The next day, Lola lifted her face from her arms before letting out a quiet yawn. She rested her head on top of her arms. Her ears started to twitch in a repetitive pattern causing her to open her eyes. Lola quickly tried to wake Zalroth up by repeatedly patting his head, ruffling his hair and poking his face, until he woke up. Zalroth opened his eyes and looked at Lola.

"What's up, fluffkins?". Lola whispered something into his ears. Zalroth's expression became slightly more serious. He stood up, with Lola clinging to his head, and tip-toed to the front of the wagon.

Zalroth exited the wagon while Lola was climbing onto his back.

"Morning, you two." Rokai said to Zalroth and Lola. Lola waved to the grey Kijin.

"We might be gone for a bit, so could you tell the others I need to go deal with something.". Rokai told Zalroth he would. Zalroth thanked him. Zalroth jumped over Rokai and landed in a tree before racing into the forest. Rokai wondered what the two of them were up to.

Zalroth quickly parkoured from tree to tree.

"The thing you heard was in this direction right?" Zalroth asked. Lola nodded and pointed a little to the left. As he was getting close to the location that Lola believed she heard the noise from, Zalroth sensed a group of monsters surrounding two individuals. He landed on the side of a tree trunk. The tree proceeded to glow a bright blue and Zalroth glowed a faint blue. Zalroth jumped off the tree trunk and, with the added propulsion from the magnetic force between Zalroth and the tree, was launched at high speed through the forest.

Meanwhile deeper in the forest, a female dryad, a humanoid creature with pale green skin, two and vine-like hair, evaded multiple slashes from a scythe, which had a lantern filled with white fire hanging from the blade, one of the soul reapers, floating skeletons wearing a long hooded cloak.

A seven-foot-tall and four-armed rock golem knocked down a soul reaper with a dual right hook, before grabbing it by its legs and using it to batter away the other soul reapers around them. The golem tossed the battered soul reaper behind them and it crashed into the walls of a small ruin. The soul reaper fighting the dryad surrounded the blade of its scythe in black flames and took another swing at the dryad. She quickly jumped into the air as the scythe swept across the ground and set the grass on fire. While the dryad was still mid-air the soul reaper attempted to slice the dryad's head. The dryad's hair quickly dug into the ground and the dryad pulled herself away from the attack. However, she wasn't fast enough and the scythe managed to cut off one of the blue flowers from her flower crown.

"Anthurium!" the golem yelled with a slightly muffled and high pitched female voice. The golem picked up one of the knocked down soul reapers and hurled it at the soul reaper that had attacked the dryad. The soul reaper collided with the soul reaper in front of the dryad, and the two of them were sent flying. Anthurium and the golem rushed over to a part of the clearing where the soul reapers weren't occupying.

"Thank you for that, Iris". Iris told her not to worry about it as the two watched the soul reapers getting back up.

"They're a lot tougher than normal, do you think they're the thing we sensed earlier?" Iris asked. Anthurium started to exhaustedly huff as she fell on one knee while being surrounded by a faint dark-purple aura.

Iris was about to ask Anthurium if she was ok, but she got preoccupied with the two soul reapers that were rushing for Anthurium. Iris quickly jumped inbetween Anthurium and the soul reapers, right as they swung their scythe. Iris blocked the scythes with her two left arms, causing the scythes to get stuck in the stone arms. Iris clenched her top right fist and activated the iron fist spell, which transformed her stone fist into iron. Iris frantically spun her body around, and at the same time, the soul reapers tried to pull their scythes out of Iris' arms causing the arms to split into rubble.

The soul reapers staggered backwards and before they could fully regain their balance Iris struck one of them in the face with her iron fist. The force of her punch crack the soul reaper's skull and sent it across the clearing. The other soul reapers moved out of the way as the soul reaper flew past them and crashed into the ground. Its head shattered on impact with the ground and all its equipment, aside from the flame in its lantern that turned into a smooth sphere, dispersed into magic particles.

Iris tried to strike the other soul reaper next to her but it flew out of her range and landed next to the others. Iris braced herself in anticipation for the soul reapers' next attack and, for a split second, looked back at Anthurium.

"You ok?". Anthurium's huffing started to go down in intensity as the aura around her died down.

"Yeah... I'm fine." Anthurium exhaustedly replied. Anthurium looked up and noticed something off in the trees. As she squinted her eyes. she could make out a blue glow and multiple red lights.

The fogginess Anthurium had from the purple aura started to subside, and she was able to sense what the red lights were.

"Iris get behind me!" Anthurium yelled. Iris didn't hesitate and jumped backwards behind Anthurium. Anthurium managed to put up a magic barrier right as multiple javelins made out of fire raced out from between the trees. The javelins impaled multiple of the soul reapers before exploding into balls of flames. Anthurium noticed that the ground, excluding the area directly below her and Iris, started to glow a bright blue. The soul reapers frantically slashed the flames away while some of them crumbled away. The remaining soul reapers tried to locate the one who surprised attacked them.

"Death from above!" Lola playfully yelled. The soul reapers managed to look up in time, to see Zalroth in the air. The glow around Zalroth shifted to a bright red before he rapidly descended to the ground.

The soul reapers tried to attack Zalroth, in mid-air, but he descended too quickly for them to have enough time to respond. In a fraction of a second, Zalroth spun around before axe kicking the middle soul reaper. The impact from his kick instantly fractured the soul reaper's skull. The soul reaper's crashed into the ground and its skull crumbled into pieces. The glow around Zalroth disappeared as he landed on the ground.

Lola quickly created two light pale cyan magic rings, each with three smaller light cyan magic circles inside the ring, followed by her firing a fast-moving pale cyan mist at the top half of the soul reapers. The mist instantly made contact with the soul reapers and started to freeze the majority of the top half of the soul reapers.

Zalroth round housed kicked all the frozen soul reapers through their heads and swiftly shattered all of them. The last few soul reapers fired a barrage of black fire bullets at Zalroth. He quickly created a magic barrier with one of his hands and used the other to hold on to Lola to stop her from falling off his back from the shockwave created by the fire bullets colliding with the barrier. While the soul reapers were attacking Zalroth's barrier, Anthurium placed her right hand on the ground before activating a Thorn Bind spell, a green magic circle. The soul reapers sensed a surge in mana below them and instinctively stopped attacking Zalroth, before quickly flying into the air.

The ground below the soul reapers rapidly cracked before multiple vines erupted from the cracks. The soul reapers surrounded their scythes' blades in black flames and violently sliced the rising vines into pieces, and burned away.

However, the vines eventually overwhelmed the soul reapers and wrapped around their limbs. Zalroth jumped up to the group of soul reapers and punched all of them in the face, while they were trying to resist the vines that were trying to pull them towards the ground. After Zalroth punched the last soul reaper all of their bodies, and cloaks, glowed a bright red. With the assistance of the vines, the soul reapers were violently attracted to the ground by Zalroth's magic and crashed into the ground.

Iris slammed her remaining fists into the ground and a dark orange magic circle formed around her. The ground shook before multiple stone spikes broke out from the ground and pierced through the soul reapers. The soul reapers disappeared and Zalroth landed on the ground, right as the blue glow faded away.

While Zalroth made his way over to Anthurium and Iris, Lola wrapped her tails around his waist and hung off him to pick up the white spheres the soul reapers dropped. Lola stored the spheres in her tails before climbing back onto Zalroth's back and unwrapping her tails around Zalroth. Iris helped Anthurium to her feet as Zalroth stopped next to them.

"Thank you for assisting us you two" Anthurium said as she managed to stand without Iris' help.

"Don't mention it papa's the coolest," Lola said cheerfully. Lola's cheerful deminer made Anthurium smile a little. Iris' body flashed orange before her stone body crumbled into rubble and revealing a glowing orange sphere. The orange sphere popped and revealed Iris' true body. Iris was a twelve-inch pixie with ebony coloured skin, golden coloured eyes and short light grey hair with three braided ponytails.

"Geez, what was up with those soul reapers, it was like they were being buffed by something?" Iris said while exhaustedly slouching in the air. Iris' statement caught Zalroth's attention.

"Now that you mention it, they were slightly tougher than normal.".

"I know right, and they even ambushed us while we were making our way through the forest.". Zalroth tilted his head in response.

"I hope you don't mind me prying, but what are you two doing in the Hollowed Forest anyway?" Zalroth asked. Iris flew to Anthurium and landed on her left shoulder before sitting down. Anthurium looked at the ground while rubbing the back of her head.

"Well... we managed to escape from our village after it was attacked and fled into the forest.". Lola's ears perked up and she looked to her right.

"Is that... so. Say... do you know a kijin by the name... Akari?" Zalroth tried to ask while Lola grabbed onto his shoulders and started to shake back and forth. Iris energetically stood up on Anthurium, and the two of them looked slightly surprised when Zalroth mentioned Akari.

"Wait, you know Akari?" Iris asked. Zalroth retold the events of the past three days, excluding anything involving him being the Phantom, along with everyone exchanging names.

"Yeah, that sounds like something Akari would do," Iris remarked. Anthurium awkwardly scratched her chest.

"Say Zalroth, would it be too much of an ask to have you escort us to where Akari is?" Anthurium awkwardly asked. Zalroth looked confused at Anthurium's question.

"I thought that was a given but yeah I can definitely do tha-". Zalroth was interrupted by Lola, who was still shaking back and forth.

"Come on, papa, we gotta hurry," Lola stated while pointing at the old looking ruin. Zalroth looked over at the ruin Lola was pointing at.

"Could you give us a second before we head back to Akari?". Anthurium and Iris said that was fine before they all head over to the ruin. Zalroth stopped at the door of the ruin and crouched down on one knee. Anthurium and Iris watched as Lola leaned over Zalroth's shoulder and inspected the door's keyhole.

Lola reached into one of her tails and pulled out a lockpick that said A.X.K (Ancient Xanthion King) style lockpick on the side of the handle. Lola effortlessly picked the lock and the barrier around the ruin dispersed.

She quickly stored the lockpick back in one of her tails as Zalroth stood up and pulled open the door. They all looked into the ruin and spotted a small translucent and glowing azure coloured box. Zalroth picked up the box and looked it over. He spotted the intricate looking puzzle on the top of the box and instantly handed it to Lola. Lola became completely engrossed with the puzzle and started to fiddle with it.

"All right now that that's dealt with, let's get going before the others get too ahead of us," Zalroth stated. Anthurium and Iris agreed before asking which way that was. Zalroth closed his eyes and used a spell to increase his mana sense range. Zalroth spun around.

"If we go... this... way? Yeah this way, we'll cross paths with the wagons, so follow me.". The duo nodded before following closely behind Zalroth, and while they did that, Lola was still trying to solve the puzzle.