When Arthur and his group left the market to enter the forest, Arthur noticed that the sunlight started to become more dim. This was because the trees were blocking the sun, Arthur started to feel anxious as they were at just the beginning of the forest.

They walked in silence for an hour as the trees got thicker and more crowded with the low hanging branches grazing Arthurs skin. 

The group became more tense as all that could be heard in the forest was the earth crumbling between their feet. 

The caked mud on Arthur’s legs were making his legs itch as earlier ,when he was distracted,Madly tripped  him into a dirty puddle. Arthur nearly shot her with his bow but then he remembered  the promise he made.

  He looked around him, they were just passing under some low branches and reached a small open place with not a lot of  trees in it. There was a small running water stream which traveled downstream.

“Let’s stop here,” Arthur said as he decided he would inform them of his plan here. They were away from the shops and no one would be able to hear his plan. Arthur knows there’s no danger in telling them now what he intended to do.

“Finally, Mr. Important is going to tell us his big secret plan, wow.”Madly was still behaving like Madly. Arthur didn’t mind her personality, in fact he dealt with much worse people than her. She was like an idiot child with some balls and no brain.

“Yes, gather up and hear me out please,” Arthur said as he went towards the largest rock that was in their campsite. He stood on top of it while everyone else sat on the other rocks, everyone but Madly who was still standing in her place just looking at him.

“Won’t you sit down?” Arthur said to her.

“I’m comfortable like this,” she coldly replied.

“Fine, what I want to speak about now is about my future plans. I will start with one simple fact, and that is to make all of you mages,” Arthur said these words and then paused as he watched the reaction of others in front of him.

Being a mage was everyone’s dream in this world, however they  already accepted the fact that they couldn’t be ones.Some were destined to be mages, while others were destined to be distanced from this dream.

“C’mon, don’t tell me you did all this to say those worthless meaningless words,”Madly was the one to speak up saying what the  others had on their mind. Even Ron, who was the closest one to Arthur, didn’t understand how Arthur proposed doing such a thing.

“I know you think it’s hard, but I can assure you I will make sure that it happens,” Arthur calmly replied.

“It’s not hard, man it’s impossible,” Ouly said before standing from his rock as he pointed to Madly, “Doing the test is incredibly expensive. This crazy Madly here tried to trick the academic testers but she failed. 

That was nearly eight years ago, when we were all nine years old.Now, we are seventeen years old, it’s too late to test our innate talents, man, let’s just face reality and don’t try to play useless tricks with us.”

Ouly was their philosopher, which meant for Arthur he was the brain of this little gang. He wasn’t bluffing so he instantly replied,”I’m not tricking anyone here, and that talent test is just to measure  the presence of innate talents. 

No one ever said no one can practice and enhance his or her talent after nine years, it’s just a misconception from people.”

“And what makes you this confident about it? We  don’t know if we have talents!” Ouly argued back.

Arthur just smiled before pointing towards Madly as he said,”I know what her talent is.”

“What?”Everyone turned to look towards Madly who just felt awkward as she embarrassedly commented, “I don’t have talent!”

“Yes you do, but you haven’t figured it out yet,” Arthur replied.

“Then what is my talent then?” Madly said while crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“It’s brown in color, so I believe it’s earth related talent,” Arthur said as that was the color he noticed when she was fighting with him.

“Brown? I never heard about such a stratification of innate talents, have you ever heard about such systems guys?”Madly was treating this like a joke as she asked everyone else in a theatrical way.

“No, this is my first time hearing something like this,” Ouly said as he was standing by Madly’s side by now. 

He wasn’t alone, as everyone else either nodded or just looked in doubt towards Arthur who just sighed as he didn’t have any proof of this  knowledge on this world.His only proof to what he was saying was through doing it practically and showing them.

“Fine, you have the right to believe it or not but at least you will follow me these next  few days and do as I ask,” Arthur said.

“And why should we listen to your words? we should return back to our shops and little village before we lose the way,” Madly said with some disgust as she was already tired.

Arthur replied, “First you owe me this, second if you follow me I will teach you how to do it.”

“Do what?!” Tarry said as his big body trembled with fear. As abruptly Arhur was beside him with one arrow pointed towards his thick neck.

Tarry was startled and if he wasn’t afraid from being injured from this arrow he would stand up right now from his place in response to this sudden move of violence. 

” I definitely want to learn that!” Lily said as her eyes brightened when she saw Arthur’s move.

Arthur just smiled, it seemed he would never get tired of such a trick. He stood there for a moment before returning again to his original place while Madly muttered,”I thought you can’t move that quick due to our fight.”

Arthur simply replied to everyone else, “I won’t force you to follow me, but if you do then I will teach you how to master such a move, besides…”

He paused, hairs on his neck stood to attention, as he sensed something was approaching them. He had the feeling that he was being watched by something that was extremely dangerous.

“W-What?!” Lily asked with doubt as she wanted to know what Arthur was going to say.

Arthur began to use his senses to the full, despite not knowing how this weak body would take the toll or not. The situation seemed risky and tricky as everyone was relaxed and not aware of the danger eyeing them right now.

Everyone looked at him with impatience, while Madly began to feel bored already with Arthur while Ron felt something was odd. Arthur seemed unusually strange right now.

Before anyone could say anything more, a black shadow leapt suddenly from the thick bushes surrounding them. The others could see a black tail being thrown towards Arthur directly aiming for his heart.

Suddenly,  Arthur jumped into the air with him holding his bow and three arrows appearing in the bow. 

As the tail aimed higher  to hit Arthur in the air he used his feet to kick that moved his body even higher. 

He was using all the strength in his body and focusing it on his right leg which acted like a cannon to shoot and his body would recoil.

The monster was on the ground still trying to use its metal tail to hit Arthur in the air. Luckily, for Arthur his group was hiding behind the rocks as the monster paid all of its attention to Arthur.

The monster had a leopard shaped body with it having a gigantic tail that had spikes on it. The monster had massive teeth that were dripping in ruby red blood. 

There was a pair of bony wings on each side of its body but when Arthur looked at the wings he noticed that there was pus oozing out of  the scratches on its wings. 

As the monster tried to flap its wings to gain height its wing would spasm dragging its body back to the floor.

Arthur was relieved that it couldn’t fly as in his weak state he knew that if the monster gained height it would be all over for Arthur.