"Is this the place?" Athena asked as she looked down at the empty street below.

Currently, she was flying above the shattered avenue, while Cedric was crouched on a crumbling stone ledge nearby. According to him, they had arrived at one of the nests of monsters, but as she looked around, she couldn’t see any signs of life, which was why she had this confused look on her face.

All she could see were fragments of broken masonry and large rocks, some as massive as carriages, scattered across the ruined avenue.

There was also random debris, like the head of a massive statue the size of a small house, a fractured marble obelisk, a monolithic stone sarcophagus, and a cathedral’s bell tower, half-buried in the cracked earth.

After a few seconds of impatience, Athena looked at her master questioningly and finally muttered, "But I don’t see any monsters here though."

Instead of answering, Cedric remained quiet and continued studying the area in front of him, casually counting from one to thirty in his head. At the same time, he rubbed his chest, or more accurately, his beautiful heart.

When he was done, he exhaled deeply. Then he reached to his side and picked up a long piece of rusted rebar that he had salvaged along their way.

He tested the weight in his hand as he straightened, then said in a low voice, "Listen here, Athena. There are three things you need to learn in this hunt that will help you in the near future. The first is that not everything you see is true, and appearances might not be reality."

He paused and didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

Not far from him, Athena, who was now dying of curiosity, asked, "What’s the second?"

Cedric smiled behind his mask, then replied, "I’ll tell you when it’s time."

He raised the rebar and aimed it at the head of the giant stone statue. Then, he twisted his torso and wound his arm back.

"I see you!" he suddenly yelled. "So stop hiding!"

With all the energy he could muster, he launched the rebar.

It tore through the air, whistling sharply with deadly momentum until it finally struck the stone face right near its eye, causing web-like cracks to spider-web across the ancient visage.

Cedric then unsheathed his nodachi and waited.

A tense second passed... then another... and another...

And then, the statue split in two like an egg, revealing a ghastly figure nested inside that suddenly let out a piercing scream.

"There you are!" Cedric grinned.

As it turned out, the statue was not a statue at all, but an exterior shell meant to camouflage the terrifying creature. Now that it had been broken open, the creature stood up on thick, shadow-black legs, and the exterior shell shifted into a carapace that shielded most of its massive arms and back.

Its long, pale torso was emaciated, and a head that perfectly resembled an aye-aye rested on top of it.

As the creature screamed, a black mass of shadow began to spew out of its mouth, gathering into a dense, volatile sphere.

"See?" Cedric yelled as he leapt away from the ledge.

Just then, the black mass of darkness, which had compressed to the size of a large ball, shot out in a straight beam toward the ledge where Cedric had been standing, smashing the ancient stone into powder. The explosive blast, which did not lose momentum, was suddenly cut through by Cedric’s voice rising above the roar of destruction.

"Remember, leave most of the final kills to me!"

Now, on the ground, Cedric ran toward the creature with his blade held to the side. However, the beam of darkness did not stop. As the creature turned its head toward the approaching ronin, the destructive torrent of energy tracked him, crashing down along the street.

But just before the dark energy slammed into the ronin, he vanished in a flurry of black feathers.

Of course, his approach had been a mere distraction. Because the monster had been so focused on incinerating him, it failed to notice Athena descending from its blind spot.

Her shield crashed into the side of the creature’s head like a runaway boulder, and the brutal impact sent it stumbling sideways several steps as it let out a screech of agony.

However, it seemed that Athena’s brute force was not enough to send this massive creature to the ground. In barely a few seconds, the beast stabilized its footing, snapped its head toward her, and fired another beam straight from its maw.

Athena raised her shield to block the torrent, but at the last second, her battle instincts warned her that attempting to block it would be fatal. Changing her mind mid-air, she arched her back sharply, letting the beam fly mere inches over her instead.

’I don’t think that can be blocked!’ she thought as she dove at high speed to avoid the beam now chasing her.

While the creature was hyper-focused on suppressing her, the ronin, who had now reached the monster from behind, leapt onto a nearby fragment of broken masonry. Using the height to vault himself into the air, he spun and slashed the exposed, gaunt head of the creature in two. The upper half of its skull sheared away, spraying dark fluid into the air.

Cedric then landed on the ground in a low, crouched stance. The massive beast swayed unsteadily before finally toppling over with a crash that shook the surrounding ruins.

Just then, Cedric’s eyes darted to see the notification that had popped up upon the creature’s death.

[EXP: +480]

’Four hundred and eighty?’

He arched a brow.

But before he could process the reward, his Beautiful Heart began to beat frantically on its own, and he suddenly felt several malicious intents locking onto them from all sides. These intents were all dripping with a hunger to kill him and his summon.

He spun his gaze to Athena, who was walking toward him with her attention still fixed on the monster’s corpse.

Then he barked a warning. "Lesson number two. Don’t rely on just your eyes. Keep all your senses active and be nimble on your feet!"

Suddenly, a light tremor rippled through the cobblestone streets. Athena’s eyes slowly began to widen as she looked down at the moving earth.

In that instant, a massive, ring-shaped chasm split open directly around her, revealing a massive maw lined with rows of jagged teeth emerging from the ground below. It happened so quickly that Athena would have been swallowed whole had she not reacted instinctively to his voice.

She leapt into the air with all the speed she could muster, her wings flaring violently. Just as her boots left the cobblestones, the massive maw fully emerged and snapped shut, missing her by a mere fraction of an inch as the air boomed with a deafening crunch.