-Sara’s POV-

“Sara?” a worried voice interrupted the darkness as I whirled myself back into conscience. I groaned in pain. My head pulsed against my skull as I winced in the dizzy discomfort.

Opening my eyes, I met the ceiling of the nurses office and the stinging smell of hand sanitiser. My neck felt bare and fire set alight on the surface of my skin.

“I-It’s hot…” I whimpered, my head falling to the side to meet Naz’s worried eyes. My breathing fell in heavy puffs as my body rapidly started to produce gallons of sweat.

“What’s happening?!” Jace said from my right, holding my wrist just to flinch back at the heat.

The nurse frantically ran around the room, mumbling like a maniac. My teeth extended and my back arched while I let out an ear splitting scream.

As my chest heaved and I panicked, the nurse poured a bucket of ice water over me and the bed. The cold ice engulfed me, taking out the burning on my skin as it dripped off my sides. My vision grew hazy as I rubbed the water off of my face and forced myself into a sitting position.

“What is wrong with you?” the nurse looked at me angrily. I stared at her in confusion, trying to catch my breath.

“What?” I gulped from the thirst building up inside my throat.

“Why the hell have you been marked?” she glared accusingly.

My eyes widened, dread rushing through me. I can’t be. There is no way I let that creature mark me. The marking process only worked if the beast was a lot more powerful than me. My head pounded as I tried to recall what happened but everything was blurry after I was slammed into the wall by that beast.

‘Marking’ was a process that wolf beasts used, it left an imprint on the prey’s body, making sure the beast knew where its prey was the next time it would come back to kill it. In this case, I was the one being marked, meaning I was the prey.

“I-I don’t know. I can’t remember. It’s all hazy. All I remember was a creature’s presence.”

“Do you remember what the creature was? Who… it was?” Naz elaborated, looking desperate.

“Go into detail.” Jace rolled his eyes, crossing his hands.

I shifted in the soaking bed, fiddling with my sleeve. “Um, I went out to confront Malia and then she started to scream in pain. A presence filled the air so we both ran.”

“You did what?!” Naz gritted. “What happened to Malia?!”

“I-I don’t know. I think she ran because I was caught.” I started to cry, feeling scared and exhausted.

“Well at least we know the wolf is a male because Sara is suffering from the marking’s side effects, which means he probably marked her. The special skill of marking can only be done by males.” Jace asked Naz, who nodded back at him, he seemed to know a lot about the were men race for some reason.

I gasped at the rising heat traveling up my legs and to my torso as I held onto the nurse. Grabbing a cold towel and leaving my side, hastily.

The room started to get hotter again and all I could try to do was rub my skin against the damp bed in hopes of comfort. I felt like something was at the tip of my tongue but I couldn’t get to it.

“Ma…” I groaned, feeling the familiar sound in my mouth. What was I trying to say?

**

-Zeref’s POV-

Our search had come to an end when we had seen the shattered barrier Xanxus and I had forged. What beast could do this? A rank, B rank? The double barrier that was protecting the school was easily shattered. Furthermore, Malia was missing too, did she get abducted by the beast. Did we even confirm if it was a beast or another wereman?

“Xanxus I’m going to find that beast. Check up on Sara and ask her what she remembers.”

Xanxus nodded in understanding and flash stepped away into the school building.

I expanded my senses and vision using my sixth sense.

[Sixth Sense radius has increased to 20 km]

[Too much information is overloading your brain]

[System is keeping you sane]

[Mp is rapidly declining]

Notifications popped up but I ignored them. I could sense everything in this 20 km radius, from people to animals to mana beasts. But what exactly was I looking for? There were claw marks on Sara. So a wolfish beast? I filtered my search down to mana beasts emitting mana signatures that resembled wolfish characteristics.

East. In the forest. There were 6 wolfish type mana beasts. 3 of them were A rank at least and the other 3 were B rank. This wasn’t looking good. I had to gamble. I stopped the use of my sixth sense, it consumed a total of 600 MP in a matter of seconds.

I couldn’t use ‘Godspeed’ yet, due to my promise with Gramps, so I had to rely on ‘lightning aura’.

‘Lightning Aura’. With a simple incantation in my head, violent streaks of lightning danced around my body and the current running through my veins emitted a blue glow. I didn’t waste time and sped past the gates of the school zigzagging through town at a rapid speed.

**

Raaarghhh!

A deafening roar made the ground shake and the beast charged towards me. I dodged by leaping to a tree. It roared again in frustration.

It was an A rank mutated wolf beast. It had wings for some reason and stood 20 metres tall. It used its ‘accelerate’ skill to increase its speed dramatically and attack unprecedentedly. Luckily for me I had hunted a couple of these and memorised their attacking habits; they were pretty strong, but were one of the weakest A rank beasts.

I pulled out Voadhailis’s claw from my dimension ring and removed my eye patch for the first time and exhaled at the relieving feeling.

[Stats have returned back to normal]

[Demon aura and Mana presence have been released]

[A rank beast – Chimera Wolf is intimidated]

I had trained in combat with Gramps a lot and discovered some interesting abilities of my demon eye. It could see through illusions and it helped me to predict movements. In combination with my Seikuken skill, My hand to hand combat had reached a new stage.

I spun Voadhailis’s claw around my fingers before advancing, I skyrocketed towards the beast and with a clean and fluent cut, the beast’s head dropped down and met the ground with a large smacking sound. A few seconds later the body toppled over. I looked back at where I was and smiled. Sparks of lightning still sparked and a crater formed around my initial position.

[You have killed an A rank beast]

[You have received 10,000 EXP]

That was 5 of the suspected beasts down.

I looked at my HP: 12460/16300, I had taken quite some damage when fighting the previous A rank beasts; I should have removed my eye patch back then; It was quite difficult to take them down but I managed using wide range lightning attacks.

Sh*t! Aarghhh!!

I spaced out! My body flew through the air and I crashed into a tree, making a jagged branch pierce into me from the back. I looked down reluctantly at the branch protruding through my chest. This brought back bad memories.

[You have suffered 3000 damage!]

I broke the branch from behind using my arm, and slid down to the cold floor feet first. I grimaced as the S rank Forest King approached me. The inspect Skill had merged with my demon eye so I knew what the beast was straight away.

It had a large plant based green body and controlled lower ranked mana beasts. If I were to fight that thing, I’d be fighting a whole army of B to D rank beasts. This was terrible! I needed to make a plan.

I pulled out the branch from my chest and stared at the hole in my chest.

[Rapid healing has activated]

[MP is dropping rapidly!]

I had to leave! My MP was below half already after fighting all those high ranked beasts. The Forest King roared and an army of C rank Ground Moles emerged from the ground; this was my queue to leave.

The hole in my chest had sealed up leaving a scar and my ‘rapid healing’ had stopped. My aim was to find Malia, so I couldn’t waste time here. Power returned to my body and I disappeared, jumping from branch to branch.

There!!

I found a feint mana signature, it belonged to Malia’s flame attribute. I looked back at the swarm of beasts chasing me, I had to find her quickly. I traced the faint mana signature hastily for a couple hundred metres until I finally found her…

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