Kale didn't wait for the girl to finish her smile. His survival instincts, honed through a million failed simulations and a literal regression from death, screamed at him to move...
He scooped up Neo, the three-headed hydra currently disguised as a palm-sized lizard, and shoved the creature onto his shoulder. With a single, explosive burst of Beast Force, he pivoted and vanished into the dense undergrowth...
The forest floor blurred beneath him as he sprinted at nearly forty meters per second, his Hexarion physiology screaming under the sudden demand for maximum output. He was smart enough to recognise a trap before the jaws snapped shut...
From what he could sense, most of the group was theoretically weaker than him, yet the power radiating from the Artificer female was wrong. It wasn't the natural mana of a researcher; it was a borrowed, crushing weight...
