Just a few meters from entering the Elvareth Forest, three figures were found standing in the wet grass at the feet of each of them, while the wind made Nulambart and Aggi's hair flutter, who looked at the enemy in front of them.
What he saw was a semi-human with a fish face and human limbs, but with a somewhat greenish color to his skin, he was covered with light armor that looked more like a blanket covering his entire body.
Seeing her appearance, Nulambart recalled the speed at which she had appeared before him previously, as well as her ability to hide and not be noticed now in front of two martial cultivators, and also when she was with her master previously.
"He's probably some kind of cultivator who specializes in assassination or stealth. Be careful, Aggi. He's our enemy," Nulambart said, warning Aggi.
"I feel like he's stronger than even my father, Nulambart. I'm afraid we'll have to flee as quickly as possible," Aggi replied, who could sense that something was wrong with the demi-human in front of them.
Nulambart leaned his head slightly closer, then remembered the warning Mayor George had given him earlier.
"The guard has a minimum cultivation level of avatar level 5, and may even be higher," Nulambart warned.
"I have the cultivation realm at the natural primary path like you, but at level 10, half a step away from entering the profound primary path, we are still far from your cultivation level, but we have no choice but to fight," said Aggi, who took out as her main weapon a mysterious whip that I had never seen used in our village and prepared to fight.
Nulambart wielded the knife, which had surprisingly held up until now, but which didn't have much durability left due to the bruises it sustained. Aggi, seeing Nulambart's knife, rolled his eyes for a moment, but then focused his attention on the enemy waiting motionless in front of us.
Then, with a look between them, they decided to start attacking together, so they ran towards the guard, Aggi on the right and Nulambart on the left.
"Hahaha, I don't know what dirty tricks you used to make me fall asleep, but I'll take my revenge right now… I'll make the girl a slave like the ones in your village and kill you slowly, dirty boy," the guard said calmly, who saw both attacks coming from his sides.
Aggi stretched out his arm, and the whip that was originally a meter and a half long transformed into a large 5-meter whip that sought to hit and restrain the guard before Nulambart could attack.
Aggi gave off a greenish aura that was stronger compared to Nulambart, and said aura also extended through the whip, so the weapon seemed extremely dangerous to face.
Nulambart, seeing this attack from Aggi, understood that it was impossible to defeat the girl who luckily was his companion, and only with the use of temporal divergence could he try to find an opening.
However, when that whip was about to come into contact with the guard, the demi-human dodged the attack with extreme speed, remaining behind a surprised Nulambart.
Oh no damn, it's much faster than the Quasi-Spiritual Beast. Nulambart couldn't help but compare the speed between the enemies he had faced, and without a doubt, this guard was incomparable to the beast he had struggled so hard to defeat previously.
Then, even before Nulambart could turn around to defend himself, the guard kicked Nulambart in the right side, causing him to barely react in time to put his only working arm back.
Crack
"Ahhh!!," Nulambart cried, feeling her wrist bend in an unnatural direction, hearing it snap horribly.
Nulambart took the half-human guard's kick full force on his hand, rendering his wrist useless and sending him flying 10 meters before landing in the stream.
Nulambart only felt an extremely annoying pain in his only usable hand, and then felt the cold all over his body as he sank into the water of the stream.
Nulambart's consciousness trembled, and his vision became increasingly blurred. All he could hear was the calm sound of the water that reminded him of the moment of meditation, since it radiated tranquility, but with an impressive solitude.
I'm going to faint, thought Nulambart, who forgot everything that was happening in the battle, when he was in the water, losing consciousness, then he simply stopped seeing the light that entered the stream and only saw darkness when he closed his eyes and fainted.
"Nulambartttt," Aggi shouted in reaction, still surprised by the guard's quick action, retracted her whip, and rushed towards Nulambart.
However, just before advancing a few meters, the guard appeared in front of her and, without giving her time to defend herself, kicked her similar manner to the previous one.
"Hahaha, you can't defend yourself, and you want to help that dirty bastard," the guard said grimly as he was delivering the attack.
Just before the guard's attack could land, he could see how Aggi's soul power stopped wrapping around his body, extending all the power he had in his whip, he extremely quickly coiled around Aggi's body to defend himself from the guard's kick.
What an annoying whip!, thought the guard who sent Aggi's body flying in the same direction in which Nulambart was found, sunk in the stream.
That girl is clever. She used my attack to propel herself over there, but I don't think she came out unscathed. The guard thought as he saw Aggi still wrapped around her whip fall into the stream in the same direction as Nulambart.
In the stream, Aggi undid her feint with her whip, and could see how a few meters away from her, Nulambart was floating up the stream unconscious and with his wrist useless.
Then he took Nulambart into the water, and circulated his soul power into his whip, which took the shape of a beak, at its tip concentrating Aggi's soul power, and penetrated the ground beneath the stream before the water could enter the space he had made there. Aggi had once used his whip to block the entrance to the small cave he had created.
Once there, he placed Nulambart inside her, while using some bandages he had brought with him to bandage Nulambart's wrist, but not before adjusting it to its original place. He then proceeded to try to wake Nulambart.
"Wake up, Nulambart, we have to run away from that stupid guy with the ugly face," Aggi said to Nulambart, while lightly hitting him in the face.
In Nulambart's dreams.
Nulambart saw the scenes of when his father trained his sister outside his house, where he at 8 years old and looked out the window with great surprise and pride to see his sister Elena training.
He also saw his mother in the house, waiting for Nulambart at the table in the center of the house, with a really big pile of books waiting for the boy.
"Son, you'll have your time to train like that too, but now you have to learn about the world around you," Saya said, wearing her glasses. Nulambart remembered being bored with that.
So Nulambart proceeded to study for several hours with his mother, until the sun went down and the weather became colder in his room.
"Okay, my son, that's all for today. I hope you enjoyed how Mom explained our country's politics and history to you today," his mother finished before getting up and going to call Axel and Elena, who were still training.
"Well, I've been able to endure several hours of this class, not the most fun of all, only because my dear and funny mother has helped me," Nulambart responded clearly, speaking to her mother Saya from a distance.
Her mother smiled as she welcomed the exhausted Axel and Elena at the entrance of the house, and then told them.
"Go take a shower right away, both of you, you both stink horribly… You go first, Elena," said the mother solemnly, putting her hands on her nose.
"Hahaha, darling, it's simply the smell of the effort of your brave husband, the very same Axel Souls…Ah… Auuuchh," replied Axel, who couldn't continue with his sentence while making a fool of himself, because Saya had his ear caught.
"Don't try too hard, stupid husband, remember that you have the se… Hmmp… You have to be more careful, darling," said her mother, whom Nulambart noticed was a little nervous between her sentences.
Then Axel seemed to understand Saya's mother, and then he took her hand and led her to her room, telling Nulambart to wait in his place.
However, Nulambart curiously followed them to his parents' room, and was able to hear the following.
"Saya, I think it's time for Nulambart to learn about our seals, since Elena has known about them since she was the same age as you," said Nulambart's father, his face somewhat impatient.
"Impossible. We decided to tell Saya when she became a martial cultivator, so we'll do the same with Nulambart," her mother solemnly stated.
Nulambart could tell that what his parents were talking about was something of extreme importance, but then he forgot it over the years.
Then, in his dream, he could hear someone calling him in the distance.
"Nulambart, come to your senses, we have to escape."
"Nulambart, I can feel the guard looking for us..."
"Nulambart…"
After hearing that voice several times, Nulambart was able to remember that it was the voice of the girl he had met just a few minutes before, and who had seen him naked. That extremely honest girl who needed his help was indeed Aggi.
Of course, I fainted earlier from the blow and fell into the water. Nulambart was able to turn on his consciousness and feel his own body, causing him to want to touch his wrist.
Then he stopped dreaming and opened his eyes to see a very nervous Aggi who was hitting him harder and harder in the face.
"Ouch… That hurts Aggi, but thanks for waking me up," Nulambart said with a smile to Aggi, who, upon hearing that, her previously trembling eyes were able to calm down, and her hands stopped hitting Nulambart.
"Welcome, buddy, we don't have much time, so I'll tell you what's going on," Aggi said solemnly.
Aggi then reviewed everything that had happened since he had fainted, until they were left in the small cave under the stream, as well as the imminent arrival of the guard who was looking for them.
"We have to come up with a plan to escape, since we can't win… Besides, both of your hands are useless," Aggi continued, pointing at Nulambart's right wrist, which had a bandage on it.
Nulambart agreed to Aggi's proposal, so they first decided to share the scope of their skills to see what they could do.
Aggi went first, who pointed out that he used the force of his soul to protect his body defensively, and how he also incorporated it into his whip to produce different forms of attack and defense in the whip.
She was a versatile close-range fighter who worked with the whip because her entire tribe had a bloodline that allowed them to manipulate soul power to interact with energy particles in the environment and create objects. She was a creator-type cultivator, but she still could not manifest her soul-derived whip, so she used a physical whip inherited from her family to train cultivators who had not reached the early avatar realm, where the whip began to manifest in a relatively functional way.
Nulambart then understood what kind of fighting style Aggi used, since his mother had previously explained to him the types of cultivators he might encounter in the future.
However, without time to explain all the other types, Nulambart explained to Aggi that he currently had no knowledge of what type of cultivator he was, and simply pointed out that he had a winning move that he could use for a time of 1 second to defeat his opponents, Time Divergence, but that he didn't know how to apply it in this case where he simply couldn't defeat his opponent in 1 second.
Listening to Nulambart's explanation, Aggi seemed to understand a few things, raising his eyebrows and placing a hand on his jaw in an undisguised manner, all indicating that he was seriously considering the use that could be given to the entire set of skills at his disposal.
However, when he was in the middle of the planning process, he suddenly looked at Nulambart's hand and said:
"If you can't do anything with that hand, we can't do anything," Aggi finished, pointing directly at my right hand with its bandaged wrist.
"If only you could get hold of that knife somehow…" Aggi said softly, her hands shaking and her legs moving so much that she seemed extremely nervous from one moment to the next.
It's really funny, Nulambart couldn't help but think when he saw how exaggerated the young woman's movements were, particularly her face when her mouth was moving from side to side.
"Wait… That's it… I'll use my mouth to hold the knife… Tell me what I have to do, Aggi," Nulambart suddenly said, pointing with his eyes at the knife that he still kept in his clothes.
Aggi then opened his eyes and looked up at the sky, and almost as if he had found a way to become immortal, he displayed a joy that also contained a lot of anticipation.
"Okay, then we'll do it this way," said Aggi, who then told Nulambart the entire plan. The entire conversation took less than five minutes.
Out of the stream.
The guard was searching intensively for the two young men he had sworn were in the same place he had sent them flying to.
"It's not possible that both of them swam away into the forest, right?" said the guard, who had a soul ability that allowed him to scan the surroundings accurately, as he was a scout of the Stella Kingdom under the Prince's guard.
Beneath his feet were knee-high boots that allowed him to increase his movement speed. These boots had a green aura, just like his body, and were decorated with colorful runes that made him look imposing.
The reason was that this guard was a creator-type cultivator, like Aggi, but being in the realm of the spiritual avatar, he could now manifest the creation that was linked to his soul, that object that would accompany him throughout his life.
Suddenly, Nulambart and Aggi burst out of the stream in a 3-meter jet of water. Aggi grabbed Nulambart with one arm and his left shoulder.
"You're here, damn it, haha, it's great that you didn't escape," said the guard, who then ran towards them with the help of his soul item.
Sensing the guard's speed, which was exponentially faster than before, both boys' eyes widened, because they had not expected this skill from the guard in their plans at all.
"Shit, we're defenseless in the air..." Aggi couldn't finish what he wanted to say when the guard arrived, his green boots and colorful runes covering his entire body. The guard finished by hitting the young men, sending them flying 20 meters before they fell heavily to the ground.
Nulambart and Aggi tasted iron in their mouths, while an unbearable pain hit their chests, as the blow had hit them squarely.
They each vomited a mouthful of blood, but got back to their feet, this being because Aggi had used his whip to create a defense that would allow them to somewhat resist the impact of the kick.
"Shit, he's a creator-type cultivator… Those boots boost that bastard's speed… He wasn't in our Nulambart plans," Aggi said, looking at the boots imbued with the greenish aura and the various colored runes embedded in them, as well as at the guard's body.
He looked like a god of death, with an intimidating aura in the realm of the spiritual avatar.
Without a doubt, despite all the plans, they both knew they were in a difficult situation.