Meera awaited the oncoming Kydar, but as she did, a thought occurred to her. So, she looked at the prince. "So, Your Highness, how would you like me to take the beast down? Through my weapons alone or my skills? Whichever you pick, that is the only thing I will use."

"You're not serious," he said, an incredulous look on his face.

"Oh, I'm quite serious. Hurry up. We don't have long."

He looked in the direction of the coming sound. Leenai was perplexed as well, enough that she left the corner she was huddling in to stand by her prince's side. A little too close, considering that the people of the opposite gender kept their distances from each other in this world. But then again, since this was the prince's personal healer, she would've seen and touched every part of the prince's body.

"Hurry up, we don't have long," Meera reminded him. "Don't you want to see what the Reverent Lady can do?"

Manazhar locked eyes with her. "I favor my weapons and would love to see what your divine weapons can do."

Meera smiled. "Oh, so you noticed. Whatever His Highness desires."

She stepped up to meet the druvis. It was almost the twin of the one that the prince had killed. Though the pattern on his leathery skin was a little different, a sort of wave-like design, and his skin was a deeper brown, like the color of wet soil.

[Kyldar Thresher – Level 321]

She swung a level 2 chakram on her finger and waited for the monster to get closer. She saw Manazhar tense, and his hand tightened on his sword's hilt.

"I got it, Your Highness," Meera said. "Just wait, please."

The Kyldar roared, and once again, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She wasn't scared, but seeing a beefed-up T-Rex-like dinosaur struck something deep in her soul like she should be scared of this monster, no matter that she was twice as strong as it.

Well, there is only one way to get over this fear.

Finally, when the Kyldar was twenty yards away, she hurled her chakram at it. She used the chakram's ability to make it bloom in size. The chakram expanded to the size of a truck's wheel and went into the monster's mouth, cutting it along the length of its body and out of the tail. It was rather gruesome as the top half of the body fell off, spilling all his organs and blood onto the ground.

Leenai gasped and cringed behind the prince, while Manazhar himself watched in awe as the chakram turned around, shrank in size, and deposited itself neatly in Meera's hand without even a speck of blood on its shiny surface.

"So, how did I do?" Meera asked.

"Quite spectacularly, I must say." Manazhar's smile slowly grew into a wide grin. "Your chakrams have the same ability as my sword. They can both grow in size and become strong enough to fell a Kyldar in one blow. Aside from the dragons, these are the strongest monsters in this world."

"I wouldn't make that bold of a statement, my prince," Meera said. "I've faced a monster that would put your Kyldar's to shame. The Glacidrak, a beast of ice that could meld into the glacial ice only to reform elsewhere completely unharmed. I thought I had killed it when I evaporated one with my fire, but then a dozen more emerged from the ice, and then I had to run. They nearly killed me."

"I see…" He said in contemplation. "That is good to know. Unfortunately, no one we know has climbed the Pale Mantle to go into the White Expanse to report back their findings. Thank you for informing me of this. I will take this knowledge into consideration."

Surprisingly, he didn't call her a liar or refute her claim about reaching the White Ember. He simply agreed. It was nice to see that in a man of his stature.

"So, are you going to finally tell me what this place is?" Meera asked, looking at the silvery door, which was most likely a portal to this jungle.

"We have some time, so why not?" He said. "Usually, there is only a pair that is hovering around the door. Since we took them down, we'll have to venture into the jungle to find more. This is the Rawaki jungle. The home of the Kyldars. This is where they reign supreme. It is, in essence, not too far from Varitsa, just a little farther north, but long enough that it would take some time by horse or any other means of conventional travel. And we've never been able to find a Gateway Mirror in this jungle. Lady Midiea didn't seem fit to place one here. I guess she didn't want this natural habitat disturbed."

"So, you created this portal." Meera knocked on the door.

"Yes, but it was the professors at the University who did so, who wanted to study the plant and animal life," Manazhar replied. "Leenai can attest to that."

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"That is correct, My Lady," Leenai said. There are all sorts of plants here that are used in medicine and other potions, along with animals whose body parts also have medicinal value. So, the university saw fit to create a portal. Though once God King Charamal, Prince Manazhar's great-grandfather, heard of it, he commissioned one to be built in the palace as well. As a sort of training room, much like how His Highness uses it."

The prince coughed. "Yes, that is the long and short of it. I come here from time to time to train, and I figured, I'm going to need it with my father's gala approaching, after which we'll be going on our trials."

Meera nodded. "Well, I'm just happy that you have something like this. I've been wanting to train for some time now. It felt like forever since I got to fight something. Though if that is how strong the Kyldar's are, then they are kind of lacking."

Manazhar snorted. "Think of them as the teenagers guarding the door. They can get so much stronger. That the overlord of the Kyldars is said to have killed adult dragons."

"I think I heard somewhere that the Druvis were cousins of the dragons, or was that just the drakes?"

"It may seem like that, but no, they are two different species entirely," Manazhar said. "Let's walk and talk, the deeper we go into the jungle, the stronger the beasts will become, and there is more than one type of Druvis here."

"Oh, I think I'm going to like this jungle," Meera grinned.

They ventured into the jungle in the same way that the Kyldars had come from. After all, they had cleared off quite a bit of the trees and vegetation for them.

"How will we find our way back?" Meera asked.

"With this." Leenai produced a glowing orb from her Hoard Belt. "This is a Wayfinder Orb attuned to the door. It glows brighter the closer we get to the door."

"That is quite handy," Meera said. "Say, if you come here to train often, then wouldn't the number of Kyldars or other Druvis just shrivel up one day?"

"See that should be true," Manazhar said. "But I've been coming here for years, but that doesn't seem to be the case. There are always two Druvis that roam around the door, as if guarding it, and then the deeper we venture into the jungle, the stronger the animals get. I usually get to level 600 before I have to turn back."

Meera raised an eyebrow. "You can kill beats that are level 600. That's impressive."

A little color came to his cheeks. "Thank you, My Lady, but I've only killed a handful of them."

"The prince is being modest, Reverent Lady," Leenai said. "Once he took on two level 500 Kyldars together and came out on top."

"That was a very close fight," He added. "They almost ripped me in two, remember." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "If you weren't there, I would never have made it back home."

She smiled as he touched his arm affectionately. In any other world, she wouldn't have found that odd, but in Ealisto, a man and woman touching like that. The way they stared longingly into each other's eyes. Meera couldn't help but wonder if there was something more between the prince and his healer.

"Shall we go find these Level 500 beasts?" Meera said, shaking the two out of their trance.

Manazhar coughed and immediately jerked his hand off her arm. "Yes, with you backing me up, it'll be easier, and I must say it'll be good for you as well."

"Oh yes, it will."

Meera figured that by now, even a level 500 monster would barely give her a level. If she really wanted to continue with her growth, she needed to find something stronger, and it looked like this jungle would provide her with all the challenge she needed.

Their next challenge came in the form of an animal that looked like a cross between a dinosaur and a wolf. It had green leathery skin with blunted scales on its back and a sharp axe-like tail, and the best part, it had a wolf-like head with sharp fangs. Meera was just amazed at the creature. It was even more fearsome than the Kyldar, though it wasn't nearly as big as it was. It stood on its four legs and was only fifteen feet in height.

[Exarion – Level 331]

"Watch out for its tail, Reverent Lady," Manazhar warned. "It swings its tail like—"

He never got to finish his warning as the Druvis demonstrated what he was trying to warn her about. The creature swung its whole body in a manner that was quite uncharacteristic of its bulk. Its tail came ripping through the shrubbery and straight for them.

Meera raised two Mirror Tower Shields and blocked the Druvis's blow. Its tail smashed through the first shield. Thanks to losing the momentum of its blow, but not the second. It's bounced off the shield, and that's all the time she needed.

She hurled her level 2 chakram, cutting off the beast's tail. Leenai flinched while Exarion squealed in pain. She teleported to her chakram and ended its misery by cutting off its head.

It was over within seconds. Meera put her chakram on her back as she turned to the prince and healer, who stared at her open-jawed.

"H-How did you do that?" Manazhar asked.

Meera shrugged. "You never asked to see my skills, and I've a feeling that by the day is done, you'll see a lot more. I'll let you have the next kill. Shall we continue?"

They ventured deeper into the jungle, but didn't encounter any other Druvis until they arrived at a clearing, after which was a long patch of flowing grass.

"We should avoid that," Manazhar said.

"Why?" Meera asked.

"A humongous snake roams in those patches, waiting to ensnare any passerby. It doesn't discriminate between animal and human," he warned. "Come, we'll find easier prey this way. We're about to enter the territory of a herd of Lumnerax."

"Lumnerax?" Meera asked.

He smirked. "Oh, you'll see."

She followed along, hoping for stronger prey. They entered what she figured was the jungle proper, where mosquitoes swarmed around any exposed part of her skin, which meant her hands, neck, and face. In minutes, she must've swatted a few dozen of them. She almost willed her armor to cover her head entirely, but didn't want to give away her armor's abilities. The prince didn't seem to be having any issues at all. This made her question whether he had a skill to repel these things. She was about to ask him how he was doing this when they came across the most dazzling creature Meera had ever seen.

It had a luminous skin which seemed to be glowing in the afternoon sun. It wasn't even that large, just over eight feet tall. It had the usual fangs and claws. The only weird thing about it was that its head was strangely human-shaped. Though its eyes were like a chameleon's, and it stood on two legs.

[Lumnerax – Level 248]

This one doesn't look so bad.

But she spoke too soon. As soon as she reached for her chakram, the Lumnerax shrieked. The trees and shrubs all around them shivered, and Meera learned what the prince meant by heard.

More than two dozen of them jumped out of the trees.

"Well, this should be fun," Meera said.

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