"Stay here—"
"You're not going anywhere," Cana cut him off, her voice completely casual as she wrapped her arm around him like a protective warrior.
Erus was stunned. "Why stop me? I have to kill those beasts to get their cores."
The Dragon Crawlers had been his primary target tonight. A single one of their cores was worth half the value of a Black Star token, making them far too valuable to just let walk away.
"Their whole bodies are contaminated with dark aura. Your newly opened energy paths have no immunity to such a vicious spell."
He couldn't see the dark aura Cana was talking about, but he could tell those beasts weren't in a normal state either. They crawled low to the ground, sniffing the dirt in sync. Hunting as a team shouldn't have been possible for Dragon Crawlers unless something was actively controlling them. Still, a question lingered in his mind: how could Cana spot a specific dark aura on those creatures, yet remain oblivious to the fact that the entire forest was reeking of heavy miasma?
"I can kill them from a distance," he insisted.
"We're not killing them," she replied simply.
"Okay?"
Erus didn't fully grasp Cana's logic, but he yielded, curious to see what she was going to do. Taking orders wasn't his style, but whenever Cana took charge like this, an undeniable instinct urged him to listen to her.
The three beasts arrived and stopped right at the spot where the dead Walker had fallen. They sniffed the air and the gory ground, but showed no intention of feeding on the carcass. The Dragon Crawlers were searching for a specific scent that lingered on the corpse, squirming in circles on the ground like mindless crocodiles, hopelessly hunting for a trail they couldn't find.
Erus stared down at them, realizing Cana had been right to stop him. In all his years of hunting, he had never seen Dragon Crawlers act like this. They were strictly solo predators, yet here they were, acting like a coordinated pack of bloodhounds. Doubt crept into his mind. These beasts were definitely being controlled, but who in this forest possessed the power to hijack a wild monster's mind?
He heard Cana sigh.
"It seems most of the people around you are so scheming," she said with a tone of disappointment. "Judgement, I'll leave it to you."
The little white monkey appeared on Cana's shoulder, and without any further instruction, it jumped off, heading straight toward the monsters. The Dragon Crawlers didn't even notice Judgement's presence as it hovered silently above them. Within moments, the creature cast a swift incantation over the beasts.
The effect was instantaneous. Spooked by the strange, overpowering energy suddenly surging inside their bodies, the three Dragon Crawlers turned and ran away as fast as they could into the dark canopy.
"What did Judgement do?" Erus asked, a bit confused. He had assumed the creature was going to kill the monsters on the spot.
"Sent them back," Cana replied casually, a sharp glint in her eyes. "Let's see who's tracking who now."
Erus fell silent. Just how capable was Cana to pull off something like this so effortlessly? A strange, humbling thought crossed his mind. Did she really even need him to train her? She had even realized those beasts were sent after him, though he still had no idea who was trying to target him this time.
"You looked pretty eager to hunt those beasts a moment ago," Cana noted, glancing at him with a knowing smirk. "Is that the kind of target we're looking for tonight?"
Realizing she had seen right through him, Erus nodded. "Yeah."
"Can we just go straight to their nest now?" Cana asked. "We can rest after gathering enough cores."
"I..." Erus started, but cut himself off before he could try to come up with another excuse. She had seen right through him. He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "So you knew all along."
"If I didn't know you could practically teleport, I might have actually believed we needed to walk that long just to reach the middle of this forest," Cana chuckled teasingly.
Erus let out a genuine laugh, realizing he had been caught red-handed. In truth, taking the long way really had been his intention. Since she was completely new to this place, he felt training a proper hunter meant getting familiar with the terrain first and building basic knowledge about the local beasts. But Cana was far too sharp to fool.
If not for her keen perception, he would have walked blindly into the enemy's bait. Still, a faint doubt lingered in his mind. He couldn't help but wonder how those tainted beasts were supposed to harm him in the first place, considering the golden shield had been protecting his body all along.
"Okay. But we're not going home after this."
"What?"
Before Erus could even answer her, he teleported them straight into the nest of the Dragon Crawlers.
A deep, dark, jagged ravine greeted them both. Dotting the rocky cliff walls were gleaming silver clusters spaced meters apart, looking like massive scaly eggs.
"Don't tell me we're jumping down there," Cana warned him, staring into the abyss. She was definitely not a fan of steep heights like this.
"You aren't. Just watch me," Erus said, finally letting go of her waist.
Only then did they realize they had been holding onto each other the whole time, from when he pulled her close in the trees right through the teleportation. The lingering warmth left a sensation they were both dangerously close to getting addicted to.
Cana nodded, clearing her throat to break the sudden tension. "I'll just wait up here."
Without another word, Erus leaped directly into the ravine. Before he could reach the bottom, the Reaper sprouted into massive dark wings behind him, catching the updrafts and making his descent effortlessly smooth. Gliding along the jagged ravine walls, he looked like a dark, terrifying predator lurking in the depths below.
Standing right at the ravine's edge, the fierce wind whipping past her with nothing below her but a sheer drop into the abyss, Cana didn't feel a single trace of fear. She simply watched his every move, studying his way of hunting to better understand how Erus had lived his life in this world. Simply hearing him talk about how people treated him wasn't enough to give her the full picture. The way he moved, spoke, and hunted right now told her something much deeper, a story written in sheer survival instinct.
Though she already had a gut feeling about what he had gone through, she knew the only way to truly understand his story, and uncover who was hunting for his life, was to witness it all firsthand by standing right beside him.
She was also plagued by doubts about why she had been brought to this realm in the first place, and why she had warmed up to him so quickly. Why had she adapted to this strange world so easily? She didn't even care about the humans she had left behind on Earth anymore. Her immediate, unyielding instinct was to protect Erus.
She was fully aware of the unhinged side Erus had mentioned, that darker half of herself she didn't entirely understand either. Whenever she knew Erus was in danger, she felt the burning itch of bloodlust and a surge of massive energy awakening inside her.
It definitely wasn't the mark of a slave bond. She always had a choice, and he never made demands on her.
Who was Erus to her, then? She still had not forgotten the way she had spoken his name on that rainy day when everything started, calling out to him like she had known him all along.
Cana gritted her teeth. "Why can't I remember what really happened that day?"
A heavy wave of disappointment washed over her, frustration bubbling beneath her chest. Even after everything they had been through, her memories of that day remained frustratingly fuzzy, a scattered puzzle she couldn't quite piece back together.
Erus effortlessly pestered the Dragon Crawlers, rousing them from their deep hibernation only to strike them down and harvest their cores. Thanks to the Reaper, he didn't need to manually scale the treacherous, rocky walls. The dark wings made his job insanely easy. If he took every single core in this ravine tonight, the entire kingdom might just end up at his mercy.
A dark smirk touched his lips at the thought, but it vanished the moment he glanced upward.
There, framed by the moonlight, stood Cana's silhouette.
Her stance was unyielding, completely devoid of fear, possessing the quiet authority of a king standing over her domain. Her long black hair danced and glimmered beneath the moonlit sky, framing the figure of an unrivaled goddess whose beauty alone could bring an entire nation to its knees.
Was she always like this?
Noticing that Erus had stopped harvesting cores, simply clinging to a silver shell while staring up at her, Cana frowned. Was he asking her to come down and help now?
"Are you done yet?" she asked, pulling him back to reality.
"D...done, yeah," Erus stammered. In one swift stroke, he launched himself upward. The dark wings dissolved into thin air the moment his feet touched the ground. "Did I take that long?"
"Mmm. No. I just noticed you spacing out down there, so I called you."
Erus nodded, secretly relieved she hadn't realized why he was actually staring before his thoughts could wander any further.
"We'll rest in the capital city, then sell the cores before we go home. Would that be fine with you?"
"As you will."
Then Erus showed her the cores, roughly fifty of them. "You might be interested in these, too," he said, and his prediction immediately proved right.
"Diamonds?" Cana's eyes lit up with amazement at the small, shimmering stones resting in Erus's palm. She could hardly believe what she was looking at. "Don't tell me these are the beast cores you just harvested."
"Yes," Erus confirmed, though he was visibly confused by the name she used. "What did you just call them?"
Cana's throat went dry as she realized her slip-up. But since he had already heard her, lying would only put her on his bad side. "Diamonds."
Erus nodded, mimicking her pronunciation. "Diamond... Do you have something in mind for them?"
"Oh! Well... they can be made into jewelry. They're actually worth far more than rubies."
"One of these is worth half a Black Star token," Erus explained. "That's equal to five hundred thousand gold coins."
Cana's eyes went wide. A single one could easily buy a house.
"How many do you want for jewelry?" Erus offered casually. "I can sell the rest."
Cana quickly shook her head. Wasting something this valuable on mere jewelry, especially when people in this world didn't even know what diamonds were, felt completely impractical. Besides, these belonged to Erus; she wasn't about to take advantage of his generosity.
"I can't sell all of these at once anyway," Erus said, noticing her hesitation after hearing their massive value. "Besides, I'm curious to see what kind of jewelry can be made out of these cores. I want to see it, too."
"Are you sure?"
Instead of answering, Erus simply handed her thirty of the glittering stones, then tossed the remaining twenty into his spatial storage. Cana stood there, completely dumbfounded by how casually he handed over a small fortune, as if money meant nothing to him.
"Make one for me, too," Erus added.
Unable to argue with his overwhelming generosity, she sighed, storing the thirty diamonds away in her own spatial storage. "Fine. I'll have Gregory forge them."
Heading to the capital, Erus teleported them directly into a dark alley where no one would spot their arrival. They stepped out onto the quiet streets, strolling like ordinary people in the dead of night. During these hours, the city was dead silent, with not a single soul in sight.
"Where are we?" Cana asked, noticing the architecture here was completely different from where they had come from, far more luxurious. She had assumed he meant the capital city near the guild.
"The Capital of Sparrow, the nearest city to the palace of Northland," Erus answered.
That satisfied her curiosity, but she showed no hint of amazement. Erus also found her lack of reaction odd, as if she hadn't even registered the prestige of what he had just said. Most people from other capitals would break out into excitement at the mere mention of the Northland Palace, eager for a chance to see it up close.
Perhaps he really had pushed her too hard today. He had forgotten that despite her triple-S power level, Cana was still new to hunting and wasn't physically conditioned for it yet, which only confirmed that he still needed to train her properly.
He tapped her lightly on the shoulder, leaving Cana looking at him with a confused, slightly dazed expression.
Then, a soft smile touched her lips.
"I'm not that tired," she said gently. "I'm just not used to how much you overstretch yourself. I honestly can't imagine how you've been surviving with a routine like this."
Erus was completely at a loss for words. She was the only person who had ever told him this so directly, the only one to genuinely worry about his health. Even his own mother could never bring herself to say it outright, no matter how desperately she wanted to.
So the reason Cana had asked to rest wasn't for her own sake, but entirely for his?
The realization alone made his face flush a deep, uncontrollable red.
"As a hunter, I've grown used to this," Erus replied, trying to recover his composure. "I seldom feel tired."
Cana scoffed, stepping directly into his path with her arms crossed over her chest, forcing him to stop in his tracks.
"That predatory mask of yours won't hide how strained you get every time you use your magic," she called out coldly, locking eyes with him. "Don't think you're fully healed just because a few of your energy channels have been cleared."
"I..." Erus started, but cut himself off and simply scratched the back of his head. He really needed to keep in mind that this woman didn't just see energies or auras—she looked right through him. Plus, she was the one treating him now—something he hadn't believed she was capable of until he felt the physical results circulating within his body.
He sighed, giving in. "Okay. You win, Little Rabbit."
"What?" Cana's face twisted in immediate displeasure at the nickname, but before she could argue, Erus gently cupped her cheeks with both hands, catching her completely off guard.
"Let's hurry," he teased, stepping past her with a smirk. "Or the sun will catch us standing here."
Cana stood frozen as Erus strolled ahead, her mind completely blown. The moment his back was fully turned, her cool facade shattered into a million pieces.
She threw her head back and screamed silently into the dark sky, bending over slightly as a giddy giggle escaped her, jumping up and down in absolute, flustered frustration. She flailed her hands against the cool night air, her face burning like hot coals at the sheer nerve of that man. He had touched her cheeks just like that? It was the first time he had ever been so openly affectionate, and it was ridiculously, dangerously sweet.
Grounded back to reality, she frantically patted her warm cheeks and scrambled to close the gap between them. She half-hopped her steps to catch up with his long, effortless stride, trying desperately to look natural.
Erus, on the other hand, was completely bewildered by the way Cana was suddenly skipping like a child beside him.
What the hell had just happened?