In the forest adjacent to Ashen village a boy was chasing a girl. Dashing quickly over the ground, weaving through the trees they ran at a speed no normal teenager would be able to reproduce. It was Nash and Ade.
"You can stop running now there shouldn't be anybody nearby." Nash suddenly shouted.
Ade turned around, her long ashen hair waving in the mild breeze blowing through the forest. Her icy blue eyes stared directly at Nash which made him gulp and turn a little bashful.
Nash quickly retook himself. "Are you sure this is a good idea? I feel kind of bad for lying to Kes you know. Oh, and I feel kind of bad for punching him that hard too but I guess I apologized for that already."
Ade shrugged. "Relax, I'm the one taking the blame here, you should be able to get away without troubles. But I really need you so we can take down the beasts together. The next month of the academy shouldn't be that insightful for me anyways and I want to quickly get stronger. We will split the kills one to three like promised."
Ade and Nash had in fact planned this trip into the forest a couple days ago. And he wasn't here just to have a romantic outing with Ade.
Ade felt like her growth was stagnating so she decided a trip into the forest would be worth it. But going in alone wasn't wise. So she had convinced Nash to go with her in a way that only she would take the blame, but they could still hunt together for a while.
This was the only condition on which Nash would have agreed, he meant every word he said to Kes. He really did not want his growth to stagnate, especially his growth in the languages he still sucked at speaking. So they had formed a plan together, and the plan sounded good enough for Nash to agree to.
The plan so far had been perfectly executed, Nash would hurt Kes so that they had to go to the infirmary together where no one was inside. Then Nash and Kes would spot Ade who would be looking extra suspicious on purpose. After following her for a while and getting close to the forest Ade would pretend to spot them and dash away. Then Nash would send the now injured Kes who would hopefully be slower to get someone, while Nash himself would chase after Ade.
This way Nash would not get into trouble, he was only chasing after Ade after all.
He had sent Kes towards his parents, who he knew weren't home all for the sake of buying time. His parents not being home was crucial to the plan too, it would buy them a lot of extra time. Not only because it would take Kes longer to find someone, but also because his parents knew the forest better than anyone else and were better at detecting than anyone else. He knew that if his parents came looking for him they would find him in no time.
"Now let's hurry up and start hunting, you really shouldn't underestimate Kes, it probably won't take him very long to find someone to look for us." Nash said as he started moving further into the forest.
"You really hold that friend of yours in high regard." Ade scoffed. "Though I must admit his growth is quick I still don't see the point of you sparring with him all the time, he's not even close to your level yet, this is why you are falling behind me."
"You'd be surprised." Nash replied. Clearly not happy with his friend being disrespected.
Nash was feeling kind of melancholic about the changes the girl he was interested in was recently through. She was getting more and more arrogant, but who could blame her. Her parents always showered her with praise, and with the exception of Nash no one of her age could really keep up with her.
Nash could tolerate the slander on his other classmates, but he didn't like it when someone talked bad about his best friend. He knew Kes had the potential to stand on equal footing with them if he kept improving and training at the rate he was right now. And he also knew that both him and Ade were not really anything that special yet.
Nash knew from his parents' experience that, right now, Ade and him were still truly weak. He knew the two of them should be able to take most of the beasts that weren't too deep into the forest if they fought a single one. But if they traveled too deep and encountered a real strong beast, or if they got ambushed by a group of beasts they had no choice but to make a run for it.
In the case of the group of low level beasts they could most likely get away, but Nash shuddered at the thought of having to get away from a beast that came from deep within the forest.
His thoughts got interrupted by a loud noise, it was a boar. This wasn't a very strong beast either of them could probably take it alone.
"Let's fight it together to conserve time, but be sure to let me land the final hit." Ade commanded.
Nash nodded and dashed towards the boar, his body felt light and strong. He could feel the fruits of his training as he caught the boar by surprise.
Landing a hit on the boar's left thigh the beast kicked its hind legs upwards trying to hit him. But Nash was already long gone swerving around the boar with a speed far faster than the beast could follow.
Meanwhile Ade, who was carrying a knife, slashed the boar in the head which caused the boar to run towards her. Ade jumped away while the boar dashed its head into the tree behind her.
This gave Nash the opportunity to jump onto the boar and knock it off its legs with a couple hard pounds onto its spine.
The boar, now incapacitated, could do nothing as Ade slit its throat, killing it forever.
Nash wiped the sweat off his forehead. "That went better than expected, nice teamwork. If we keep this up we should be able to have quite a gain today."
"Yes, well done now let's move onto the next one." Ade replied with a curt nod.
Even though Ade was a little arrogant towards the other students she still seemed to hold Nash in high regard. She also did not complain about the time it took to kill the boar which was about the weakest beast that could actually fight back.
They quickly moved a little further into the forest, killing some rabbits by hiding their presence very well and jumping out at the right times. Though this was still a bit difficult, and they couldn't really dictate who would get the kills this way, they still killed a couple of them.
Nash and Ade were now resting on a dead log wiping the sweat of their foreheads and catching their breaths.
The hunt was not going incredibly well. They had just killed their fourth boar, Nash got the kill this time finally resulting in some gain from him too. But they did not have a lot of luck with finding animals.
"Let's move a little further into the forest, maybe we will find a wolverine or a group of boars or something, the singular boars are just not cutting it anymore." Ade wasn't that happy about this luck.
A wolverine would indeed be optimal, even though they were predators they weren't incredibly strong, yielding a lot of Flow and innate element without a lot of dangers. They also traveled alone so they didn't need to risk running into a huge group of them and getting overwhelmed.
But Nash was worried about something else. "The whole group of boars thing is bothering me in the first place. It's not that rare to find maybe one or two boars on their own but four of them is very uncommon, boars are group animals you know."
"That is indeed a bit strange, but maybe you are worrying over nothing. Let's just go a little deeper and leave as soon as possible if we detect anything dangerous. I put a lot of trust in your hunter's instinct so let's be extra careful." Ade replied.
Nash was happy Ade was trusting him, the last thing he could use right now was a kid throwing a tantrum over not finding enough prey while there was potentially a massive danger lurking within the forest.
So they proceeded with caution, but Nash was really getting nervous now. There was no animal in the vicinity, none at all not even a rabbit.
There was an eerie silence in the forest, all he could hear was the gentle breeze blowing through the leaves of the trees and the sound of his own breathing getting heavier and heavier.
His hunter's instinct was doing nothing but screaming at him to get the hell out of there, and fast.
But then, Ade suddenly grabbed his hand. A shiver ran down his spine, and he felt Ade shiver too.
Walking a bit further he suddenly heard Ade gasp and quickly cover her mouth with her hands, he also felt something else. It was an emotion coming from Ade's Flow, it was fear.
Nash quickly shot his gaze over to where Ade was looking, and what he saw shocked him through his very core. It was a gigantic group of boars, all murdered. Now this feat alone would not be that impressive, any innate element user in the village would be able to accomplish the same easily. But what really shocked him were not only the numerous big bite marks all over, but also some of the boar carcasses which were going up in flames.
This was done by a predator, and not a weak one. It was presumably a wolf, maybe even a group of them. And they also seemed quite strong for wolves looking at the size of the bite marks. But the biggest problem were the flaming carcasses, this could only mean one thing, a wolf that had formed its innate element.
It wasn't that uncommon for a wolf pack leader to have formed their innate element, they were predators after all and their pack leaders were usually the strongest of their kind thus resulting in them getting the most kills.
Nash realized that they had gotten too far into the forest. The lack of animals had messed them up so they had thought they were still near the periphery. But in reality they had walked themselves right into the edge of wolf territory.