At the same time that the pale humanoid monster emerged from the shadows of the numerous trees in the forest, Jay’s mind was working at its best.

Immediately, Jay opened his energy expenditure window at the same time as he did a quick count of all the parasites in his body.

He then focused his vitality radar on all the people present, starting with Vilda and Faith, but not forgetting Nico, Kai or Tom, fortunately, all of them were alive.

With that out of the way, his train of thought in this situation was simple… all ending in running away.

Maybe if he had been a rank (C) monster, he could have at least tried to make time for the others to wake up and deal with it together, or just defeat it himself using his trusty Overload.

However, in this situation, neither of those options were viable.

*Swoosh!*

The wind ruffled to help Jay who had leapt backwards in Faith’s direction. The esper’s gaze was still locked on the monster, who was also not letting Jay out of its sight.

Quickly, Jay reached Faith, and without waiting a second longer, he lifted her onto his left shoulder and began to run at full speed.

For this, he didn’t hold back, using both the energy of his little ones as well as his wind control and Phantom Trace.

He really wanted to help the others, especially Vilda, but faced with such a dangerous and stronger opponent, Jay knew that the only option they all had to survive involved leaving them here temporarily.

The monster, seeing this, simply stared at Jay’s back as he ran away, in its eyes an almost imperceptible curiosity as it slightly tightened its grip on Tom and Vilda.

Passing tree after tree, even though he had already used a good amount of energy on the whole Kai thing, Jay didn’t look like he was going to slow down anytime soon.

Instead, what he did was to order several of his parasites to move inside Faith, but not to see things like their status or so on, but so that they could share as much of their energy with him as they could.

Despite the risk of the situation and that Jay had definitely been afflicted by the encounter with a monster of such rank, all was not lost, as he was able to think of a way to be able to get out of this.

The forest was a considerable distance away from the city, that was true, even taking rank (C) supers a short time to get there._.

However, this was because normally, rank (C) supers really had no reason to use everything they had for such a short distance.

If they were serious about it however, the journey from the city to the forest would take them at most a couple of minutes.

And to Jay’s luck, he had a rank (C) super with him, if you took into account that he was running in the direction of the city, then all he needed now was for Faith to wake up and get out of the forest to call for help while he did his best to distract the monster.

It was not going to be an easy task by any means, but it was the only way out he could see in this situation.

At that moment, thanks to the fact that there were more than a dozen parasites sharing their energy with her, Faith began to wake up.

“U-ugh…”

Without pausing, Jay spoke, “Faith, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I already know what you ran into and I need your help so we can get out of this.”

However, instead of a response, Faith instead just stared at him for a couple of seconds, as if not quite understanding what was going on.

Faced with this, thanks to his little ones inside of her, Jay already knew where this was going, so with his free hand, he moved the bandages that were covering most of his face.

On another occasion he would have protested or thought a couple of times about his attire, but now was not the time for that, so he just explained what he had planned.

“Faith, I know about the humanoid monster, and I have a plan to escape, I need you to head to the city at your top speed while I distract the monster, we’re about to reach the forest edge, so save your energy for the time being.”

“Um…”

It took her a moment to process all of this, as the last memory she had was the monster in front of her as she was using her ability to hide before slipping into unconsciousness.

However, instead of raising any more questions or such, what she did was blink a couple of times as she thought about what Jay had told her,

She looked like he was about to say something, but paused and nodded, “Fine, I’ll do what you say.”

With that exchange of words as the last between them, Faith concentrated on gathering energy while Jay, in addition to continuing to run, took it upon himself to assist the first mentioned in her task, at least with his little ones.

With this, one would think that the reason why Jay was sweating profusely was because of everything he was doing, however, the truth was otherwise.

Turning his gaze back every so often, Jay couldn’t help but hold his breath each time he did so because of the uncertainty of not knowing if the monster would be there.

This was both a concern and a motivation for him, after all, he also hadn’t forgotten that the longer he delayed, the more at risk the others were, which urged him to run faster.

And he was not alone in sharing this feeling as Faith was also feeling something similar, but she was forcing herself to bury her doubts to avoid making mistakes.

Quickly, the density of the forest began to thin, with fewer trees coming into view, an indication that they had already emerged from deep in the forest and were getting closer to the city.

Seeing this, Faith then began to move while still on Jay’s shoulder, “I think here would be fine, you can put me down now.”

Agreeing with her, Jay slowed gradually as he shifted Faith around, moving her from his shoulders to his arms to carry her princess style.

To other people, perhaps this might seem intimate, but perhaps because of the situation they were in or because of each other’s personalities, this was not the case with both of them.

Finally, there were only a few trees that indicated the end of the forest, being especially tall and thin with oddly shaped branches which produced an unexpectedly large shadow.

“Then-“

*SHRR!!!*

“!”

Being interrupted by Jay, who stopped short, Faith couldn’t help but go into confusion as to why he had done so, bringing her gaze up to the aforementioned’s face.

What she saw then was Jay standing completely still with his gaze riveted on one of the trees.

The next moment, at about the same time that Jay’s grip on Faith tightened, he turned and began to run in the opposite direction.

Due to the suddenness of this movement, Faith could do nothing but be carried away by Jay, barely catching a glimpse in the direction they both were facing until a moment ago.

And when she did… a shiver ran through her entire body.

In the shadows of the trees, what had appeared to be a tree was actually nothing more than the same humanoid monster that was forcing them to flee the forest.

This monster, realizing that its camouflage had been discovered, moved slowly, separating its incredibly thin silhouette from the tree’s shadow and revealing itself more clearly, its empty eyes staring at them both.

“…It can’t be… it’s another one of them…?”

Faith couldn’t help but ask a question stemming from her disbelief that the monster could move so fast without being noticed by either of them.

“No, it’s definitely the same one…”

Using a more serious tone than usual, Jay confirmed Faith’s concern, though that didn’t mean he didn’t have his own doubts.

Starting with what kind of monster it was, Jay had flipped through his mental encyclopedia of all the monsters he knew, failing each time to find even one monster with similar characteristics.

Of course, the knowledge he possessed about monsters could not compare to that of a real encyclopedia, let alone that of an expert, but still, it was somewhat strange that he did not remember even a hint about this monster.

This would undoubtedly be the most disturbing aspect of this unknown monster, were it not for the next doubt Jay had.

Which was… what exactly did this humanoid monster want?

Jay had originally thought that its intention had been to eat them or at least kill them, after all, that was what monsters normally did when they saw a human.

Adding to this the fact that it had thrown Faith against a tree, as well as dragging Tom and Vilda, didn’t help at all.

The cherry on top of the cake was this seemingly simple act of appearing in front of them, which showed that its speed far exceeded what Jay could do in his current state, so catching them was an extremely simple thing to do for it.

However, that did not seem to be its intention, as both the first time he encountered it and this time, the monster in question just stood still as it watched them go.

Thus, the confusion Jay had was only increasing with time, and what was worse, he really didn’t have time to think about this in more detail, as he needed to think of another way out of this situation now that his first ‘plan’ failed.

“…Ah!” At that moment, at the same time as she was jumping around a bit, Faith came up with something and started checking her pockets before asking Jay a question, “Jay, let’s use our smart watches!”

“…Right! Use yours to call for help while I’m running!”

The reason they were running was to call for help as fast as possible, thinking it was the only solution, when if he had only stopped to think for a moment, he would have realized that a much easier way had been under his grasp all this time!

Immediately, Jay couldn’t help but contemplate what an idiot he was for not having thought of something so obvious from the start, though of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t a bit relieved.

Having checked her pockets several times, Faith, making the last attempt, turned to Jay with an apologetic expression, “…I…I don’t have mine, I seem to have lost it earlier…”

“Use mine then, it’s on my left wrist, the password is 8365.” Jay replied, to which Faith wasted no time and hurried to lift Jay’s sleeve to pull out his smart watch.

Hidden under a layer of tight bandages, Jay’s smartwatch came into view, with enough battery to last for many more hours without having to recharge.

“Well-“

*SWOOSH!*

From one moment to the next, no sooner had Faith touched Jay’s smartwatch than a strong breeze hit them both at the same time as a figure appeared beside them, forcing them to stop.

“!”

To the right of them both, with its imposing but gaunt tall figure, stretching out its slender, sharp fingers, the humanoid monster was holding Jay’s wrist, or specifically, his watch.

*Crack*

And with that sound, despite Jay and Faith trying to move and avoid it respectively, the smartwatch was destroyed.

However, even though they were unable to react in time to prevent the destruction of the watch, they were able to react in time to act against the monster.

Jumping out of Jay’s arms, Faith activated her ability, surrounding herself with a glowing golden aura, with most of the glow concentrating on her fist.

*BAM!*

A small explosion then erupted from the collision between Faith’s fist and this creature’s chest, which, in addition to leaving a burn mark on its chest, had also pushed it away a bit.

Raising her fists close to her face and putting her right foot forward, Faith faced the monster, the energy in her body running rampant.

It was clear she had made up her mind to face the monster.

“Jay, seize this moment to-“

“NOPE!”

“Ah!”

Shouting that, Jay then grabbed her by the hips before lifting her up and putting her on his shoulder before starting to run again, which caused Faith to let out a small squeal of surprise.

The race had started again, however, this time, there was something different, and that was that Jay was going at a much faster speed than before!

If anyone was watching him move at this moment, they could notice how every so often, his silhouette seemed to disappear and reappear periodically.

Of course, this had nothing to do with his wind control ability, but was actually the product of Jay using the 5th and 6th step of the Phantom Trace.

As for how this was possible without him having activated the Overload ability, this was because with the humanoid monster so close, Jay had been forced to command his little one who was storing a special type of energy in his body to release it.

As a result, at this moment, Jay had qi coursing through his body, further increasing his physical capabilities!