Swoosh!!
A small silhouette was jumping from one branch of the tree to another. Due to high-speed movement, a gust of wind was created.
Animals on the ground subconsciously look up. Alas, the figure disappears before they could catch a glimpse.
Not far behind, four small figures were sprinting with all their might on the ground. Their energy is being drained at an alarming rate. Sweats began to wet their bodies.
"Damn it!" Moja cursed. "How is he even moving like that with such speed?!!"
"Hah...Hah...Hah...I don't know, Moja. Perhaps thanks to magic." Tusca answered in exhaustion. He was pushed beyond the limit and on the verge of collapse.
"Haja, can't we take a rest? The chief is moving too fast. We never feel so tired like this even when hunting." plead Rosta. His throat felt dry from thirst.
Screw the test! All he wanted now was a sip of cold water. Rosta looks at the sky. It's darker than usual. A sign the rain might be poured down soon. He wishes for it to happen in haste.
However, Haja remains unmoved. "No, we can't do it. We need to follow him closely and evaluate his performance."
Out of these four dunirrs, he is the only one that wasn't exhausted. Even so, he is still impressed by Adrian. He had to admit that he slightly looked down on him earlier.
Far at the front, Adrian peek from the corner of his eyes. "Did they stop? Am I moving too fast?"
Seeing no one following him, he decided to stop for a moment and took shelter in one of the gigantic trees.
By his estimation, he had been moving for a total of three hours. It makes sense that his mana is almost depleted. As for his direction, he doesn't know. He just moves randomly.
But he is not worried about it too much. With his [Mental Mapping], he can find a return path to Adrianopolis.
While waiting for his evaluators to catch up, he better recovered his mana first.
Performing all those ninja-like movements heavily consumed his mana.
Because of the dunirrs small stature, the distance between branches was greatly far apart. He needs to channel mana to his legs before taking a jump. When landing, he needs to balance himself to prevent himself from falling thirty meters to the ground.
"I couldn't imagine doing this on Earth even if I wanted to. Hours of watching that blonde-hair ninja anime aren't wasted." Adrian happily said.
As he absorbed mana, drops of water fell from the sky causing his concentration to be disturbed. Grey-coloured clouds slowly covered the sunlight.
"Great, now I have to channel more of my mana to reinforce my eyesight," Adrian grumbled.
He is already doing so to scan a trace of mana in animals' bodies in accordance with Aries's advice. According to her, magic beasts only had special features that grew when they reached a certain level of mana in their bodies. Often, they look like their normal counterparts.
Judging by appearance alone would be difficult and unreliable.
So far, he has yet to find any animals that emitted mana from their bodies.
[Look at the two o'clock directions, under that tree]
Aries's voice suddenly echoed in his head, prompting him to look in a certain direction. Adrian, without anything to do simply followed her instruction.
[Can't you see it?], She asked.
"Yeah, a faint amount of mana emitted from those bushes." He replies after finding the source.
Wasting no time, he leapt to the nearby tree, right above the bushes. He couldn't see anything but he had an idea.
'Danger Awareness'
Everything in a radius of three hundred metres turns black and white. He looks down at the bushed and sees four silhouettes of creatures with horns hiding in it. Look at their figures, he does say they were rabbits.
The colour of their silhouettes is yellow. Meaning that with his current strength, they were not particularly easy targets but not hard either.
'I can't believe that rabbits posed a considerable amount of threat to me.' Adrian feels a little disheartened. Everything is dangerous in his size.
Given the low-rate encounter with magical beasts, he has no right to be picky. Unless he wants to stay in the forest for weeks. It's lucky enough for him to meet four of them after several hours.
Adrian believes he can take one of them. All he had to do was patiently wait for them to come out of their hiding spot.
Seconds turn into minutes, minutes turn into hours. The forest is getting darker and darker. Adrian remains static regardless. Both of his hands are holding a dagger.
In the absolute silence of the forest, only the sound of thunder clasps can be heard occasionally. It provided him with a light for a split second.
Sadly, a disturbing voice foils his hours of effort. "There you are, Adrian!"
'F*ck!! Aren't evaluators supposed to shut up and watch?!' Adrian cursed on the inside. He saw the horned rabbits startle at the sudden noise near them.
The rabbits dashed out from the bushed with an astonishing speed. He doesn't remember rabbits could do this fast.
Adrian ignored Haja and the others.
He channelled mana to his feet and dashed his body from ten meters above the trees straight to the running rabbits on the ground.
His target is the rabbit at the back. It's a risky move. If he misses it, his body will crash to the ground at a high speed. He bet even magic won't let him recover quickly.
His body landed on its back.
*Stab*
Quickly, Adrian buried two of his daggers deep in the back of the horned rabbit, near the neck. The blood starts to splurt out. A momentous joy appears on his face.
But then he realised the stab wasn't deep enough to kill it in one shot.
His prey begins to shake him down.
*Thud*
"Ouch!!" Adrian fell hard to the ground. Pain assaulted him. Perhaps due to the adrenaline rush, he wasn't bothered by it too much. Compared to the pain he felt during the ingrained process, this felt nothing.
He quickly recovered his stance.
The horned rabbits soon realized that their hunter was a mere Dunirr. They stopped running and turned around, facing Adrian.
Now, the hunter has become prey.
"For magical beasts, they're pretty smart." Adrian compliments them. Although he doesn't know if they would understand him.
[Magical beasts' intelligence is pretty high compared to normal ones]
Aries kindly gives him new input.
When he looks closely, these rabbits are larger than he knows. Or maybe his sense skewed after being miniaturised.
Four horned rabbits rush to him together after knowing they are on the advantageous side. They pretty much want to gang up on him.
"I'll look like a sore loser if I lose to mere rabbits." He cast his sight at his four evaluators. They were bewildered by the situation.
It escalated too quickly. They weren't sure whether to step in or not. The test passing requirement is only one magical beast, not four.
When rabbits came close enough, Adrian cast his magic. "Earth Spike!!!"
Four fairly large spikes appear from the ground. Three horned rabbits were stabbed right at the neck. Their bodies shook violently as life was fleeting from them.
However, Adrian had no time to celebrate as the last one barely managed to dodge it. Honestly, he couldn't comprehend how this biggest size rabbit survived.
"You're quite nimble, aren't you?"
As if it understands Adrian's words, the rabbit squeaks angrily. It has no intention of running like earlier.
Rain begins to pour down heavily, causing the ground to soften. Adrian is unmoved. His eyes never left the rabbit.
A showdown between dunirr and rabbit.
The rabbit made its first move. It propels itself to Adrian's direction.
"Earth Spike!!" Adrian used the same technique again.
This time the situation is a bit different. A spike failed to form perfectly due to soil softened by rain.
It completely slipped through his mind.
"Damnit!!!" He cursed at his stupidity.
Even so, the sudden appearance of the earth spike doesn't bother the rabbit.
"Squeak!!" It changes its trajectory midway, targeting Adrian's right side.
Its intention is clear. To poke a hole in Adrian's body.
Panic! Adrian made an earth wall as thick as possible to dampen the impact. The soft earth wall successfully absorbs some but a fairly large impact causes him to stumble a few feet to the back.
Luckily, he fell near the tree. The ground conditions there barely get affected by the downpour thanks to the big branches and leaves above. He pretends to stay on the ground.
Again, the rabbit comes fast and so does Adrian's casting speed.
"Adrian, dodge!!!" Haja shouted. He couldn't bear it anymore. From his perspective, Adrian already passed the test with flying colours.
"Earth Spike!!"
This time, a hard earth spike emerges from the bottom.
"Squeak??!!!" The rabbit was caught off guard. The earth spike went straight through its neck.
Killing it instantly.