[Levi's Pov]
I had no idea how or why, but out of nowhere, a group of four had suddenly found us in the forest, with their leader now smiling when coming toward us. Followed closely by his team, his smile was still not enough to hide his confusion.
"Levi? What are you doing here? Weren't you supposed to be in the central part of the forest?"
'No... not now...'
Seeing the group of four led by Will approaching us, I wanted nothing more than to just run away, to not have to face the white-haired youth among them. This feeling was only exaggerated when I saw his nonchalant, uncaring face, acting as if what happened this weekend was of no importance at all to him.
The worst part about that premise was that he should be the one to feel wronged, he should have been the one that got upset because he got put into a situation like that against his will. Yet, he didn't care, which only made me even more upset that it affected me so much.
'I need to calm down.'
Taking a deep breath, I sorted out my thoughts to the point where I could make sure that the unexpected interaction wouldn't take too long.
"Unfortunately we are just about to stop for the day, and as our camp is quite far away from here, we really have to get going. I'll talk to you after the excursion, Will."
"Alright?"
Turning around, not minding the surprised looks of my group members, I gestured to them that we were going to go back, an order that they gladly followed, even though they were still quite confused as to what was going on.
However...
"I wouldn't go that way if I were you."
A familiar voice, albeit a bit deeper than my memories would suggest called out to us, making me inadvertently shift my focus back to the group of four again, with my eyes now landing on the man who had given us the warning.
Just as I was about to answer him, I realized that if I did, I might not be able to hold back anymore. Therefore, I ignored him. And with that, I hurriedly led the way for me and my team to get away from them.
****
[Aarick's Pov]
"Hey, what was that about?"
"Hmm?"
"The thing you were saying about how Levi's group shouldn't go that way. What did you mean by that?"
Still standing in the same spot where Levi had obviously left us in a hurry, a small little valley with an open patch of grass, I wasn't quite sure how to answer his question.
The reality was that I could feel a pretty big lifeform a bit further away from here, located in the direction they were walking toward, but I had no way of telling Will this unless I wanted to reveal what I was or what kind of abilities I had.
As a result, I merely shrugged my shoulders.
"Just a gut feeling."
"You..."
As his eyes narrowed, and I could sense the same frustration that he had shown so many times already start to emerge inside him, a bright voice intervened in our conversation.
"Hey, shouldn't we also get going? It will be dark soon, you know?"
Luckily for me, Jessica saved me from Will who had been intent on trying to get the truth out of me, putting him in a very peculiar situation.
On one hand, my words had made him worried about Levi, which was the true reason why he wanted to get a better answer out of me, but on the other, Jessica was right. It wouldn't even take an hour before the sun would go down completely.
Despite her not talking, we could also see that Lydia felt the same way as Jessica, not wanting to be out in the middle of the forest where we hadn't scouted our surroundings when it got dark. Which did put a curious thought into my head.
'I wonder how she got the courage to follow me yesterday?'
"Lydia, please search the vicinities for monsters."
"Ah, yes... Hmm, if there is something big, it's either in the air or it's too far away for me to sense."
With his face turned down to the ground, probably feeling incredibly conflicted about what to do right now, I could see Will's fists tremble a bit.
"Aarick... how sure are you about your gut feeling...?"
It had to be said that no matter if my words were true or not, even if there was some kind of monster that was actually too strong for Levi, Astor, Celina, and... whatever his name was, to deal with, it didn't actually matter. Because our teacher was spread around the vicinities in case something happened.
In fact, I knew that Dona would be close by somewhere, as she had already told me that she would make sure she was the one to inspect my group. It would be quite bad if another teacher saw me drink blood, after all.
I did feel a bit anxious to just blindly trust her, but it wasn't as if I had much of a choice. If I abstained from consuming blood for too long, I would inevitably end up losing control anyway.
'Come to think of it, do the teachers know of some way to hide their presence?'
Sadly, I knew that I didn't have time to think about this, as Will was now intensely staring at me, waiting impatiently for an answer. An answer that I still felt didn't matter at all.
"Does it matter?"
"Yes. It matters."
"Why? If there actually is something over there, wouldn't they just get saved by the teachers?"
"You... Haaa... Of course, you don't understand. Just tell me, is there something over there that you think they can't deal with on their own?"
At this point, the fire inside his eyes was almost as vivid as the flames that he had used to scorch our enemies with. Which I found pretty funny because if he was that determined to hear my answer, that would mean...
"Then, that means that you trust my judgment on this?"
"I do. Even if you still acted out of line yesterday, you seemed to have some way of knowing that the cave was empty."
"I see..."
Though I wasn't particularly happy that I had exposed one of my traits, his way of mentally bowing to me felt so incredibly good that I didn't care.
Right now, the strong and proud Will Steiner, the one who always acted as the protagonist of the story, had no choice but to listen to what I had to say, no matter how badly he thought of me. Then again, I didn't care enough to milk this moment for longer than needed.
"Then, if you want to save them, you should probably get going. Because my gut feeling isn't wrong."
"..thank you."
Showing us his back, while also showing his intent to go to the side of the girl he loved, he gave us some parting words.
"Go back to the cave. I'll meet up with you after I'm done."
"What?! Will, you can't just...!"
*Rustle*
'And there he goes.'
Was it a bit awkward that our party leader just left us like this even though there was no actual need, for a girl that didn't even love him back? Absolutely. Despite how heroic he tried to make it seem, I didn't think any of us thought of his actions as neither necessary nor brave.
However, I still felt like it was kind of nice to get a break from him for a bit.
"Uhm... I guess we should just go back then?"
Then, an uncharacteristically meek Lydia spoke up, probably not sure how to deal with this kind of situation.
"Haaa... Yeah, let's go."
As Jessica joined in on her decision as it was the most rational thing to do right now unless we were going to stupidly follow Will into the forest, it was promptly decided by an unspoken majority vote that we would return.
Due to the fact that I was now the only one to act as the vanguard, and as both of the women were now looking meaningfully at me, making words unnecessary to understand what they wanted to say, I took the lead during our return to the cave.
'Come to think of it, I wonder what kind of monster I actually sensed?'
With me only being able to feel the sensation of blood circulating over there, it wasn't as if I could actually determine what kind of monster it was. The only thing I was sure of was that it was something a lot bigger than the monsters that we had encountered so far.
****
[Astor's Pov]
*GRRRRR!*
Aarick had sadly been quite right about his warning to us, that it was a bad idea to go this way.
"Get ready to engage!"
Because now we had no choice but to prepare ourselves to fight the giant furry monster in front of us, a monster that undoubtedly was one of the bosses of this forest.
Worst of all was that it was also very obvious that our leader didn't have much left in her tank, and neither did Celina or Gerald after fighting all day.
'Well, this is unfortunate...