Splat!

A greenish gooey liquid landed on a tree and surprisingly opened a hole in the tree with smoke coming from the sides of the tree.

“Shit! It also has corrosive effects?” Grey could be seen running towards the tree that was hit by the gooey liquid, and he could not help but look at it.

The greenish gooey liquid was initially aimed at him, but being quick, he managed to evade it and it hit the tree, and to his greatest surprise, the greenish gooey liquid had a corrosive effect.

Croak!

Two frogs could be seen following closely behind him, while multiple other beasts could be heard from some distance away, they were all chasing after the same person, Grey.

‘Why are they following me, what did I do?’ Grey asked himself while creating an inscription.

He felt there must be a reason why the beasts were chasing after him, but he couldn’t think of an that could be the cause of it.

One of the frogs following behind him suddenly opened its mouth, and its pink tongue shot straight at Grey.

Void who was on the lookout instantly sent a lightning bolt at the tongue.

Buzz!

The lightning bolt made contact with the frog’s unprotected tongue and sent a stream of lightning straight into the body of the frog.

The frog retracted its tongue and wailed in pain while also trembling continuously, it also temporarily stopped in place, unable to move for the time being.

Void seeing that he got one of them, laughed happily, especially at the sight of the frog quivering repeatedly. Though he knew the frog wouldn’t die from the shock, it was still satisfying to watch.

‘What’s so funny?’ Grey asked when he heard Void’s laughter.

‘I just electrocuted one…’ Void told Grey what happened.

‘Well, that’s good, now, we need to get the other one off our backs.’ said Grey.

He had tried creating some distance between them, but the frogs were not falling behind, rather, they were slowly catching up to him. If the chase continued this way, then they would definitely catch up with him.

Had there been only these two beasts, then he would have already stopped and tried to fight against them. Even though it wouldn’t be easy, he was sure he would be able to defeat them, with the help of Void that is.

Grey was currently running towards the south, and the beasts were chasing after him continuously.

After one and a half minutes of running, Grey had finally set up the inscription, while managing to keep himself alive as well.

While he was running, the frog would continuously spit out those greenish gooey liquids at him, which Void blocked some of them, while he dodged the remaining ones.

Scampering through the trees, he remembered when he was being chased by the horde of apes.

‘It hasn’t even been close to two weeks, yet here I am, being chased once again.’ He thought self mockingly.

‘If only I could encounter people just like the last time.’

Grey attacked the frog who was already only ten meters away from him.

Boom!

The attack missed the frog who agilely jumped to the side, to escape from it while also spitting out the greenish gooey liquid.

The greenish gooey liquid hit a tree ahead of Grey and was able to eat away a part of it, making the tree fall in the direction opposite Grey.

Bang!

The sound of it hitting the ground reverberated out, while Grey jumped above the just fallen tree.

He once again used the inscription to attack, while Void also followed up with an attack of his own.

With both attacks coming from two different angles, the frog was forced to spit out its gooey liquid at Void’s lightning attack. When the gooey liquid touched the lightning, it let out a sizzling sound with steam rising up into the air.

_____

Three kilometers in the direction Grey was currently headed.

Two silhouettes could be seen facing each other, one was a young lady, and the other was a young man. Behind the young man, was a gate that led to an ancient-looking castle.

“Where are your friends?” The young lady asked icily while looking at the young man with ruthless eyes.

The young lady was none other than the one from the Azure empire Grey encountered just over a week ago when he was being chased by the horde of apes, and the young man she was facing was Neil from the Royal Academy in the Qilin empire.

Neil separated from the group when they entered a castle just like the one Grey and his friends entered when they just came to the trial land. He had been searching for them around the castle for almost a day now, but he hadn’t seen any of them.

Just when he gave up and leave the place, he was blocked the young lady. Neither of them had made a breakthrough yet, so they were still in the Fourth and Third stage respectively, with the young lady being in the Fourth and Neil being in the Third.

Neil felt a little panicky when he recognized the young lady before him, he wasn’t as strong as the Twelfth Prince, so he was not one hundred percent confident in being able to escape her. Being the weaker party, his chances didn’t look good.

He summoned enough courage not to show the slight fear that crept into his heart.

“Hmph! What are you doing here? Seems like you were lucky to escape the pursuit of those apes.” Neil snorted coldly making sure not to give away anything.

Although, he was quite surprised seeing the young lady because he thought none of them would be able to escape from the clutches of the apes, except for Grey. Since Grey was able to keep himself alive from when the apes started chasing him till they saw him, he was sure he wouldn’t have any problems with escaping, especially when he had the group from the Azure empire as decoys.

When the young lady heard him speaking of the apes, she was instantly infuriated and attacked. Her eyes turned red and for some weird reasons, tears were flowing from them.

Seeing her reaction, Neil was a little taken aback, but he quickly dodged the attack.

‘What did she experience that would make her react like this?’ He questioned himself.

From the young lady’s reaction, it wasn’t hard to figure out she must have experienced horrifying things at the hands of the apes, but he couldn’t think of anything. The apes would normally only kill their opponents, so for the young lady to react this way was quite strange.

“I will kill you!” The young lady yelled angrily and attacked once again.

Boom!

One minute later.

The scene of their battle was currently a mess, the young lady could be seen looking at Neil evilly, and the gates to the castle had been blasted to smithereens by her vicious attacks.

Neil was currently huffing, from the continuous attacks the young lady had sent his way. Even after blocking over eighty percent of her attacks, he was still injured and had suffered from multiple burns. But those were the least of his problems, due to blocking most of her attacks, he had suffered from the shockwave from when the two attacks collided, causing internal injuries.

Blood could be seen trickling from the side of his mouth, but he quickly wiped it while focusing on the young lady once again.

“What did the apes do to you?” He asked for the umpteenth time.

Hearing the question sent the young lady into a frenzy once again and she charged at him while yelling at the top of her voice. But just as she was about to attack.

Boom!

“Fuck!”

They heard an explosion, as well as someone swearing.

They both curiously looked in the direction where the explosion came from, and they saw a stunningly handsome young man running out of the forest, his short hair was fluttering in the wind, and he had a somewhat worried expression, but it didn’t hide the glint in his eyes. On his shoulder perched a small pitch-black cat.

They were both dumbfounded when they saw the young man because he was someone they had seen not too long ago.

“It’s him!”

They exclaimed simultaneously.

Grey who was running already knew there were people here, so he wasn’t too surprised when he heard their voices.

“Oh! Hi!” He waved when he saw how both Neil and the young lady were staring at him.

“It’s all because of you! You made them did those things to me!” The young lady screamed and charged towards Grey who was running their way.

“What are you saying? What did they do to you? Also, who are you?” Grey asked three questions simultaneously.

“I’ll never forgive you!” The young lady yelled hysterically and completely forgot about Neil while charging at Grey.

Neil just watched from the side, his curiosity eating him up as he asked himself the same question, ‘what did they do to her?’.

Unfortunately, the young lady had refused to tell even after he asked her multiple times during the battle. It wasn’t like he cared or anything, it was just his curiosity getting the better of him.