda glanced at Eres. Her eyes were the same as they were at the end of their fight, as was the oppressive feeling from her ecstatic expression. He looked up at the avatar behind her which was not the same as he remembered.

  It was less impressive than before. Just as tall with the same blue face of Eres, but its armor was far less grand. Still the same brilliant gold color, but a mere patchwork of protection compared to its former full armor. The red cloth over the gaps of the metal less rich.

  It’s shield was the same size, though bare of intricate carvings, and its lance was replaced with a simple spear from which a long ragged cloth of red flame fluttered from the base of the blade.

  “Make sure no one else is around.” Eres ordered.

  “I did.”

  At his words, Eres dispelled her avatar.

  “Why do you not keep it?” He asked. She had told him before how much it cost. While he could sense no dangers at the moment, that did not mean none would come.

  “It puts on strain on me. Just like your Feral Form.” Eres answered as she looted through the human corpses with a smile.

  She was acting more familiar and passionate again. Banda didn’t really know how to deal with her when she was like this. It threw him off for some reason.

  “...how did you make fire?” Banda asked. That was not part of her Palm Blast trick, as far as he knew.

  “Fire Spirit Root. A sacred grade trait. I can turn the properties of my aura to the element of fire as I wish, just as I could with divinity before. As for the golden aura… That’s a secret.” She spoke with a teasing sultry tone.

  “You lied.” Banda accused. “You never said that before Humbaba.”

  “I didn’t lie, I just didn’t reveal everything.” Eres spoke without a trace of guilt. “But I’m not the only one keeping secrets. You still haven’t told me about your true form. The one with imposing horns.”

  “I don’t have horns.” Banda grew annoyed. What was the point of lying when he could feel the truth for himself.

  “Obviously not now. But you do in that form.” Eres finished her plundering and turned towards him with a look in her eyes. “Have you ever heard of the Bull of Heaven?”

  Banda had not.

  “The Behemoth. One of the Four Heavenly Beasts who served the creator Anshar, and who along with his kin, slayed him. Gugal. The Bull Who Tramples The World.” Grandeur started to slip into her tone. “What do you think your power is?”

  “It makes me stronger-”

  “It’s density.” Eres corrected. “Gugal could make himself heavier without limit, granting him a body more indestructible than any metal, filling it with more might than a god of strength. And now you have that power as the Primordial of Gravity’s reincarnation.”

  “I am Ensimbanda. Not Gugal.” Banda narrowed his eyes. He did not know what reincarnation meant but he took offense to it.

  Eres smiled. “In the beginning, there was only the primeval sea. A formless, featureless nothing.”

  “I don’t care about your stories-”

  “And then there was Anshar.” A radiance unparalleled filled Eres’ golden eyes. An overwhelming passion that would not be denied. And Banda knew he had no choice but to listen in this dark forest full of beasts.