Chapter 54: Rest

Chapter 54: Chapter 54: Rest

A soft, digital chime trilled through the quiet undergrowth as the two siblings synchronized their trial bands, transferring their points before retreating down the winding trail without daring to look back.

Eric glanced down at the glowing holographic projection hovering above his left wrist.

"Tsk. Only eight and six points between them," Eric grunted, shaking his head with a dry smirk. "Four siphoned from him, three from her. A measly seven-point haul."

Still, stacked atop his previous baseline of thirty-three, the updated tally refreshed to a respectable *40 Points*.

"Not a terrible trade," Eric mused, watching the trembling pair vanish beneath the dense sea of ferns. "Shaving seven points off two shaken examinees took less than thirty seconds and burned almost zero stamina. Tracking down and butchering seven Soldier-tier beasts through this timber would have eaten up two hours."

He cast his gaze upward toward the thick bough where Coal was methodically preening his sleek obsidian feathers.

"How are your reserves holding up, Coal? Soul core fully recharged?"

*Caww.*

Coal let out a deep, resonant trill, snapping his three-foot wingspan wide with a crisp, metallic rustle before settling back onto his ivory perches.

"Good. Let’s pick up the hunting cadence and sweep the perimeter."

Over the following four hours, Eric and Coal functioned like a synchronized harvesting engine.

With Coal’s high-altitude surveillance mapping their trajectory through the dense canopy, they ambushed isolated Level 2 and Level 3 beasts, selectively picking off lone Level 4 targets whenever the natural terrain offered an overwhelming ambush advantage. Anything registering at Level 5 or higher was immediately flagged, bypassed, and left untouched.

By the fourth hour of relentless, methodical skirmishing, the trial band flashed with a substantial update: *70 Points*.

However, as the trial dragged deeper into the afternoon, the vast woodland grew increasingly congested, and the examinees crossing his path obliterated any lingering illusions of superiority Eric had harbored.

While scouting a jagged limestone outcrop, Coal sent an urgent, sharp mental pulse down the soul link, signaling an immediate halt.

Dropping into a silent crouch behind the massive trunk of a moss-covered cedar, Eric peered through the foliage and triggered his diagnostic talent.

*Appraisal.*

Striding through the clearing below was a tall youth clad in ornate, rune-inscribed alloy plate that shimmered with passive kinetic wards. Prowling beside him was a colossal, heavy-shouldered feline whose silver coat rippled with rolling, ethereal mist.

│ Race: Human

│ Stage: Soldier | Level: 8 | Talent Rank: B

│ Contracted Beast: Mistmane Lion

│ Rank: C | Stage: Soldier | Level: 8

Eric didn’t hesitate for a single microsecond. Funneling mana into his boots, he melted backward into the deep shadows with a soundless Shadow Step, putting several hundred paces between them before the lion’s sensitive nose could catch his scent.

Barely an hour later, Coal pinged another red-tier threat.

Perched atop the crumbling archway of an ancient stone ruin was a lone girl with long, auburn braids, resting a heavy crescent glaive across her shoulder. Sleeping curled at her boots was a colossal wolf draped in dense, bramble-like emerald fur.

*Appraisal.*

│ Race: Human

│ Stage: Soldier | Level: 8 | Talent Rank: B

│ Contracted Beast: Mossmane Wolf

│ Rank: B | Stage: Soldier | Level: 9

Eric’s breath hitched in his throat, a cold sweat pricking his collar.

*A Level 8 human with a Level 9 contracted beast?!* Eric cursed silently, ducking beneath the tangled roots of an upturned ironwood. *Is my luck just terrible, or have I spent my entire life living under a rock in Riverdale? Level 8 and Level 9 at eighteen years old... those monsters are practically knocking on the door of the Captain realm!*

He retreated with ghostlike discipline.

As the afternoon light waned, Coal’s reconnaissance revealed even more high-tier candidates prowling the central timber. Virtually every examinee from the provincial hubs hovered comfortably between Level 4 and Level 6.

Among the true generational prodigies backed by elite clans and top academies across Auremont, a fresh Level 2 Soldier tamer with a Level 2 crow was sitting near the very bottom of the food chain.

*Damn it, am I really hovering near the lower tier of this bracket?* Eric thought, a wry, self-deprecating grin tugging at his lips.

Yet he refused to let the disparity rattle his resolve.

Raw cultivation level was merely one facet of combat. With Coal’s aerial reconnaissance, the elusive burst mobility of Shadow Steps, and his newly achieved Minor mastery of Advanced Swordsmanship, he possessed peerless evasion and surgical strike lethality. He abandoned all notions of picking fights with high-tier examinees, focusing solely on tracking down isolated, lower-level beasts to quietly inflate his tally.

Before long, a sharp vibration rattled against his wrist.

*BZZZZ.*

A vivid crimson warning header flashed across the trial smartband:

[TRIAL CLOCK: 12 HOURS ELAPSED]

Warning: Nocturnal cycle initiated.

Ambient rift mana density increasing by 40%.

Demonic beast aggression and roaming frequency elevated by 150%. Proceed with extreme caution.

"Twelve hours already," Eric murmured, feeling a heavy, dull ache settling into his calves and lower back.

Having bridged the biological chasm into Soldier Rank, true unconscious sleep was no longer an absolute daily mandate. A few hours of deep, structured meditation could purge cellular fatigue, flush lactic buildup, and restore cognitive acuity just as effectively as eight hours of bed rest.

Looking down through the leaves, the woodland floor had transformed into an active deathtrap. Eerie, guttural shrieks, chitinous clicking, and predatory luminescence flickered between the shadowed roots as nocturnal horrors emerged from their burrows.

Remaining on the ground was pure recklessness.

Eric scaled forty meters up a colossal ironwood trunk, wedging himself securely into the crook of a massive fork where two reinforced boughs converged. He pulled his enchanted shadow-drake hood low to mask his facial silhouette and settled into a firm lotus posture.

"Keep watch, buddy," Eric whispered across the soul tether. "Wake me if anything scales this trunk or enters our airspace within fifty paces."

*Caw.*

Coal dipped his sleek head, settling onto an outer branch like a motionless obsidian gargoyle, blending seamlessly into the ink-black night.

Eric closed his eyes and regulated his breathing, drawing the dense pool of liquid mana from his heart into a slow, restorative circuit through his widened meridians.

Two hours slipped past in deep, undisturbed tranquility.

Eric exhaled a thin, crisp plume of white vapor from his lungs and snapped his eyes open. The mental haze had completely evaporated; his perception was razor-sharp, his muscle fibers humming with renewed spring-steel tension.

He glanced over at the outer limb.

"I’m awake, Coal. Anything large wandered through our perimeter while I was cycling?"

*Caww.*

Coal offered a quiet, negative tilt of his head, leaning in to brush his heavy beak against Eric’s leather pauldron.

"Good." Eric adjusted the scabbard of his sword against his hip, peering down into the predator-infested abyss below. "The night cycle is in full swing. Let’s get back to the harvest."