"No… no, I don't think I will," Xander said with confidence and finality as if nothing she could ever say would convince him otherwise.
Na-ri no longer had a smile on her face; she instead had a somewhat shocked look. "And why not? Do you have something better to do? Do you not care about your fellow man?"
Xander looked away, her stare making him uncomfortable. "It's not that I don't; it's just I have to focus on myself. I have to become stronger. There are things I have to accomplish, there's someone I have to find… and I can't let anything or anyone slow me down."
Xander had told himself when he first got teleported here that the only thing he was going to care about while he was here was surviving and getting stronger, and he wasn't going to let some random pretty girl convince him otherwise.
"What, you think I don't have goals I need to accomplish? Do you think I don't want to get stronger? I do. But that doesn't mean I can forgo everything else. I still have my morals, and even my need for revenge, as great as it is, won't let me cross a line I don't want to cross," Na-ri said with a harrumph as she stopped staring him down, turned forward, and they continued their slow walk forward.
"Raaaawwwrr!"
All of a sudden, a large but nimble cat-like beast jumped out from behind one of the large trees.
[Common Mistweaver - F-rank - Entry]
"Dammit!" Xander yelled as he summoned a wall of death qi and used 'lightning dash' to retreat.
As both Na-ri and Xander retreated back, trying to create distance from their attacker, they both started to notice what felt like a noose wrapping around their necks.
It was the mist. The Mistweaver was aptly named, able to control the mist in the air.
Both Na-ri and Xander had their own ways to deal with it.
With Na-ri summoning her sun core and Xander his lightning core, they each used their qi to push away the mist.
While the suffocating feeling didn't go away, it was enough for them to begin their attack.
Xander wrapped around the beast while he phased into the mirage realm, and Na-ri started to fight the beast head-on.
The beast couldn't decide who to focus on, but in the end, it decided the threat directly in front of it was more dangerous than the unknown one, so it started its attack on Na-ri.
Xander, seeing his opportunity, phased into the real world and brought down his blade on the F-rank beast.
"Bang!"
His 'electro blade' attack, which summoned a large amount of lightning qi onto his blade, slammed onto the Mistweaver, doing a large amount of damage.
The Mistweaver screamed out in pain but quickly jumped around and swiped its claws at Xander.
Xander struggled but managed to hold his ground long enough for Na-ri to get in a nice strike of her own. The two continued this strategy until the beast realized this fight wasn't worth the effort and bolted away.
"Phew!" "Phew!" they both breathed out.
It was an intense fight with an F-rank beast that could easily end with one or both of them dead, so they were happy for the fight to be over.
"Okay, now I think we should head back to the cave. What do you think? Let's wait and see if this mist will disappear with the sun," Xander said.
Na-ri nodded her head, and the two started their trek back.
As they walked back through the same trail they had just taken, they were expecting not to run into any beast, but they were wrong. They ran into two more groups of G-rank beasts along the way back: another group of Fogclaws and a group of Mistshades that they easily took out.
They eventually made it back to the cave, and once there, they waited for daybreak. Once the sun finally came up, they were happy to see the fog disappear.
"So where to now? Should we continue along the way we went before or try something else?" Na-ri asked.
"Just wait a moment," Xander said as he attempted to climb up the large 500-meter tall tree.
He slowly climbed his way up, and he was very disappointed to find out he couldn't see anything once he made it to the top. There were too many leaves and other trees in the way, so he had to climb back down with the same knowledge about where to go that he went up with, which was nothing.
"Anything?" Na-ri asked.
"Nope," Xander answered. "Let's just keep going like we were before."
They continued their journey forward through the forest.
***
After walking for about 3 hours and only running into two groups of G-rank beasts, Na-ri finally asked, "So who do you have to find?"
Xander was a little surprised when she asked, and he looked over at her for a moment, "Austin… my brother. I thought he was dead for a long time, but it turns out he's not. Now the problem is that he's in a dangerous place, and I don't know how to get to him."
Na-ri nodded her head.
"So what about you? You mentioned revenge?" Xander asked, wondering if she would start opening up a little.
Na-ri glanced over at Xander then continued to look ahead, "…I… I umm… wait, what is that?"
Na-ri pointed forward and to the left. From where she was standing she could see about 1000 meters ahead, and she saw what looked to be smoke.
Xander couldn't see what she was pointing at, so he repositioned and saw the smoke.
"I don't know. Let's go check it out."
The two walked forward, making sure to be quiet, and eventually, they were on top of a small hill overlooking a campfire that was built by a demon and a devil.
"It looks like they're cooking some food," Xander whispered. The demon and devil were each standing around the campfire, grilling some sort of beast they had killed.
The two sat there and watched them for about two minutes, and then the demon turned around, walked behind a tree, and then they started to hear a girl screaming.
"Ahhhhhh!" "Ahhhh!!" "Stop, please stop!" "Just kill me!"
They could hear the demon laughing, and watched as the devil stood up and walked over toward the girl as well.
Both Xander and Na-ri looked at each other with disgusted looks on their faces. They each nodded their heads, then Xander held out his hand and Na-ri took it. The two then phased into the mirage realm. Na-ri was marked with qi so she could freely move, and they started their way forward.