“Eris, look out!” I yelled as a lion-like magical beast pounced on her. The green lion attempted to bite her head off but was left with an open jaw along her mana barrier. Reacting quickly my daggers plunged into the side of the beast. Enough to penetrate several inches before the lion roared with electricity surging through its body and my daggers. It shot out a stun attack which caused my entire body to stiffen and stumble back onto my bottom with my daggers still in my grasp.

Looks like I pissed off the lion since it changed its kill target. It’s eyes sparked with electricity as its mouth reopened with a roar. All I could do was watch helplessly, numb from head to toe. Yellow lighting charged up and bolted out of its mouth.

Prior to my head being blasted into smithereens, a lifesaving barrier deflected the bolt into a nearby tree, bursting it into flames. My sense of touch came back, allowing me to get up through sheer willpower. Seeing as its lightning attack failed, its fur began to erratically discharge electricity.

I yelled as both of us did a frontal charge. The lion’s claws slashed across my chest without being able to dodge it completely. I fell to the ground again, but with a sense of success as blood flowed out of my chest and the lion crashed to my side with both daggers protruding from its left eye. The lion shuddered as life left its body.

All I could see before my eyes shut was Eris rushing frantically towards me.

“Volatis, can you hear me?” Eris thoughtfully held my head up after healing my wounds. Her worried expression calmed me for some reason. “Can’t have you going berserk. I don’t want to die again.”

I pushed her hand away after hearing that and stood up. Eris caused me to sigh often lately. I wanted to argue with her but we needed to wrap things up quickly, or else we really might be in danger.

The monsters kept coming one after another after we killed our first target, a Wind Jackal. I looked back on the carnage and a trail of bloodied beasts laid scattered around. I knew the monsters had a semblance of intelligence, some said they were even smarter than humans, but I never knew they would take advantage of two lone hunters to this extent.

My estimate was somewhere over twenty beasts. What surprised me though were the extra bodies lying around the green lion. Four flame vultures and a stone scorpion the size of a sedan.

“Eris, what happened!” I shouted in bewilderment as I got closer to their corpses.

“They kept attacking after you passed out. I had to take care of them before being able to heal you. Sorry for the delay.” Eris sincerely apologized as if I were mad she took too long.

“That’s not what I meant. Are you alright? How did you kill them all?” I’ve never seen Eris attack or use any offensive spells, so I’ve no clue what she can even do. I was more curious about how she killed them over being shocked she was able to. I already knew she was overpowered and the look on her face made me look like the bad guy who just scolded her.

I quickly changed the tone of my voice and let it go, telling her to help me collect the various important parts from each individual kill. The most important part being each beast’s magic cores as those sold for the most and were used in refining equipment, weapons, scrolls and even improving one’s own magic powers.

The smell of blood filled the air and hopefully, this scared the weaker monsters for long enough to allow us to salvage everything we needed. “Finished, finally!” I’m not one to complain normally but that ended up taking a while and was messy with both of us lathered in blood.

The materials barely fit into the rucksack but now it was packed to the brim, so we called it a day. Right when I decided that, distant trees shook and birds scattered, then a loud earth-shattering roar filled the entire sky.

“Not good, run!” Eris shouted, but didn’t need to tell me. I was already running and asking if she knew what we were running from exactly.

“Feral ape. Dangerous.” This wasn’t in the book we read, what could possibly make her scared? Even with the rucksack on my back I could run at a fast pace, but noticed Eris having trouble keeping up. Her breathing became erratic and her running slowed down. I went behind and lifted her up over my free shoulder, running as fast as possible.

Our speed could easily be misjudged as a speed enchantment since we were running well over thirty miles per hour. Eris continued to look in the direction of the Feral ape over my shoulder and she knew we still wouldn’t be able to outrun it. “It’s able to track our scent, we’re doused in blood. There’s no way to escape at this rate.”

She was right, I could feel the earth trembling beneath us grow stronger and louder as it neared. “We’ll fight!” I set Eris down and tossed the rucksack to a nearby tree.

“Feral apes are known for their extreme brute strength and high resistance against all forms of magic. I won’t be able to hurt it, mine barely affects it. The only way is without magic.” Eris gave me a summary of its strengths and weaknesses, but it sounded like it had none of the latter.

“Sounds like a mage-killer.” Probably not the best time to joke around, but I wasn’t planning on dying here today. I handed the two scrolls over to Eris. I know she said it’s not effective against this ape, but better her having it than me not being able to even activate them.

My mind was constantly thinking of ways to survive and moments before it appeared, I retrieved a lion’s fang from the rucksack. Supposedly the fang was strong and wouldn’t break, from all of Eris’s warnings I was afraid the ape’s skin would also break my daggers by chance.