The next morning, before the sun came up, the same thing happened as the day before. Dillim woke up Keith, and they trained and sparred for a while. After a little bit of time had passed, during their spar, Rinza’s sleepy head appeared from outside his tent. He asked them if they could lower their volume a little, but Dillim’s fierce gaze was all the motivation he needed to return to his bed.

Only when the sun had already risen, and it was almost noon, did Rinza appear from his tent again. His face still had traces of drowsiness, and when he saw that the loud noises from Dillim and Keith had finally stopped, he immediately wanted to return to his bed to sleep a little longer. But Dillim forcefully dragged him out of his tent when Keith had recovered his breath. They then swiftly packed up, and moved out again.

They left the forest around Nizlon, and encountered a road. This turned out to be the main road of Erelath. If they would follow this path, they would eventually get close to the National Magic Academy, but it would take too long. They figured they were strong enough to directly cross through the outer edges of Erelath’s Woods, and take a short cut that way.

Even though they would eventually enter Erelath’s Woods, they still had to follow the main road for a while. There were quite some people who used the road as well, especially traders and carriages of nobles. Keith once again curiously observed his surroundings.

The reason that there were quite some nobles on this part of the road, was of course, because of the teleport gate. Some traders could use it with their products to efficiently get them to other countries. The only problem was that they couldn’t bring a whole carriage, only a few backpacks, but even that would result in a hefty price. As for the nobles, if they had business in other countries, they would simply use the teleport gate to arrive there sooner. It was also a form of showing off one’s wealth and importance by using the teleport gate instead of travelling.

Keith’s party followed the main road for two days, until they left it at Rinza’s remark. They had slept in their tents just a little bit away from the main road the previous days, without relatively fearing anything. The main road around Nizlon was frequented by nobles, which would normally be a perfect place for a bandit attack. But the nobles were aware of this as well, which is why there were a lot of mercenaries hired for protection. The mercenaries were pretty smart; they had stationed a huge network of them in Nizlon. This way, if nobles quickly wanted to hire a mercenary party, it would be done immediately. Most regular bandits wouldn’t want to risk their own lives fighting against a mercenary, especially not for only a chance at minor profit.

Keith left the road along with Dillim and Rinza when it started to make a weird turn. They had been walking in a straight line the previous days, but out of nowhere, the road suddenly started to go towards the left. Rinza urged them to continue forward, saying that the road was simply avoiding ‘Erelath’s Woods’. The town of Nizlon was located at the edge of Erelath, so they still had to travel for about a week until they would reach their destination. Erelath’s Woods occupied a huge part of the right side of Erelath, but it only slightly extended towards the middle of the country. The main road had taken them to more or less the middle of the country, so they would only have to cross a small part of the outer edges of Erelath’s Woods.

Thus, they continued forward, advancing towards the academy in a straight line.

After they marched on for a few hours, the surroundings gradually started to change. It got more quiet, and the atmosphere had gotten somewhat mystical; the nature around them was gradually growing wilder and bigger. After this continued for a while, the party suddenly stopped dead in its tracks.

Keith’s eyes widened, showing his amazement at the sight in front of him. They had come to a stop, because in front of their eyes a magnificent forest stretched out. They had seen the trees from a distance of course, but only when they stood in front of the forest did they really understand how immense those trees were. When standing at the edge of the forest, the first trees that could be seen were already enormous. One could only imagine how tall the oldest trees at the center of the forest would be.

Rinza just grinned and directly entered the forest, seemingly not fazed at all. Dillim and Keith recovered quite fast, and followed him inside.

They moved throughout the forest, and everywhere around them life could be seen. These were the tallest trees Keith had ever seen, but not only had the trees left a huge impression, all the different kinds of nature too. There were lots of flowers and bushes, which were all taller than the norm. Every so often, they would see an animal walking around, or one who would curiously observe them.

They kept moving, while Dillim would sometimes glance in a certain direction, which would be followed with the sounds of a magical beast scurrying away. Even in the outer edges of the forest there were magical beasts. They preyed on other animals, but also on everything weaker than them. When they spot humans, they would try to attack them, but seeing Dillim’s fighting spirit, their instincts to flee would immediately kick in.

After they kept walking for a few hours, they set up a camp again. This time Dillim went out to do the hunting; there were enough wild animals in the forest anyway. After Dillim moved out, Keith and Rinza were left alone for a while.

“Hey,” Keith said, looking in Rinza’s direction. Rinza was seated across from him; he had used some spells to create some benches again. The spell he used this time wasn’t as destructive as the previous one. “Why are there only magical beasts in forests?” Keith asked.

Rinza straightened his posture a little, assuming his ‘lecture’ posture. “That’s a question that’s well debated actually. But to get to the root of it, I first have to talk a little about world energy,” he said, checking if Keith was closely paying attention. “As of now, the most intellectual people think that world energy is formed by living things. Magical beasts need world energy to survive and strengthen themselves, but somehow, they all appear in enormous forests. We think that this is closely related, so the current hypothesis is that enormous forests have huge amounts of life, which all produce world energy. Because of the huge amount of dense world energy, animals start to more easily absorb it, and eventually turn into magical beasts. Or magical beasts are simply born there,” Rinza said. He looked at Keith with an inquiring gaze, but it looked like Keith somewhat understood. Seeing Keith’s reaction, Rinza thought he could make it a little more difficult. “But that’s exactly what’s weird. Everyone needs world energy, and everyone absorbs it automatically. Of course, it can be cultivated too, which is how warriors train. But don’t you think it’s weird that all life needs world energy, but all life produces world energy too. That’s why the theory isn’t widely accepted yet.”

Keith thought for a while, he then came to a simple conclusion. “That means… in short, you don’t know?”

Rinza smiled for a split second, he didn’t think that Keith would actually be pretty sharp. He had dropped a huge amount of information on him, but he actually managed to get to the core of the answer. “Well, it’s not that we don’t know exactly… it’s just that we’re still figuring it out,” Rinza said, smiling at Keith.

Having received that answer, Keith sank back into silence. He had slowly become a little colder than how he used to be. The only things that would visibly change his bearing, was when he held a sword, or when he was curious about something.

They sat in silence for a while, until Dillim returned with a figure under his arm. “Look,” he said, throwing the corpse of the animal in the middle of the camp.

“Is that… a wolf?”

Keith’s surprised voice rang out; that wasn’t a simple wolf, for some reason it had 2 tails!

“Ah,” Rinza voiced his amazement, “That’s actually a Two-Tailed Wolf! That should be a second-tier magical beast. Normally the Two-Tailed Wolves are under the protection of their parents… what a catch!”

Dillim, who saw Rinza’s amazed appearance chuckled: “Yeah, it should be a nice meal.”

Rinza looked from the corpse of the Two-Tailed Wolf towards Dillim. “Tell me, how did you manage to get rid of its parents?”

Dillim remained silent, and just questioningly stared at Rinza.

“Huh? It was alone? Damn, I hope they don’t find us then.”

Keith had no clue what they were talking about, so he finally interjected: “What are you talking about Rinza…”

“Huh?” Rinza didn’t realize he was mumbling something not understandable, so he started to explain: “Well, Two-Tailed Wolves are special magical beasts that can evolve after they’ve absorbed a certain amount of world energy. This Two-Tailed Wolf is only second tier, but when it evolves it become a Three-Tailed Wolf, which is a 4th tier magical beast!” He exclaimed, before continuing: “Most of the time the parents are Three-Tailed Wolves, and they closely guard their children until they evolve too. But seeing how they weren’t around, this wolf was probably abandoned.”

“I see,” Keith voiced, before asking a question again. “Then what do you mean with tiers?”

“Well, as I said before, the first tier is the cultivator stage, which lasts from everyone’s 6th year, until they are twelve years old. And the last stage is the grand sword master or grand spell caster stage. That is the 6th stage. To efficiently categorize people by their strengths, they are all part of a certain stage, corresponding to how strong there are. There are six stages in total for us humans, while magical beasts have tiers. A 4th tier magical beast, is as strong as a human who has reached the 5th stage! That means that those Three-Tailed Wolves are as strong as a mana master, like me!” He said, while he muttered after saying that: ‘Well, almost as strong as me, hmph.’

They then made a campfire again, and started resting. They slowly ate the Two-Tailed Wolf, which actually tasted extremely good. Rinza had some spices and salt on him, which improved the quality of every meal by leaps and bounds. In general, because of the continuous nourishment from world energy, magical beasts tasted extremely good.

After some time, the sun started to go down, and they made their preparations to sleep. They didn’t have anyone stand guard the days before, but while in the forest, they would. Dillim proposed to stand guard first, but just when the other two prepared to sleep, something happened.

“Awoooooo.” Suddenly, a lot of sounds could be heard. There were multiple instances of wolves howling, all coming from different directions. They had seemingly surrounded them already, and it seemed like there weren’t only 2 parents.

“Damn,” Rinza shouted, “We shouldn’t have underestimated their sense of smell!”