The group decided to run where they came from, trying to find shelter along the way, but saw nothing. The noise became quiet for a second, which made Adam stop in his tracks, then, through a chain reaction, everyone stopped, but the cat whimpered.

"We have to keep moving," Nova said, looking at the cat. "We can't stop now. Whatever is coming towards us is just trying to lure us in; we can't fall for it. We're better than that."

"I agree, sorry for disrupting the motion," Adam said, though Nova didn't mind. He would have done the same thing if the cat-like creature hadn't been there.

"Alright, let's keep moving. Whatever that thing is, it's clearly out of our rank, so let's try not to injure ourselves and be trapped in this realm, which we don't even know thoroughly about."

Everyone nodded, running away. The guttural noise had stopped, but the cat grew more scared, trying to escape Nova's grasp, but halted itself as it realized that it was still in the clear, but not for long.

Nova, realizing this, grew more nervous. His cold demeanor had whithered away the second he heard the guttural snarl. He realized that the cat-like creature wasn't composed at all, which meant that the monster that had made that guttural snarl was still on their tail, though hidden.

As they ran, they found a place to hide, among a thick patch of grass that expanded a couple of miles. They camouflaged themselves in the thick patch, and Nova noticed that the cat was more composed. So, they kept moving through the thick patch, and as they were moving through, the cat was calmer and relaxed.

Nova had a bright smile, realizing they had just avoided imminent danger, without anyone being hurt or anything bad happening. As they leaped through the other end of the thick patch of grass, the cat was still composed.

But the second they were an inch away, the cat quivered uncontrollably, leaping out of Nova's arms, and running away, into the patch. Nova was confused, as the cat was just calm, but like the derivative of an absolute value function, at the origin, it changed its expression instantly.

Then, the monster appeared in front of them. It was an Absyalling, a monster Nova had read about in some books in the library. The descriptions of the creature weren't at all identical to the real thing.

The Absyalling was a creature that seemed to warp the air around it, shiver the air around it, into unnatural distortions and ripples that made even the strongest of Adventurers quiver at just its mere presence.

It was a towering beast twice the height of a normal human from the Netherlands, who was a male. Its body was a contortion between a shifting mass of shadows and cruel sinew, with jagged, extremely rough, almost crystalline protrusions jutting from its shoulders and spine.

Its skin was a dark, oily black that absorbed light, like a black hole, giving it an outline that seemed to flicker in and out of perception.

Its head was elongated and slightly angular, with no visible eyes at first glance, only faint indentations where eyes might have been. But when it focused on something, Nova, for instance, deep fiery glows emerged, illuminating its mouth, which was full of needle-like teeth, with a bite force that could shatter the solar system if it wanted to.

Its limbs were disproportionate, with long, spindly arms ending in clawed hands that seemed too large for it, yet it moved so symmetric and perfectly that it felt fictional, and it moved with such precision that it was terrifying.

A low, guttural vibration echoed from its chest, almost like a resonance that made the ground quiver slightly with every step. It moved with an uncanny fluidity. Each limb was slicing through the air as if it were a high-Reynolds-number flow, the surrounding atmosphere rippling in turbulent eddies around its elongated form.

The shadows that clung to its body behaved like a non-Newtonian fluid, thickening and stretching unpredictably as it shifted, giving the impression that the creature itself was part of the surrounding, rather than separate from it.

Even the distortion in the air around it seemed to obey principles of laminar-to-turbulent transition, bending and twisting like a fluid encountering an obstacle too massive to ignore.

Most unsettling of all was its aura, a palpable sense of predatory intelligence, something that was expected since it was the highest form of all monsters in The Expanse layer of Beastaria, or in the outer layer of Beastaria.

The Absyalling screamed a dark melody which made everyone's knees buckle, their entire body shake uncontrollably as Nova, especially him, felt an uncontroable urge to, for some unknown reason, fight the monster, even though he knew he was nowhere near the creature's prowess.

Suddenly, the Absyalling shifted its focus from the group to another nearby creature, darting towards it instantly. The nearest triple-evolved creature was about a couple of light-years away, and the Absyalling hunted only powerful creatures, so it lost interest when it saw the American guild.

Nova was relieved that the Absyalling had left, and in the distance saw a random checkpoint, a teleporter to exist Beastaria, and instantly nodded to the others in that direction. They all ran towards, Nova taking the front as always.

But just as they ran towards it, the Absyalling came back screeching at them. It made all of them shake uncontrollably, but Nova resisted the urge and didn't want to express his fear, sealing all his fear in. It was time for him to "lock in."

"I will distract it," Nova said, as he moved his hand from one direction to the next, where the Absyalling tracked only his hand. "It seems to be reacting to me only. It could be because I'm the highest-ranked in the group, so it only goes for me. So, you guys escape, as I defend against it. And like a hero, I will make a last-second comeback, and we can all happily forget about this."

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