True to Alex’s words, the monsters were as fast as the wind and quick to use the grass as a hiding spot. They focused their essence on their legs to make themselves faster, but they still could not catch up to the monsters.

"We are getting weaker by wasting essence," Stallus complained. "We’ll fall before we can take any of these monsters down."

Azaroth frowned stubbornly at the monster that peeked from the grass before it darted down and was gone in a blink. Should he give up and leave for the next room? But what if there’s even no next room? What then?

All he was doing here was guessing, but it was also guessing based on the previous happenings.

It surprised him how swiftly the monsters could move, as if they were the wind or at one with the wind. He turned to Alex, who was breathing hard on the floor. "How do they run so fast?"

Alex looked up at him, face drawn, he had lost all his vigor. "Their legs. They have powerful-built legs that react faster than their brains. That’s what I read anyway. Also, they track by hearing. The only smell they could smell was that of their fellow monsters." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Azaroth frowned. "So we are too noisy for them, and they are much faster than us. A hard thing to combine against. There has to be something we can do."

Azaroth frowned, he saw another monster as it shook the grasses, and he took off after it. His hair streamed behind him like a white streak, and his feet-covered legs ate the distance in a blink, but the monster was even faster. Impossibly fast for something so small and weak.

Azaroth jumped to cover the distance between them when he saw the monster about to enter into a hole. "Not again!" He muttered. This had been happening again and again. He needed something done quickly.

He looked up at the fake sky. Azaroth knew it was fake because the sun did not move since it had been up there. And they had used some hours here. It must be a high-level illusion or some kind of trick because they could feel the hotness of it.

Maybe the training crypt is meant to remove their senses of time, Azaroth thought. They could not even guess what the time was outside.

Eventually, they were forced to stop chasing the monsters by their bodies when it became too weak to move. They collapsed on the ground and lay there.

"What do we do now, oh, precious leader?" Alex still had enough strength to roll his eyes.

Azaroth closed his eyes. What else could they do? "Rest a little and continue."

"Azaroth..." Stallus began, but Azaroth was already shaking his head.

"You’ll do it my way, or you can all go on without me."

Then he went to sleep. Or what passed as sleep because there was no way Azaroth was letting his guard down here so he was dozing, waking at the slightest disturbance.

The others tried to sleep too. They might be hungry, but their bodies still needed sleep.

In the small room, Kael Hound and Commander Apex watched them through an essence projection. They could watch them from anywhere in the training crypt.

"Do you think they will perish here?" Apex asked curiously. He watched as Kael turned to him, his eyes hardening like iron. Sharp iron.

"Then they shouldn’t call themselves my students. They have not even begun the training. This is the crypt’s way of testing them if they are worthy of it. If they could survive."

"Don’t you think we made the crypt... too powerful? Too aware?" Apex asked.

Kael shrugged. "It’s so we cannot directly interfere. The crypt would rather not waste its resources on those that can die before the training even begins!"

Apex shook his head at the clear difference between when Kael was wearing his mask and when he had removed it. Such a crystal difference that it made him shudder sometimes. "What will the crypt Master introduce himself, you think?"

The crypt Master is the training crypt itself. Made into a spirit kind of monster that could communicate and reason. Apex considered that one of the greatest achievements in East Haven.

And it was hidden from everyone but those directly involved. The patron of East Haven had asked the two Captains to form a team and give him a training plan. Both gave different ones, and the patron chose to sponsor the two with resources to see their training complete.

Apex himself oversaw the building of the training crypt, and he knew how many resources went into it. Enough to make their patron twitch.

But at least it was completed, but would the children die before they could even learn the use of the training crypt?

Kael shook his head. "Maybe after they survive to the real training hall, then he’ll show himself. The crypt Master is weird."

"Indeed it is. It was not a monster. Should not be because they honestly didn’t know what they created when they gave a crypt a mind."

"We did our best," Apex said.

"It probably won’t be enough. Maybe given time, we would be I would have been able to give them a good chance," Kael said, his eyes trained on Azaroth.

"Why did you choose that boy? I thought he would be dead in the culling, but he surprised me. People from that outpost were weak. They were not fighting outposts."

Kael understood him. The raid on the smaller outposts provided them with weak Hounds Indeed. Kael shrugged. "He is strong."

"Stronger than your first choice? Darian?" Apex asked.

Kael smiled. The truth was, all those children had been specifically chosen for this training. It was no coincidence that their outposts were raided.

Except for Azaroth. He was the one coincidence, and Kael was liking his choice every day. "He defeated him, didn’t he?" Kael answered the question.

Apex grunted and continued watching the projection. "Yes, he did. In a very strange manner."