Soon, the monsters were running, whistling shrieks echoing in the cave chamber. Some of the monsters saw Stallus and took their chances with her.

Since she was not using any skill, they thought she was the weakest, and they were right in a sense. She had no crystals to work with, but she wove her essence around her heavily.

They ran at her, and with her light feet, she moved between them like fleeting shadows. Her hands flashed out, and she started fighting with her fists.

Her hand struck out at ribs. Although she didn’t have the strength of Catena, her blows hit hard and fast. Her small knife flashed.

She used that to her advantage to block and cut fingers. The monsters hissed and shrieked, realizing that the one they thought was weak was actually strong and could hurt them back.

Azaroth and the others fell on them and started killing the monsters that still stood. Those that did not run fell to Azaroth’s fire or Catena’s fists, and Alex gleefully threw her lightning at them without a care in the world.

The monster leader stood in front of its cave, its eyes narrowed flatly, and surrounding it were its four strongest warriors. The leader opened its mouth filled with fangs and let loose a loud roar.

The monster jumped into the chamber and rushed Catena. The two clashed, and all the monsters around them fell. Azaroth and the others also gave them space while the four strongest rushed them.

Azaroth used his invisible thread like a piece of metal and slammed it into heads while he quickly drove in to use his fire to burn his target. With the way to the inner cave cleared, he went in and collected their weapons.

Catena finished off the leader by twisting and crushing its head. Now armed, the rest of the monsters were easy pickings, but they ran out of the cave and into the snow.

It was even easier to kill them in the snow, and soon, they were all dead. It was good that the monsters were not more than that because Azaroth and the rest were tired at this point.

But still, they managed to drag the monsters in and pile them on each other.

"I haven’t been this tired in a long while! It felt like the time we fought Kael! Only this time, we are the ones winning," Alex said. He had folded himself into a position to harvest essence from the air.

"Me too," Stallus said, but she also envied the way the others got to practice their skills while she looked on. Her priority now was to find crystals and take them with her in case of the next fight.

Azaroth said nothing. He silently cleaned his sword while he kept glancing at the cave opening. It was snowing, and the snow fur monsters liked to use sneak attacks.

Although they had already made one today, he didn’t trust them not to return. The others were carefree, but he stayed silent and kept watching the door. When he was done with his sword, Azaroth sat facing the cave opening and started to slowly fill his two cores.

Catena, who had used the most essence, was also filling his core, and so silence returned to the cave. In the midst of all the dead monsters, as if there were not a bunch of monsters piled high beside them.

By the time they were done filling their cores, the weather had changed again. Now, the sun burned in the sky, and the snow had melted.

"What are we doing now?" Alex asked. He yawned and stretched.

Azaroth answered him by drawing his knife and starting to remove the monsters’ hearts. The others saw him and stood to join him.

Soon, they had a lot of bloody hearts on the floor. Azaroth used his fire on them, and even half-burnt, it was better than the raw meat they had been eating for a while.

"So what’s the next step? I’ve almost forgotten that we entered a door that promised death," Stallus said.

"True," Alex nodded.

Catena was too busy eating hearts to have time to talk.

Azaroth stood and faced them. "We wear the white fur and hunt down the other monsters too."

"All of them?" Stallus tilted her head.

Azaroth barely frowned. "All of them."

They got ready then, wore the furs, and got their weapons ready to use, which was not an easy thing to do with all the heat that the fur cloak was generating.

"Why don’t we burn this place down?" Alex asked.

"Because stone doesn’t burn, especially not when Azaroth is at that level. He’s simply not strong enough to burn a stone cave to the ground!"

They tried tracking the other monsters’ lair then. They only knew the general direction because the monsters they just killed sometimes went that way in large numbers and returned wounded and with white fur monsters.

"Do we really have to put this cloak on? The heat is killing me!" It was Stallus who said this, voice muffled inside.

Alex and Catena nodded as well, even though it was barely noticeable inside their cloaks. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Azaroth was also feeling it, but he said, "It’s important that we wear it because the weather can change at any time. And we’ll freeze to death if we don’t have something tough to put on."

"Won’t our essence protect us?" Catena asked.

Azaroth nodded. "Maybe if this was the real world, but in here, the essence won’t protect us from the elements."

They continued their hunting, but no matter where they checked, they could not find the monsters they were looking for. If Azaroth had to make a guess, he would say that like the other monsters they just killed, these ones would be waiting out the sun in a very secure place.

And just then, the weather changed, and the bitter cold began. The others understood then why he asked them to wear the fur.