Chapter 144: Hunting Practice (5)

At the rear of the group, Lyria, Emma, and Zack held their ground.

There was simply no need to move. The three at the front had it handled and everyone in the group knew it.

Emma crossed her arms and watched with her brown ponytail swaying slightly as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her gauntlets caught a flash of the fire from Leonard’s spear.

It was over quickly.

The last wolf dropped with Damien’s blade through it, the golden light fading from the steel as he straightened and shook the blood clear in a single practiced arc.

The four of them moved through the fallen bodies and extracted the mana cores — small dense crystals pulled from just below the chest cavity, already cooling as the monsters’ vitality left them.

Emma exhaled through her nose. "Our team is absurdly stacked. It’s almost frustrating." She looked at the three cores being collected with a dry expression.

"Hard to get kills in when those three finish everything before the rest of us can even blink." She was very irritated. She also wanted to fight. But her companions were just too strong.

Lyria glanced over at her with a small smile. "Our chance will come. There’s still most of the day ahead. We still have whole day so don’t worry."

"I know." Emma dropped her arms to her sides. "Doesn’t make it less annoying right now."

Zack, the brown-haired elf standing quietly beside Lyria, adjusted the strap of his quiver and nodded in quiet agreement with Emma without saying anything about it aloud.

Damien turned back to the group and gestured ahead. "Let’s keep moving."

They fell into step without argument, forming up naturally as they pushed forward through the undergrowth.

The forest floor was soft here, layered with old leaves and broken branches that muffled their footsteps. Overhead the canopy shifted in a slow wind that didn’t quite reach down to ground level.

Emma drifted toward the back of the group, walking at her own pace.

She was watching the trees on either side absently, thinking about nothing in particular, when something moved in the bushes to her right.

She stopped immediately.

A sharp rustle. Something there or something that had been there a moment ago.

She turned toward the sound and stared into the cluster of low brush and shadow between two wide trunks.

But there was nothing. She definitely heard something moving.

But the bushes were still. Not even swaying from whatever had moved through them.

Emma’s eyes stayed on the spot for another second.

"Odd...i guess there’s nothing," she muttered under her breath.

Then she shrugged it off, turned forward, and started walking again to catch up with the others who had moved a few steps ahead during her pause.

She was not a serious type of perosn. She didn’t care much about this things. Mostly she was careless.

She didn’t think more of it.

She didn’t notice that the silence behind her was not quite the same silence as the silence ahead.

And she didn’t see the shape that emerged from the shadow between those two trunks. It was slow and careful, watching the back of the group with still, vertical slit eyes and began to follow then quietly.

---

Noah’s spear cut through the air in a clean, fast arc and tore through the lizard-type monster in front of him with a single slash.

He barely had time to pull back before another one came lunging at him from the left. He didn’t move to block it. Instead, sharp spikes of ice burst upward from the ground beneath the creature, driving through it and lifting its body off the forest floor entirely.

It didn’t make another sound after that.

Noah lowered his spear and exhaled slowly, running a hand through his pale hair.

That was the last one.

"Noah."

He turned. Mary was watching him from a few steps away, her round glasses catching the filtered light coming through the canopy. Her expression was hard to read as always, but there was something attentive in the way she was looking at him.

"You seem distracted," she said. "Did something happen?"

"Nothing serious." He shook his head. "I’m just thinking about something unrelated to the hunt. Don’t worry about it."

"What kind of something?"

That was Ken, who was walking over while dragging a clean cloth along the length of his blade, wiping the dark monster blood off in long practiced strokes. He looked at Noah with mild but genuine curiosity.

Noah was quiet for a moment, then answered honestly enough.

"I want to run into Damien’s group."

Ken raised an eyebrow. "Any particular reason?"

"Not really." Noah gave a small shrug and a slight smile. "Just wanted to check on Lyria and Arisha. Make sure they’re doing alright."

Ken stared at him.

The expression on his face was flat in the specific way of someone who had asked a question and received an answer that made them regret asking. He looked like he was reconsidering the entire conversation.

"Right," he said after a moment. " "Meh ..whatever. if you don’t want to tell me then don’t just hoping you won’t do something as crazy as what you did in VR."

"I won’t," Noah said immediately.

"I genuinely don’t trust that answer," Mary said from the side, completely without expression.

Noah opened his mouth, then closed it.

Before he could come up with a response to that, the sound of footsteps came through the trees and Ryan, Ophelia, and Marina emerged from between the trunks, having finished pulling the mana cores from the fallen monsters.

Ryan had a small bundle of them already tucked away. Marina was brushing leaf debris off her sleeve.

Ophelia took one look at the three of them standing around talking and frowned.

"What’s going on? We’re wasting time standing here." She glanced between them. "Let’s move."

"Agreed," Marina added simply, already turning in the direction they had been heading.

Mary nodded and started walking after them without another word. Ryan fell into step beside the others naturally, adjusting the strap across his shoulder as he went.

Noah picked up his spear and followed.

Ken lingered for just a second longer, looking at the back of Noah’s head with a quietly suspicious expression.

Then he sighed under his breath and followed the group into the trees.

"Hey let me take lead this time." Ken said knowing this group walk without proper thought.