It didn't take long for Angie and the others to reach their destination. Finding their target, however, was a different matter. They had rented a couple of rooms at the inn and asked around.

They had gotten a lot of information about the weird occurrences, but none of them were concrete enough to actually pinpoint the location of the anomaly. It was strange, considering that a huge army of monsters should've been easily spotted. Natsumi even looked up from the sky, but there was nothing out of place.

"Could we have gotten the area wrong?"

Natsumi asked.

"No, Kai said that information from the guardians is always reliable. Maybe they're just using the terrain to hide?"

Date looked around but there wasn't anything he could see that they could use to hide such a massive number.

"...Maybe they're underground?"

Arata touched the ground.

"I wish they hadn't disappeared before we got here..."

Natsumi sighed.

The guardians had told them the last known location of the monsters before their people retreated. They had already searched the entire area they were told to but came up with nothing. The guardians didn't say anything about the anomaly being invisible either.

"Is it even possible to hide a dragon?"

The last they were told, there was a single dragon that had been put under control. It was unlikely that they'd be able to get another one soon, but just trying to find a dragon would be like trying to find the tallest building in a city. Was it even possible to hide something of that scale?

In the end, they could only retreat into the nearby city and wait for more news.

...

A couple of days had passed without anything noteworthy happening. They had tried to go gather more information, scout areas they hadn't scouted before, they even went into some abandoned mines to see if there were signs of monsters but they couldn't even find human footsteps let alone monsters.

"I'm starting to believe that the guardians are wrong..."

Natsumi was sighing. She was acting listless, after all, they hadn't spotted a single beast in the past two days. The people also said that it's been pretty safe for the past few months. It was one thing for them to be unable to find an object inside a city after searching for this long, but they were looking for not just one or two beasts, but an entire army of them.

"Should we just give up and call Kai?"

Date was the one to propose it. After all, the anomaly grew stronger with each passing day. If they were to delay it any longer, it might even become a threat on par with the Blind Swordsman—or not, but it could cause unspeakable amounts of damage to the continent.

"He could just use his... Soul Call or whatever it was called to find them, can't he?"

"I already contacted Master but Erina told me that he isn't able to move right now."

Angie grumbled. She wanted him to hurry up but if Kai couldn't move, then it must be an important matter. After all, Kai was the type of person who could teleport from one side of the continent to the other in just the blink of an eye. If he couldn't even spare the time to go here for a minute or two, then what he was doing was just that important.

Not only that, their teleportation rods weren't working either. What had come up that made Kai so preoccupied? It didn't sound like he was battling anyone because of Erina's words, but she couldn't explain the situation well enough for her to understand.

"Then, all we can do is wait for the enemy to..."

All of a sudden, they heard screams. The four of them went on alert and without even talking to the others, the four of them separated to where the voices had come from.

They were in the middle of the city, and they had heard it come from four directions. One was nearby, and the three others were on the northeast and west. There was a mountain at the city's south that could block any threats from going through there, so maybe whatever caused those screams couldn't get there?

With the same thoughts, the four of them moved independently. Arata, who was the slowest of the four, stayed near their spot and found a beast attacking a civilian. It was a white-winged tiger. Its fur was as white as snow, and its eyes were of the same color. It was a monster that didn't exist on the human continents, and Arata had no idea how to deal with it.

However, he was already S-class. There was no way that the beast could contend with him individually.

"Get away!"

Arata stomped his foot on the ground. After a second passed, there was a wall of earth that rose from the ground and struck the tiger. It separated the tiger and the civilian.

"ROOOAAR!"

It roared in anger at being deprived of its prey. It looked around and using its keen senses, understood that Arata was the one to stop it. It quickly changed targets.

Arata, using a ring that Kai had forged for them using materials from the Demon Continent that functioned like his pendant, but with limited storage, summoned a shield that towered over his body. He held it with his right arm and slammed it into the body of the tiger that had charged at him.

"[Stone Pikes]!"

Arata slammed the shield on the ground immediately after he flung the tiger away and spears made of stone shot out from the ground and stabbed into the tiger's body. It became wounded all over, but none of them went deep enough to actually kill it.

Arata was about to finish it off by crushing it with a giant boulder but then, it opened its mouth. There was a small ball of elemental energy in front of it, it was made of light.

'A light beast in the Demon Continent...?'

How had it been able to survive this long? This continent naturally rejected the light element, and while there were beasts that used light on the continent, none of them should be this weak.

To survive in a place that defies your very essence, if you were weak, then it was impossible. But, from what Arata could see, the beast was only B-class. Though its body was definitely stronger than that, it shouldn't be able to survive against the other beasts.

'This means...'

Arata quickly looked around after he realized it. From the sky, three other white-winged tigers swooped in. He moved quickly and raised walls of earth to cover himself. He managed to block both the light and the tigers.

'...that these beasts travel in packs!'

Arata called for the ring's power again and took out his spear. He gripped it tightly, and then after making a small hole on the wall, he stabbed it at the tigers. Backed with the power of an S-class, the tiger died instantly.

With one of their members dead, the rest of the tigers became even more fierce.

However, B-class was still B-class. They couldn't do anything to Arata and could only be picked off one by one.

"Where the heck are they coming from?"

Before Arata could look for the source, he was suddenly struck from the side. It was a beast that looked like a bull. Did it sense his mana? It ignored the civilians that were running away and charged straight at him.

The bull was A-class, and the horns it had looked like it could break through a building's wall pretty easily.

Arata put his guard up and readied himself. It didn't look like the bull was gonna be the last enemy either.

"[Rain Cutter]!"

Date raised his hand, then lowered it suddenly. Hundreds of droplets formed and cut the monsters in the area apart easily. Then, he swung his sword and a dragon made of water swallowed the remaining ones.

Inside the dragon, it was like they were torn apart and eaten by the dragon's stomach acid. They all vanished instantly.

There were some civilian casualties, but Date's timely arrival had managed to stop more from happening.

"Huff...!"

Date took a deep breath and leaped forward. He raised his sword above his head and slashed down at a monkey-like beast.

He had cut its neck clean in two.

"T-thank you!"

A demon woman thanked him with tears in her eyes.

"Go on!"

Date yelled out after helping the woman to her feet. Then, he pointed his sword at the remaining monkey beasts looking over at him. One of them had just finished killing someone and looked at Date.

Some of them had swords, while some of them used claws. But, in the end, they were just B-class monsters.

"If Kai was here, he'd just spend a stupid amount of mana to kill everyone super fast."

But, Date couldn't do that and neither could anyone else. After all, no matter how strong they became, they were still limited by mana.

Kai was the only one who could do such reckless moves.

The monkeys charged one after another. They didn't attack in bulk because they would hit each other.

Date dodged the first attack and cut the first monkey in half. Then, with just slight movements, he also dodged the second and third. A ring of water then appeared around his body and shot out. It cut the two monkeys in half and halted the movement of the fourth.

He only used one-hundredth of the mana that Kai's Rend would use.

To put into perspective how ridiculous Kai's mana was, even if he didn't refill it constantly, he would still have enough mana of everyone in Memento Mori and then some. It was like comparing a bathtub to a swimming pool, it wasn't even close.

After the first three were taken care of, the rest fell down pretty quickly. They were considered Disaster-classes on the human continent, but that was only if they grouped together.

Otherwise, they were just a threat to anyone at C-class.

"Hey, you!"

A guard hailed at Date.

"Did you take care of the monsters here?"

"Yeah. Do you have any idea what's happening?"

The guard shook his head and pointed at the other guards from the direction he came from fighting monsters.

"The gates weren't broken, there wasn't a single beast that had gotten through there. They just suddenly appeared and started killing people."

"Sir Galfridus."

Someone called out to Kei from behind. He turned around and saw a demon man wearing a suit.

"The Neutral Faction requests your assistance on the matter at hand, is it possible?"

"What do you want me to do?"

Amazingly, the Neutral Faction managed to figure out that they were here. Had they planted spies? No, Kai had teleported them here without letting anyone know. It didn't matter right now, however.

"We've found the source of the monsters."

The demon man pointed up. Date raised his head and saw a giant pillar floating. The clouds were covering the top half, but the sheer size of the pillar alone made Date feel the pressure.

"Is that..."

"A giant tortoise?!"

Angie couldn't help but exclaim as she looked at the sky. It was just a coincidence that she looked up when she saw a shadow looming over the skies. At first, she thought it was a pillar, but when it moved, she tried to look more closely.

In the end, she managed to spot the head peeking from the clouds.

It was undoubtedly a giant tortoise. She didn't know when it appeared or how nobody managed to sense its approach. But, seeing the stream of monsters drop from the tortoise made it evident where they all came from.

"So the reason we couldn't find any monsters on the ground was because they were all in the sky... How in the world did they manage to land from that height?"

Angie had taken down a few flying beasts on the way, and she could understand how they managed to get down. But, how the heck did the monsters on land get here? Wouldn't their legs break? Forget their legs, wouldn't they just straight-up die after falling from that height?

Suddenly, there was a roar from behind Angie. She turned and saw a bear charging at her with four paws. It looked like it wanted to rip her apart.

"Dragon Slayer Art... I guess I shouldn't use that."

Angie scratched her cheek. She adjusted her position a bit then raised her arm.

Just as the bear arrived in front of her, she swiped down.

"Beast Art: Tiger's Claw."

It took her stamina instead of her mana, something she had more of an abundance on. In a situation like this where she didn't know how much she would have to expend, it was best to save her mana for only dangerous situations.

She couldn't imitate the claws, but she could at least imitate the strength. The bear couldn't do anything other than be buried in the ground. Angie then shook her arm a few times to take away the numbing feeling.

"That felt like I hit a rock..."

She then followed where the bear had come from then found more monsters and followed their tracks too.