"Where are you all going?" Reina curiously tilted her head and asked as she watched Keith, Kiara, Minami, Iseul, and Yingying all dressed in black and wearing boots.
Amira and Kashish too were giving them a curious glance, and the latter was frowning as well as she found Yingying wearing her sword and Iseul carrying a backpack.
"We are going out to train." Keith smiled at the younger of the twins and gently patted her head. "It might get late, so, don't wait on us for dinner after 9. Okay?"
"Yes, Brother." She obediently nodded her head, and when he looked at Amira and Kashish, they both nodded as well.
Even though the daughter of the Mir Family did not buy his words, she wisely kept quiet.
The five of them left right after lunch, and instead of taking their cars, they ran into the woods next to their mansion, on the bank of Lake Orisis.
All of them covered their bodies in their Aura Coats, and then their speeds gained a sudden boost as they pushed it.
They were not going all out, which was why they had not summoned their Aura Souls Avatars, but their speed was still outrageous enough to only leave behind blurs of amethyst, silver, azure, red, and grey.
Crossing the water, the quintet started moving away from Griffin City, towards the faraway mountains across the Zenza Forest.
The journey to their destination, which was several hundred kilometres away, took them almost three hours to reach. And since the days had started becoming shorter, nightfall was only an hour away now.
"Let's take a break here." Keith stopped inside a small clearing, atop a hill, and then turned to look at the girls. "Recover." He ordered and they all nodded at him before sitting down and utilising the One-Fold Heart Pulse to recover the Aura they had expended on their journey.
It only took them a few minutes before they were back on their feet, and they curiously watched Keith as he stood in his spot with his eyes closed.
Minami too followed his lead by scanning the surroundings with her heightened senses, and she also controlled all the nearby animals to scout the vicinity
When she opened her eyes, she found Keith smiling at her, and then they both nodded to each other before he turned to look at the rest of the girls.
"We are very close to the Wislaw Family's compound." He informed them. "You have twenty-one targets. Eight of them are at the peak of the Spirit Profound Realm, six are in the Late Stage, three are in the Middle Stage, and four of them are in the Early Stage of the Realm. Eighteen Males and three Females. Understood?"
"Yes." Iseul and Yingying answered him, and Kiara resolutely nodded her head, a little anxious about their expedition.
"You will deal with the three Grand Elders who are in the Primal Desolation Realm." He turned to look at Minami and gave her the task that baffled the other three girls.
Kiara was a little worried about her sister, but seeing her unhesitatingly nod her head, she did not step forward to offer to go with her.
Keith had already made it clear to them last night that he would not be participating in the battle and instead would be making sure that no one interfered with their fights.
Their goal was to take out the Head of the Wislaw Family, all their Grand Elders, and the most respected Elders who were staunch supporters of the Head.
Once these people were gone, the Wislaw Family would fall into a struggle for survival and would isolate themselves from the world to recover their power. The loss of their main force was bound to make them vulnerable for decades to come, and if they were unlucky enough, their enemies would not miss the chance to eradicate them if they learned about their miserable state.
For the next hour, Keith carefully influenced hundreds of people in the Wislaw Family compound to move further away into their territory.
When the sky finally darkened, he signalled to Iseul, who immediately nodded to him and then led Yingying and Kiara to the northern side of the compound where the most powerful Elder of the Wislaw Family lived.
Iseul entered the house first, and soon sounds of an intense battle started emanating from inside, the walls cracked and eventually crumbled when a yellow stag clashed against a grey raven.
Inside the Yellow Stag Avatar was an old man, seemingly in his late fifties, and he was alarmed to the extreme as he found himself hard-pressed against a girl, who seemed to only be in her early twenties and wore a harmless smile.
However, when he looked into her eyes, he felt chills up her spine as they seemed eerily sinister.
"Who are you?" He grimly asked, but immediately backed off when the girl, surrounded by her Grey Raven Avatar, rushed at him again, conjuring up an Aura Blade in her hand.
He hastily created a sword as well, not betting on his Aura Soul to block her sword completely, and then their battle escalated as the old man fought for his life.
A couple of their targets lived nearby, and the battle was bound to attract them to the location that was planned to be their final resting ground.
As expected, only a couple of minutes later, three more Elders at the Peak of Spirit Profound Realm arrived at the location, and Yingying and Kiara immediately summoned their Aura Souls as they blocked them and engaged them in a battle.
Iseul seemed to have been waiting for their arrival as she suddenly became more ferocious in her attacks, and a few seconds later, a wail rose to the night sky when the old man had his left arm severed from his shoulder.
"Maul!" Another old man, who was engaged in a battle with Yingying, cried out his name in alarm, and when he tried to disengage and rush to rescue Marius from Iseul's hands, it proved to be the final mistake of her life.
All of a sudden, Yingying pushed away the middle-aged man who tried to block her and then appeared in front of the old man, who was disengaging the battle, at a speed that baffled him.
The old man did not even understand what happened, and his eyes remained wide open even after his head was cleanly decapitated by the young girl.
The two old men fell one after the other, and the remaining realised that only death awaited them.
They tried to make a run for it, but Kiara surprised them with her outrageously superior speed.
She was even faster than Yingying and Iseul despite only being in the Early Stage of Spirit Profound Realm, and with one swift kick, she sent the middle-aged man flying in the direction of Yingying, whose sword cut past his Aura Shields and divided him into two.
The fate of the fourth Elder was even more miserable.
He heard his companion get killed, and the next instant, he found a young girl standing in front of him, shrouded in her Aura Soul Avatar that was an Azure Fox.
She was ethereally beautiful, but all the man saw was his death in her dark blue eyes.
A barrage of Aura-Laced claws and Fists started chopping off his Aura Soul, and in a matter of a minute, the girl had her hand impaled right into his chest, destroying his heart.
Yingying narrowed her eyes a little when she watched Kiara kill her enemy without any hesitation. And even after her first kill, there was no trace of any discomfort or uneasiness in her expression.
She was totally indifferent, and when their eyes met, it sent chills up her spine for an unknown reason. She had felt the same constriction in Keith, Venessa, and Minami's presence, and now she could feel Kiara oozing it as well.
"Let's move." Iseul suddenly spoke, breaking Yingying out of her trance. "Our next targets are two miles away in the North." She was off once she finished her words, and both Kiara and Yingying caught up with her, following her lead.
"There are seven of them."
"Okay." Iseul heard Keith's words from the earpiece and then informed the girls behind her about how many targets they might end up facing at once.
Miles away from their location, in the west, Minami arrived outside a cottage and then created a large water serpent that crashed right into it, destroying it, and waking up the man who was meditating inside.
Water rained on the crashed cottage, where a tall middle-aged man emerged from under the rubble, protected by his Aura Soul which happened to be a green tiger.
"You have picked a bad day to die, little Esper." He was raged, and his words contained no mercy.
He was visibly alarmed too, obviously by the fact that he waited for her to respond instead of rushing at her, not underestimating her.
Minami remained indifferent to his words and seeing him not rush forward, she wasted no time as she summoned her Aura Soul, a gorgeous silver fox, and then rushed right at him, intending to finish him up as soon as possible.
"I have directed your second target to your location. He will arrive there in a minute."
She heard Keith's words thanks to her heightened senses and nodded in acknowledgement, an action that confused her opponent. But the man did not get any time to fret over it because as soon as their Aura Soul Avatars clashed against each other, he realised that it was his last day in the world of the living.
