Far away from the black forest, Vouno who chose a bounty hunter mission has three primary purposes in his mind. The first is obvious. Because of his Chaos Sea constitution, he needs to seek out powerful energies to cultivate Ki, and the most straight-forward way is none other than combat. Vouno can draw in an opponent’s Ki during a fight like how other practitioners use the ambient Heavenly Energies and turning it into their own.

Usually, a person’s Dantian will take in Heavenly Energies and sent it coursing through the body through the Meridian System. In doing so, unwanted parts will be filtered and released back into the atmosphere leaving only the elements that the practitioner could use. If the required element is not present in the air, then the body will slowly convert whatever elements there are into the ones that the cultivator wants. This is the primary function of Cultivation Methods.

After going through several rotations, the refined energy will return and gather in the Dantian to be compressed and stored, and it is now called Ki, Qi, Chakra, or Prana. This ‘Ki’ will be composed of one or several elements in varying concentration according to the cultivator’s affinity.

To make this process easier, many choose lands with concentrated elemental energies that suit them. In Saint Empire, it is not odd to have large settlements of fire Ki practitioners staying near volcanos, or water element practitioners living near bodies of water.

However, there are also practitioners with the rare Transcending Elements affinity. When one is born with it, they could hardly find a corresponding terrain and must make do with whatever is available to them to slowly refine it into the transcending elements they desire.

The elemental affinity that Vouno has is called Attributeless, one of the eight Transcending Elements. In some places, they call this the Colourless element because it is all-accepting. The Attributeless element can absorb all forms of energy, however, because it can accept any elemental composition, refinement does not result in anything.

Unfortunately for Vouno, this means that whenever he cultivates, most of the Heavenly Energy he absorbed is lost during the refining process and he was stuck at I rank for most of his life.

Just absorbing Heavenly Energy without refinement does not work either. Firstly there are no cultivation methods that do not refine the ambient energies, and secondly, even if someone creates such a method, it will turn out to be unstable, chaotic, and generally impossible to be used.

If Vouno tries to empower a Ki technique with a randomised energy mixture, he’ll be fortunate if he fails in executing the skill instead of exploding into smithereens.

Imagine using a Ki Barrier, and instead of projecting a pure energy forcefield he used a lightning and water mixture, or a fire and ice elements, he will either be electrocuted or die in a steam explosion.

Usually, those who are born with this Transcendent affinity are considered hopeless to become a cultivator unless they have a second affinity that could support the Attributeless element.

In Vouno’s case, he is an extremely pure Attributeless Cultivator which Kairos called it the Chaos Sea constitution and then proceeded to customise a Cultivation Method solely for Vouno.

Since he cannot refine any form of energy, he must rely on finding already processed Ki to cultivate with. And because the elemental composition in his Dantian will always be varying, he couldn’t learn most Ki Techniques. It’d be funny if he used a fire palm and out comes a water bath.

To be viable in a fight, the boy had to come up with a different combat technique for his father.

In the three realms and ten thousand worlds, there are cultivators with all sorts of innate supernatural abilities. To successfully customise Cultivation Methods and combat techniques is perhaps one of the greatest gifts of them all, as even Grand Masters will fall short of this task.

Of course, anyone can edit a manuscript but for it to work better than before requires incredible insight and pure talent.

Vouno’s second purpose is to hunt for either raiders, thieves or ravishers, in this order of priority. His reason for the choice is to look for certain artefacts that might appear. And the treasure he desires the most right now is one with movement aiding abilities. For a practitioner, an excellent treasure to help one escape is equalled to having another life.

Otherwise, he would be more than happy if he could find spirit stones, invisible talismans, body armours, shields, or stratagem plates.

Because there is a higher possibility these treasures would be on the hands of one of these criminal parties, they are the ones he looked for on the Adventurer Guild’s billboard.

Unfortunately, as this area is still within the boundary of the capital, raiders are very rare.

There are some thieves in this area, like most places in the country would have, but none that made it onto the bounty. However, there is one serial rapist that has been on the wanted list for quite a while now. The quest level is a solid C rank, indicating the difficulty of the mission, and the expected requirement to survive. This became the rank that Vouno tried to attain during the combat grading.

The last reason for him to pick a bounty quest is the accompanying rights to access the town’s archives. The Empire’s officials are tasked to keep records of every noticeable event in their archives. A report would then be sent monthly to the county, which then categorises and filters the information.

Such records could certainly help track down anyone on the wanted list, and more importantly, it might give them leads on Jones.

…..

Meanwhile, in the dark forest. The group of boys have been walking for the past hour without seeing a trace of the Black Wind Wolves. The crows have turned quiet, staring at them on top of branches silently. Except for these silent watchers, the woods seemed devoid, and even their Soul Perception couldn’t tell what is beyond the thick trees.

To increase their detection range, the boys gave Kairos their energy through the Northern Swords array, and a powerful wave of Soul Perception permeated the surrounding rolling out across the thick woods like a dense cloud of smoke. The strength of their soul shocked the master of the forest, and within the darkness, its pair of yellow eyes reopened, staring directly at their direction. It sniffed danger in the air and growled threateningly.

“Lord Black Gale, the humans are near, what should we do?” a wolf asked in its raspy voice. To a human, their communication would only amount to snaps, snarling and growls. The wolf king turned its attention on its interrupting lieutenant. When it looked at it with a lazy eye, the smaller wolf whimpered and lowered its tail.

“Ragh, do not disturb me for such a simple matter. I could feel them. Send in the alphas. As usual, no humans are to leave the forest.”

“Grrr. Yes, your eminence,” it replied reverentially.

…..

*CAW CAW CAW*

Meanwhile, deep within the forest, the crows flapped their wings excitedly as Kairos suddenly came out of his reverie with a grimace on his face, “We need to move now. This place is a death trap, the wolves are surrounding us from the edges of the forest.”

“How many are there?”

“Around two to three hundred.”

“Damn, that’s a lot!”

As time trickles down, they know that they have to hurry. Even though the wolves are nowhere near a match for them, two to three hundred wolves would whittle them down eventually.

“Which way?”

“Back the way we come!”

“Are we returning without doing anything?” Jim asked. There’s no point in choosing this mission if they can’t do a single thing.

“Of course not!” a swift answer from the rest of them.

“All the creatures of the forest are now our enemies. We do not have time to talk now. Go!”

They made a mad dash towards the forest edge, but by now they could feel the wolves coming closer towards them.

The Soul Perception that they used made the wolves rather uncomfortable, and those beasts chose to stay far from the boys until they attacked.

“Edward, is the mission booklet with you?”

“Here!” The archer handed it to his captain even as they ran.

“This, this and this. I saw them within the ranks of the wolves,” Kairos flipped the pages quickly and pointed without slowing down.

“Hellbringer Bats, Red Python and Shadow Crows,” Alan received the booklet from him and started reading out the information quickly, “Powerful bat species found specifically in the Black Forest. Oh, I just realised…”

“What?”

“That the one who named this forest and Tiny Town has an utter lack of originality.”

“Just carry on reading, Alan!”

“Right. Even in a group these bats could match only an F ranker and are creatures that pose little threat usually. However, they can emit sonic waves that could cause illusionary effects. Man, I wish Jones’ ermine is here now.”

The Million Years Snow Stoat also possesses illusionary arts, and have a natural defence against other illusions.

“The Red Python is a powerful magical beast that permanently shrouds itself with darkness. A constrictor that could not move far distances quickly but able to strike down even the swiftest Black Wind wolf that enters its range. The word ‘red’ in its name… comes from the blood of its victim that rains down during constriction?! What the heck!”

“Eww, that sounds gross.”

“What about the Shadow crows?”

“Black crows that number almost as many as the bats of the black forest. Individually able to deliver a full-powered attack of an F ranker. Their group is led by a powerful Silver crow.”

“F ranked power individually? That’s terrifying!”

“Heh. Terrifying? You forgot we are already Peak D. Didn’t we already face off an entire Orc army?” Tommy laughed heartily. He once stood alone against numerous Orcs, so tiny birds are never in his ‘Start-Panicking’ list. In fact, this whole monster subjugation mission should be a walk in the park for them.

“If they are only capable of dealing attacks at F rank at best, then it seems as though only the wolves are dangerous. Does the booklet say just how strong those are?”

“What? We picked this mission and yet you haven’t even found out about the wolves?”

“Well…. I don’t like to read,” Jim stuck out his tongue. While he is running and replying to his brothers, the saboteur had been busy scattering dust on both sides of their path as well as placing small bundles that they have prepared into any crevices or tree hallows along the way. Only him who is vastly faster than the rest could do this.

“Jim, your speed is simply disgusting.”

“You know that you love me. Hahahaa!”

“No… you ate my pudding, I hate you,” Edward said.

“Gah! You’re still not over that? So petty!”

“But I’ve been saving it!”

“Guys, don’t trail off-topic.”

As their foes came close, the forest stilled, leaving only their footsteps as the only sounds.

“…. Here they come!”

Like a wave of black smoke that the wind blew in, the Black Wind Wolves ran out from the shadows. The beasts snarled and howled with drool dripping from their maws. They bounded across the undergrowth and gnarled tree roots as though flying, looking for an opening to strike. Oftentimes, snapping at their heels when they find an opportunity.

The boys could feel that they are being herded and they desperately tried to outpace the beasts. As they were getting out of here, unnatural darkness suddenly befell them. It completely sucked the light out and they couldn’t see an inch before their eyes. The boys did not stop running while most adventurers would’ve stumbled.

It became quiet, and only the sound of the wind whipping past their faces as they ran and the occasional howl from the wolves became the only noise accompanying them.

*ts tst tstt tsttt*

From the crevices all around, a flutter of a thousand wings arise from all directions and everything in their sight is covered by great darkness.

“Hellbringer bats!”

Despite their Soul Perception covering the entire area, they failed to notice the bats that blended into the shadows, a great colony that invoked nightmares.