Noah was jumping from tree to tree at high speed toward the faint presence that he felt with his mind.
When the figure entered his field of view, he slowed his pace to make sure that he would not be noticed.
The member of the Gray Shadows kept running for about an hour deep in the forest, unaware of a black figure hiding in the trees behind him.
Then he stopped in a seemingly random location and hid in a bush, probably waiting for any pursuer to show up.
After a quarter of an hour, he came out of the bush, convinced that no one was following him.
He happily folded his sleeve and raised his now exposed right arm into the air. Then he closed his eyes in concentration while furrowing his brows.
A twinkle shot out from his hand, and various items appeared on the ground. There were magical beasts' parts, weapons, bottles with shining liquids, and so on, all of those had appeared out of nowhere.
The hooded man was about to sort the items on the ground when a black blade appeared on his throat, followed by a cold threatening voice.
"Tell me how you did that, and I'll let you live."
The man realized that he had been followed and cursed internally.
'I'm the fastest in the Gray Shadows, but my brothers should be near here by now, maybe if I stall for a bit...'
The plan of the hooded man was simple but effective, so he went for it.
"Oh, you know, it's a special technique passed down by the ancestors of my fa-!"
He could not finish his sentence that a sharp pain coming from his right shoulder assaulted him, forcing him to crouch on the ground holding his shoulder.
However, when his hand reached for the spot where the pain came from, he only felt a warm liquid flowing from it.
He opened his eyes to look at it and discovered that his right arm had disappeared from its spot and was on the ground staining it with a red color.
Before he could say anything though, the black blade reappeared on his throat, and the cold voice sounded again.
"Next is your left arm if you don't speak."
The Gray Shadow was terrified by now and hastily explained with a trembling voice.
"I-It's the space-ring on my right hand, sir. If you use your mental energy, you can bind it and use it to store non-living things. It's all yours, just give me one second to remove my binding."
"No need."
The cold voice sounded one last time, and the head of the thief fell on the ground severed by its body.
Noah looked the severed arm on the ground and found a plain-looking silver ring.
He took it in his hands and focused his mental energy to inspect it.
A type of connection was created, and the half-transparent image of the ring appeared in Noah's sea of consciousness.
When Noah focused on the ring, he could see a separated space of 30 cubic meters inside it full of precious material and similar.
He was amazed!
He shifted his gaze toward the items on the ground, and just by willing it, they got sucked inside the space of the ring.
He tried to do the same with the corpse of the thief, and the same thing happened.
Then he concentrated again on one of the items inside the ring, and it suddenly appeared in front of him.
He put the item back in the separated space, and he scrutinized the ring.
It looked perfectly like a regular ring from every perspective.
Only by inspecting it with mental energy, you could vaguely sense that something was off with it.
'This thing is amazing! There is no way that I give it back. If I just hide it under my clothes, no one would be able to find it!'
While he thought of this, he sensed six presences coming from the forest in his direction.
'Right, let's solve this issue first.'
The remaining six members of the Gray Shadows arrived in the spot where Noah once was and got perplexed, seeing the stains of blood on the ground.
One of them touched them and spoke in a worried voice.
"The blood is still warm. I think that seventh shadow was followed and injured, as we all know his battle capabilities are pretty inconsistent."
Another one of them answered him.
"What do we do now? All the stolen goods are in his space-ring, and, without it, we are just some lousy robbers."
'So everything they have is inside the ring, no need to waste time then.'
Noah was back in his hiding position at the top of a tree listening attentively to the conversation of the thieves to make sure that there were no more secrets to uncover.
Once he was sure that the ring was the main reason they managed to operate in secret for so much time without getting caught, he slashed the air in their direction and jumped toward them at high speed.
The slash created a blade of wind that crashed on the remaining members of the Gray Shadows, catching them by surprise.
Two members of the group got injured instantly and were about to unsheath their weapons when a black figure passed next to them, their heads detached from their bodies as if they were only leaning on it.
Noah touched the ground and released four more wind slashes in the direction of the remaining four hooded men.
Then he followed the slashes without even waiting for them to hit.
Every time he moved, someone's head would be severed, he was using his rank 3 martial art at full strength!
Since he entered the fifth cycle, the limit on the usage of his full strength got raised to ten attacks, so he wasn't going to hold himself back against six enemies.
In less than a minute, the Gray Shadows were all dead and put inside Noah's space-ring.
'I have less than two weeks left for this mission. I might have a plan on how to get the highest benefits from it, but I must first clean this place and go deeper into the forest to make it work.'
Noah hurriedly dug out the terrain that got stained by blood and put it in the space-ring, then he refilled the holes and checked again to be sure that he left no traces of his battle.
'This should be enough. Now I need to find a suitable place in the forest to create a fake deposit.'
As he thought that, he ran in a straight line toward a deeper part of the forest.