Chapter 44: Red Lizards Grey turned and looked at the youths calmly. He shifted his gaze to the one who was hurt. “Thank you for lending a hand, if it weren’t for you, we would have been in a tough spot,” the youth said again “It’s okay,” Grey said coolly. When the youths got a clear view of his face, they were stunned. The boys almost thought he was a girl, as he could almost be described using the term ‘beautiful’. The girls on the other hand were dazed, they never expected the youth who saved them to be this handsome. “What are you all doing here anyway?” Grey turned to the youth who thanked him and asked. “My name is Claude and this is Aaron, the two ladies are Nina and Tessa. And that’s Ryan” The youth introduced himself and the others before continuing, “We’re from the Idris Academy, we came out for training. We didn’t expect to be attacked by those Apes just after getting here” Claude said with a wry smile. “This is your first day here?” asked Grey. On seeing how they lacked experience, he guessed it probably might be. “Yes, we heard you can only find beasts in the Arcane Plane after passing the one hundred and fifty kilometers mark” Claude answered truthfully. “So you charged here without getting prior experience of how magical beasts fight?” Grey was puzzled by their reasoning. Since they charged straight past the mark, they should be prepared to battle beasts, or do they think the beasts would wait for it to be attacked?. Claude and the rest dropped their head in embarrassment. It was just like Grey said, after finding out beasts in the Arcane Plane were present after the one hundred and fifty kilometers mark, they charged in because they felt confident in their abilities. Clearly, they’re still lacking. “We’ll not be able to stay here longer, since we have to take Ryan back to recover,” Aaron said. “Okay then, I’ll be on my way now” Grey smiled before turning to leave. After Grey left. “We were lucky he showed up, else” Claude shuddered when he thought of what the outcome of the battle might be. “Yeah” The rest nodded in unison. They truly were thankful for Grey’s help. …. Grey was already getting close to the territory of the Red Lizards. Although not only the Lizards stay at this part of the mountain, they make up the majority of the beasts in the area. “Hmmm, I should be close now. I wonder what they want to do with the eggs of the Lizard” It was quite baffling since the person only asked for the eggs and nothing more. He soon found the first lizard’s nest, but unfortunately, even after going through a tough struggle with the Lizard, it was empty. The next nest he found, he couldn’t get close because the Lizard was already in the Mid stages of the Arcane Plane. Grey kept on searching until he finally found the right target. It was a Red Lizard in the Second stage of the Arcane Plane. Although it might be troublesome, Grey could still deal with it given his prowess. He quickly made short work of the Lizard and found only two eggs inside its nest. “One to go” Grey extracted the core from the Lizard as he kept it with the eggs. His backpack was already almost filled. Luckily, the eggs weren’t too big. They were the size of a human head, his backpack could hold them but that would be it. He had already acquired close to ten cores of beasts in the Arcane Plane and more of those in the Fusion Plane. Grey went in search of the last egg since he was required to bring back three. His experience in the mountain so far has been just as he wanted. He is now able to use his techniques faster and was also growing adept at fighting. Grey’s learning speed truly was beyond normal. That day ended without Grey seeing his target, although he got into some battles with some beasts, he was able to end it quickly. The only regret he had was that his backpack couldn’t contain all the cores from the beasts. The next morning, Grey got up and continued his search for the last egg. He soon found a nest inside a cave. “Hopefully I can get the last egg from this nest” Grey had already found some nest, but either there are no eggs or the Lizards are stronger than him. He wanted to train to be stronger, not kill himself. Once he attacks and notices the difference in strength, he’ll quickly escape to avoid injuries. Getting injured this deep in the mountain won’t be good for him since he was alone. Grey could deal with those in the Second stage of the Arcane Plane, he could hold out against those in the Third stage, but he doesn’t stand a chance against those in the Mid stages. Grey walked deeper into the cave with caution. If the lizard here is in the Mid stages, he will immediately flee the cave. When he got closer, he heaved a sigh as he saw an egg but the lizard wasn’t present. “Seems like the lizard isn’t in the cave” Grey was quick to act and quickly kept the egg in his backpack and turned towards the exit. “Hiss” Grey heard the sound of something running quickly into the cave. He raised his head to see a huge eight-meter-long lizard staring at him with vicious eyes. “Do these things place a trigger in their eggs so whenever someone touches it they will be aware?” Grey couldn’t help but ask. He thought this would be the easiest egg he would acquire but seems like it’s not the case. What was more frustrating was the fact that the lizard in front of him was already in the Fourth stage of the Arcane Plane, there was no way he could defeat it. Even defending against it was not going to be easy. The Lizard screeched and charged at him, it spat out a huge fireball that seemed to occupy most of the cave. Grey cursed his bad luck before using the Earth Wall technique to protect himself. After the fireball died down, the Lizard was shocked when it couldn’t find the human it just attacked. It screeched again and started searching for Grey. Grey was nowhere to be found.