Bang! "Hiss!" Bang! "Sisss!?" Bang! "Sss..."

Some snakes hissed n anger, others looked left and right in bafflement and some directly gave up hope of catching the ominous pipe assassin for his ways of concealment were nothing they could hope to expose

At least that's was what went through Anput's head as she tried to occupy her bored mind with random thoughts while killing the snakes

At first, it was a hard but not so dangerous battle but with time her master started to speed up his attack sequence leaving her with many openings to finish the beasts off, thus the boring routine of jumping in and out of the group while clawing and biting repeated itself too many times

"Si-"

Biting off the head of another snake she could barely retain her urge to spit out again as the numbing taste seeped into her mouth, to get rid of the urge she turned her head to look for ore prey

"Wu?"

There were none for her hunting though as the place was littered with tons of dead bodies and no living ones being fished out the waters

She turned to her master and saw him looking at her with a pipe in hand, clearly not intending to extend her battles any longer

"Awu!"

Running to him while happily barking she conveyed just how relieved she was of the long-awaited rest

"Good job"

He gave the happy hound a nice pat on the head, she certainly did her job well

"Go get Ellis while you take guard on the entrance"

"Woo!"

Its time for the bloody exhibitionist to suffer a little, she thought while running out enthusiastically

Barely a minute later Ellis came to him with a crowbar in her hand

"Out of weapons"

"Almost, I would rather not use them against weak enemies"

He nodded at her economical thinking but still refuted her actions

"Use whatever you have for now, we're getting some weapons before we leave anyway"

Since she could use better weapons she naturally would

Dropping the crowbar she took out a fire axe and looked at the waters, ready for his command

"Use two axes and try to familiars yourself with dual-wielding"

He told her while jumping among the wreckage to reach the midsection of the water area, the snakes at the edge were already depleted so he needed to fish them out the centre now

"Hiss!"....

The boring routine started again only this time it took much less time than that of Anput's, after all Ellis could follow up with her attacks when she used stances plus the dual-wielding she was now trying gave her duo direction for attacking

'Shes not half bad'

Dual-wielding was a hard task since it meant one needed to divide his attention onto two different tasks at once, that required one to process te events at two different angels, at least that's the method YuJu took when he learned it

'Her understanding is different, she's mirroring the movements of one side onto the other when she could, otherwise, she would move one weapon opposite of the other sides movement, either way, shes linking the two hands as if they were two parts of one machine, the movement of both sides is correlated to the other'

It didn't seem like a bad thing at all, in fact it would be of major help to her stances, but this sort of method was the worst approach one could take toward dual-wielding, or multitasking in general, because this way one wouldn't be able to adjust to different types of situations happing at the same time if he used the same mindset for each one

'Il let her see the end of this road and only then guide her on the right track, it's never too late to change this type of thing'

He didn't point it out in the end and let her do her thing, self-learning was always his method

'Though I might have overdone it with her'

He contemplated as he looked upon her naked figure, stained with old and new blood, dashing through the bodies as she turned them into fountains of blood, her purple aura swaying around her like a flame that signalled her passion for fighting, contradictory to what her cold face told

'What a weird trait she gained'

Auras gained traits and evolved with their holders, while the main essence of the aura, in her case that would be dignity, remained the same, everything else could change, it could turn from a harmful aura into a healing one, from stable into chaotic, anything was possible

The new shape her aura took, a flickering flame, was a trait that she had gained after she continuous slaughter, there were signs of it emerging each time she seemed to be exhausted and it finally became apparent when she fought the giant snake

'It's pretty useless though'

Sure it gave Ellis a boost in stamina, or at least it seemed to do so, but other than making his blood boil for battle when he was within its vicinity it really didn't have much of an effect

'Actually, its effect can be said to be a demerit, I'd like my followers to have a calm and collected mind, not one that wanted to rush into battle as soon as possible'

When put this way it could be seen that it had side effects without any real benefit thus making him reconsider his no-hands approach

'Il see what road this new trait takes, if it's really mass moral oriented I'll have to nudge her onto a different path'

While thinking about various things he watched on as she sliced the hissing menace while he contributed by giving her some more to fight every now and then

Soon her level reached fifty as well marking the end of this boring hunt

"Master, how come the snakes were so passive"

She directed this question at him the second he came out the wreckage

"The poison filled blood is sort of a tunic for them, with its numbing effect and the entice it offered they went into a deep slumber in order to absorb it and as I hadn't made any big movements that could be caught within their perception they didn't know I was fishing them out until the pipe hooked them up"

"So basically, they didn't even know their brethren were being hunted?"

He nodded at her simplification and started to run outside with her following

They passed by the resting Anput promoting her to get up and run along with them

Pretty soon the trio was out he factory, heading back in the direction of the city

The long distance between the factory and the city was covered pretty quickly and they arrived before a tall building, blue ripped flags and postures were strewn about it while a few roars sounded from within

He didn't bother eliminating the many beasts around the place and directly entered the building

"A mall?"

Questioned Ellis by the side

"More like a tourist trap where they sell all the things you might want to buy at the centre of the city at exorbitant prices, you wouldn't know that you've been robbed until you saw the market within the city"

"I see"

"On the bright side, that means they have everything we need here"

He while leading them into a fishing supply store

Walking past the rods, bait, and common fishing equipment and commercial items they stood before a rack filled with long and sharp harpoons, by the side lay a nice collection of gutting knives under which was an even better collection of gutting knives

"Swords?"

"None, its a fishing supply spot, pulse you won't be using sword for a while"

"?"

He didn't further explain what he meant and left her guessing at whatever plans he had for their long-awaited journey

He used his storage to take away most of the gutting knives and all the harpoon darts leaving her with all the harpoons and the remaining gutting knives

After she took them into her storage he took them to a large clothing centre where all sorts of clothes were thrown on the ground while some had stains of blood on them, other than that there weren't many beasts here and the damage done wasn't that great, presumably because it was a clothing area where neither beasts nor humans needed to be in at this time

After disposing of the few beasts in sight he instructed Ellis on what to do here

"Choose a few bra's that you're comfortable with and come back to me, I will get us the needed clothes for the journey"

"??"

"You'll need it"

".....But I don't like to wear bra's, at least not anymore"

"Because they get in the way while fighting?"

She nodded her head

"Well then don't worry, it's not for wearing, it's for training"

"..."

She really didn't know how to reply any longer, but thinking about it she was standing in front of him naked, how could getting bras be any worse

"Okay"

She turned toward the woman section to get them

"While you're at it take a shower and cover this already" Slap!

Her head turned sharply toward his disappearing figure while her hands rubbed on her assaulted ass, she also thought it was about time she put some clothes on but she had hoped he wouldn't make her, something about fighting in the buck gave her a sense of freedom

'Maybe this is becoming a bad habit?'

She wondered to herself while walking into the woman privet clothing sections