The Beasts' Forest:

With short breaths and a fast-beating heart, she watched as her hand went past the door and became blurry behind the grey fog.

Exactly as she had expected, she felt something when her hand 'touched' the grey fog, it was the same cold feeling she felt when her hand touched the floor and the door before, if a bit stronger this time and continued till the centre of her hand, instead of it being a feeling that disappeared at her fingers.

Unlike the last two times too, the feeling wasn't momentarily, but continuous, giving the sense that an unending river was flowing into her.

A bit afraid about what was happening, she turned her head towards Adam wanting to tell him about this, just to get shocked at what she saw.

Next to her, Adam was looking intensely at the grey fog and all around him, there were wisps of that milky white energy, and his eyes too were shining with the same white light.

He appeared highly concentrated and she shrank back and couldn't bring herself to speak to him.

Again, a small voice in her heart made itself known, she had no idea about what was happening, she didn't know if she was in any danger, even though if everything around her was taken into account, then she was almost sure that she was in some kind of danger. She didn't know if she could trust Adam, that small voice was particularly shouting at her to turn around and try to run as fast and far as she could, or her end was near.

Taking a deep breath, Susan tried to ignore all of that as she looked at the grey fog in front of her. That wasn't because she had that much trust in Adam, or she trusted that nothing bad was going to happen to her, no, it was just that she had no real choice.

Even if Adam meant her bad, it wasn't like she had a lot of choices, she was but a normal weak human, and he was someone that made some of the strongest guards in her village retreat easily, the only choice she had was going on with Adam and hoping that he meant nothing bad towards her.

For the who knows what time in these last few days, Susan felt anger, sadness and bitterness of being a weak human with no means to protect herself.

Things continued like this for a while, Susan just kept her hand lifted while she felt that never-ending feeling of something passing through it. What made her more nervous as time passed was how she felt that coldness move higher on her arm.

The first time, when she touched the floor above, it seemed that it hardly passed her fingers, actually, she treated it as nothing more than the coldness from the floor that she felt on her fingers.

The second time, at the door, it reached the lower end of her fingers, and it was only then that she started thinking that this coldness might be something else and not just a normal chill.

And at the beginning of this, when she lifted her hand to the door for the first time, the coldness had reached the centre of her palm before disappearing entirely, but after that, as time passed, she felt that coldness move up her arm slowly, from the centre of her palm, to her wrist and till the halfway point up her lower arm.

Just as she felt the chill reach the halfway point of her lower arm, she couldn't take it anymore and decided to ask Adam about what was happening to her.

Yet, just as she turned her head towards him, she felt as if she saw a blurry figure from the corner of her eye, and her heart dropped because it was coming from the grey fog.

She didn't even have the time to turn her head around, she could only freeze as she watched that figure get closer and closer to her.

Suddenly, just as she thought that she was done for for sure, she saw a bright shining milky white flame head to that figure and collide with it

Boom!

"Ahhh!"

A big boom was heard first, followed by a loud, shrill scream.

Susan turned her head hurriedly towards the door again and saw a blurry humanoid figure engulfed in burning white flames.

While that figure was still struggling amidst the white flame, a milky white pyramid started manifesting itself around it.

When the pyramid was done, the figure had finally extinguished the fire and tried to retreat to the safety of the grey fog, unfortunately for it, it found that it wasn't able to pass through the pyramid-shaped barrier.

It clawed, smashed, and eventually shouted at the barrier, but none of that worked.

Susan turned to Adam who was clearly the person responsible for what had happened.

At that moment, Adam was looking intensely at the figure with his eyes shining brightly.

"Wh... What is that?" She asked stutteringly.

"An evil spirit... A low levelled one... I think?" He answered hesitantly while still keeping his eyes on it.

Susan looked at the figure, the evil spirit, again and saw that it had calmed down a lot more than before. The evil spirit had a feminine shape, her features and built were a bit blurry, but even with that, you could still differentiate its sex.

Her scanning complete, Susan noticed that the evil spirit had turned its head and was looking towards them, studying them closely with its cold unfeeling eyes.

When those eyes fell on her, they made her take a few involuntary steps back. They were beastly bloodthirsty eyes, but even with all that, Susan could almost swear that she felt a hint of sentience under all that madness.

"You're... Weird?" Adam said to the evil spirit inside the pyramid-shaped barrier.

As Adam spoke, the evil spirit turned her head towards him.

"Rel....ease... Me... Yo...u low...ley... Li...vi...tus..." A broken voice came of the evil spirit, it was extremely unstable, high at times and low at others, it sounded sinister and harsh before it started shouting.

"It... It spoke..." Susan's heart clenched.

"Yes, uncommon, but not unheard of," Adam's eyes were full of interest as he concentrated his attention at the evil spirit, "usually, if someone had a high enough level before their death, after turning into an evil spirit-"

Before he could finish his words, another shrill scream was heard from inside the pyramid-shaped barrier as the evil spirit started attacking it with renewed vigour.

"Barely holding to an ounce of sentience, but that's to be expected really, few evil spirits would have any strong sense of self," murmured Adam.

Even at that moment, he was still in the same state as before, with wisps of milky white light floating around him and his shining eyes never leaving the evil spirit even for a second.

"What should we do now?" She asked.

"Hmm..." Adam appeared to be in deep thoughts, "evil spirits in this state are highly unstable, I don't think that we are going to get much out of it... Asking her about small easily remembered things about herself might help though..."

Done speaking, Adam took a closer step to the evil spirit as he said in a loud but clear and calm voice:

"My name is Adam, and I am a livitus, what are you and what's your name?"

All he got as an answer was a monstrous shout as the evil spirit continued hitting the barrier, Adam didn't appear discouraged, he waited till it calmed down a bit again and repeated his question. This time, the spirit's reaction was calmer, even though it still shouted and attacked.

After repeating the question for a few more times without tiring, the spirit calmed down at last, enough to listen to him without lashing out.

"What's your name and from what race are you?" Asked Adam again.

"Ata...lya... I... am... a danu...pi..ra..." Finally, and after who knows how many tries, the evil spirit answered with something other than screaming in enmity.

Susan didn't recognise the race that the evil spirit mentioned, and looking at Adam, from the deep frown on his face, it seemed that he too didn't recognise it.

"Danupira..." Murmured Adam, it was clear that he was a bit disappointed, but he soon controlled himself as he added:

"Do you know anything about the coneith?"

Susan too looked in interest to the evil spirit, she wanted to know if this race that Adam was searching for was real or not.

"Th...ose... Trait...ors... Tho...se dec...eivers..." To their surprise, as soon as the evil spirit heard the name, it froze before starting to scream louder than ever before and restarting its attacks against the barrier.

None of them expected that. Adam stood shell-shocked as he looked at this reaction, while Susan took a few steps away unconsciously.

"It seems that it has a deep hatred towards the coneith..." Adam returned to his senses fast, "they could have had a hand in its death to get this reaction out of it."

"What now?" Susan tried to calm herself down, "I don't think that it's going to calm down anytime soon this time..."

"Yes, you're righ-" started Adam as he took his eyes of the evil spirit to look at Susan for the first time since it appeared, but he couldn't complete his words.

As soon as his eyes fell on Susan, he froze as they moved slowly to the space under her.

Susan followed his gaze after noticing the change in his expression with a growing sense of fear and unease inside of her.

She didn't even need to lower her head entirely, as she took her eyes off the evil spirit, she noticed what she should have noticed a long time ago, the floor all around them was covered in the same grey fog that had covered the other side of the door before.

After looking even closer, Susan noticed that some of grey fog was circling her feet before disappearing into thin air like smoke at the end.

As her face paled and the colour disappeared of it, she suddenly heard a scream louder than any of those she heard from the evil spirit till then, followed by the sound of something cracking.

Susan turned her head just in time to see Adam wave his hand horizontally towards where the evil spirit had been before, and with that, a big wave of milky white flames advanced forward.

But unfortunately, the wave hit nothing at all, the place where the evil spirit had been before was completely empty.

"Behind you!" Shouted Adam at her who was still looking at the big wave of fire blankly.

Susan froze. Even though she knew that an attack was probably coming towards her, and understanding that completely, her body just refused to move, she just continued to look at Adam's face with widening unblinking eyes as he shouted at her.