We were walking deeper into the forest, and the bushes were becoming thicker. My hands had gotten a few scratches just by walking on this path. Behind me, Emi was relatively in better condition, yet she got a few insect bites.

"We should go back; the path is getting narrower. If we encounter any wild animal, we won’t be able to run." She spoke, and I said nothing; after all, I was planning to deal with something much worse than a wild animal attack.

Looking at the surroundings, it indeed felt like a trap. But it didn’t mean I would turn around; I planned to deal with this singer today, because it specifically targeted Emi over me. It wasn’t a good thing at all.

After walking for a while, we finally got off that narrow path and found ourselves standing in front of the small pond, which should have been formed under the heavy rain. The water was muddy and stenched with multiple tiny water craters in the surroundings.

"Eww..."

Emi closed her nose as look at the tiny ponds. I began observing the surroundings, looking for the clues of that singing demon, at a little distance from these tiny ponds. I fear that the demons might be hiding within these tiny ponds. They might not even be big enough for a single body to fit in, but who knows what kind of demon we might encounter.

"Ricky!"

As we began checking the surroundings, I heard Emi screaming my name, and when I turned towards her, I saw her pointing to our left. Her face was filled with shock, but not fear. When I turned in that direction, I saw someone’s footsteps. From the shape of it, someone had walked by this muddy ground; the footprints were still wet, meaning that person had just walked away from here.

"I think you were right; there indeed someone is trying to scare us away, from here." She said strongly, her fear was almost gone, when she got a feasible explanation for that anomaly.

But it wasn’t the same for me; I was getting a very strange feeling about it, because now things were adding way too fast.

As I was considering returning to the village, we suddenly spotted a person moving through the bushes. We were only able to see his back for a second before the bushes hid our view.

"He should be the one," Emi whispered, grabbing my hand tightly. Though now she knows there was a human here, who was trying to scare us. She bought it easily, because she wasn’t chosen one like me.

I wanted to tell her to calm down, and let’s head back, the research time was over, but before I could do that, I sensed the anomaly in the surroundings. The wind pressure began to increase, and I felt the moment below my feet as if the ground was moving. All of this happened in less than a second.

At this moment, I still didn’t know if my senses were tricking me or if we were actually getting targeted by the demons. I instinctively pushed her away from me, wanting to tell her to run away from here, but my face began to turn red, as an invisible vacuum had formed around my body, leaving no way out for my voice. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

"What the fuck," veins began to sprout out from my body, as the blood vessels in my body began to swell. Even my curses couldn’t be heard outside. My body was rupturing from the inside. For the god’s sake, as if it wasn’t enough, my feet began to sink into the ground.

At this moment, I doubt if I hadn’t gone through evolution earlier, I would have died in an instant.

The only thing I could do now was let the hellfire burn everything, and hope to get out of here. As I did so, the purple flames burst out from my body, burning the entire ground and surroundings. I was trying to concentrate the flames around myself, not wanting to hit Emi with the hellfire, as she was still on the ground, staring at my flame-covered figure in shock.

She had lost in the moment, unable to react to the situation; she didn’t even try to run away as a few sparks of hellfire fell on her.

Luckily, Mink, with his lightning-fast speed, was easily able to deal with them, not even letting a single spark of hellfire on her. I didn’t realise it earlier with the summoning bond with Mink; both of us were able to understand each other’s words without even saying.

"Ricky..."

By the time she came to sense and stood up, I had turned into a burning pillar of fire in the middle of the forest. The hellfire was reaching the sky, as the water in the surrounding ponds instantly turned into ice. And the ground below my feet began to dry out. As the hellfire was sucking all energy from the soil and using it to strengthen itself.

My entire body had turned cold, my mind became clearer, and my eyes stared straight down at my feet, which were locked in the ground.

I took a deep, cold breath, finding my body turning numb, which wasn’t actually a great feeling, but escaping from that pain was. I tried to pull my feet out of the ground, but they were locked in pretty tightly.

So, I stopped, just staring at the mouth-shaped ground, swallowing my feet, the ground beneath me appeared just like those, tree face and fire face demons.

I gave a side glance at Emi, not wanting her to find out. I couldn’t pull my feet off the ground, after all, this was my aura farming moment.

I was trying my best to appear nonchalant and cold as I began observing the surroundings.

The flames around me were still burning intensely, as the vacuum around me was still trying hard to suppress the hellfire. But couldn’t do so; all it did was force me to use extra mana to intensify the flames.

I glanced at my mana and smirked.

[Mana: 578/1000]