The two moved out, abandoning their cautious pace for a relentless advance.

The transition to active combat was seamless as well.

They fought back to back, with Soren taking the point, his spear keeping the Drakelings at bay with precise thrusts, sweeps, and blocks. Ryan acted as the finisher, his blade flashing with surgical precision.

But they didn’t go all out, as recklessness in such a place was a death sentence. They fought with a cold, calculated efficiency instead.

As time passed, the friction between their styles vanished almost entirely.

Soren no longer needed to shout commands because a simple shift in his stance told Ryan exactly where the next opening would be. Ryan, in turn, learned to read the rhythm of Soren’s spear, stepping into the gaps to deliver lethal blows to exposed throats.

With every skirmish, Ryan’s movements became more fluid. The slight clunkiness that had hindered his footwork earlier was gone, replaced by a predatory grace as his body and mind finally synchronized with his new power. It was as if his physical form was finally catching up to the explosive growth of his mana core and mentality.

By the end of the second hour, their coordination reached a frightening level. What had previously taken minutes of back-and-forth struggle now took seconds. They had cut their clear time by half, dismantling entire packs in a flurry of silver and gold light.

Surprisingly, Soren never let a corpse go to waste.

"Loot the cores and the scales," Soren said after every fight. "We’re taking everything."

Ryan didn’t question the command. He moved with practiced speed, harvesting obsidian scales and mana crystals. While Ryan thought of them as valuable loot, Soren was already calculating their real ’worth’. They would be important once they returned to the real world.

After two more hours of trekking, the trees finally began to thin.

They stepped into a vast, open clearing that marked the forest’s center.

In the middle of the space stood a massive, monolithic structure made of bone-white stone that pulsed with a rhythmic, golden light. Surrounding it were hundreds of Drakelings, and at the very top of the monolith sat a creature that made the others look like mere hatchlings.

Soren came to a halt, his eyes narrowing as he gripped his spear. "Looks like we found our target."

Ryan stood beside him, breathing heavily but with a gaze that remained sharp. "And the conditions for leaving just became much clearer."

The two retreated slightly, sticking to the edge of the thinning tree line to stay out of the direct line of sight of the hundreds of yellow eyes. Thankfully, their sense of smell wasn’t that great.

"That’s a lot of targets," Ryan whispered, glancing at the bone-white monolith and the massive creature perched atop it. "Supervisor, do we need to destroy that thing to get out? It feels like the center of everything here."

Soren didn’t answer immediately. "Wait a moment."

He narrowed his eyes, focusing his Investor’s Insight on the structure. After a long minute, Soren blinked, the strain of the high-level analysis making his head throb. He turned back to Ryan, his expression shifting from calculation to a grim sort of resolve.

"I think I have an idea of what we’re looking at," Soren said.

Ryan looked at him expectantly, his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword. "Is it something we can bypass?"

Soren let out a short, bitter smile. He looked back at the clearing, then at the sheer density of the obsidian horde between them and the monolith.

"No bypassing this time," Soren said, his voice dropping an octave. "It seems we have to kill that big guy at the top to get out. But..."

Ryan followed his gaze to the giant drake, watching the dark smoke curl from its nostrils.

"...We have to go through all of them just to get to him." He finished Soren’s sentence.

"Mm..." Soren nodded in affirmation. "The good thing is, that guy seems unable to focus on us right now. It is probably undergoing a breakthrough or something similar, which is why so many of its kin are here. They are its living shield."

He paused, watching the rhythmic flare of the monolith. "But if we don’t hurry, and if it finishes whatever it is going through, our last hope will vanish. A successful evolution would put it far beyond our reach."

"You mean..." Ryan didn’t pull his gaze away from the clearing. "...we have a chance to defeat it in this form?"

Soren hesitated, his grip shifting on the shaft of his spear.

"I hope so," he muttered.

He looked over at Ryan, expecting to see the pale face of a teenager realizing they were about to dive into a suicide mission. Instead, he found the boy looking at the horde with a cold, analytical intensity. Ryan wasn’t shaking at all. He was actually considering the distance, the numbers, and the angles of attack as if he were simply solving a difficult puzzle.

’Guess I worried too much,’ Soren thought. The kid was ready. Perhaps more than him.

"Alright," Soren said, his voice regaining its decisiveness. "Let’s plan. We aren’t going to dive into the center of that mess. If they surround us, we’re dead."

He pointed toward a slight elevation near the edge of the clearing where the bone-white trees were densest. "We move along the perimeter first. We need to draw them out in waves, not all at once. Ryan, your job is to keep the path behind us clear. I’ll take the lead and break their momentum."

"And the big one?" Ryan raised his brows.

"We ignore him until the numbers are manageable," Soren replied. "But the moment he starts to stir, we drop everything and go for it. We can’t let him complete that transition."

Ryan nodded, his gaze following the Drakelings near the monolith. "That works. But if we use the elevation, we should also try to funnel them through that narrow gap between the petrified roots. It limits how many can lunge at us at once. Even with hundreds of them, only four or five can reach us if we pick the right spot."

Soren looked at the terrain, immediately seeing the tactical advantage. "Good eye. We’ll use the roots as a natural choke point. It’ll keep us from being flanked."

He paused, the weight of the coming battle settling over them. The clearing was silent except for the rhythmic thrumming of the monolith, a sound that felt like a ticking clock.

"Ryan," Soren said, his voice losing its sharp, command-like edge. "Before we go out there... we should have a talk. A sincere one."