We spent three days up and down the mountain until we managed to gather everything, we needed to complete this mission, but as we still needed an owl's egg to do so, we decided by photo that we would risk going deeper into the forest to see if we could find a nest that still contain an egg.
As we went deeper into the forest, we not only faced more owls but we also fought for the first time against an owl that had the lightning element in addition to the wind element, even after undergoing the master's training on the lightning element it was still quite painful to be hit by the little one's rays that the owl released in all directions.
Luckily for us it seems that the scum isn't able to focus their lightning element in one hit, they release it from their entire body when they attack. I found this quite weird, but as its lightning element is released to all sides, the entire team was hit by weak blows that did little damage to us, as our armors are made of leather with a bit of metal.
A warrior in iron armor would take damage from these owls, but a warrior fully armored with metal plates would end up being cooked by the rays these owls emit.
Alice and Hilda will suffer a lot to kill the owl, Alice's ear hairs burned slightly during the fight and Hilda didn't summon a drop of water or ice during the fight to avoid drawing the rays to her spear.
But after killing the annoying owl our luck didn't improve, to be precise it got a lot worse, we faced groups of four to six owls which is very difficult to kill, even after we managed to improve our skills to hunt annoying owls. But all the suffering we faced rewarded us with a nest with four owl eggs, when the team saw the eggs in the nest, I took from the tree a smile dominated everyone's face.
"How many eggs were needed for the mission?"
"Two, with these four we should earn a good reward. It's a shame that this reward will only be given after this phase of the exam is over."
"The important thing is to get the special reward and not when it will be delivered. We will probably gain some unique and rare materials; I would love some miners to be able to forge a better shield."
"I would be happy with a high-level magical beast core; it would help me a lot to study the wind element if it were an active core. They are very rare"
"Active cores?"
"Don't you know about them, Ulric?"
"It's the first time I've used that term."
"Ulric doesn't come from a large Zephyr family. There is no way for him to know about active cores, as only cores level four and up can be active."
"I thought he was from a new noble family, but with a fair amount of money, his equipment is very good. Ulric the active core and a core of a level four or higher magical beast, when the core is active its elemental energy will be moving within it, a mage can study this elemental energy to apply it to his own magic."
"An active core is quite rare because they don't last a very long period of time, the stronger the magical beast and how much wing energy it still has inside its core when it died dictates how long the core will be active. The higher and quality of the core and how long it will last its price is decided, they are usually extremely expensive and whenever you get one of them you will depend a lot on your luck, study an active core and as a bet if you will get it to gain something by studying depends more on luck than on your own perception."
"Because of the person's affinity for the properties of the core?"
"Exactly, you can have a much higher perception than normal, but if the characteristics of the core element are the opposite of those of your element, it is basically impossible for you to gain anything by studying the active core. But the opposite can also happen, 'if a mage gets an active core compatible with him his perception and understanding of his element will greatly increase in many different aspects, the stories reporting various rare spells of various elements and combinations of more than two elements were discovered because of mages studying an active core."
"And warriors? If I studied an active nucleus, can I gain from it?"
"Honestly I don't know, usually only mages gain knowledge by studying cores. Warriors may gain some knowledge of their element, but it tends to be seen as wasteful for a warrior to study an active core."
"Thanks for explaining to me how it works and what active nuclei are, zephyr. I'm very interested in getting a core of this type, it's a shame that only magic beasts of level four or higher can develop this type of core. We've already collected everything around here and we'd better leave before something bad happens."
Only a few minutes had passed from the moment we started making our way out of the forest to the moment I was taken in by a bad feeling. I felt like I was covered in ice and the wind was cutting through my skin, something bad is coming.
I looked around to look for something different, a new enemy or even the lack of magical beasts around us, but at the end of my search I didn't find anything wrong.
Hilda who was right behind me realized that something was wrong.
"Did something happen?"
"Let's go, run!"
I was no longer walking quickly as I lead the team but running. I may not have thought anything bad, but I always trust my extinct and senses, for something bad to come and the sooner we get out of the forest the faster we'll be safe and out of harm's way.
Even though we were more at risk of warning or attracting animals or magical beasts I led the team through the forest as if we were running for our lives. And I don't know if luck or luck was exactly what was happening, even though I still couldn't see the danger.
It didn't take long for a roar or caw of a really big bird to break through the silence of the forest, it was a very different sound and it even seemed to come from more than one source. But hearing the sound of a powerful magical beast is irritated or just happy to have found tasty prey, and always something extremely dangerous for groups like ours.
As the danger increased, there was no longer any reason to hold back and the whole team all invoked our wind element to speed up our speed and with the addition of Zephyr's support magic our team traveled through the dense forest at very high speed and ignored anything or animal that got in our way.
It was still half way before we could get out of the forest, but a roar broke through the dense forest air, now I'm sure it came from a large magical beast and it mustn't be an owl. And when a loud cawing with a lightning sound is from the center of the forest my suspicions will become a certainty, a high-level owl is fighting another magical beast further towards the center of the forest.
The rest of the magical animals have been hiding in their lairs while the owls seem to be waking up in high spirits when their leader appears to be fighting. Owls will start appearing in our path, when the owls start attacking the air around them it gets chaotic so they can move more effectively, but now the air of the entire forest becomes one big tornado formed by several chaotic airflows.
It didn't take a few more minutes for the air to also be saturated with an amount of energy from the ray element as great as the energy from the element wind.
Now I'm pretty sure there's a level four owl to more than one owl fighting in the center of the forest. I have no idea what kind of beast is crazy enough to invade owl territory and trigger a battle at this level, we're quite a distance away from the fight, but still the chaotic energy is getting to us.
When we reached the end of our forest, we were attacked by more than a dozen owls and two of them had the lightning element, we were lucky that they would seem more interested in flying around and going to the center of the forest than killing us, so we managed to get this far with only a few superficial injuries.
We basically jump off the cliff with just a rope between us and the free fall might seem risky, but it's still less risky than staying here and finding out what's going on in the woods. When we got to the ground most of the team breathed a sigh of relief, least of all me because when I looked up, I saw a huge wave made up of the elements wind and lightning coming out of the forest.
This is not common, there is something very wrong going on.
"We'd better leave at once."
"Are we leaving yet?"
"Yes, I don't want to be here. There's something wrong here."