(Ch.3) Another Step Forward, Part 2.

And just like mystics, some foes possessed similar bonds or-related powers. They were like animals but more dangerous. The strength of these beasts went higher and higher the deeper into the forest one went and that was the reason why it wasn't so possible to go beyond the third zone.

On our journey so far, we hadn't come across even one monster as they called it but Darren assured me that the monsters of the first zone were all if not most unnamed.

These monsters were categorized into sectors: Named and unnamed. Unnamed monsters weren't able to sense bondor and weren't able to use any bond or-related abilities, but their strength was still higher than any normal animals. Whereas the named monster was able to sense bondor and even control. The more their mastery over their powers the stronger these monsters would be.

The monsters belonging to the first zone were mostly unnamed monsters with a few exceptions only. But starting from the second zone, there were barely any unnamed monsters. Sirius and the others were strong enough as a team to deal with them for the most part. The third zone was different though. Their exploration team had previously been to the third zone before and even the mention of it made Darren shiver slightly.

"In there lie monstrosities that are beyond one's worst nightmare," Daren said, a little fear leaking out of him.

The mystic of Xavier wasn't able to discover beyond the third zone even after centuries of trying and that told me enough about how dangerous it was. I took a chance and asked Darren at what ranked did the strongest of Xavier belonged.

"Third rank. A senior mystic." He replied simply as if it wasn't a big deal and I stored that information in my head.

Senior mystic? Huh? How long will it take me to reach there?

As the days passed, the group's pace increased, and each day's walking duration grew longer and longer. It wouldn't be until sunset that we would stop to camp and rest for the night, far later than normal but it was fine. Although this meant less time for my training, I decided not to ask for the reason. The air of urgency that surrounded them told me they had a reason for hurry and I expected them to reveal their purpose to me in due time.

It wasn't like a group of mystic would be sent here without any reason and from the pieces of clue that I picked up, they were here for a mission. A mission that someone wanted to sabotage and had sent Eadric for. It was bound to be something important.

On the seventh day of my arrival, we came across our first named monster during our travel. It was a reptile monster called 'Mareux'. The 'Deux' suffix at the end was used to denote all reptile-like monsters. Knowing that I wondered if I could get a chance to read through their encyclopedia about beasts later.

These creatures were like big green lizards, with their body's length being around a meter each. And just like normal lizards, they were similarly capable of climbing on trees or any walls for that matter. Even after being a named monster, they possessed no bond or-related abilities except for being able to sense us, which was a common trait of all named monsters.

Octus cut through one of them, spilling green slimy liquid all around him. I sidestepped avoiding an acidic blast coming from behind me which my enhanced senses picked up. The acid splattered at the ground where I had been standing, most of it burning the soil into a charred crumble but a few droplets managed to slip on my lower garments burning tiny holes in them.

I spun on my hills and used skyburst to instantly close the distance between the lizard which was above a tree branch and me. I slashed my sword from above with pressure building on my shoulders. Its eyes diluted and turned round for a moment as it awaited its impending doom but my sword wasn't able to slash through its hard shell protecting the soft flesh underneath.

Noticing the same event occur, it shot another acid blast at me, forcing me to drop my head low and dodge it. My body dropped down to the ground and from the corner of my eyes, I noticed the lizard taking another aim at me.

"Shit!" I cursed aloud, realizing I was in no position to dodge that one.

But the next moment a wave of wind flew past my head making me turn my head upward and there was a spear piercing the mareux through its hard shell, impaling its body into the tree. It was Sirius's spear which he threw after having killed the one he was fighting before.

The mareux in front of me shirked and then its body went limp as it took its last breath.

"Thanks," I said and Sirius gave me a terse nod.

There were half a dozen of them of these 'Mareux' and only two remained. Octus effortlessly killed one of them in front of my eyes and another one desperately pounced toward Sirius but waving his hand upward, he manifested an incorporeal blade cutting the matrix into two unequal parts.

With the fight finished-although it would be better to call it a one-sided slaughter, Sirius decided to take a small break before resuming the journey. Darren instantly got himself busied trying to skin the dead matrix for its eyes. With green slimy liquid all over him, he explained that the eyes or the crystals inside of Margaux were quite valuable and sold at a very high price.

But I ignored him and found a sitting spot on a rock.

I was easily able to avoid the mareux attacks by using Skyburst but my sword wasn't able to pierce its shell and Sirius was forced to lend me a hand. There was no point in being able to escape from an attack if I wasn't able to counter it with something else. I didn't bother using 'Stone bullet' there as its impact wouldn't be anything different from throwing a soft water ball at an adult.

When I'd ascend to being a proper mystic, I'd gain some abilities but what those were would be unknown to me until then. In case I gained a rank like Darren's then I'd sorely lack attack-based abilities, putting me in a very bad spot. For someone like Darren whose abilities were all support based, he needed a team who could support him and provide cover for him when needed. But that might not be the case for me. After all, our chance of separating after reaching Xavier was quite high.

Although I couldn't tell when I was going to awaken, I'd personally prefer awakening before we reached the town of Xavier. After all, I didn't know what awaited me there.

My gaze landed on the sword that Octus had lent to me at the start of our journey together. It was a spare sword that he carried in case his main one broke but he laughed while mentioning it as if the chance of his black blade breaking was just impossible.

If I could strengthen the sword like Sirius did to his spear.

According to Darren, The incorporeal blade that Sirius used during his fight earlier was a different and more advanced form of the first phase of Bondor coalescing arts. A little that the ever-stone statued Sirius shared was that he had been stationed at a council-organized training camp for sprouts and it was there where he awakened.

While that was the first time they mentioned the training camp or whatever it was, Darren's initial introduction to mysticism had him mention the second method to awakening, that being through training. So, I wasn't as surprised about it.

Despite Darren having a wide range of mystic arts which he displayed many times through our short journey thus far, his arsenal severely lacked direct attack-based abilities, although I was plenty surprised when he nonchalantly mentioned that. When I asked him why he was willing to share such personal information with me that easily his response was surprisingly easygoing.

"I suppose, I've started to trust you zareth," Daren replied, smiling.

He was younger than all of us but even for a moment I didn't take him to be naive. It would be nothing but stupidity on my part to underestimate someone based on my previous judgment. People here were different, far more than on Earth. Their logic was too. I'd have preferred to take a diplomatic approach with them but for some reason, I felt an unknown, almost distinct connection with Darren. I just couldn't point it out yet…

On the other hand, Octus didn't know much about mystic arts from what he told, and my observation, which I recently discovered was way more accurate than I gave credit for.

That left me with one person, Sirius. Taking the chance, I found Sirius as he was tending to the wound that the now-dead Eadric left him with. The healing art used by Darren wasn't enough to heal it completely, with it most of its effect focused on stopping the bleeding.

"Sirius, do you have some time?" I asked.

When he nodded back-a typical attitude that he displayed- I went on to explain about the favor I wanted from him. I quite bluntly emphasized how my learning and getting stronger would help them. Words flowed out of my mouth smoothly until I was done.

As I waited with bated breath for Sirius's response to my request, he first finished his task at hand.

Standing up, he answered while looking at me, "Alright. But I only know the first phase of Bondor coalescing art. Is that fine?"

It was more of a surprise that he agreed to teach me about it so easily. I'd assumed from the start that among all three, Sirius was probably the most cautious about my existence here but then his agreement slowly started to change that opinion of mine.

"Of course. It's more than fine. " I said, somehow stopping myself from grinning.

He did not reply to me, instead started walking toward the camp.

Sirius was a rather peculiar man. He would always put up a cold face with everyone, only speaking when it was needed. As he was tasked to lead their team, I didn't doubt much about his leadership capabilities but it would be a lie if I said I wasn't interested in his past. Maybe something had happened which led him to be like that.

The next day, Sirius taught me about the bondor coalescing art or well he explained it. Just as the name signified, the technique consisted of bringing the bondor to a specific point, in this case, it was my sword, and then strengthening it. While the process of channeling the bondor outside my body into the sword was kind of difficult as I wasn't able to balance it properly, and if I slipped the sword would shatter at the pressure created by the bondors.

Sirius showed me a brief demonstration of the technique and went back to check the map, which he had been sharing for pretty long.

But after having learned stone levitation and stone bullet, it wasn't that hard. Although there was some difference between them. In the case of a stone bullet, the task was to push the stone forward with an explosive speed but that wasn't the case for the sword.

It was more of how long I can continue to channel the bondor outside the sword, creating a protective layer of bondor around it which had to remain as static as possible. Otherwise, if my focus drifted away, I'd lose the connection with the bondor and waste a useless amount of my bondor reserve.

The first phase of Bondor coalescing art required the use of a catalyst, that is my sword. It was the first time I heard the concept of catalyst from Sirius and he explained it as support to use greater power than one is currently capable of. For my sky burst, the catalyst was the boot underneath my feet. I didn't consider that at first and only used Skyburst with my boot since I was already wearing them but now it was clear.

Once I was able to successfully keep the bondor layer active for a while, Sirius proclaimed that I'd managed to learn the first phase of Bondor coalescing art or however much he knew himself. His Incorporeal Blade had him manifest a pure bond or-made blade that he could use.

The strength of the sword with the Bondor layer was much more than it normally had. I was easily able to slice through a semi-large sized tree easily and the sword wasn't damaged either. It was nice but what I needed was a long-range attack that would help to protect myself.

With that goal, I continued experimenting with the bondor coalescing art for the next few days. I'd have to stay awake later at night to experiment with them as my companions started to stretch our traveling time for twelve and sometimes even fourteen hours each day. Different from the first few days, I was able to keep up with them as my stamina increased. I understood that something was making them hurry so much but I didn't ask about it.

Although my experimentation was going rather well, and I had a hunch that I would be able to have some results pretty soon, there was a constant increase in the number of flashes of memories that I had.

The first flash that I had was after was on the ninth day. It was an image of traveling through some forest but there was someone else with 'him' but that person's face was blurry and I couldn't make it out.

More and more of Basak's memory-one of the latest alias used by the owner of the body that I'd occupied, flooded my mind. Sometimes I would see flashes of high ceilings of huge mansions and other times huge cities from a bird-like view.

I didn't mind them at first since it wasn't so hard for me to distinguish between his memories and mine but recently even my companion's faces would merge with some other unknown people's visages from his memories. They would overlap although there weren't many similarities between their features. And that accompanied a slight headache each time it happened.

I'd hear Darren's worried voice each time I came to a sudden halt because of the sharp mental jab and I'd to convince him that it was nothing at all. The foreign memories slowly took their own space in my mind and I let them be.

But on the tenth day of my arrival in this world, we came across something. Something that was out of my wildest dream.

Before we stood the massive body of a creature, its four heads swaying above the canopy of trees.

It was a Corteus Hydra.