When the alliance between Rudolf and decided to split into two to cover more ground more people ended up picking to join Joaquin's side.
For convenience most of the students were not wearing their school uniform, Joaquin was dressed in a plain black t-shirt which was tucked in track pants under his signature lab coat. The lower half of his attire was a pair of sneakers. Ains was wearing her uniform. Ruben and the Idol Prince Wang were in the school tracksuits.
His long blue hair was tied behind his back and his eyes stuck out beautifully, all of the Rudolf members kept praising the Idol Prince. He moved over to Joaquin and gave him his hand, "you promised to go with me yesterday. Take care of me." He said with a bright smile.
Joaquin tilted his head a bit and observed the Idol Prince Wang before giving him his hand. They shook for a second and the Idol Prince pulled Joaquin's hand near, observed it, and stared back curiously.
"What's the ring on your finger for?"
"Nothing to do with you," Joaquin pulled his hand away and tucked them into his track pants, in them and not the pockets. There were three groups, the first one was lead by the Idol Prince Wang and Joaquin but Beipan and Luo tagged along.
The second one was by Ruben and Basil, the last one was lead by Colton and Nadia. They spread out into different directions where Peerless wasn't headed.
After walking for a little over 10 minutes Joaquin pulled out his grimoire, this time it didn't appear out of midair to avoid attracting attention to himself. He read through the contents for a short while and turned to Ains and the Idol Prince.
"This is where we split up, I have places to be," Joaquin said in a slow manner.
"Why don't we come with you?"
"I don't want to be held responsible for your lives." He turned back to Ains. "Let's go." She skipped to him and hid behind his back.
Beipan cleared his throat and waltzed to the Idol Prince's side. "I hear, that in the Forest of Dimensions lies priceless treasures and mysteries. Are you perhaps by any chance trying to deny us here, all of your allies a chance to power up?"
The other students started whispering amongst themselves curses at Joaquin, talking about how he is being unfair. The evil in his heart and the possibility of him plotting something. The Idol Prince Wang raised his fan and they stopped.
"Do you know where we are?"
"No, if I did I would've went with Ben."
The Idol Prince pouted at the response and folded his arms. "Can we come with?"
"I don't care, you won't be my responsibility either way," Joaquin said as he turned to walk away.
The Idol Prince waved his fan and the students followed behind, "Hey wait up." he dashed to Joaquin's side. "Are you really looking for treasure?"
"Of course not, I'm going down this path because I'm suicidal."
"Hehe. No seriously why did you suddenly change directions."
Joaquin pointed back to where they came from and on the bushes, those with good enough eyesight were able to spot some creatures lying in wait. A few of them jumped but the rest kept calm, they already knew that inevitable for the creatures to attack. There was no use in being afraid rather some even activated their abilities.
'That will only aggravate them, but then again they should already know that.' Joaquin thought to himself.
The forest going forward was dense, there was barely any room to walk freely so the journey was slow. The vines and the branches hugged the students, the twigs became accessories, while their shoes gained new hue. They never skipped over the chance to complain, but instead of blaming the Idol Prince who decided to follow Joaquin, they blamed Joaquin for walking around aimlessly.
Everything got worse as the ground below their feet got soggy, they sank in by inches whining started to get to Joaquin. He was especially pissed off because he was dealing with the smoke ghost's incompetence, while Luo led the group in front of him.
Joaquin was angered by the fact that the shock meter didn't serve any purpose and made the concept of levels meaningless. But he couldn't do anything about it right now because the smoke ghost nowhere to be seen.
Luo suddenly stopped and Joaquin stopped simultaneously while Ains rammed into Joaquin's back.
"Why did you stop?" Joaquin asked.
"Well," said Luo as he took a few more steps forward and moved to the side. "See for yourself."
Upon escaping the torture of the bushes one would be greeted by a burst of bright sunshine, right on entry into the denseness there was no sunshine because of a blanket of clouds. The extreme switch in weather surprised the students to a point of being all the rage about it.
There were also no trees for as far as the horizon, the grass was tall and the flowers were white.
"Where do we go from here, it seems like we strayed away from the hunting grounds?" Luo said as he placed his hand on Joaquin's shoulder. Joaquin lowered it and slipped away from his grip.
"We are. We are nowhere near the hunting grounds, those were about E2 grade hunting grounds. Where we are is D4 grade, no only is death looming on every corner but the thing I'm looking for should be in the center." Joaquin said as he pointed forward.
"E2, D4? What are those numbers about?" Luo scratched his had.
"Think of it as a more specific way of varying the difficulties of what seems to be the same thing. Basically, he is saying we strayed from a controlled area to a dangerous one. He escorted us to our deaths." Beipan said with a giggle.
"Won't he die too?" Luo asked even more confused than at first.
"Who knows, I heard he gained an ability. As a beach negative you must know what that means." Beipan as he glared at Joaquin. "It's obviously an evil ability, who knows what it does?" Everyone backed away from Joaquin immediately and activated their abilities.