The crunch of leaves caused many to turn their heads.
General Pennel was the first to react, and when he suddenly saw that it was Theron, his eyes couldn't help but widen.
The Tribulation had ended long ago, but no one would be foolish enough to just approach a location a Runebound Mana Beast could have been born from. As such, they were still watching from a distance, waiting to see if something would change when Theron suddenly appeared.
"Sorry, everyone," Theron said with a light smile. "I hope no one was worried about me."
The silence was deafening.
Theron just rode in on the back of the Alpha, a light smile on his face as though he didn't realize that his appearance here made little to no sense at all.
General Pennel's surprise slowly turned cold. He looked at Theron, and then down to the Alpha he rode.
He didn't recognize the Alpha at all. It looked nothing like a Lightning Blood Hound would. Plus, taking advantage of the tunnels, Theron had come out from a completely different direction than the Tribulation.
After the Tribulation, the formation that the Sangun Clan had set up was destroyed, so going through the tunnels was easy. Theron had been able to easily find an escape plan they crafted and took advantage of it, exiting from a location far further away than the one he had entered from.
General Pennel didn't seem to realize that the Alpha wasn't looking at him because it didn't see him as a threat in the first place.
"… How did you tame a beast? You are not a Spirit Mancer." General Pennel chose to lead with this question, but the geniuses around him were sharp. How could they not sense the favoritism?
There was no question of desertion, no questioning about where Theron had been, but instead a question of how he had gained something while they were all fighting for their lives against the Thistles?
"Tame?" Theron shrugged. "It chose to follow me on its own. I didn't really do much but save it."
General Pennel's eyes narrowed. This wasn't entirely uncommon, but usually the beast would have to be quite intelligent, which meant that it couldn't be a feral beast…
But nothing about this creature screamed Mana Beast either.
What General Pennel didn't know was that this was a result of the Alpha's unique mutation. Not only was a Runebound Beast something the General had no familiarity with, but he also had no experience with this so-called Blood Mana.
The Mana too easily blended into the Alpha's Life Mana, making it look as though it was a normal creature, a feral beast.
Theron's smile never faded. But he did look up and sweep his gaze over everyone present.
"I'm glad that so many survived as well. It got really dicey there for a moment."
Gengh and Shah gave Theron a cold glare, as did the two remaining military stream students. They were still nursing injuries from their battle with the Thistles, and General Pennel seemed to have no intention of retreating even after all of this. So how could they not be discontent?
Theron looked better than he ever had before, almost as though he had just been lounging somewhere.
None of them even considered how Theron might have escaped the Mist in the first place.
The only one looking at Theron with more curiosity than anything else was Aliza. Her head tilted to the side, looking him up and down with a calm intent in her eyes.
Her gaze fell to the wolf, and she couldn't help but frown. It wasn't that she could sense something, but she was the smartest of the young scholars here aside from Theron himself.
This was not only a species that she didn't recognize, but there were no comps to be found in this region.
Theron was definitely hiding something.
"Did you see anything odd?" General Pennel asked.
"I did." Theron nodded.
"There was a very large beast that appeared suddenly. It was a Water Mancy Mana Beast, though I'm not sure of which level. Back when the Mist descended, I ended up stumbling near the river and found it stagnated and filled with a dense, poison-like air. If I had to speculate, I'd say that this infuriated a Mana Beast that was downstream.
"I got there just as it killed the Mist Mancer in a fury and had no choice but to run."
"… Why would you have to run?"
Theron gave General Pennel a weird look. "It was a Mana Beast capable of killing a Gold Mancer. Mist Mancer or not, what chance did I stand against that?"
"It was a water-anchored creature."
"And I was right next to the river."
"So you couldn't run away from the river? You had to run away from the battlefield itself?"
Theron shook his head. "You don't understand. The creature swallowed the Mist Mancer."
General Pennel was about to lose his temper, just there sitting on the cusp of it. But then his pupils constricted.
He ran through a plausible scenario in his head and all of a sudden, he looked toward where the Tribulation clouds had been.
Theron didn't even need to say much more. Sometimes, the best lies were told to one by themselves.
If the creature that could kill a Gold Mancer was Quasi-Silver, then it was certainly a Mana Beast of great strength. And if a creature swallowed poison that it couldn't withstand, it would either die… or it would evolve to contend with it.
The trouble was… why did a water-anchored beast trigger a Tribulation in what was the middle of the forest, so far from the river?
General Pennel no longer held back his Third Eye, sweeping it over…
Only to find the entire cave system flooded.
Not only was it flooded, but the Water Mancy beast was gone…
Along with all the Blood Crystals.
His face paled considerably.