Lia, Quin, Fay, Leah, Roxy, Aaron, Mike, Gallan, and Dawn. These were the people set to tackle the forest training and become evolved.
Amongst all of them, Leah was the closest to evolving. She was a hero candidate, and her legacy made it so that she could level up faster.
Now that all of them were set, they were immediately teleported into the forest that Silva had specially sealed off.
There was no way for them to leave the forest. Before they had left, Silva took away their storage rings and gave them rings that carried the bare minimum that they would use to survive.
And with that, the forest training began at that moment. Each of them was teleported to a different location so that they wouldn’t easily find each other and help each other.
—
Leah was teleported into the middle of nowhere in a forest. She looked around a bit, and when she didn’t see anything, she decided that she could check her ring out what Silva gave them.
But as soon as she opened the ring, she felt the presence of several abominations heading her way like a swarm of bees.
She immediately drew out her sword, the only weapon she was allowed to add into the ring, and then she got into a stance.
From the thick coverings of the trees, a seven-foot grotesque abomination leaped out and attacked her, but she reacted fast enough. She twisted her feet, spun around, and slashed through the abomination.
She cut it cleanly in half, but she was not done yet, because more had started coming out, so she charged at the next one.
It tried to use its long arms to attack her, but she dodged to the side and cut the arm off. A small amount of purple lightning crackled under her feet, and her speed increased.
She slashed through the abomination in one move, then she used a tree to stop and continue her motion. She kicked the tree and shot in the opposite direction.
More abominations came out and tried to get her, so she had to be faster. She was quick and decisive; she picked the smallest abomination that was about four feet tall and then she attacked.
She ran full speed, and when she was right in front of it, she leaped into the air over the abomination and slashed through its head.
With that move, she was able to kill it and make a way out so that she was not encircled by the other abominations.
When she landed on the ground, she didn’t stop moving. She backed up and then slashed with her sword, firing a large lightning arc.
The abominations that were chasing after her ran into the arc and were cut in half clean. But more kept coming.
“It doesn’t seem like their actual number is reducing. This will be a serious pain,” Leah complained. She retreated a few steps and then started running in a circle.
She found a good opening to take out multiple abominations and she took the opportunity. She charged into it with her sword crackling with lightning.
She moved faster than normal and tore through them from the side like a wild wind. She killed close to ten in a swift move, which actually reduced their number by a lot, but not enough.
It was as if the abominations now understood that Leah was dangerous. They started attacking with more ferocity, slashing and biting.
With their renewed vigor, they started pushing Leah back, but she wasn’t backing down. She kept blocking their attacks and with every opening, she would take out one of them.
Over the course of a few minutes, the coordination and flow of the abominations seemed to be getting better. The ones that were here earlier had now understood what they needed to do to fight her, and the new ones were following their lead.
“Yeah, trust Silva to make everything hard. Who the hell makes intelligent abominations?” she asked. But regardless, she decided to lock in and fight well.
Her footwork suddenly changed, and her sword erupted with massive bolts of lightning. If there was one thing that she was good at, that was her mana.
The lightning extended to cover her entire body, and in a flash, she vanished. When she appeared, the heads of over twenty abominations were blown off.
She took a deep breath after doing that because it took a lot of energy out of her, but she wasn’t done yet. She stabbed the sword into the ground, causing a massive blast of lightning moving like a wave.
The wave caught almost all the abominations inside of it, electrocuting them to death. Only a few were left standing, and when that few came to attack her, she mowed them down with ease.
She could finally take a breather. Now that she had stopped the abominations, she sat on the floor and leaned her back against a tree.
“You shouldn’t let your guard down, hero.” She heard a voice that she knew—Zack’s voice. And if Zack was here, then she was about to get her ass beat.
She jumped on her feet, took out her sword, and pointed at him.
“Nice reaction, though I would have already killed you before you made that move. That aside, you really did good work on all the abominations, nothing less from the hero candidate.”
“But sadly, I was passing through this side and I heard the commotion, so I figured one of you had to be here fighting. So why not come and make your life a thousand times harder,” Zack asked. He took out his axe, ready to fight.
Leah looked at the axe and swallowed subconsciously. She kept her straight face and spoke.
“Don’t be so sure that you will beat me here. I am full of surprises, you know,” she said.
“It is highly unlikely that you will even touch me, but dare to dream,” Zack said and then took a step, releasing his aura. It moved like a wave and slammed into Leah. His aura alone sent her to her knees.