Surprised by the sudden appearance of the magical beast, the three friends weighed their chances.

"This one is much bigger than the last turtle we found, and I bet it is also in a higher stage. We should consider retreating before we get into trouble." Nathan suggested as he looked over the beasts' corpses lying around.

"This thing is the first beast we find during this exploration, so it can't be a casualty that it is in a place like this. And judging by the corpses around, it has been defending the area for a while now, so that tree should have something special." Travis said.

"Are you suggesting that we put our lives on the line for the chance of having access to something that we don't even know what it does?" Marianne asked.

"Yes. I mean, without danger, there is no reward. That thing might be stronger than the last one, but we have the advantage in numbers, and now we also have the staffs, so I think we may be able to destroy its shell if we attack at a time." Travis said.

"What do you think about this?" Marianne asked while looking at Nathan.

"I don't think we should stay here for much longer. We should return to the academy and report the appearance of a high-stage magical beast before returning to work on our investigation." He replied sincerely, with his head down, before becoming quiet.

For the past few seconds, the turtle did its best to dig up its body completely, as its legs had been still under the earth. While it did that, Nathan observed it the whole time through his spells. Because of this, he managed to spot another symbol on the turtle's shell.

Instead of the previous one, which consisted of a diamond inside three concentric circles, this one looked at seven hexagons sticking together, creating something like a net with a shape like that of a hexagon.

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At first, Nathan couldn't fully understand if that thing was a symbol or pure coincidence, but when he saw it shine, something inside him woke up.

"We need to hunt down that thing. It doesn't just have the symbol we already know how to use, but I'm pretty sure it has another one on its shell." Nathan said decidedly.

"That's my boy. I always knew I could count on you for this situation." Travis said while laughing.

Seeing that her companions had decided to fight instead of fleeing, Marianne couldn't help but sigh.

"Ok, let's give it a try. But if we find out this is much more difficult than we thought, we will flee. With some luck, that thing would be slow enough for us to outpace it." Marianne said.

At that point, the turtle had already managed to stand up, and while the three cultivators were discussing what they should do, its shell was gathering energy from the surroundings.

"Fuck, it is already preparing to attack. We should strike before it can act." Travis said as he firmly gripped his staff.

Having charged their weapons beforehand, Travis injected a small amount of energy inside the symbol to make it release all the energy inside it.

In a few seconds, a large amount of fire-energy appeared in front of him, and while using his mind, he shaped it to create a fireball that he didn't doubt about throwing toward the beast.

Seeing this, Travis couldn't help but smile.

'Eat shit, you fucking turtle.' Travis thought.

But when the projectile was about to hit the magical beast, something happened that made Travis lose his smile.

Surrounding the turtle appeared a purple barrier against which the fireball collided, causing it to explode without impacting the beast. Even worse than that, the explosion didn't traverse the shield either, resulting in the turtle being completely unscratched after the first attack.

"What the hell was that? It didn't have enough defensive capacities that now it can create barriers?" Travis asked, completely desperately.

"But it can't create them indefinitely. We only need to continue attacking it until it dies." Nathan pointed.

"How do you know about that?" Travis asked surprisedly.

"Look at its shell," Nathan said while pointing at the beast.

Doing as he was told, Travis looked over at the turtle and realized what Nathan was talking about.

After creating the barrier, the turtle's shell had lost most of its shine.