Monster

In an instant, the vines that had bound Hawklight's arms extended down to his legs, wrapping around them like snakes to crush him.

The next instant, these vines hurled the middle-aged man upward and began pulling his four limbs simultaneously.

He would have had no chance of escaping this if he had been alone.

Rosella, who was beside me, became a blur of movement and leaped forward. The glint of a shining blade flashed, and the vines were sliced into hundreds of pieces in the blink of an eye.

Freed from what would have been imminent dismemberment, Hawklight fell freely for a few seconds.

However, just as he was about to hit the ground, he was caught by thin arms... much too thin.

Hawklight felt that these arms were so thin that they could hardly cushion the fall. Even so, he couldn't be rude and decided to thank them anyway.

Hawklight looked up with a smile of relief, but the words of gratitude died when he saw a white skull with two bright red orbs where human eyes should have been.

"AHHHH!! A-A MONSTER!"

The instructor struggled to free himself from the skeleton's lap, which dropped him unceremoniously.

Hawklight hit his butt on the ground but ignored the brief pain and got up to draw his sword.

Rosella landed on the ground and also raised her sword against the Skeleton Soldier. "How strange... Why is there an undead in the Forest of Thorns?"

'Am I going to have to deal with these overreactions every time?' I thought, taking a deep breath.

"Everyone, it's okay. It's okay." I raised my hands to calm Hawklight, Rosella, and the others as I placed myself between them and my Skeleton Soldier.

"This is my Summon. He is completely harmless to you because he only reacts to my commands. He will not attack anyone unless they attack me or I give the order."

Rosella lowered her sword and breathed a sigh of relief. "That explains how this creature suddenly appeared. It wasn't down here when I rushed over to help Mr. Hawklight."

"I summoned him so that Mr. Hawklight wouldn't fall three meters without anything to break his fall. It would be terrible if we had to continue without an instructor," I explained.

Hawklight scratched the top of his head as beads of sweat ran down his forehead.

"So that's what happened? Ah, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, young Brandon. The surprise attack I suffered left me a little shaken," said Hawklight, sheathing his sword.

"It was no trouble, but please, sir, don't raise your voice again. The Forest of Thorns functions almost like a living creature. Most of the trees here are dangerous, and the vines that are everywhere are very aggressive." I said.

At that moment, my Summoning drove his sword into the ground and cut off an arm of vine that was slowly creeping toward the skeleton's feet.

"Humph." Anton Wilxes sounded dismissive. "We've wasted enough time. How about we start moving forward?"

"Y-you're right, young Wilxes. Let's continue," said Hawklight.

So, we finally began to enter the Forest of Thorns. Everywhere we looked, we saw a deep, intense green.

The huge trees in this forest were called Thorn Trees, and they were so tall that their branches intertwined dozens of meters above the ground, and their trunks were thick enough to remind me of the famous redwood trees in the United States on Earth.

The biggest difference between the redwoods and the Thorn Trees was the reason why these trees that dominated the Forest of Thorns had the word "Thorn" in their name. All along the tree's massive trunk, there were hundreds of thousands of thorns that looked like those on rose stems. These thorns were about the size of an average human head, and the distance between them was no more than a meter.

Looking at those sharp thorns sent chills down my spine, just imagining fighting in a place like this with such a large group.

For that reason, I made sure to stay a little behind the main group. I didn't want a battle to break out and find myself in the middle of the chaos, surrounded by natural thorn traps.

By the way, our group's formation changed a bit when we entered the forest. Rosella was now at the front, protecting Mr. Hawklight's life. Since it wouldn't be a good idea to leave three mages — Kyle Barlown, Anton Wilxes, and me — unprotected in the rear, my Skeleton Soldier took the rear.

"It's really impressive," said Kyle, looking at me after adjusting his glasses.

"What's impressive?"

"Your Summoning, of course." Kyle decided to flatter me a little. "Normally, Summoners summon magical creatures like Light Soldiers, and I've heard that a Summoner from a large guild can even summon a lion with a flaming mane, but I've never heard of a Summoner, regardless of rank, who could summon the undead. Wouldn't that make you a Necromancer?"

My eyebrows rose. It was a very perceptive conclusion for someone who lived in such a primitive world. It made me think that, indeed, if this were an MMORPG world, I could be considered a Necromancer or something, but in Aland, the view of Necromancers was not as lenient as in other universes.

"Did you say 'Necromancer'?" Anton asked with a frown, looking at Kyle, who quickly nodded. This made Anton laugh briefly. "Do you really believe in those horror stories for children? There are no necromancers in real life. Those were stories that poor mothers told their children to scare them into sleeping instead of complaining that they were hungry."

'A despicable comment from a despicable person. But what a surprise...'

At least Anton's comment reminded me that there was a famous horror story about Necromancy in Aland. I just couldn't remember what the story was.

"Besides, if he were a necromancer, he would need a corpse to raise, and that would definitely be considered black magic. And I must remind you that discussing black magic is expressly forbidden by the Church, and just discussing it could result in a few years in a penitentiary like Fortbrick."

"No, that's not necessary," Kyle said, lowering his head. He had completely lost the desire to talk.

Anton smiled with satisfaction after observing Kyle's reaction, but the smile disappeared when he saw the disapproving look I gave him before turning my face away. My Skeleton Soldier mirrored the action. A vein popped out on Anton's forehead, and he gritted his teeth and turned to look ahead.

As the minutes passed, we quickly ventured deeper into the Thorn Forest. The path, at first, had been easy to navigate, as the terrain wasn't that difficult, but the deeper we went, the denser the forest vegetation became. This made it difficult to progress at the same speed as before because the living vines often grabbed our legs and feet.

If the vegetation was thicker on the ground, it was even thicker high up in the trees. The number of branches and leaves from the thorny trees began to make it very difficult for sunlight to pass through, so the darkness became increasingly prominent above us. Not being able to see where we were walking also hindered our progress. And in the middle of a dense forest, with such difficult terrain and poor visibility, getting lost was a natural consequence.

"Now we should go this way," Hawklight gestured with his chin while holding the paper map with both hands. "Or is it this way?" he said after turning ninety degrees to the right.

"Ugh... That's enough," Rosella suddenly whispered, snatching the map from Hawklight's hands. "It feels like we've been going around in circles for an hour. That's the fifth time I've seen that tree I marked." She pointed her sword at a tree on the right that was marked with a large X.

"Oh... Was that X there?" Hawklight asked, sounding innocent.

"It's been there since I did that half an hour ago, which was when I realized we weren't getting anywhere." Rosella sheathed her sword and began to look at the map.

"He's the instructor, not the guide," I said, breaking our formation and moving to the front.

"What do you mean?" Rosella asked when I approached her and Hawklight.

"It means that since this is a test, he's not going to just take us to our destination without us having to make an effort to get there. Even though he's being paid very well by the Church to do so." I glanced at Hawklight and could see from the look of relief on his face that I had given him an excuse to explain his own incompetence.

"That's right! Have you ever heard the famous saying, 'Don't give a boy a fish, teach him how to fish'? That's basically what I'm doing for you here."

"Let me help you with that," I said to Rosella, holding out my hand.

She frowned as she looked at me, but rolled up the map and handed it to me.

As I unfolded the map, I began to analyze it. In my life on Earth, I had some knowledge of documents and maps because the office where I worked was basically funded by construction companies that wanted bids for large condominium developments in rural areas.

Working with a physical map was different from looking at Google Earth, but the logic was the same.

After looking at it for a few seconds, I managed to find where we were in the Forest. Fortunately, we weren't that far from our destination, but there was another spot on the map that interested me more than the Angelica Roots—the Ruins of the Temple of the Sun, hidden in the center of the Forest of Thorns. If I wanted to kill monsters to level up, that was the place to go.

"Let's go this way... There's no mistake." I ordered, rolling up the map again.

Sun, Anton Wilxes' bodyguard, was the only one who clearly found my decision strange. She probably knew somehow that the right path was further northeast than where we were, rather than north. However, for some reason, she didn't intervene.