The Rebirth of Evelyn Knox

The Terran team that had managed to 'barely escape' from Aurora's senses before couldn't believe how bad their luck was at all.     

Even though they completely changed their course and went in the opposite direction of where the girl had flown off in, they still somehow managed to run into her!     

The poor men didn't even realize that Aurora had long since known of their existence, with their grade six concealment artifact being no better than a toy in front of her.     

She had simply decided to not let Evelyn be involved in the matter, and marked them to be captured later. She never planned to let them escape at all.     

With the vast difference in strength between them, Aurora's methods of capture were simple and direct, instantly engulfing everyone in the team in a water bubble, imploding all but the one with the leader.     

Aurora decreased the size of the leader's bubble till his head could pop out of it before looking at him curiously. "Why are you people here?"     

Of course, the Terran soldiers were known to be fiercely loyal for a reason, and the moment he was captured, the man sent a pulse of spirit power to the poison stone in his body, resulting in an instant, painless death.     

Aurora could have easily disabled the man's spirit power completely if she wanted, but his actions served just as well as an answer. "Hmph. So it was on your King's order, right? Not much of a surprise."     

Having guessed their affiliation, figuring out their purpose became much more simple. If she had still been a young student, Aurora would have surely assumed that the Terran soldiers were here just to save their prince.     

But the platinum blonde knew very well how much importance the Terran royalty placed on their descendants, and how far they could go for them, and how far they could not.     

Under normal circumstances, the Terran King should have sent missives to their academy imploring them to rescue the prince, or demanded permission to do so himself.     

Because to send in his forces into the wonderland like that could easily be mistaken as another attempt at capturing the academy, which would not be the first one from their side, and Aurora didn't think the Terrans wanted to suffer their wrath while still fighting the Lavinian Empire.     

"So… why?"     

It made no sense at all, unless the King really lost his reason for the love of his son. But that was just nonsense that Aurora refused to believe.     

"There must be something I don't know… mm, well, if anyone here should know, it might be that Prince of theirs, right?"     

Compared to these foot soldiers who might give her just half facts, if not outright lies, Craig seemed like he would be a much more reasonable person to 'question'.     

"But… finding him in this place… it won't be easy. I should probably take Evelyn back first, and then come back to check later."     

After all, the 'Wonderland of Doom' was neither small nor easy to navigate, and even stumbling upon this bunch when she first arrived with Evelyn had been nothing but a stroke of luck.     

And if she truly tried to scour through carelessly, she would have to waste her energy fighting those hegemons in the forest, and not knowing what the Terrans were up to, Aurora didn't feel like doing that at all.     

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Meanwhile, Craig had already scoured every inch of the area he thought he had heard the sounds from, but could not find even a trace of his father's forces.     

Professor Dane couldn't help but snort. "Hey, Craig, you realize I don't like walking around naked fighting these beasts for no reason, right? Don't you have any means to contact those forces of yours? I cannot believe the Prince of Terra… sigh… if only I still had my artifacts… fucking Aurora!"     

Although the Terran Prince didn't like being called out like that, he could only grit his teeth and bear with it. "Maybe I heard it wrong. It could have been just some beasts fighting among themselves… Let's go back, then."     

Only after the three of them were gone for a while did Evelyn dare to cancel her concealment and move away from her position.     

"Professor Dane and Craig, huh… Interesting, I wonder who the third man was?"     

Of course, with the existence of Professor Dane, she didn't have any thoughts of following them around to find out, because that would be as good as courting death.     

Making her way back to the spot Aurora had left her at, Evelyn didn't have to wait for long before the platinum blonde returned.     

She had been curious about Aurora's reaction for a while, and couldn't help but link it to what she had heard from Craig before. "Did you figure out what the strange thing was?"     

If it was truly some of Craig's men Aurora had sensed, perhaps there was some scheme at play that she could make use of.     

Of course, if Aurora had any intentions of letting Evelyn get involved in this matter, she wouldn't have left her there in the first place. "A minor matter, don't worry. Did you find a beast to kill?"     

The pink-haired girl nodded before taking out both of the beast corpses from her inventory. "I found these two. Not very interesting, right?"     

Aurora observed the smaller deer corpse, completely ignoring the larger wolf. "You managed to kill this thing? They are notorious for being able to sense a threat from a ridiculous distance, and escape in the blink of an eye. Not bad at all…"     

Recalling how the deer had rushed to kill her instead, Evelyn didn't know if she should be glad or not. Well, her teacher looked very impressed, so at least that wasn't a bad thing. "Is it very useful?"     

Although her system's information classified it as quite useless and normal, she would also not have known about the deer's special properties if not for Aurora, so maybe there was more to it?     

Unfortunately, her hopes were dashed as Aurora shook her head. "No, it's quite useless other than being an interesting target to chase and kill by the higher level hunters. In this forest, it's just prey that tries its best to survive."     

Just as Aurora was about to tell her she would be taking her back to the academy, the pink-haired girl smiled mysteriously. "Say, the disturbances you didn't want to tell me about, they wouldn't happen to be some men from Terrazyme, would they?"     

Aurora blinked at her student in surprise. "How did you know? You were so far away… hm, no that shouldn't be… then…"     

Evelyn would never have taken the initiative to tell Aurora about Craig under normal circumstances. After all, wouldn't she just save him if she found him? Why would Evelyn want to save her enemy like that? She wasn't stupid.     

However, the Terran Prince was clearly hatching some plot, and Aurora didn't seem pleased by the existence of the Terran forces in the forest.     

Evelyn didn't believe that a cockroach like Craig, who could survive even a clash between the two guardians and the 'Thousand Eyed God', would die by himself in this forest. Especially not now, when he had some mysterious man and a senior professor by his side.     

In this case, wasn't it just fine to snitch on him to Aurora, so he could hopefully get in some trouble? And Evelyn could get some 'good girl' points with her teacher at the same time.     

Evelyn rolled her eyes. "You wouldn't believe it, but actually, I found some people wandering around not far from here, and they were talking about some 'Terran forces' they had to reunite within the forest, so I guessed that might have been it."     

The platinum blonde frowned as she considered it for a while before nodding. Since it was too late to keep Evelyn out of it, might as well let her lead the way. "Where did you last see them? Did they spot you?"     

As expected, Evelyn shook her head. "No, I would have already broken the protection bead if that had happened. I saw them leave that way, come on."     

A few minutes later, however, they found themselves feeling lost as Aurora looked around but found nothing.     

The platinum blonde sighed. "Well, let's take you back first. I'll come back to—"     

Evelyn shook her head. "Wait, give me a minute, please?"     

She had expected that Aurora would be able to easily find the trio if she gave her the rough direction, but maybe they were using some way to block her from being able to find them.      

Evelyn didn't know how Aurora searched for them anyway, though she couldn't just retreat without trying it out with her own technique first.     

After conveying her instructions to Ruru, the little fox jumped around for a while as Aurora watched with interest.     

The biggest advantage of the 'Sacred Lake's Eternal Ripple' was that there was no limit to how far she could sense using the technique, though her spirit power consumption would scale with the radius, it was a small price to pay.     

Evelyn just hoped that she found them before her spirit power ran out.     

As for alerting any hostile targets? With a one-shot Aurora turret by her side, the pink-haired girl didn't feel worried at all.     

More and more spirit power kept flowing through Ruru's feet as the ripple spread, and only after a combined total of almost 800 spirit power was consumed did she finally find what she was looking for.     

"There!"     

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