"Wait, are you for real?"

Uriel stared at me wide-eyed as I followed with the rest of the group selected for the expedition part of today.

"Hmm?" I turned my head to the man, looking at him with fleeting curiosity.

Still, right now?

There were more important things for me to pay attention to than this guy's surprise.

"I never expected you would be coming with us," Uriel said, his face twisting with a sense of unease. "I mean…" he then looked over the group of twelve adventurers, himself, me and the Saintess.

It was roughly half of my group that was better with swords than they were with tools.

And Uriel, as the only genuine high-ranking adventurer, likely spoke for them all.

"Isn't this part of the job why you hired us to begin with?"

The doubt in the man's voice was clear.

Right now, though?

Right now, Selia confidently marched towards the jungle's edge, her eyes darting all around in search for its guardian beast.

As it often happened, its current iteration masked itself so perfectly well, I could feel Selia's dissatisfaction through our bond.

Not an anxiety over the enemy hiding somewhere around.

But a dissatisfaction that she couldn't easily see through its camouflage.

"And if I don't go, who will explain what you guys are to do over there?" I spared Uriel just a whisker of my attention before driving my eyes right back to Selia, watching as she marched through the guardian beast's domain.

Then… I sensed it.

A faint change of the air.

Selia ahead felt it too, stopping where she stood and looking around.

She wasn't here to play.

Her sword was already out, dangling comfortably in her hand. Somehow, the sword's weight helped to balance Selia's steps to the point she almost appeared to be floating as she shifted over the terrain.

"Get ready."

The plan for today wasn't just for Selia to slay the beast.

If it was only that much, I wouldn't be half as worried.

Influenced by my way of thinking, Selia decided that it was finally the time to do more about this beast than just killing it.

First, she was going to study it. And only once she was done, she would allow Uriel into the jungle's perimeter, within the realm of the beast, so that he could get his first real taste of fighting this constantly evolving monster.

Then, it happened.

A patch of perfectly flat land suddenly burst open, shards of rock and earth shooting through the air in every direction while a mist of smoke created a thick cloud that hid whatever emerged from the ruptured ground.

Selia twisted her body at her hips, turning to face the direction of the commotion.

A single swing of her sword sent all the earthly projectiles veering off course, thus creating a cone of area unaffected by the explosive barrage.

The smoke rising from where the explosion happened twisted and turned…

And then, it emerged.

Nothing like the beasts Selia last fought, back during our last trip to the jungle.

It was far smaller, appearing like a weird mix of scorpion and a horse, where the former gave the shape while the latter decided what this shape was made out of.

Instead of a scorpion's tail, the beast sported a long, wriggling snake with hollowed-out, bloody eyes right on top of its crown and two long, black-ooze-dripping fangs.

At the front of its body, there was a swinging upper body of a caricature clearly made to resemble a human.

Its anatomy was all wrong, though, with its arms far too massive and weighty to be attached to a relatively frail corpus.

'It's a fucking chimera…' I gritted my teeth, recognizing the grotesque shape of this monster.

Not an exact replica of the earthly mythos from my past, past life, but… still!

And the monster didn't wait to waste its window of opportunity.

It leaped out of the smoke at a worrying speed, its massive arms already swinging at brutal speeds while the snake part of it surged from behind, ready to sink its dark-ooze-dripping fangs into Selia's frail body.

I almost closed my eyes.

Almost.

On one hand, I just couldn't watch it.

Selia was a soldier, alright. A saint of the sword. The importance of that title to her I already came to properly understand.

Fighting was in her blood.

I could see it in her eyes, sparking as the monster charged her down.

I could feel it in our bond, currently trembling with anticipation and some deep, primal force that drove this girl.

A force so deeply ingrained into her own nature, it made all the hair on my body rise.

Like a roar of a primal predator, it awakened something in me. Stirred something deep at the bottom of my very nature of a man, something that the great inventions of my ancestors made them too comfortable to preserve.

A gene that rarely surfaced in the chosen ones who could awaken to their true potential of their bodies, unrestrained by the limiters evolution gave us for our own good. And just like a mother lifting a tree to save her child trapped underneath it…

The monster into Selia, smashing both of its arms in a brutal assault of her frail body.

Two of its horse-like legs on each side of its scorpion-like body shot up, merging mid-move and turning into jagged bones of claws.

The beast struck with its arms down. Right when it started to pull them back up, however, it snapped its newfound claws down on Selia, shooting them through the air with the clear intention of using the sharp edges of its jagged bone-blades to slice through Selia's soft skin.

Then, Selia's surroundings exploded right as our bond suddenly flared up.

In that single instant, an infinite amount of information flowed through my brain, paralyzing my body, dulling my mind.

An exhilarating excitement of Selia unleashing her full force and just blasting it off into the air was so strong, I felt like dying, orgasming and shitting myself at the same time, all the while my body trembled under the relentless assaults of this intoxicating pleasure.

This wasn't just arousal, excitement or even an awakening to one's most primal instincts buried deep beneath a human sense of society and civilization.

It was all of those things at once.

And even though it was merely a reflection of what Selia felt the moment she fully removed all of her limiters and pretty much squashed the monster with just the sheer pressure of her might…

I still felt it.

The sense of raw power coursing through her hands, itching to get out, pressing to get used.

A power that Selia released for but a moment, before reeling it all back in.

It was only then that I realized that in this unnatural excitement, I literally forgot how to breathe.

Then, I shook my head and raised myself up before casting a quick glance over to Uriel.

"Now. Go."

Up ahead, Selia stood in silence over the wretched body of the chimera monster.

She didn't rush to finish it off, but instead stared at its mangled insides hanging out from what turned out to be largely chitinous shell.

In a sense, she admired the gore of her own making.

In reality, however, she was judging it.

Learning all she could about the monster, how it bled, how its organs were arranged, what was the general flow and logic of its design.

Anything she could gleam from what should be the monster's remains yet continued to be a still alive mass of its mangled flesh, she would.

Because she was done just killing those beasts.

Now, Selia wanted to figure them out so that she could stop them from coming after people, rather than fighting them off every time they did!

Hearing my command, Uriel didn't wait.

He rushed ahead, pulling his weapon out while sprinting over to where Selia stood.

And even though the Saintess continued to observe the monster with livid interest, she forgot to take one thing into account.

Uriel was the group's high-ranking adventurer despite his relatively young age… for a reason.

It took more than just practice and training to get to that level. To get to where he was, one needed talent or instincts… or, preferably, both of those things.

And for him to climb as far as he did, Uriel wasn't the one to be taking chances.

"…"

He didn't announce his arrival. He gave the monster no hint of his approach.

Yet, the moment Selia turned her eyes to check the movement out, the monster's body twitched.

Then, its snake of a tail shot up from the otherwise devastated pile of flesh!

Was it working on a parasitic level, like a worm sticking out from the host it infested? Or maybe there was some other trick at play?

Either way, Uriel had no time to consider those complicated things. All he could do was to lean to the back before falling into a slide and dodging the snake's blackened teeth by a hair's width.

"Do you need help… or?"

Uriel, who was clearly intent on slaying the monster in one, unannounced and practically perfect strike, all so that it couldn't execute some sort of surprise, revenge attack… nearly fell prey to it just now, the monster falling short by a really narrow margin.

And even with the Saintess here, if those blackened teeth were to sink into his flesh, Uriel's chances of survival would be…

"No."

Taking a deep breath, Uriel rose back up to his feet and turned, facing the snake that was already charging right back at him.

This time, however, Uriel showed no emotion, calmly setting himself in a stance as he watched the monster approach, all under Selia's watchful stare that she threw at the two while holding her arms crossed over her chest.

"Then, show me… No," Selia shook her head before nodding her chin back towards the rest of our group.

"Show everyone that you are capable of keeping them safe."

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