As Tom crawled through the tundra, he soon noticed that the gecko was taking this extremely seriously. Because whenever he was particularly noisy or slow, he got a small taste of a tail to the face or a bit of electronic shock treatment. It felt like he had suddenly found himself in some sort of an army boot camp that was led by a sadistic trainer who couldn't find pleasure in anything else than making others suffer.

But as much as he hated to admit it, it did force him to focus on what he was doing, and it was starting to show the result as their speed started to rise, and his face got well-deserved rest from getting tail slapped.

Sometime later, they were finally starting to approach the forest, and Tom was ecstatic. He couldn't wait to move like a normal human being. And the moment they were fully inside the forest's foliage, safe from prying eyes, he stood up while stretching his body, enjoying the liberating feeling of having access to his full range of motions.

However, before he could even roll his shoulders, the gecko struck again, as it swept his feet from under him.

When he was just about to finally snap and give the gecko piece of his mind, he noticed that it was even more focused than before. It was like the whole ordeal before had just been the warmup.

The gecko's seriousness was contagious, and Tom placed a pin into his tirade.

He wanted to say to it that abusing him created a disturbance, but he also knew that it would achieve nothing else than possibly even more abuse. As how else was it supposed to communicate with him? It was at this moment that he realized that he was truly the abused pet in their relationship. The gecko was training him!

However, as the forest awaited right in front of him, he soon noticed why the gecko was being so careful. The mana was much stronger here than in the tundra. It was similar to the level he had felt roughly at the halfway point inside of the cave, and this was only the very edge of the forest.

He realized that if he hadn't spent all that time cultivating, the natural mana here would have been enough to kill him where he stood.

And then his mind jumped to the fact that the Olen's had actually managed to clear a control-point weeks ago. The realization drained all the color from him. He had spent most of his time in the Secverse cultivating, and only just now, was he able to comfortably set his foot inside of this area, and there still was an unknown way left to go before he reached any control points. Then just how far ahead were they? How could they have cultivated so fast? It didn't make any sense. Just how could they be this far ahead of them?

He could still accept the fact that they had been able to clear the areas around their cities a lot faster and claim more area there, as the monsters weren't so powerful. But this was on a completely different level.

He was full of questions, but no answers were forthcoming.

However, before he could fully sink into despair, the gecko started moving once again. And he followed right after it, not caring which one of them was leading as long as they could get some results.

Having a local as a guide was always a good idea when traveling, so why wouldn't that work in the animal kingdom? Well, monster kingdom.

The gecko clearly had a goal in a mind, as its route through the forest was as straight as possible, always heading deeper into the forest. It didn't diverge front the path even if Tom could clearly hear some sounds of other aminals about, and he even hearth one battle happening. But the gecko only momentarily stopped, listened for a while, before continuing its trek through the forest, not paying it any more mind, as if it was a completely normal occurrence, and it probably was.

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Tom was starting to get worried when he had continued crawling after the gecko for over an hour. And he was starting to get tired of the pace the gecko kept up.

However, to his relief, the forest was one loud place, to begin with, so he didn't have to perform each and every move perfectly to stay quiet. There were multiple animals making noise at once, the wind swinging the trees, bugs chirping, and so much more other noise that he was able to give himself some leeway.

As they continued forwards, Tom started feeling Deja Vu for some reason, as if he had entered a place where he had been before, but he just couldn't put his finger on it.

He had never been here, nor had he ever seen a forest like this. Sure the main concept was still the same as in any other forest, trees and other vegetation mixing together. But the trees varied so much from each other, almost like each one of them was a completely new breed of a tree, and the plants were colored in a variety of blues and purples, making the forest look colorful but gloomy at the same time.

It was almost like this place had used Earth's biomes as a concept and then thrown them into a mixer with an unknown environment. Everything look like it was recognizable as something from Earth, but at the same time alien enough to be considered a wholly new environment.

As he pushed forwards, the Deja Vu feeling didn't go away even when he had run through all the possible places where he could have run into anything from here, but he came up with nothing.

Until he finally realized what it was. He couldn't notice it as it wasn't something visual. No, the Deja Vu feeling was coming from the fact that the mana in the air was almost similar to the mana the wooden bear's core had inside of it.

And the realization didn't come a moment too soon, as the lump he was just passing by suddenly came to life. And the very next moment a wooden lion jumped at him. However, his mind had gone into overdrive the second he realized how the mana was familiar as some part of his brain started screaming of danger.

As the lion lunged at him, it seemed to him like it started moving in slow motion, his improved mind showing its value, giving him enough time to react to its approach.

He channeled mana into his whole body, speeding up his movements. Then he drew his swords in one fluid motion before the lion had closed the one meter separating them.

And just as the lion was about to bite his head off, he managed to lift the swords their flats first in front of him in a cross, stopping the lion from mauling him with hard metal standing between its maw and his head.

At the same time, he bumped his boosted legs and jumped backward borrowing the attack's momentum to aid his disengage, creating some distance between them, giving him the ability to do more than just react to the lion's attacks. And he did just that, eager to find out how much more powerful he now was. He channeled mana into his arm as the lion started closing the distance between them, but before it could attack, the swords were already swinging toward it.

Then the lion and the swords met in the air, and this time, Tom didn't run into the problem of the wood being too hard. On the contrary, before he even realized it, his swords passed through the lion's head, cutting it off in one swell swoop.

"Huh?" Was all that Tom could say, as he watched the wooden lion stop moving. His boosted arms had made short work of its tough wooden exterior.

He had ended the conflict even before the gecko managed to backtrack to help him.

He immediately started to dig for its core before his "partner" came to look for some of the spoils. He cut the head open and hurriedly took the core for himself, pretty sure that if the gecko saw it, he would be taxed for this relaxing forest tour.

It was at least twice as big as the wooden bear's core he had faced at the very beginning, and the mana it held felt much more concentrated. This gave him an actual feeling of accomplishment. The enemy he had struggled so much to defeat at the start, was now nothing special to him, even if it had been a more powerful version of it, and it had managed to ambush him.

However, nothing good can last forever, as the gecko poked its head out of the bush just in front of him, giving him the death glare, demanding him to come and stop playing around.

And Tom did just that, full of newfound motivation.