Nar landed with a grunt, and half blind but still feeling something trying to chew through his bone, he turned with a growl rumbling past his lips. And pulling his sword out of his inventory, Nar brought it down squarely in the middle of the tygalos' forehead.

There was a moment of resistance, as the beast's HP sought to absorb the damage, but there was no blocking that kind of death blow and anger… Not at their levels at least, and warm, brown blood splattered across Nar's wet face as the blade went in and out under the beast's jaw.

The tygalos went still, and with a grunt, Nar pried open its jaw with one hand and kicked the dead weight away from his leg.

"Are you okay?"

Knees collided against his back, supporting him, and red arrows rained directly above him, peppering the foaming waters and driving a fresh tide of snapping teeth back to safety of its depths.

"Where's Teb?" Nar shouted instead. "Where's…"

An in-sapient howling reached him then, and he snapped his head in its direction. The quam held his mangled, bleeding mess of an arm with his other three, and Raf towered above him, his mighty, aura coated axe slaughtering any beast that dared approach his downed party member.

Kur was quick to arrive on the scene, holding his buckler in an attempt to provide a buffer for Jasphaer and Leta to work with. The two healers rushed in after Kur, and with Tuk's rings providing cover, they got started on the quam.

"You okay, Nar?" Jasphaer asked.

"I'm fine!" Nar grunted against the pain radiating up his leg. He had already set his aura to the task of healing him. "Don't worry about me!"

He pushed himself up, careful not to lean too much weight on his injured left leg.

"Careful! You're hurt!" Rel snapped at him from behind.

"I'm fine!" he said again.

Tys has done way worse than this, he added to himself, as he made use of his [Aura Quickening] to once again take stock of the situation. The pain that warned him of the skills overuse was a lot more subdued this time, as there had been an interval, but it was still there, a result of his double use from just a few moments ago. However, he had a bad feeling from the whole situation, and had decided in favor of using it again to get his bearings.

First of all, where's Gad? He wondered, and stabbed down on a tygalos that got too close to him and Rel, sending it scampering back to the cover of that bottomless stream.

Nar had tossed the rope to the tank, and instead, he had found its other end discarded at Rel's feet. No doubt Raf had given her a hand, which explained how they had been yanked so hard and far from the stream. However, why had the tank swapped positions with the two DPS? And why was Gad not here even now, covering the healers instead of Kur? The only explanation for that was if…

Ah, shit! Nar thought, his eyebrows raising.

A quadruped, furry beast snarled at the fight from atop a dense cluster of gnarly branches and vines, stripes glowing green and red across its lengthy body. Meanwhile, its tail, or tails, were seemingly darting up and down and slamming against Gad's shield with a clamor that had been ringing for at least a mile all around them.

Are those… Teeth on those tails? Nar wondered, flabbergasted.

There had been such a wide variety of beasts within the Brightnight that just as Professor T'Nash had told them, they hadn't been able to study and memorize them all, so he had no idea what in the damned Pile that thing was. But, at the very least, it seemed that Gad, with Mul, Jul, and Lim had the situation well at hand, and the unknown beast was already bleeding yellow from several wounds, some of its disturbing tails hanging limp from the trees too.

He also caught sight of a second darting shape in the trees, but Cen and Cor were chasing it with their quick [Aura Projectiles], preventing it from joining the fray. Row was also nearby, coordinating that second fight, with the two guides eyeing the apprentices' struggle without interfering.

Meanwhile, Tun was still doing his best to hold the main frontline, keeping the tygalos at bay with his golden shields.

Is that skill indefinite? Nar wondered, awe spreading across his accelerated mind despite the chaos they found themselves in. Though perhaps Tun's lack of offense was explained as the price the tank paid for the lengthy use of that insane defensive skill.

On the big morsvars right, Viy was a dash of mad, deep purple and blue aura, and her halberd had reaped and crushed through dozens of beasts already, which she kicked out of her way without halting her crazy combat moves to ensure she maintained a clear space to fight in.

She looks fine, and Raf is holding on the left side well enough, Nar decided, as his [Aura Quickening] faded. But these things are endless! How long can Tun last like that?

"Nar!" Kur suddenly shouted. "Can you still fight?"

"Always!"

"Great! Can you see if you can start using your [Aura Blade] in a way that doesn't get us all killed?" Kur asked, his brow tensed in thought as he scanned their cramped battlefield. "We need some AOEs in this mess, and your skill is probably the best one we can use!"

"You want me to hit the water or the frontline?" Nar asked, lifting his sword up and testing his injured leg.

Agony laced up his limb as he pushed down on it, and he grit his teeth to ignore it, even as he let go of his aura healing to continue training its self-healing autonomy. It was in the midst of this kind of desperate combat that he would make the greatest strides in his gains, and he had to persist through his training.

"The front line!" Kur answered.

"On it!"

"Be careful!" Rel shouted as he half dashed, half limped back into the fight. "I'll cover you, so focus on what you need to do!"

"Got it!"

And trusting her crimson, cursed arrows to keep him safe, he slashed his way through the herd of tygalos that had made it ashore.

Damn these greater HPs! He thought. In the past, his quick hits would've been enough to slay with impunity, but now, two thirds of those he attacked lived to become a later problem.

Relax! He told himself. You're 6 levels under the average for this zone, and the beasts in this domain are ranked close to purple! You'll get stronger! Now focus!

As Kur had laid it out, he needed to find a way to shoot off his devastating skill without slicing anyone else in half by accident.

And here's that flaw… he suddenly realized, his eyes going wide. This is what the master meant!

His [Aura Blade] was undeniably powerful, but he lacked the finesse and the control over the skill. If he could make the blade smaller, he could've used it here with much less freedom!

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But that's a worry for later! Nar thought.

"Tun! Can you move back a step?" he shouted, hoping that the tank could hear him from amongst his own personal chaos of teeth and limbs banging and scratching against his shields. "I need to use an AOE! In a straight line down the frontline!"

The morsvar didn't reply. Instead, with his lips parted in a silent, sharp toothed snarl, he allowed himself to be pushed back another step and a half, and the beasts were quick to take advantage of that extra space on the margin of the stream.

"Viy! Raf!" Nar shouted, already flooding his blade with aura, the skill ready to cleave through the battle.

"I heard you!" Viy said, already positioned out of harm's way.

"Clear!" Raf added.

And here we go!

He slashed forward, the skill coming out with a lot easier now that he had practiced it against Tys and the Master of Blades in Arena B, and a line of gray, searing light carved through the fight. A guttural, low and distorted growl deafened the fight as his skill parted the very air before it, and in its wake, a line was left, sliced straight through the brush and the mud, dead beasts left severed and unmoving along its path.

A startled silence covered the battlefield for a few heartbeats, as eyes, sapient and beast alike, went wide at the sudden destruction that had just annihilated two dozen tygalos in the space between blinking. Then, loud snaps echoed from the canopy above, and branches began falling down over the stream, startling the battle into re-igniting.

Too high… Damn it! Another flaw! Nar realized, gritting his teeth. How much aura had he just wasted cutting through trees and air? And how much more damage could he get from his [Aura Blade] if he could just focus it all on a much smaller and more powerful edge?

How did I not see this before? He wondered, already preparing another strike.

Tys and the Master of Blades had made sure that he trained the skill relentlessly, in order to ensure that it came out easier and faster, but at the moment, the best he could manage was one [Aura Blade] every five seconds. Not to mention that he couldn't just fire them one after the other without frying his pathways. Even constantly training his pathways as he had been, the best he could manage at that five second rate, was five or six [Aura Blades] before he needed to let his pathways recover.

"You've reached a limit, not for lack of ability or lack of desire, but because of a lack of capability," his master had explained to him, as he lay on the floor of his private training room, gasping as pain burned throughout his body. "Your pathways, as good as they are, have limitations. And these are different from [Mastery]. Rather than an issue with quantity, it's an issue with frequency."

"Frequency?" Nar repeated in confusion. No one had mentioned anything about that before, and his master chuckled at his deep frown.

"I can see your confusion. Apprentices don't usually run into this issue until about level 80, when their skills start to properly look like something, and so we only talk about it on a need-to-know basis, such as your case," his master said. "The issue essentially boils down to you already being able to cycle too much and too fast. You're within your [Mastery], yes, but that doesn't mean that your pathways are strong enough yet to withstand the strain of you cycling such quantities through them again, and again, and again."

"I've been fine, though?" he grunted, forcing himself into an upright position.

"[Aura Blade] and [Aura Quicking] are much more demanding skills than [Sword Aura] is, and while [Aura Quickening] is bad enough that it needs to come with a warning tag, [Aura Blade]'s limitations are more subtle, though no less deadly," his master explained. "Especially when you try to spam it like that. I think for now, until you've gained a couple more levels on your pathways, the best you can manage is a 5 second interval in between them, and even then, you shouldn't push past five or six consecutive [Aura Blades]. And understand that even with self-healing, aura pathways are not something you can easily fix yet without a healer's guidance and support."

Nar nodded, swallowing his frustration. Chuckling, his master squeezed his shoulder.

"I know it's hard. Having all that aura and not being able to use it. But paths are not built in a day. Step by step, you work on this, then you work on that… And one day, you look back and you'll be surprised to see how far you've come," he said, smiling at him. "If anything, you should know this by now. You've come a long way already since that cubeplant!"

And so, there was nothing to be done for the moment other than to keep up his training, and with a proper strategy now in place, and Rel's arrows and his [Instinct] shielding him, Nar timed his blinding attacks to keep them from being swarmed and to keep his pathways from being overwhelmed.

He briefly considered shooting the skill straight into the stream, but he had no idea how water and aura would react in such a collision, not to mention the loss of harvesting they would incur for any killed beasts underwater. So he decided against it.

But just when he thought that the situation was well in hand, his [Instinct] screamed at him in a much louder warning, and he glanced over in time to catch two bigger beasts leaping out of the water.

They deftly snaked around Rel's red arrows and rushed at him in a flash of wicked, serrated teeth, and yellow, hungry eyes glinting in the darkness of the jungle.

"Nar!" the archer cried, just in case Nar hadn't already noticed the danger.

His blade was already occupied inside another beast, who had managed to sneak up on him and get past Rel's arrows, but with a flare of [Sword Aura] and marshalling all of his [Strength], he pushed his blade upwards. Dead lifting the thrashing beast while his aura blazed through its flesh, the [Lingering Aura] effect from his [Aura Infused Strikes] ravishing the creature from within, he slammed the doomed beast against one of two incoming attackers. The other darted around him, and readied to snap at Nar's neck, when suddenly it halted in its tracks and dashed off somewhere else, headed for the rest of the party.

What the…

"I got him!" Gad shouted in his mind. "Deal with that one!"

"Got it!"

And another quick glance back told him that the others had finished one of the opportunistic, strange tailed beasts that had ambushed the domain party from behind, while Cen and Cor seemed to have forced the other one to run away, leaving a trail of destroyed branches.

"Ugh!" he grunted, and ripped his glowing blade from the insides of the now dead tygalos, and lowered his stance to face the creature that had attacked him.

"By the way, I'm pretty sure these are the alphas of this herd," Kur said. "If we kill them, this will probably end!"

Alphas? Nar thought, frowning at the beast circling him, its tail flashing in an angry promise of violence. Does that mean this beast is my first…

The alpha darted forward, halting his train of thought, and several other tygalos joined in an multi-pronged assault that surrounded him.

Tails sought to trip him, claws to slash at him, the jungle suit offering zero protection against damage, and teeth tried to close around his arms or shins to drag him down and into the waters, where the tygalos would be at an advantage. His [Instinct] was a storm of warnings around him, his brain interpreting colors, priorities, timings, vectors and many other complex meanings in the space in-between seconds. However, even relying on his [Aura Quickening] to keep from getting overwhelmed, his injured leg curbed his speed, and his blood peppered the now muddy, ravaged vegetation he stomped over.

The alpha in particular managed to rake its claws along his back more than once, eliciting grunts of frustrated anger from Nar, and the deepest of those cuts seemed to trigger some kind of infection status effect that was always quickly burned off by his raging aura. And from around him, his [Awareness] told him that the fighting had grown desperate.

With Teb downed, Jul and Mul seemed to have been forced to join the frontline, the ranged were all hands-on deck, focused on that endless surge of reptilian beasts pouring from the frothing waters. And Nar did the best he could to fight, all the while resisting the urge to push his aura to fully heal him instead of letting go of it for the self-healing training. Doing so would only net him an immediate reprieve, while the end target passive skill that he was hoping to unlock would pave the way forward for his very future and combat capabilities, so he had to hold steadfast.

Snarl, claw and teeth, and burning lines of pain whenever one of the beasts manage to score a hit on him, but Nar held, and eventually, his shin recovered enough…

With a voracious grin upon his own features, he let go of his healing efforts and threw all of his aura and focus into the fighting, and soon, the bright blade was nothing but blurs of light in the sweltering air of the dark jungle. Sprays of blood flowed after his movements, his own included, but mostly that of his enemies, and the tygalos began to drop by the score around him.

Even the alpha beast was unable to hold back Nar's healed state, and after exchanging a few more blows and exhausting the beast's HP, Nar sidestepped and thrust the blade into the side of the alpha's jaw. Placing his second hand on the grip, Nar pushed forward, and opened the beast all the way to its stomach, spilling dark brown innards all over the mud.

It was as though a switch was flipped, and all of a sudden, the tygalos were turning tail and retreating back into their stream.

DING!

Nar flicked away the notification for the moment, eyeing the retreating beasts in case they decided to attack again, but soon, there was nothing but the sound of their desperate panting and Teb's weak moans of pain in the quiet that descended upon them. Nar's head reeled as to how quickly they had gone from fighting for their lives to returning to the serene, birdsong filled and glowing jungle.

"So, how was that first fight?" Sej asked in the silence, seemingly unbothered by Teb's injuries.

Still heaving, Nar glanced at the disturbed surface of the water, as it too slowly returned to its peaceful, and smooth previous appearance.

"This place is mental," Jaz whispered. "Holy shit…"

Nar could only nod in stunned agreement, as water and blood still dropped down his jungle suit. It had only been two hours since they'd entered the jungle!

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