William and Victor was following Rigel now. They had been walking in the forest for a few hours at this point but there had been nothing to see except different kind of trees. Both Victor and Rigel had stopped talking a while ago, they said it was to not alert any potential enemy but in reality they just wanted William to get into the habit of being silent in a dangerous area, especially while hunting.

After roughly two hours of walking they finally spotted the first Swift schyte mantis in a small clearing. It was standing a bit under two meters and was looking around itself, seemingly searching for something. It was an ugly thing. All thin and rugged with minor protrusions all over it's body.

Rigel fell back towards Victor and William now. Victor and Rigel had told William earlier that he was going to take the lead in any battle, which he was fine with.

Of course he was extra happy that their first encounter was one that was alone. Letting him get used to how they fight, preferably after sneak attacking it to make one of the wings unusable.

Victor and Rigel was watching from behind as William was trying to sneakily approach the mantis from behind.

Rigel was about to go forward and stop him before Victor put a hand on his shoulder.

"Protect him but allow him to learn the hard way."

William was fully focused on the mantis trying to figure out when he could approach and when he needed to hide behind trees to escape the sight of the creature, something that filled him with annoyance as it kept looking around itself like it was in a panic forcing him to jump behind trees constantly.

He was about to walk past the last tree before the clearing when something changed.

As soon as he walked past the tree he felt a rush of wind blow on his face. There was a brownish bending blade almost touching his nose before he could even react to it. Looking a little to his right he could see that a sword had stopped it from cleaving his face in half.

William felt Rigels hand on his shoulder as Rigel pushed a little on Williams shoulder making him take a few steps back. Now visible was the body of a previously unseen Mantis that was hugging the tree, it had blended in with the tree with its natural camouflage.

Rigel took a step back to change his stance before cutting the mantis head off, bisecting the two scythe arms that it raised to try protecting itself.

William was in a trance as he couldn't stop staring at the now headless mantis, had Rigel not protected him then that would have been his own headless corpse laying there in the grass.

His heart was beating loudly enough to drown out anything else. He had fought a lot but this was his first real encounter with death, the closest thing he had felt before this was his seniors attempting to scare him during duals, but he was always aware that they wouldn't really hurt him... at least not badly hurt him as he had learnt.

William saw his Grandfather standing in front of him. William didn't know exactly how long he had been standing there before he realized Victor was there and his hearing returned. The first thing William heard was Victor telling him to lay down and take deep breaths.

The grass was actually nice and soft but rather than just laying down and breathing he started to cultivate out of habit. The 'whispers' from the forest came immediately and was much stronger than he had ever heard it, but it was unknown to William if it was because they were quite deep in a forest or if his near death experience had any affect on the 'whispers'.

As William stood up he realized that the first mantis that had kept his attention was standing completely still as if it was frozen.

"Better now? I kept your own pray so you could get some proper experience."

Williams grandfather's voice startled him from his own thoughts, freeing his attention to focus on other things.

"Yeah I'm fine now."

The body of the dead mantis was still laying where it had fallen. William quickly stopped looking at the body to stop himself from falling into the same stream of thoughts that he had just broken free from. Luckily there was something else that he could focus on now.

"Grandfather, what happened to that mantis?"

"I sealed it to prevent it from escaping. When you are ready I will free it."

William quickly checked his equipment before pulling out two Qi stones, one fire and one wind, from his backpack. Having them in his pockets would allow him to quickly use them to boost his Sword artifact if he needed.

William wanted to destroy the creatures wings before the fought but Victor stopped him, saying he should fight proper now that his initial ambush had already failed and in fact been turned on himself.

William stood ten meters from the mantis, the most common distance used in duals, William had simply stopped here from habit. Victor disappeared from Williams sight the moment William gave the signal. There was a creepy chittering coming from the mantis as it was finally free.

It quickly looked around while trying to keep it's sight on William. It let out another louder chittering apparently happy with there not being anyone else around, Rigel having disappear somewhere before William had calmed down. The chittering from the creature quickly turned into a high pierce hiss as it started to approach William.

While the hissing might have been unnerving to others, the hissing was quite pleasant to William. William was unused to almost everything else that he had encountered this journey, but this, combat, was something he was used to. Especially one on one combat, dual style.

William observed the mantis as he waited for it to get closer. He had enough experience to make several guesses about it's weaknesses. William waited slightly longer before making his first move. He responded to its approach with his own, using his [Pouncing Snake] footwork to immediately get into a distance were he could attack with his sword. The first attack was a simple stab without any real technique behind it, but with it being a artifact the force from his movement technique and his muscles would be enough to pierce it's head if the blow landed.

The mantis couldn't bend it's front limbs enough to use the scythed side of it to block a frontal stab, something it must have known as it didn't even try instead lowering it's body to doge the stab while continuing forward. William was forced to use his movement technique again to quickly move a few meters left to stop it from getting close enough to slash him.

The mantis was apparently not willing to let it's prey go as it used it's wings, not to fly but rather as a speed boost to approach William. It then used both of its front limbs which had given it the name of Swift scythe mantis. And the name was fully earned as William was forced to boost his body with Qi to be fast enough block the blows with his sword. But the slashes were lacking variation making them easy to block as they were always downwards slashes with only slight angle differences.

William doged the left limb while blocking it's right scythe with his sword. This gave him enough time to punch the head of the mantis. The punch didn't do much damage but William was simply using it as a opportunity to disengage and allow him to breath and make up a plan. Not that he was planing to end this fight just yet. This was too fun, and he also needed to learn more about the fighting abilities and habits of the mantises if he wanted to exterminate the colony.

The fight mostly continued in a similar manner, William using his movement technique to get close and attack before moving away again after a short clash. William used his movement technique to change his position to attack from different angles and learning how it responded. William was fully using this opportunity to study how the mantis fought and trying to figure out what weaknesses it had that could be exploited in a fight. Something he was only comfortable enough to do because he knew Victor and Rigel were watching his back.

Both the mantis and William were tired after fighting for a long while, but it still ended a bit earlier than William would have liked as the mantis had clearly grown tired enough that it wanted to stop this and run away, it had also figured out that it was unlikely to win this fight, making escaping extra attractive.

The moment William used his movement technique to put some distance between them the mantis took the opportunity to turn around and run. Previously it had only used it's wings in short bursts to quickly shorten the distance between itself and William but now it was using them constantly to boost itself while running away.

William was only in shock for a second before realizing what was happening. He quickly used his movement technique several times in a row to get close enough to its back and with a slash cut of one of the wings.

The mantis feel down and rolled on the ground from the sudden attack and the resulting imbalance. The mantis stood up and tried to run away again but with only one wing it was to unstable to gain any real speed. The mantis instead choosing to fight instead of trying to flee now that it couldn't properly boost it's speed.

William for his part was actually not doing much better. The sudden use of his movement technique several times in a row combined with the former exhaustion left his legs burning and his stamina drained. His Qi was also running out as he had been forced to constantly boost his body and use it to fuel his movement technique. So it was about time to end it.

Mimicking how the fight had started, William was standing still allowing the mantis to approach him. He used his movement technique to close the distance in one go when the mantis was near him. But unlike the the first time they clashed this time he fully boosted his sword arm and sword while also using proper sword technique to speed up his stab enough that the blow landed before the tired mantis could properly react, ending it's life with a sword through its head.