"Thessa! Are you okay? Thessa!"
Teagan and Soren both rushed Thessa out of the water, their panic evident as their palms quickly became coated in blood.
Pushing down the anxiousness in their hearts, they hurried to bring her to the shore, almost forgetting about their mission.
Even now, none of the three understood why they were given a sudden mission in the dead of night like this. But they were told before they left the Sect that this was a training exercise for the real world. They had no right to refuse.
In times of war, missions came at all hours of the day, and they had to be ready for them no matter what.
"Thessa? Wake up!"
"The first aid kit, you idiot!" Teagan rarely lost his cool, but watching Soren yell at Thessa as though that was going to fix something was really starting to vex him.
Soren had a million quippy replies to that, but he eventually decided that Teagan was actually in the right.
"Dammit, what do we do? We can't take off her clothes, right? She'll kill us!"
"Who said anything about taking off her clothes?! Just give me the first aid kit."
Teagan pushed the idiot out of the way.
"Hold her up, the wound is on her side. We just need to clean it up and stitch it together. That should keep her upright for long enough to get back to the city."
"Alright." Soren rushed out a bottle of water and poured it across Thessa's gaping wound.
They cleaned up the wound as best they could, but the blood made it a continuous struggle.
Luckily, the Sect had their own classes, and first aid like this was among the first. They might have been flustered, but they half knew what they were doing. Soon, they were patching her up with the on-the-go stitches they had. They were basically glorified bandages that squeezed folds of skin together.
However, they didn't expect that the moment they stood up, they would hear clapping.
"Not bad, not bad. I mean, it is kind of pathetic to almost die to a feral beast, but I guess you can't expect much from Outer Sect Disciples anyway."
The voice was muffled and hard to make out. But the insults in it were clear.
The expressions of Teagan and Soren changed. They hurried to stand, pulling out their swords once again and focusing on the direction of the sound, only to realize they weren't sure exactly where it came from.
Feral beasts were unranked creatures. They weren't considered true Mancy Beasts, and by extension, they often had simple colloquial names. All things considered, grey rhinos were among the toughest of them to deal with, but they were still nothing special.
Teagan and Soren were already feeling quite horrible that they didn't do enough to distract the grey rhino, and this person's words were just like salt in their open wounds.
"No need to look. With your skill, you'll never find me. I can give you a choice, though. Obediently put down the girl and scurry off. If you're fast enough, you just might be able to live. Or, I guess you can fight and die here along with her. That works too."
The two tensed.
Just what was going on here?
They both looked at each other, and then at Thessa. There was a storminess in their eyes as though they grasped an inkling.
It seemed that they had truly gotten themselves caught in a mess this time.
"No? Well, I'm not a patient person. I'll give you three seconds. Two…"
The timer started, and the two reacted at the same time.
Soren took Thessa and dashed to the right. Teagan released her and dashed to the left.
They had hardly made it very far when both of them tripped.
No matter how clumsy they were, with their cultivation, it was impossible for the two of them to make such a mistake at the same time.
They both looked down at their ankles, and their eyes filled with despair.
"Ah, it seems you've figured it out. This is a little bit of a shame. I don't know what I should do about that… except to kill all three of you. What can I say? It's out of my hands."
CRACK.
The wooden branches wrapped around the legs of the duo squeezed down, shattering their ankles.
They yelped in pain, trying to hold back their cries but failing to do so in the end. The feeling of having your bones give way beneath pressure was worse than words could describe, and it was only made worse by the shards of your own skeleton digging into the soft bits of your body.
Deep in the forest, Yonowai stood with a sinister glint in his eye, so focused he almost didn't notice a streak of blue appear at his back.
Almost.
Theron's short sword and dagger glinted in the night, slashing out at the back of Yonowai's neck. He had no intention of acting for the sake of saving those three. But for the next steps of his plan to work… he needed them to live.
He didn't expect to get caught in a political game so quickly, but since this was the dance they were going to have, he was going to have to show the world who Theron Galethunder was far earlier than he wanted.
Yonowai's reaction, though, was even faster than Theron expected. A shield of wood appeared at his back, and before Theron's blades could take his head, they ran into a solid wall of wiggling vines first.
The defenses felt both solid and flexible at the same time, half like he had just sunk his blade into a net of roots, and half like he had just smashed against a wooden board.
Theron's reactions were quick as well as he slipped away, dodging the shifting roots in the ground.
… "If you can find a way to limit or eliminate [Thorny Fields] entirely, using a speed advantage to win should not be a problem." ....
Those were the recommendations of the mission. But Theron had stepped directly into an arena Yonowai had long prepared.
This entire bank was his domain. This entire bank was [Thorny Fields].
Roots shot up from the ground, assaulting Theron from all sides.
And yet, those steely blue eyes glittered in the dark with the calmness of a killer.