Chương 73: Dimittis!

Damion took with him only a few items from his pack. A bag to keep the ears needed to prove his kills, his compass, a ration pack and his self-filling canteen, which Damion had learned took about an hour for the enchantment on the canteen to completely fill it. Even though Damion parked his ground car at the closest point to the where the Aerico were supposed to be, he still ended up walking for ten minutes before he saw the first ones.

Three Aerico were roaming around a group of trees and did not seem to notice Damion as he approached. Damion was able to walk right up to each of them in turn and decapitated each of them. After killing the Aerico, Damion sliced off their right ears, stowing them in a small bag on his waist before setting the corpses on fire with his sword. The Aerico were too easy to kill. They did not try to attack him or try to defend themselves or even flee.

Damion checked his quest status and saw that all three of the Aerico he had just killed were E Rank beasts. Damion just needed seven more E Rank kills to complete his quests and 22 more Aerico kills to complete his mission. With how easy Aerico were to kill the biggest challenge Damion was having was finding them. It took Damion another ten minutes to find another group of Aerico. Once again Damion quickly dispatched them and collected their ears.

When killing one of the Aerico, Damion had miss judged the angle of his swing and managed to slice through the skull instead of decapitating it. While collecting its ear, Damion noticed something odd in the skull. A small sphere the size of a marble. Damion quickly opened the skulls of the other Aerico he had just killed and found similar small orbs.

'Are these Magic Cores?' Damion thought as he looked at them. He could not be sure, since Aerico were supposed to be Ferocious Beasts and not Demonic Beasts, they should not have cores. Damion bagged the couple of small orbs and went in search of more Aerico. For the next two hours, Damion wandered aimlessly through the Benault Forest in search of Aerico. Unfortunately, Damion did not have much luck in finding any.

When Damion decided to give up for the day and head back to his ground car he had only managed a total of nine kills. The one thing Damion had not paid attention to during his wanderings, was where he was going. It took Damion a while to figure out how to get back to the ground car since he had gotten lost. Thankfully, Damion had a compass and was able head in the direction of the edge of the forest. Once Damion left the forest he saw his ground car a few hundred meters away.

As Damion looked towards his ground car in the distance could tell someone else had found his ground car and was waiting for him. Damion could not discern who, or how many, but someone had started a fire, and Damion could see several figures moving around the fire. Damion slipped back into the shadows of the Benault Forest before he moved any closer. The wilds were a wide-open space, and Damion was quite far from the road. As far as Damion knew, no one else should be coming to this area by chance.

Because of the Aerico other Ferocious Beasts stayed clear of the area which meant other adventurers stayed clear as well, since there was no profit to be made. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. After Damion had slowly crept within earshot of the ground car and his visitors from the shelter of the Benault Forest Damion waited and listened. From the conversations of the interlopers, Damion quickly figured out who they were and why they were here.

"Where is that damned brat?" one of the four men around Damion's ground car complained.

"The sun is starting to go down, if he isn't back soon he'll be spending the night in the forest."

"Relax Davis," another said.

"So, the kid got lost in the forest. He's only a new E Rank and I bet he only passed his exam because of high quality artifacts."

"I call dibs on his sword," a third one said quickly.

"The boss will divide the kid's loot," Davis chided.

"We'll have to kill the kid first," a fourth man spoke up.

"Despite what many of you think, the boy is talented, so don't let your guard down." The group of men continued to bicker between themselves, with Davis wanting to go into Benault Forest to search for Damion. The other three held him back, but Damion somewhat wished they would let him go. If Davis did come into the forest alone, Damion was sure he could ambush him and then it would be one on three by the ground car. At least Damion had determined they were hostile to him.

While Damion could not say with certainty, but he was fairly sure these men where part of the Falks Guild. After all, to Damion's knowledge, no other group was hostile to him. When darkness finally settled over the area, leaving only the light from the stars and the fire the men had started to see by, Damion decided to act. He did not imagine the entire group would stay up all night. All he had to was wait for them to start falling asleep and then he would make his move.

An hour later Damion started hearing a bit of snoring and he knew his time had come. Creeping out of the forest Damion snuck up to the camp, keeping the ground car between him and the camp, just in case there was enough light for them to see him. Once Damion was next to his ground car, he peeked around it to locate the men. Three appeared to be sleeping, with the fourth sitting on a stump by the fire.

Damion did not want to risk a prolonged fight with these men and given they had already admitted to wanting to kill him, Damion decided to attack first and ask questions if anyone was still alive after. Damion channeled mana into his sword and once he was ready he stepped out from behind the ground car and unleashed his pillar of fire attack from his sword. The attack hit the man on the stump and cooked him instantly. The man did not have a chance to scream before dying to Damion's attack.

However, Damion's attack did rouse the other three men. Damion quickly slashed his sword down on the closest of the men, splashing blood across the ground. The other two men were on their feet with weapons in hand before Damion could launch another assault. Both men did not hesitate to retaliate against Damion and rushed at him while channeling mana into their own weapons. Despite having the early advantage, Damion was put on his back foot under the two men's attacks.

Damion was busy parrying their attacks in search of an opening, but Damion was quickly realizing he was not going to get one. The two men were a match for him, even with the years of intense training Ms. Teft had put Damion through. What was worse, was that the men seemed to understand they were a match for him and altered their fighting style, aiming to exhaust Damion and outlast him in the fight. Damion felt the change in the flow of combat and understood what the two planned to do.

Even with Mana Absorption active, helping to fill his magic core and weaken the men with each blow, Damion was not going to be able to keep up with the two of them. What these two did not realize was that Damion still had a trump card to play.

"Dimittis!"