"I think you need to see this."
"What’s wrong?" Clovis furrowed his eyebrows. When he took a peek at the thing behind the tree, he was quite surprised to see a beast’s corpse lying on the ground. "Huh?!"
Jay remained silent, but he also felt something was wrong. Melody hurriedly kneeled down and inspected the wound. "This doesn’t seem to be from the beasts."
"Yeah. It’s definitely not a beast hunting another beast for food. Looking at the blood, it shouldn’t be that long." Kanaria’s expression turned serious. If this was indeed a wound that a human inflicted, it meant that there were people around this area.
"This is quite troubling," Clovis muttered.
"Should we continue? It’s not like that we’ll have to fight if we meet another person, right?" Kanaria shrugged.
Clovis thought about it, but he couldn’t dismiss the possibility that someone was targeting them.
"Alright. We will go around the mountain to locate the ruin first. Since the mountain is this steep, we should be able to find the entrance from the bottom. We’ll also continue monitoring the radar and making sure that we’re not getting ambushed." Clovis pointed up.
He was talking about the potential of a sniper. At the same time, there was a chance that people were hiding nearby. That was why Clovis wanted them to go around first.
"If we take a look at it, don’t you think it’s pretty easy to find the way they climb?" Kanaria pointed forward. There were at least three more corpses or blood traces, showing that whoever came here actually climbed the mountain.
"Is there something weird on the radar?" Clovis asked.
"I can’t really find anything. There are some dots around the mountain, but that’s all I can say." Melody crossed her arms, wondering if she could take a different approach to finding the enemies.
Kanaria was also observing the mountain, wondering if she could find any ambushers or not.
Because the terrain was horrible, the assassins might have brought the beasts to the top of the mountain and tried to send them down or do something to cause a landslide. Either way, it would be fatal for them.
After what happened previously, they had to be more careful.
While they were thinking about a solution, they heard a few roars coming from the left.
Updat𝓮d from freewēbnoveℓ.com.
*Roar!*
*Roar!*
*Roar!*
Jay stepped between them while assessing the situation. "There are only three beasts. They all seem to be Tier 1."
"We are in the middle of a discussion. Can you handle them, Jay?" Clovis asked.
"Take as much time as you need." Jay jumped forward. Instead of being useless, it was better if he could just kill these beasts and protect the rest. They were just Tier 1 beasts, so it should be pretty easy.
Jay waved his sword with all his might, planning to slash the beast in front of him. The beast pounced on him, using the momentum to push the sword down.
Jay only smiled, thinking that his sword would simply overpower the paws and turned this beast upside down before he killed it.
But to his surprise, the paws actually withstood his swing.
"Huh?!" Jay widened his eyes in shock. Although he didn’t use his full power since the opponent was only a Tier 1 beast, he had released enough power to fight against a Tier 2 beast. Yet, the beast actually stopped his sword.
The other two beasts also surrounded him from both sides.
Because he was unable to retract his sword due to the beast holding it, his other hand reached out to the scabbard and blocked the beast on the left. By doing so, the third beast had the opportunity to strike him from the right, which he took on the upper arm.
"!!!" Jay gritted his teeth, seeing the claw mark on his sleeve. It even penetrated his defense and grazed his skin.
After that, the beast in front of him rammed its body into Jay, knocking him back.
The crisp sound of pebbles echoed in everyone’s ears. They all turned their heads around, shocked to find Jay on the ground.
"Wha—!" Kanaria grabbed the pistol out of reflex, but before she could provide any help, Jay had punched the beast, knocking its paws away from his sword. After that, he stabbed the beast’s head.
The other two came toward him, but they all got blocked by Jay’s saber and scabbard. With a single spin, Jay cut down the second Tier 1 beast before overwhelming the third beast.
Still, they were pretty shocked to find Jay getting overwhelmed like that.
"I’m fine." Jay said, glaring at them as if indirectly implying that they shouldn’t say anything.
Jay wasn’t the person to underestimate his opponent even if he didn’t go all out. So, this only confirms the informant’s words regarding the beasts being stronger than the normal ones they had faced so far.
With this additional information, climbing the mountain had become even more dangerous.
"Change of plan." Clovis sighed. "We’ll locate the entrance of the ruin and make sure it’s the right one. After that, we’ll try to camp inside the ruin if we find no beasts. If there are a lot of beasts, we’ll immediately go down and set up the camp here. Let’s do it before the sun sets."
Jay looked unwilling, thinking that he had just underestimated them a little bit. But Clovis didn’t take no for an answer this time
The entire group hurriedly looped around. Kanaria and Melody had to focus on the mountain to locate the entrance. Meanwhile, Clovis experienced the rumored strength of the beasts here.
As said earlier, they were indeed stronger. It was a bit more troublesome to take them down one by one, especially if they were on that mountain.
This made Clovis even more careful with the exploration which possessed a different kind of challenge.
Fortunately, Kanaria and Melody seemed to be able to locate the entrance of the ruin. While it wasn’t fully visible, it was pretty easy to spot the entrance.
Without wasting another second, Clovis chose to climb the mountain right away.