At the military base in the city of Capeturn, Warrant Officer Ron Alec was alone in his office with papers stacked in front of his desk.

Ron belongs to a new service branch of the U.S. Armed Forces created after the incident in New Mexico. It was called Hunter Raid. They are tasked to control and eliminate threats coming out of the towers.

However, the Hunter Raid did not have enough forces to subjugate all the towers themselves, so they created a system to hire hunter as a freelancer and also to keep track of them.

It was the need of a hunter permit to enter the tower. Since then, the government had pretty much every information about the hunters.

Although they could not force them to show their aretisites' abilities due to a privacy act that been established to protect the hunters.

As Ron was flipping through the document, he stopped at a team of hunters who recently entered the tower in Capeturn.

"3 2-stars hunters, and 3 1-star hunters… This team is quite strong, however…" Ron read a document about Lyden.

"A 2-stars hunter, but with no experience, and no information about his artesite. Even more, he was a recent graduate of high school. He probably did not have any physical training." Ron did not have a high opinion of Lyden. "A boy who overestimates his ability because he is a 2-stars hunter will most likely die."

Ron showed no empathy to Lyden because many had died because they relied on there aretisites too much. It takes more than some magical ability to survive.

Many hunters were once civilians with little to no combat training so casualties were inevitable.

Upcoming hunters should train themselves physically and mentally because once they enter a tower, they enter a war zone.

However, young new hunters think they were a hero that can overcome any hardship as they see in movies or books.

Those were the type of people Ron liked the least.

He looked at the next stacks of documents. It showed the information on the first team that entered the tower.

"Jennifer Parker, age 23, 3-stars freelance hunter. Her aretisite can control, summon, and as well as extinguish flames. There are rumors that she possesses another aretisite..." The information presented here was not given by her own free will, but from a thorough investigation of her. She was a veteran hunter so it was easy for the government to gather information about her.

"Nonetheless, she still went missing inside this tower. How dangerous must it be for her to not be able to come back in time..." Ron sighed as he thought of losing such a valuable hunter. He wanted to recruit her to the Hunter Raid after she finishes raiding the tower. However, he did not lose hope.

In the tower of the purple forest, the barrier was thinning and was about to vanish at any moment.

"Everybody, let's get ready to leave," Gary said. Everybody was bored out of their minds that some of them wanted a monster to come to have something to do.

"At Least it is easy money. We should enter here again when more spots open up." Maina did not mind earning free money. It is not like they get stronger from killing monsters like in video games. Although, she did wish they found something useful to bring back to sell.

Since they get paid just for entering the tower, it was not necessary to take unknown risks.

In a matter of moments, the barrier completely dissipated.

"Alright it is gone, let's head home. I will report this to the Hunter Raid officials." Gary was leading the team to where they once came from. They all exit one by one.

Lyden was the last person in line until he was the only person left in the forest.

The rest have already exited while Lyden was hesitating to do so.

"Why am I hesitating to stay? Did I not already told myself to do so?" Lyden's chest felt tight.

He stared at the exit in front of him. He knew that the second he steps inside, his dream of becoming a hunter was over. Anxiety fills his chest and froze his legs. He thought about the future after he steps through this door.

"If I left, what can I do?" He thought of the possibility of what can he do once he left, but none of them was what Lyden wanted to do.

"I want to become a hunter, no, it is not the title of a hunter that is the most important." He thought of the orphanage, his siblings, and his future. "I want to become strong so that I can give them a home. if someone like me can become a hunter, if I find an aretisite here, I can provide for them. We won't have to separate from each other. And I will go look for him, my brother." Lyden slowly turned his back against the exit.

He stared at the purple forest for a long while until his legs began to move.

He slowly took one step and then two until he walked deeper inside the forest.

Lyden's anxiety was overshadowed by his resolve.

"I will come back as soon as I obtain an aretisite… wait for me till then," He said as if he was talking to someone.

After 8 minutes, Lyden was deep inside the purple forest. The pace was quicker since Lyden was less cautious about his surrounding since he already explored this far before.

"Something weird is happening in this forest. The tracks before had all vanish. It was like we never walked in the forest," Lyden first followed the track him and his team left behind, but it was not before long he lost all sign of it. "I guess it is better than finding a monster..."

He wanders aimlessly looking for a way out, but it seems somewhat endless.

After another hour, he left lost. He also felt his backpack feeling lighter as he occasionally drinks water from it.

"No, I can not go on like this. I will die from starvation before long." He forced himself to not give in into his fear. He calmed his mind until he can feel his emotions stabilizing.

He began to think of possibilities of how he can leave this forest.

"There is a slim chance I can find my way back to the exit without Jai helps." Lyden could retrace his steps, but he was not confident in doing so.

"I could also wait for the next team to find me..." Although Lyden thought of this, he realized the chances were low since his team could not find any traces of the previous team.

"If I can solve the mystery behind this forest, perhaps I can find a way out. There must be a trick to this."

Lyden stopped wandering aimlessly and slowly examining his surroundings.

"What I want to know is how can the forest remove traces of other people who had been here. When going through the forest, people would step on the grass. However, the plant looks normal like no one had touched it. But how does it do it?" Lyden pondered until he came up with a possibility. He reads a lot of fantasy novels so he came up with plausible ideas that do not follow normal logic.

"Perhaps the forest can fix itself when no is looking after a certain distance," He recalled when he camped near the exit with his team. He remembered that the grass they stepped still had footprints on it after several hours. But when Lyden traversed through the forest, his footprints started to disappear.