The Chair’s Second Trial

“BOOOMMMM!”

Rufus swung another punch, tearing three squirrel-like beasts to shreds – the fallen corpses completely unrecognizable. A raccoon beast pounced from the nearby shrubbery, taking him by surprise; however, a needle skillfully embedded itself into the beast’s eyeball before falling dead.

Roughly three hours passed since we began walking. More and more D-rank beasts attacked the deeper we went into the forest. The rainstorm startled the beasts enough that I didn’t need to mask my mana. I hadn’t seen any C-rank beasts yet, but I imagined we would encounter some soon.

The party was a bit exhausted from the constant fighting. The beasts came in waves, providing at most a five-minute reprieve. Since the party couldn’t work together, the beasts were able to exploit the openings in their defense. Rufus and Aster were the only two who could fight. Ai conserved her mana for the incoming rainstorm while Emma didn’t have any offensive options. On the other hand, Aster was covering Rufus’s openings quite well. Emma also kept up, despite the fear plastered on her face.

“ROOOAAAARRRR!”

A bear-like beast charged from behind, aiming directly for Emma. It was slower than the other beasts, but it made up for that in raw strength. Each step crushed the ground; every tree snapped like a twig. It was definitely a C-rank.

Emma froze in place. Ai noticed, clicking her tongue, before using a vine to trip the beast. Aster followed up with a few needles and a ‘[Slash]’ from her sword. She didn’t have time to collect her bearings as she whipped around and threw another two needles at some stoats which slipped under Rufus’s attack. Rufus’s punches seemed to be missing the beasts more often as the fight dragged on. He was wasting the same amount of energy when blowing away one beast compared to multiple. I could see the frustration build on his face.

“Damn it all!” Rufus yelled, punching another beast into oblivion. The exhaustion was starting to affect his mind. Aster’s breathing also labored, but with how expressionless she was, I couldn’t tell how it was affecting her. Emma snapped out of her frozen state, but her fear and depression grew.

After another hour, the beasts petered off until there were only one or two coming every so often. The party’s mental state was not great, so everyone took a break to catch their breath. It was the right call, but they let their guard down too quickly.

“Argh!” Rufus screamed. A bit of acid fell from the sky and dripped onto his right arm, another hitting a bit further down. Ai stuck her hand up, instantly spreading vines above like a canopy. Beneath us, vines rose from the ground. Luckily, no one else managed to get hit. Well, technically one did hit me, but I used a bit of mana so it harmlessly slid off my rags.

Rufus gritted his teeth as the acid dissolved holes in his arm. It looked like someone had repeatedly stabbed him with a knife. Emma handed him a healing potion, which he immediately guzzled down. A pale green light hovered over the affected area, but his wounds remained open.

“Why isn’t it working?! Argh!” That was rather simple: the acid was too strong. All a mid-grade healing potion could do was stop the wound from getting any worse. There wasn’t anything they could do until the acid diluted itself a bit more.

Rufus sat down on the vines as Ai continued moving them forward. We were moving much faster than before, but she was slowly losing mana, even with her speedy mana regeneration. The rainstorm caused her to replace multiple vines every second. She made the right call conserving her mana. If there were no other problems, her mana would probably last until tomorrow afternoon.