Luan crouched on the robust branch of a tree, silently watching as a squirrel the size of a table munched on a fruit at the base of a tree 300 meters away.
The squirrel didn't really have any obvious mutations, and by the way its tail hairs moved and perked, it was obvious at first glance that it acted like its mundane counterpart.
With movements so silent that it might as well had been wind, he removed an arrow and nocked it on the the string of the bow before pulling it back.
If there was one advantage to using a vine as the string of his bow instead of the normal tendon, it would be the quietness whenever he drew his bow.
Luan's hands raised slightly, his movements still not giving out any sound, then he released the arrow.
The arrow, which was supposed to be nothing more than a sharpened stick, streaked through the air with the silent lethality of a prowling panther, moving through the gaps in the three trees that separated the squirrel from Luan.
Without any ceremony, the arrow struck true, piercing the tiny eyeball of the oversized rodent with impeccable accuracy and nailing its head to the ground.
Black blood pooled beneath the rodent's head, then Luan moved, but not in the direction of the dead beast.
Luan seemingly effortlessly jumped off the branch he was crouching on, landing on another tree that beside the former one.
Then, he removed an arrow from the quiver and nocked it once more, silently waiting.
Thirty minutes, passed, but Luan silently waited on the branch of the tree.
It could be said that his patience was off the charts.
After a while, he nocked the arrow well and pulled the string of the bow until it began digging into his fingers.
He was stronger now, but the bow he crafted was even more so.
He closed his eyes as he muttered to himself.
'Mana is everywhere... anything that takes from it to power itself distorts it...'
The arrow streaked through the air straight towards the head of the dead beast, making it seem as if he was targeting the dead beast.
The moment before the arrow landed on the beast, a streak of black flashed into existence before disappearing completely, taking the dead beast along.
At first glance, it could be said that Luan had missed.
There was a striking oddity though...
The second arrow was nowhere to be found!
Luan, feeling the mana he had attached to the arrow move farther and farther from him,descended from the tree and broke into a sprint.
He had already been fast for a fourteen-year-old, but with the changes to his body and the miniature cores pumping mana in his body, his speed more than tripled.
Luan ran in a hunched position that had both his arms dangling beside him like the claws of a sloth, but it only seemed to make his movement speed faster.
He was fast enough that he felt the wind hitting his body with quite the amount of force, but his eyes couldn't help but flash as he felt the mana in his arrow go further and further.
'That thing, was clearly far far faster than me, but why did it seem like the air wasn't giving any resistance...'
Suddenly, Luan's eyes revealed a sharp glint.
'It was using some sort of mana to eat away at the wind in front of it!
'In my case...'
The glint in Luan's eyes intensified as he wrapped himself in a frail layer of mana that was promptly overwhelmed by the wind.
This didn't cause Luan's steps to falter though, instead, he used a layer of mana that was thicker and stronger, but that resulted in his speed dropping abruptly as he felt extremely heavy.
'No,' Luan thought. 'I have to find a way to balance the mana such that it disperses the wind and doesn't affect my weight at the same time.'
It took a bit tweaking and working around, but when he was done, the glint in his eyes became almost blinding as his speed soared and all that could be seen of him was a blue streak and displaced wind.
Suddenly, Luan came to a halt and immediately scaled a tree and lay prone one one of the branches closest to the top.
He placed Moonlight right in front of him and folded his limbs over themselves.
If one looked at the tree from any angle or even directly below, all they would see would be the branches of the tree swaying in the wind.
There were no signs of a human being on the tree, and all this was only possible due to Luan changing the nature of the mana in his body to hide all signs of life from him, shocking the Lord of the Abyss for the umpteenth time in the span of a few hours.
Luan didn't and couldn't notice the latter's reaction. His eyes which had practically shrunk into pin holes, were looking at a scene from a distance of over 700 meters.
He didn't know what the moonlight had done to his senses, but they had improved to an extent that Luan found it difficult to control the amount of information that flowed into his brain.
Luckily, he was able to expert control over his senses and restrict them somewhat, or he wouldn't even be able to stand properly.
That was by the way.
At that moment, Luan was seeing something he had never thought he would for the next couple of years...
Humans.
And not even one human.
There were fourteen humans, and each of them was dressed in some sort of clothing he had never saw before.
Ten of them were youths dressed in white shirts, black trousers and black boots.
They looked to be only slightly older than him, but he felt that each of them were only about as strong as the boar monster.
What truly gave him a pause and made him withdraw every signs of his anatomical activities was the presence the remaining four exuded.
They felt strong, so strong that they could kill him with a casual move.
Three of them were dressed in armour and had swords hung by their waists, but the last one was a man wearing a green robe and a pointed hat.
Luan didn't directly look at them, but his thoughts couldn't help but spark.
'People don't casually come into this forest according to what I've heard...'
His gaze narrowed.
'What is going on?'