'An S-rank monster.' Lucian thought. The sun was starting to rise; Lucian couldn't let himself sleep all through the night. He silently kept all his frustrations to himself and kept thinking, 'When will the game end?' 'Thorin should be dead because of Gale, so then who was the new hero?' He knew for sure that it couldn't be Gale because magic didn't transfer after one killed his opponent; that was just a lie he made up for survival. Regardless of what he knows, he still prepared himself for any surprises that could come his way because Gale could be the hero, and Lucian didn't think he was strong enough to defeat Gale. He had better luck with Thorin than Gale. 'With the current ability I have, I'm not strong enough to defeat an S-rank monster. I have successfully stolen 2 different systems of magic and one beast magic. I'm at my limit. Does this mean that I will have to depend on the strength of others to survive? But I don't want them to know that I'm weak. I don't want to be weak.'
"You didn't sleep?" Luna asked Lucian, she was the first to weak up.
Lucian glanced at the others still sleeping with tired eyes. "I can't use my magic anymore. I think that beast was able to find me through…" He lowers his voice, "beast magic."
'But you haven't been using beast magic.' Luna thought. The reason why Lucian hadn't been using his beast magic was because of the new recruit; he wanted to hide the secret of his ability. 'Could it be that it doesn't matter what magic he uses? As long as his magic is activated, the beast could still find him?' She sighed and sat down next to Lucian.
"You looked more awful than usual." Her soft voice was filled with concerns. "Heal." She mutters as she placed a hand on Lucian cheek, her thumb moving to his red eyes that shut close at the feel of her warm and magic that took away his tiredness and growing headache.
"I won't be able to create fires for us to keep warm at night." Lucian said, letting out some of his fears.
"That's the least of our problems." Luna pinched his cheeks and retreated her hand.
Lucian tried soothing the pain in his cheek by massaging it with his hand. "If we don't stay warm at night, we might end up sick eventually. Don't tell me that you don't think it's a problem because you can just heal whoever is sick." He glared at Luna. "Just because you have healing magic doesn't mean that you are invincible."
'Oh, I know that.' Luna thought. She had been in so many life-threatening situations that her healing magic could do nothing to save her; Luna's hidden skill was her only form of defense. So she wasn't arrogant, not when she knew how weak she was.
"Calm down, Lucian; being in Hlasked for too long must have made you forget that there are a lot of things you can do without magic."
"You are right."
Marta and Soren begin to stir in their sleep. Luna and Lucian ended their conversation and silently went back to preparing for their journey for the day. They needed to travel far away from the place Atlas had caught them. Atlas wanted revenge, and if Lucian and his teammates journeyed far away from Atlas, perhaps they would be safe.
"I'm sorry to ask, Captain." Soren said, "Why did that beast call you brother?"
"And are you feeling okay, Captain?" Marta asked, "You haven't been using magic for days now?"
"Captain Lucian is saving his strength." Luna almost bit her tongue at the use of the word 'captain'; it was a word she was sure that she would never get used to. "After the attack we got last time, he decided to start a different type of training without magic."
The doubtful look in Soren's face disappeared as soon as he heard 'training'; he felt excited.
'No, I didn't.' Lucian sighed in irritation, 'Trust Luna to make my life more difficult than it already is.'
Joel grips Lucian's head; his strong grip is firm and skull-crushing if Lucian decides to make any stupid move in an attempt to escape.
Lucian stared widely at the claw wrapped around his face, his heart beating in fear. 'How did they find us?'
"He's the one, brother. The human responsible for our brother's death." Atlas gave an ugly smug smile. "Did you think that I won't be able to find you if you don't use magic?" He pointed at his nose. "I know exactly what you smell like, human." He turned to the rest of Lucian's teammates, "Drop the sword unless you want his head squashed."
Soren, Marta, and Luna reluctantly drop their weapon. They were all taken away by the Achiloq brothers; soon everyone, including Lucian, was tied up by a tree vine. The tree was also a beast that had life and had received orders from the brothers to keep Lucian and his team tied up until their return.
Soren had so many questions after hearing the beast say that Lucian killed their brother, but before any of his questions could be answered, they needed to escape before the beast returned.
"Stop struggling." Luna had resigned herself to accept her current fate. "The more you try to free yourself, the more this tree will try squeezing the life out of you, and don't even try to use any magic either; this damned tree will simply turn you into fertilizer and suck you dry of your magic until you are dead."
Soren wanted to ask how Luna knows until he followed the directions of her eyes and saw dead beasts whose life force had been sucked out of them. They were so dry that their skin was attached to their bones, outlining every single abnormal structural fragment. Soren gulps down in fear and stays still.
Marta burst out in tears, sad that she was too weak to protect anyone and the new friends she had made were going to die.
'I don't think this tree is going to kill us just because we use a little bit of magic.' Lucian thought. 'If those two beasts wanted us dead, they wouldn't have brought us to their lair and trapped us here. Although this feels a lot more like kidnapping.' Lucian was calm; he had been kidnapped before at an early age when he was younger. So an experience like this with his life on the line was nothing new to him.
With his knight skill, Lucian summoned a dagger; it took little magic. A sword would have taken more magic. The tree vein around him tried acting immediately by sucking his mana but was quickly cut off because Lucian didn't use much. It angrily wrapped its vine more aggressively over Lucian in retaliation. But it couldn't do more than that, because the brothers had plans for Lucian; the tree will die if it takes Lucian's life away.
Lucian intended to rescue his team with the single dagger in his hand, but it was going to take combined effort for his plan to work.