Running came two people out of a hole in the ground.

One was a red haired girl with a tattered red cape flying freely behind her and the other; a tall man covered in metallic armor, which was equally rugged and scratched.

The man was holding another girl in princess carry and his expressions didn’t have a single clue of menace. His eyes were glowing with fervor and had a slight glow to them.

“We are out! We are finally out of the hell hole!” The girl wearing the red cape made a ‘Y’ pose by holding her hands high up above her head, as she shouted at the top of her voice.

A smile also formed on that man’s face who was calmly standing beside her. The sky and the twinkling stars held a new kind of beauty for him on that night.

The girl he was carrying had no arms and from the flowing blood and her torn clothes, it was clear that she had been badly mutilated by someone and her condition also wasn’t great.

These were the trio who had survived the ordeal and the betrayal of their own team member and escaped from the mouth of death of the newly discovered den of ants. They escaped, but not without paying a huge price for it.

Daniel was carrying Dust ‘The earth mage’ while ‘The fire mage’ Martha walked beside him.

He looked at dust who was still unconscious and a hint of pain and feelings emerged in his heart, when he remembered what she had to go through on their seemingly easy, but an atrociously difficult job. He remembered how she had swallowed the pain of having her arms cut without letting even a little sound out, and how his and Martha’s life was saved by that same girl who seemingly on the verge of death didn’t forget to take her revenge.

After running and crawling for an hour in the monster less monster tunnels, the remaining members of the B Rank party sent to look at the dungeons authenticity came out of the hole which had become a new experience of trust, cruel realities and dangerous plans to them.

Daniel looked at Martha, who was still standing straight looking at the normal but lit sky, but he noticed that even though her smile wasn’t fading and she was holding herself quite well, her watery eyes and flowing tears were enough to state her state of mind.

Her shivering legs were also enough of an indication telling him that all which they went through was as real as life could get and that they were really lucky this time to have survived the perfectly spewed traps and plan of a true mastermind.

“We were lucky, huh.”

Martha didn’t mind his mumbling and nodded instead, pointing that he was true about that. He also sighed as they started walking towards their home.

“Let’s go, we have a lot of distance to cover and very little time for that.”

“How is she?”

She didn’t question his decision as she could also see that Dust’s condition, though looked fine, but her pale face and lifeless body was enough to tell that she was anemic because of high blood loss.

He looked at the near death girl in his arms as he said,

“Though her bleeding has stopped, but she is still unconscious. I won’t say she is out of danger because she has already lost a lot of her blood. I have nourished and am trying to preserve her life by giving her my mana, but I don’t think she will be able to hold on for more than a day like this. We really need to get back to the town and get a high cleric or someone of the same status to help her. I don’t want her to die, not after all of that she went through, with us.”

His voice got heavier and heavier the more he spoke, but then Martha slapped his shoulders as she started walking forward.

“So let’s run.”

The sudden nudge on his shoulder brought him back, as he started following her.

“Yeah, let’s run.”

They started running away from the cave of misery and towards their establishment of life.

The night was dark, darker than usual. There was no moon in the sky, so they had no natural light around them to see.

Daniel had to slow his speed because Martha was too slow for him to run at his full capacity. She was a mage after all. A mage’s strength is directly equal to their mana and spells. It has nothing to do with their physical abilities. So no mage actively tries to increase their physical abilities. They are known for their destructive power and it is also a reason that a mage is an easy target.

It sounds stupid at first, but a mages fire power or ability to cause destruction is on a completely different scale and level than any other class. This increase in power in turn also makes them fragile and vulnerable to an all sided attack and because of their low physical abilities, mages account for the most amount of deaths when the situation calls for a retreat.

SO,

They both ran from the ant hill and travelled down the mountain and toward their home while the things, which the assassin said to them, kept on rampaging inside their minds.

They left the barren lands behind and entered the Devils Beard forest, but unlike before, this time they didn’t stop for rest because it would take them almost a whole day to run back to the town and time was what Dust didn’t have.

“Martha, we are going to travel through the jungle. I am sure our journey back won’t be easy and there will be a lot of monsters coming to take a bite of us, but we don’t have time to waste for the sun to rise, so you’ll have to preserve and make it through with me, I don’t want to lose anyone else.”

“Ah! I- I can do this, I am sure, but…”

“Then it is good. I am leaving the battles to you because I can’t fight while holding her, right.”

“Bat- Battle? Ah! Right, you can’t fight while holding her, but won’t my fire burn everything and lit the jungle ablaze?”

Daniel looked at her as if he was looking at a criminal, an arsonist. But he waved his hand conveying to her that she needed to lay low, talk slow and to follow him.

Martha nodded her head understanding the meaning and followed behind him.

They walked and even though it was night and the time of the jungle and its inhabitants, strangely there was no sound. Everything was just too quiet and calm. The calm felt like a bad omen to them and that sickening feeling was enough to make their hearts tremble with anxiety.

But instead of stopping, they gritted their teeth and continued to advance.

The calm and silent jungle retained its serene state till they reached the center. Because they were vigilant and attentive they had decided to move slowly to keep note of their surrounding and not to get trapped inside an ambush, but things changed when they reached the center of the jungle. The calmness and silence of the jungle got turned upside down, as the sound inside the whole area around them got taken over by the howls of wolves.

Their hearts jumped when they heard the call of wolves and they both became attentive.

“What the fuck? Did we somehow enter the shadow wolf’s territory?”

Martha hurriedly looked everywhere to understand the situation and said, “It doesn’t look like it, I am sure we are following the right path. But then,”

She was interrupted by Daniel who was listening to the cries of wolves.

“Looks like, we’ve been had. This is why the jungle was so quiet.”

“What did you find out? Tell me.”

“Just get ready, those wolves are coming. I think the jungle was quite because these damn wolves were following us from the start and now that we are in their territory, in the middle of this darned dark lightless jungle, they have finally decided to attack us.”

“What? Is that true then~ then what should we do?”

He looked at her, smiled and he said with a laugh, “Let’s run.” and started running at his full speed. His sudden actions bewildered Martha as sweat trickled down her open back and she hurriedly followed him.

Because Daniel was carrying Dust in his arms, his speed wasn’t that great and Martha who was a mage was able to follow him though she had to put some effort in her actions.

But just as they had started running, the calm jungle suddenly gained back its liveliness.

From their left, their right and definitely from directly behind them, sounds of grass and branches breaking and twitching suddenly broke the serenity and their hearts which were already pumping blood at a heightened speed, became crazy and as its beating got faster and excited became the howls and cries of the wolves following behind them.

“Mine fire, fire; don’t leave any corner. Burn them alive.”

“But won’t it burn the jungle itself.”

“Huh, are you an idiot? Why are you thinking about the jungle? Don’t you want to live? Do you want to die? If not, then blast those wolf bastards to hell; burn the fucking jungle…!”

Carrying a girl, no matter how light she was, and then running. This was already tiring the hell out of him physically, but then being followed and chased for life also quickly drained him mentally and he lost his temper.

Martha gritted her teeth, as for her burning a whole jungle wasn’t what she had signed up for when she had become an adventurer. She really didn’t want to do it, but being chased and hunted by those monster wolves was enough to make her forget about her ambitions and whatnot. She readied herself mentally to do everything in her hands to leave the darned jungle with her life intact.

So she opened her arms and faced her palms to the left and right direction and started firing fireballs like a machine.

Most of those aimless fireballs did nothing other than burning trees and grass, which in turn burned even more trees near them, but some of them made loud impacts and killed the monsters.

Though the wolves were getting killed by her over the top fireballs, but she didn’t receive any level up notification, indicating that the wolves getting killed were too low leveled and the higher leveled and stronger ones were not there yet.

The wolf’s cried in pain and their partners howled in anger, but none came out of the fire to pounce on them. But the hundreds of sounds coming from near the wall of fire were enough to solidify their belief that, if she hadn’t made up her mind to spew out fire on both the side at the same time, then the wolves would have started attacking them in the hundreds.

While fire covered and blocked the path for the wolves to come from the left and right, but those of them following from behind were quickly decreasing the distance between them and their number wasn’t low either.

They ran while Martha kept on firing the fire balls and after some time the intensity of her attacks deceased. From the looks of it, she had almost reached her limits and was just preserving through share will power.

Daniel noticed her pace getting slow and then saw her ghastly pale face devoid of blood, it startled him. He hurriedly ordered her to stop using her mana and to preserve it.

“You can stop firing fireballs now. Preserve your mana, a fight is coming. Charge all of your mana into your biggest spell and fire at my command. Okay.”

She looked at him with her slightly aged face and tired eyes and she stopped spewing out fireballs left and right and acknowledged his command.

They ran like that for another three or so minutes when a horde of wolves, about fifty of them, suddenly came running towards them from the front.

These were the high ranking ones who hadn’t joined the fight and were clearly waiting for the right time to ambush them. The pressure on them both increased even more when they remembered that there was an equally strong horde of wolves following behind them.

Daniel turned his head around to look at Martha and saw that she was getting ready to do or die.

“Is your spell ready?”

“Yes, it is, but…”

“Don’t worry about the power and fire it at the front. If you can control its power, then make sure that its impact travels in a straight line and doesn’t disperse.”

“Huh, I can do that.”

Daniel didn’t know what to expect of her power. Because she, no, the fight and troubles had already expended most of their powers, therefore they were not at their full power. Otherwise, even a single spell of hers would have been enough to wipe the wolves to dust.

So he really didn’t expect much from her this time and as he also didn’t see any concentrated fire balls near her, neither did he see any spell formations raging, so he thought that maybe her mana was too low to use the any of her powerful spells, but boy how wrong was he.

Just as he told her to fire, a magical wave travelled through her body and everywhere it touched lit up in fire. The fire burned and burned all the trees around them to charcoal black in a second. It was like the wave had quickly lit up some kind of fuel and created havoc.

Left, right, front, back every side around them turned into a burning inferno. Daniel s eyes bulged out when he saw the scene of carnage unfolding in front of him.

He quickly used his shield skill ‘Iron wall’ and created a defensive barrier to stop the fire from reaching them, but to his surprise a road opened in the inferno leading straight outside while everything else around them burned.

*Ayoo* *Ayoo* *ooooooo*

The cries of wolves flooded the whole area as the fire touched and burned everything, but he noticed that though fire looked menacing, it wasn’t strong. Sure, some 0 rank wolves were burned to death by it, but it had no almost effect on those higher ranking monsters.

Martha continued to run after Daniel after she fired her spell, but then her steps dwindled as her she also lost conscious while running. Though she had created a massive blazing inferno of 200 meters, but it also emptied her mana pool, which in turn made her forcibly lose consciousness.

Daniel saw her falling, but he couldn’t leave her behind. So he gritted his teeth and gave a low shout as he changed Dust’s position and placed her on his left shoulder and picked Martha before she could fall onto the ground and hurriedly placed her over his right shoulder and carried them both.

He ran on the road and left the domain of fire behind, but the fire instigated by Martha quickly expanded and spread through the whole forest.

And slowly cries of monkeys, birds and all the other inhabitants echoed throughout the jungle. The whole Forest was in turmoil. All the monsters residing the forest started running to save their lives, they ran to save their lives and slowly the situation turned grave.

Daniel hadn’t thought that she would have the power to burn down the whole forest, but she displayed power much greater than anyone at her level could and the results of it were obvious too.

He ran out of the fire covered area, but unlike what he had expected would happen, they didn’t get ambushed by the wolves. He got surprised at first, but quickly understood what had happened.

The fire spreading through the forest became a danger to their cubs, so they ran back to save them. So her unreasonable carnage had in turn saved their lives.

“Haha, so her fire actually saved us all. That’s fine, but I hope this fire won’t make those running monsters to come chasing us towards the town.” He kept on running forward as the once lively and green forest burned to smithereens.

He ran and ran for another two hours and finally got out of the forest, but there was still a lot of distance that he needed to cover and from the looks of it even Martha was not going to wake up any time soon.

It took him another three hours of walking to finally reach a road connecting to the town, but his tired self finally gave in when he saw a carriage coming towards him.

His legs staggered and he fell on the ground. His fading conscious and closing eyes saw a wheel stopping as two people jumped from the carriage and picked the girls up. They placed them inside the carriage and then came to help him, but by the time they picked him up he was already out of conscious.

The fire kept on burning the forest and it was really going to burn the whole forest down, if the rising smoke hadn’t given birth to black rain clouds.