The Earth After Rebirth

"Uh, no." He said a little bit out of breath.

Kiro strained his ears more, but the sound never came again. He thought it must\'ve been his imagination. So he decided to ignore, and they continued for a couple more minutes and then stopped.

Lyle wanted to keep training. Since he was tired, Kiro refused and reminded him that patience was the most important characteristic.

They came out of the meditative state with everyone else sitting around, with their hands on their cheeks. Bored out of their minds that they had to wait.

Lyle slowly opened his eyes, he weirdly didn\'t feel tired, he felt refreshed. His staff was on his hand, so he swung it the other way, a gust of wind came out, though it wasn\'t as strong it still made the trees shake.

"Th-that was amazing, thank you master!"

Jorge showed his deepest gratitude that Kiro took his time to teach his vice a thing or two. Something that wasn\'t even part of their agreement. He offered to pay for the lessons, but Kiro declined.

"Let\'s go."

The forest was darker now. Not even the moon illuminated their path, they entirely depended on their own eyes and senses. Kiro was glad he had vibrations back to work normally.

He didn\'t know whether he wanted to encounter another necromancer, but maybe it would be for the best. Figure a way to work around vibration disturbances.

The winds around were cold, but thanks to Hiro\'s creation, they couldn\'t feel it. Kiro had his robe that showed his chest a little.

"Aren\'t you cold?" Kade asked, since he was also walking without shoes.

"Not even a tiny bit."

Lyle was still in his head, excited for what he\'d just experienced.

"Master Kiro even has a mental world, it was so realistic and amazing and everything." He blurted out to one of his guild mates.

After Dark shot him dirty looks, he has never taken them there. Kiro looked away embarrassed, he\'d never thought to do it either. He didn\'t even know whether those without meditation or those who aren\'t bound to him could even enter the space.

"I\'ll try to when we get back." He said curtly when they didn\'t stop glaring at him.

He was walking at the forefront, so when he hit the ground with his staff that startled everyone. He released vibrations through his staff, a countless giant spiders fell from the trees, stunned.

"That, might have been a dangerous ambush!" He cried.

Their shock died just as quick. They swiftly attended to their enemies as they couldn\'t move. They didn\'t want to hang around and find out just the kind of abilities they had.

They managed to quickly get rid of them. As soon as they did, the tree roots attacked once again unexpectedly. Two tendrils shot at one of the priests, piercing through him on both the throat and stomach, he died immediately.

"Sh*t! Be careful, we can do this!"

They once again fought tree roots. They were more aggressive and stronger than the ones before. That\'s why yet another priest was taken before Ishaan could put up his protective shield.

The trees seemed to be smarter, going after priests mostly was a good start for any opposing team. Once a team had no healers, they were doomed if they were not strong enough.

Brutus had meant to jump and dodge in their air, but he was much too slow as he was whacked on the face, caught by a tendril before he got too far and smashed back onto the ground. This single mistake cost him a life as the red light stole his body too.

"Dammit Jorge, how are you training these guys!?" Kiro didn\'t think his main attack would be this weak.

Jorge couldn\'t even answer, he was dying from embarrassment. If they didn\'t pull their weight here, if they didn\'t prove their worth he doubted After Dark would want to be allied with them in the future.

So he gritted his teeth, as an assassin his movements were swift. He could dodge the tree roots no problem, he just didn\'t have the strength to completely overpower them.

He used short swords now, but Kiro vividly remembered him using a scythe. He was even nicknamed the Grim Reaper.

"You still have a lot to learn." Nikolai shouted appearing from the shadow next to him. "Assassins don\'t depend on strength, they depend on tricks, tricks that work. We don\'t need to be the strongest, we just need to be swiftest."

He said all this while throwing his poison daggers to the roots. He threw in a mist potion for good measure.

The trees whose roots were affected died instantly. They shrivelled up and disappeared from where they stood, leaving the spot empty and snow filling it up.

"Poison? I don\'t have any poisonous skills."

"You should, maybe Kiro has some. Ask if he can\'t sell you some."

He disappeared just as quick from the shadows, appearing on the other side, repeating what he\'d done.

The trees retreated, having been defeated by this one team twice now. They didn\'t wait around much, they continued walking. They weren\'t exhausted in the conventional sense, but since there was no sense of time in this forest, that made them tired.

They encountered a few more beasts, which they defeated without losing anyone else. The drops for Chasing Madness were sweet too, they had so much at this point that they had already put half of the drops to the auction.

Since the game was locked, nobody would be able to buy until after the wars and he didn\'t mind much.

They eliminated a lot of guilds along the way. Kiro\'s biggest fear at that moment was running into Isla\'s guild. He didn\'t want that no matter what, she was still mad at him and he didn\'t know if he\'d be able to eliminate her when push came to shove.

He wasn\'t soft on her, okay maybe a little, but he did break a promise and he felt bad for it, a little.

"I think I hear the cheers from the arena!" Jorge commented excitedly.