"Hehehe. Boooarry! I have something special for you! It's super special," Paige called out to the surrounding forest. Boary had to be somewhere in the vicinity. She knew that the boar usually didn't leave this clover patch if he didn't have anything else to do, as the environment here was perfect for both growing clovers and for recovering mana, something which would help the boar upgrade his mana core over time. "Hey! Where are you?" Hearing no response, Paige frowned. With no boar, how was she supposed to test her theories? "Tch. Looks like I have to find him first. Usually he is here, so what is different about today? Hrmm, well it isn't wasn't a full moon yesterday and there have been no changes in the ambient mana, so the most likely option is... an intruder? What could fight a mostly grown Elder Boar? Direwolf Pack? Armored Blackbear? Freshwater Alligator?"

Looking around the empty clearing and locating a few animal trails Boary had likely used, Paige decided to use the simplest solution she had. "Let's see where you went off to. [Trail Finder]." In truth, she hardly needed to use her Skill, since she practiced tracking extensively when she was training Lily and Tyler, but Paige needed to use her mana and it was hardly worth the time to analyze when each path was last used. A nagging sense in her brain informed her that the path leading deeper into the woods was the one that had last been used. Paige frowned as she confirmed that her skill was indeed right, though it hardly made sense to her. She knew from her landmarks that the only place of interest that the path led to was a few plots of evergreen trees. Nothing exceptional that would warrant a trip for the Elder Boar in question, at least.

Following the path her Skill was informing her of, she walked briskly, letting her skill take the lead on where to go. Paige picked up varying sizes of pebbles and placed it in her overall pockets before hefting up a piece of a fallen tree limb and muttering quietly to herself. "No monster tracks thus far besides Boary, which in itself is odd. A monster that can fly? Could it be a Stone Hawk? No, there shouldn't be any here, their migrating pattern doesn't go this far west during the winter... wait, did Zenith say where Nick was planning on teaching today?" Stopping slightly, she thought for a moment and shook her head before continuing on the path. "Ranger standard training, assuming they haven't changed anything, would put them somewhere in the fringe of the forest for practicing archery, not in the heart of a forest. So am I the only one this deep in the woods?"

A sudden chill assaulted her from in front, her skin crawling with goosebumps. Paige looked incredulous at her arms, shaking them lightly. "What was that? Was that a mana wave, a skill, or was it a monster trait? It... it kinda felt like a Frost Beholder, but in a forest?" Frowning at the path ahead, she dropped the tree limb and held her ring, taking out a few metal bangles and a heavy steel spear. A tingling sensation quickly traveled up her arm as she held the shaft of the weapon. Grabbing some of the heavier stones from her pocket, she quickly modified the spearhead with her skill; opting to replace the sharpened metal edge of the spear to a simple stone bladed hoe. She bit her lip as the tingling in her arms slowly abated and walked faster toward the location she felt the mana wave originated from.

She could already start to hear muffled grunting sounds and heavy breathing as the trees swayed back and forth in front of her. Now that she was closer, she could feel a deep thump from the forest floor and could hear the sound of a pitched battle; the boar's squeals of anger were clearly reverberating in the forest now. Stopping slightly before a clearing, Paige quickly hid behind a tree, taking care not to be noticed.

Breathing deeply, she quickly rotated the mana in her core and whispered quietly to herself. "[Natural Explorer], [Hide in Plain Sight]," She could feel her mana and the mana in the forest intermingling, and she carefully pulled her mana back toward her, hoping to draw the ambient mana around her like a bubble. It was certainly not the best way to use her mana, but it did allow her a bit more flexibility and stealth while in a forest. Waiting carefully to make sure that none of her mana leaked out into the environment, she slowly pushed away from the tree and walked around, 'Now let's see what Boary has gotten into.'

Walking slowly into the clearing, Paige immediately noticed the two sets of blood. Everywhere. But whereas one was a deep red and smelled of iron, the other was blue and smelled...differently. Almost like how the air smelled when it snowed. Not a precise smell, but distinct enough. And true to her gut feeling, Boary was facing a relatively rare monster, for this side of the world at least. An eye the size of a wooden gate was locked on to the boar as it charged once again, wary of the Elder Boar's tusks, which was painted in the blue blood of its enemy.

A Frost Beholder, but a minor one by the looks of it. The main Eye was floating almost six feet above the ground, the monster's mana resisting the pull of gravity through natural instinct alone. The six tentacle arms flailed in an unseen wind, the eyeballs at the end focusing hard on the enemy in front of it. Paige blinked. 'It's not an Elder Beholder, that much is certain. But still, it's almost a few thousand miles to the nearest permafrost, so how could it get here? The thing practically melts if it stays in the sun too long.' Paige stared at the beast confusedly as she watched the fight.

A loud squeal interrupted her thoughts, and she almost whistled aloud as she saw what her training partner was doing. The boar's tusks were shrouded in hazy light, one that was solidifying quickly. The jagged tusks were now replaced with glowing tusks, nearly as long as a knight's jousting lance. '...that's a new one. Spectral, magic, or elemental based? Probably something close to the [Magic Lance] or [Light Lance] if it was a Knight Skill. Still, how come it never did that in our mock fights? I'd still win of course, but it would have been a nice challenge every now and then.'

Boary charged once again, angling his charge sideways to avoid the Frost Beholder's frozen gaze. Tactics. Paige nodded as she saw the boars' actions. 'Only took Boary two years to figure that out. Good. At least it learned something from the mock fights.'

The Beholder tracked the boar wearily while scanning the clearing, looking for something. Paige smiled as she noticed it's actions. 'Heh. I forgot how mana sensitive Beholder's are. I'd be a little worried if it was an Elder or Ancient Beholder, but not for this runt.' She started walking steadily around the clearing in the opposite direction of Boary, distracting the Beholder from the fight on hand.

The beast knew something was there and sent out probes of blue light across the clearing, shrouding the sun and the surrounding forest. The intensity of the blue beams increased remarkably as the air steadily became colder. A thin layer of frost was starting to gather onto both Boary's hide as well as Paige's clothes.

'[Frost Aura]. I guess it could technically survive a bit then in the shade. But that still wouldn't be enough for it to travel this far,' Paige thought to herself as the frost evaporated slowly from her clothes. Eying the metal bangle on her arm, the inscriptions of the bangle was suddenly alight with power. [[Frost Resistance]]. All this free time had done wonders for Paige's crafting skills, and Zenith's incessant begging to learn inscriptions had only worsened once Paige had shown she had known how to work spells into materials as she crafted Lily and Tyler's armor. Sure, Mage Inscribers and Blacksmiths all had their own trade secrets, but it wasn't too hard to figure out after watching her friends do it a few dozen times. Not that she had the mana to actually inscribe anything when she was a Warrior, but now with all the excess time and mana, she decided to try her hand at it with varying success.

Evaluating the worth of the monster in front of her, Paige pouted. 'If it was An Elder Beholder, I'd be tempted to get the core, but a juvenile... I'd rather just have the monster parts. It's not like I am lacking monster cores after all.' Paige realized something as she walked around the clearing; the Beholder hadn't left yet after what looked like a rather long fight thus far. 'Beholders are rather skittish creatures, so why hasn't it tried to escape yet? I mean, most monsters aren't that stupid to fight out of their element... Bah, something to figure out later,' she thought as Boary was struck by another icy blast.

"Boary! Attack pattern delta!" Paige yelled out as she stopped channeling her mana, her form slowly appearing in the clearing as her hold on her mana slowly fizzled away. The Beholder jerked in surprise but shot beams of light over to Paige as she appeared. Watching the beams coming closer, Paige simply ducked and threw something at the main eye, attracting the attention of the Beholder and the beams of light, hoping to freeze the projectile as it traveled closer to its body. A pebble. A fast-moving pebble that slowly transformed into a large, solid ice sphere; one aimed directly at it's main eye!

The Beholder recoiled in horror as the pebble's forward momentum carried it closer and closer to its body. Moving sideways to avoid the now large projectile and glaring hatefully at the new intruder, the last thing it saw was the new interuder waving at it before the boar's enlarged tusks pierced it's body through. The dark blueblood trickled down the boar's tusk and pooled below it, a heavy scent of snow diffused across the forest.

Paige nodded to herself as the boar shook his head and flung the body to the side. "Good job impaling it and missing the eye. Phew, it's rare to be able to save the main eye. I can make something good out of it at least," Paige laughed happily. It was always better to have extra materials than not. She stopped as Boary turned and faced her; it's gaze unfocused and his head angled downward, his enlarged tusks pointing straight at her.

"I haven't had something thick and round pointed at me in a long while. Point that at someone else before you regret it." Paige said with amusement. She got serious as the boar started pawing the ground. "Boary. Wake up before I start getting offended." Paige started drawing in the ambient mana forcefully, the air solidifying quickly with an unseen force as the density of the mana started making the air feel stuffy. It was a little trick Paige had learned from the far east, though it usually didn't work if the opponent wanted to fight. She sighed in relief as Boary stopped and focused, his eyes staring confusedly at the Farmer in front of him, one that was unusually scary today.

Seeing the boar calm down and the eyes started to have a shred of intelligence, Paige reigned in her mana as well. "Good. Hey Boary, care to split the spoils? You can have the core if you want, but I want to process the body. I did do half the work after all," Paige said unreservedly as she pointed at the dead body. 'It's weird, did he not know he was fighting it? I've seen monsters fight before, and this one was strange. Is it the environment or the magic formation again? But then how did this monster get here? she thought to herself as she started cutting away the important material from the body. Idly extracting the core and gathering her spoils, she watched Boary's reaction as he followed the core with a burning gaze.

Of course he would want it; what monster with a core wouldn't want the chance to upgrade itself. That was exactly what Paige wanted to check too. Boar, Elder Boar, Elemental Boar, Ancient Boar. Most simply thought it was a title or a ranking system the Guild Hall used, but the truth ran deeper than that, not that most people cared about the truth. In fact, perhaps only Monster Trainers knew the true reason they were called that. Monster Classes.

Every living creature had a mana core, but just like how people could consolidate the mana in their core to advance their Class, so could monsters. But while people used monster cores as materials for their equipment, monsters absorbed any core they could in the hopes of advancing. That was why monster hunting was a dangerous prospect; it was hard to tell who was the hunter or the hunted.

"I want to test something Boary. You can have this Frost Beholder core... or a Lava Bear core. Which do you want?" she said with a smile as she pulled out a fist-sized core with care, the orb pulsing with heat. Taking the other core and making sure they were both around the same circumference, she held it out in front of the boar.

The test was a simple one: confirming if Classes gained by monsters still operated under the same rule as before. Sara had said a four-legged creature wreathed in flame had killed the rest of her party when they came to this forest before, but in the last four years, the only elemental creature they had seen was this Frost Beholder and the Wind Sparrow Zenith had killed. Everything else they had hunted were Elder monsters at best, regular animals at worst. But knowing now that Tyler was able to choose his class, could that mean monsters could choose their class as well? Usually eating an elemental core would, theoretically anyways, instantly upgrade an Elder monster. Was Boary staying as an Elder Boar for a reason? Or did Monster Classes change as well?

Or could it be that was much deeper than that? If she could stop from advancing to a Warrior until she hit every warrior specialization, could a monster do the same? Even the Imperial Family had never successfully created an Ancient monster before, so maybe that was how one reached Ancient. Had she stumbled upon an ancient secret?

"First off Boary. How di-," A crunching sound interrupted her thoughts as she blankly watched the boar eat both cores at once.

"Ack! Hey! It took a few days for me to track that bear when I was travelling in the southeastern part of the Empire," Paige grumbled slightly. Now it was a waiting game, though Paige hoped that it wouldn't take too long to see a quantitative change in Boary.

---

"What a waste of time. At least I got some monster parts but still," Paige grumbled as she and Boary walked back to the main settlement. She had waited a good six hours for a change, and she had nothing to show besides dirt-stained overalls and dead leaves in her hair. The stupid boar hadn't even condensed his mana or anything to show for him eating two cores! Two! Looking down at her clothes, she knew she would be in for it later. "Gaah. Had I known I'd be traipsing through the forest on an adventure today, I would have worn my coarser overalls instead of these cotton ones. Zenith is probably going to kill me for not wearing my rough linen gear instead."

Paige stopped as she suddenly thought about what Zenith had said before she left. "...was I supposed to make dinner tonight? Shoot, I should still have time to make something edible. Maybe something with a vegetable base. Pumpkin soup or lentil?" Hmmm, tapping her cheek idly, Paige stopped short of the houses and scanned the clearing ahead, making sure to check a few key areas, especially on the wooden gate set in the stone wall. It was still closed. 'Good, the magic circle hadn't been broken,' she thought as she nodded her head. That was one of the few defenses they had surrounding the entire settlement, used only in the case that everyone had left the premise.

It was a simple formation, one that most people wouldn't even consider, not unless they were either Assassins or full Mages. By creating a stone fence around the entire premise and having only one true exit, it was quite simple for Zenith to create a magic circle with the fence as a fuse. Should anything larger than a bird pass over the stone fence, the gate would unlock and open discreetly. One door of the gate was used to indicate how many people passed over the magic circle, and the other was used to indicate the relative size of the people entering.

Looking across the settlement for any clues to see if someone had passed by but not entered, she nodded to herself after reconfirming with her skills that nothing had passed by. "Don't have to do a sweep around the perimeter. Come on Boary, let's go get some food ready." Rolling her sleeves up, she led the way to her fields to pick her ingredients for dinner.

Had she turned around, Paige would have noticed how Boary's eyes flickered between blue and red, before slowly returning back to normal.