Aaron flew beside Yuki, who used some kind of Skill that made it look like a bridge of energy was materializing beneath her feet, letting her run through the air.

  “Really, Fukuoka, you say? It rings a bell, but I couldn’t place it on a map.”

  “And you? Where are you from?”

  He had decided to make small talk as they flew toward their target. He figured that if he wanted Julius’ people to open up, he would need to get to know them first.

  “Oh, me? A little town on the Central Coast of Australia. You wouldn’t have heard of it. But I haven’t been back there since. Well, since long before all of this.”

  “It’s sad,” Yuki said, looking a little glum. Beneath them, the other three members of her party sped with the use of land-based movement Skills, and she looked down at them sorrowfully. “We’ll never see our homes again. It’s all gone.”

  Aaron’s reaction wasn’t intentional, but he was distracted by the sudden mood shift of their conversation by the sight of a massive wooden structure in the distance.

  “Hey, Yuki! Look, there it is. And it’s fucking massive,” Aaron said, almost shaking his head as he admired the sprawling mega structure.

  The truth was, he had always thought beavers were kinda cool. The idea of them building giant dams was appealing. He had always thought there was something interesting about animals building things. And this? Well, it was on a completely different scale to anything seen in the pre-integration world.

  The dam stretched on for hundreds of meters, and the rivers pouring into it had already begun to form a lake, which would without doubt grow larger and larger if something wasn’t done about it.

  Okay, I get why they were worried.

  “Amazing,” Yuki gulped. “It built all of this?”

  “You weren’t aware?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “I wasn’t part of the scouting missions. And I can’t understand the others. Not well, anyway. I catch a word here or there, but it's hard.”

  “I see.”

  That admission was a little disappointing. Perhaps Yuki wouldn’t be the best insider. Still, she would have seen things, and so he didn’t give up on her. All the information he could gather on Julius and his people could help him make a decision, after all.

  “So, first time fighting a D-grade?”

  She nodded, uncertainty written on her face.

  “No worries. We’re going to be fine. You're a ranged attacker, right?”

  “I am, yes.”

  “Well, just stay back. It’s not my first time, and I’ll be up front.”

  She nodded to that too, and while it did seem to relax her a little, the stress wasn’t entirely gone, and Aaron realized he would have to get used to this. At least until he had a higher level.

  “Oh, and Yuki, I’ve been meaning to ask. Have you been with Julius’ group the entire time?”

  “Ah, yeah? Pretty much.”

  “Since the Tutorial?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “For most of it, anyway. I was always a bit of an outsider, but they’ve treated me well.”

  Well, that’s good to hear.

  “Great. Here’s the thing: if we get through this, would you mind answering me a couple of simple questions? I just want to get to know your people better. Nothing too special.”

  Aaron tried to be careful with the words he picked. But he wanted to be up front about what he was asking. He didn’t want to trick her or worm the information out of her. That’s not the first impressions he wanted to make, and if Julius was a good guy, he didn’t want to go making enemies of his people.

  “Sure… I don’t see why not. But I’m not sure how much help I’ll be. There’s a lot that goes on that I don’t understand.”

  “That’s fine. I expected as much. Now, let’s go kill ourselves a beaver, shall we?”

  Yuki nodded, and the two of them glided down to where the rest of the group was. As they moved, Aaron already started eating from his pouch, growing bigger with every second, and he knew he had caught Yuki’s attention with his absurd Skill. But this was a D–grade, and he couldn’t let first impressions get in the way of taking the fight seriously.

  “Wow, that is something,” Carlos said, and cleared his throat as he eyed Aaron’s increasingly rotund form grow.

  “Haha, maybe I changed my mind!” Boris laughed. “I like this one. What a Skill!”

  Aaron smiled. “It’s useful, too.” Flexing seemed to make his adipose bulge further, and Annie, who looked like she could be used as his toothpick, forced a timid smile.

  “So, are we ready, everyone?” Carlos said.

  “One minute,” Aaron raised a finger, and then threw his shadow cloak over himself, earning a gasp from his new companions when he disappeared into the shadows.

  They could no doubt sense him, as the item granted an imperfect invisibility, but all he wanted was for them not to see what he was about to do.

  He needed to take the ring off. It wasn’t just because their target was a D-grade, but because there were others with him, and he didn’t want to risk their lives over his training methods. But he also didn’t want them to see him sever his own limb. Not yet, at least. Something like that needed time to explain.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  A quick karate chop cut his arm straight off, and he threw the entire thing into his scabbard, and then forced a ridiculous amount of energy into his arm, regrowing it as fast as he could before returning from the shadows.

  Within a short moment, he was back with the group, smiling like a child pretending he hadn’t just stolen a cookie from the cookie jar.

  “Err, I would ask what you just did, but I already have so many questions,” Carlos groaned. “And we need to kill this beaver.”

  “Great!” Aaron grinned. “Kill the beaver, and then let’s all sit down and have a chat, shall we?”

  “Actually, I’m not sure. Maybe I don’t like him,” Boris scratched his chin as if genuinely confused. “He is odd.”

  Carlos snapped his fingers like an impatient boss. “Focus, people. We can go over Aaron’s weirdness later. We have a job to do. Now, to the plan. I’ll be leading the charge. I will try to draw the beast out as best I can into an open area. Annie will be on heals as usual, backing me up. Boris, you’ll stay back and look for an opening. Don’t waste it. I don’t want you using one of your best attacks just to have it land on the beast’s defenses. Wait for a good opportunity, got it?”

  “Yes,” Boris nodded.

  “Yuki will do what she always does,” he glanced at her briefly. “Which is why it’s important we keep that thing out in the open. The faster we can land real damage, the faster it goes down. And you, he continued, turning to Aaron. “Just do whatever you do and stay out of our way, okay?”

  “Ah, I guess so,” Aaron shrugged.

  Carlos’s speech mightn’t have been the most polite way of saying it, but Aaron was used to doing his own thing anyway and was, quite frankly, glad not to be given instructions.

  That said, the group did intrigue him. He was excited to see a party of fighters, well-experienced in working together, engaging a beast with a plan, and wondered how much stronger it would make them.

  The group moved toward the dam. Clearing the swampy surroundings and circling around to the side to avoid the huge, growing lake.

  But the beaver was nowhere in sight.

  As they got closer, the group fanned out. Boris was the first to drop off, waiting back somewhere, ready to strike, as instructed by Carlos. While Annie followed Carlos several meters back.

  Still, they got closer and closer to the dam, and there was still no sight of the beaver. He eyed Carlos, but the leader seemed unfazed, continuing to lead the march into enemy territory.

  And soon, they were jumping up and onto the dam itself. They still couldn't see the beaver, and Aaron raised his [ Soul Vortex ] to get a better feel.

  And the results were instant. He sensed a powerful aura beneath them. It had condensed itself and was hiding, but it couldn’t hide from his Skill, and it knew it.

  “Shit! Watch out, everyone!”

  It all happened in an instant. The moment it knew that it had been detected, the beast hurtled toward them from below. He could already tell that it was massive, and it was moving fast.

  For barely a second, the dam shook and rattled, and then the timber beneath their feet erupted into an explosion, sending giant splinters large enough to impale a man flying outward, and a huge, furry beast shooting out from the ground catastrophically.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. The beast was going straight for Annie, and she gasped, staggering backward and clutching at new wounds that the timber shards had opened across her body.

  The beast was too fast, blinking toward her in a second, and it was clear that neither Carlos nor Boris was going to get there in time. Aaron activated [ Spectral Rush ], pouring energy into it to move as quickly as possible, and appeared between them in a flash, immediately following up with [ Equal and Opposite ] and cancelling the beaver’s attack just in time.

  Before the beast even understood what had happened, he immediately followed up with his own devastating attacks, plunging himself down with a deadly flurry of strikes, crushing furry flesh beneath his fists.

  Aaron hadn’t wanted to waste so much energy so soon into the fight, but it was the only way he was saving Annie. And the healer had already begun to back off, with a cooling green light enveloping her.

  He clashed with the beaver, relentlessly punching into it as he activated Skills, and was met with a wall of wooden missiles that shot out from the beaver. Several of them landed, opening wounds, but he ignored them and continued his attack.

  A haymaker hit the chin of the beast hard, and it sprayed blood as it was knocked back. It retreated several meters to snarl at him, and Aaron took the chance to inspect the beaver that was about the size of a two-story home.

  Steeltooth Builder [ Level 109 ]

  Titles: [ Construction Prodigy ] [ Giant Slayer ]

  Aaron nodded at the notification. A level 109 was nothing to take lightly. But between its level and what he had felt so far, he already knew that it was nothing compared to the simian reaver.

  “Not bad, big fella. But I think this is going to hurt you... for you,” Aaron cracked his knuckles.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he confirmed Annie had gotten away, and her wounds were healing nicely, and less than a second later, Carlos appeared only a few meters away, seething at the beast with his shield held high.

  “I owe you one,” he growled at Aaron, almost reluctantly, and then, without a second wasted, leaped across the ground. He seemed to shimmer into multiple versions of himself as he closed the distance and swung with his mace. But Aaron could tell that it wasn’t some kind of clone Skill like Voidrin, but a cheaper, weaker blurring Skill that seemed to increase his speed.

  But before the short man could reach the beast, he seemed to step on some kind of landmine, and it exploded with timber shrapnel. Luckily, his armor and shield dampened the attack, but several of the nasty and incredibly strong spikes stabbed between the metal plates of his armor and were soon dripping blood.

  Worse of all, the Steeltooth Builder didn’t wait. The moment the explosion happened, the beast pounced forward, but before it reached the wounded man, Boris came lunging out of nowhere, reaching the beaver in an instant and swinging down on his axe. A massive transparent wave of power extended from the axe and came down on the beaver. It hit hard, and a giant gash was opened across the beast’s back.

  But instead of whimpering or fading. The massive beaver immediately turned to the barbarian, and the man’s eyes widened in terror.

  In an instant, it was upon him, bearing down with razor-sharp claws and fangs. The power gap between them was simply too great for a direct confrontation, and Aaron knew he needed to get there quickly.

  Speeding toward them as fast as he could, it took him barely a second to reach the battle, but barely a second was all the time the beaver needed to open a massive wound across the barbarian’s chest and sever two of his limbs. He would have died too, if not for Aaron interrupting a following slash with his [ Soul Shattering Strike ].

  Not even a D-grade could brush off Aaron’s ultimate punch, and as his combination followed the opening strike, the beaver exploded in spikes again before fleeing back to its dam.

  The spikes crashed into Boris, littering his already gravely wounded body, but Aaron had no time to help the man.

  Yuki wasn’t just standing around, either. Purple blasts of energy were raining down as she ran through the air, blasting across the beaver’s fur coat.

  Annie, who was circling around, had already started to heal Boris, leaving her partially healed wounds to finish the job on her own, and green light filled the near-dead man before he passed on.

  Carlos, having recovered, chased after the beaver, but then suddenly, an explosion burst out from the dam near Annie, showering her unprotected body in spikes. The attack didn’t kill her, not yet at least, but several steel-strong wooden spikes protruded from her body, and she fell to her knees.

  Damn those traps!

  It seemed that taking a D-grade beast on in its own home was not a great idea, and Aaron banked that thought for later. But for now, he had little choice but to continue the fight.

  The armored Carlos roared as he chased after the beaver, and Aaron got a very bad feeling as the beaver dived into the lake, and Carlos followed after.

  “Dammit, wait for me!”

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