An Owl's Rise

Pulling her foot out of the chest of the stag beetle, Evelyn held the largest beast core she ever had that was roughly the size of a softball.

Of course, it was not perfectly round or anything, and she was certain that there was no way she could eat it whole with how big it was.

'It is quite a bit larger than even the cores I got from the behemoth frog and awakened rank venom bat. I guess that there is quite the difference between a newly evolved awakened beast and one that has made it to the mid-tier.' Evelyn thought while examining the core.

Once she was satisfied that she was not going to get anything else of value off of the stag beetle. she stored the core away and brought back out her messaging notebook.

In the battle she had lost track of her previous message and needed to use another one in order to continue following it to Katrina.

Quickly she wrote up anther message and ripped the paper out of the notebook, before tossing it into the air.

As it fluttered there, it quickly formed itself into the shape of a bird and began flying off into the jungle.

Following behind it, she weaved in and out of the trees. It was certainly much harder than flying in the open sky, but she did not want to invade the air space of another awakened rank beast that decided she was a threat.

Going along, she kept her eyes and ears out for any threats. And while there were a number of beasts around, none of them were anywhere close to as strong as the giant stag beetle and did not pose any danger to Evelyn.

Not long after she had entered the jungle, Evelyn saw a group of four owls flying around and caught a glimpse of the identification cuffs around their legs.

'I think I saw them when we all gathered for the meeting before we left for the expedition.' Evelyn thought, recognizing that these owls were part of her team.

When she started flying towards them, they seemed alarmed for a moment, before perking up and swiftly flying to meet up with her.

The one in the lead who was a low tier awakened beast landed on a branch and extended her magical thread for communication.

"You are Evelyn, are you not?" They asked the second the connection was made.

Nodding her head, she sent back a confirmation and the other owl let out a sigh of relief.

"Your message reached us a few minutes ago, and the peak awakened beast who is your mentor ordered that search parties be sent out to find you. Now we need to send up a signal that you have been found."

After saying this the leader of this group of owls pulled out a talisman from his storage ring and activated it.

In just an instant the piece of magically enchanted paper burned up and what looked like a firework shot up into the air and exploded.

"Good, now let us head to the base camp. The commander was fuming about the whole situation and has some questions for you."

With that the group owls took off and Evelyn followed behind them towards the area that was being set up by the two expeditionary forces the Roost had sent.

It took them around another thirty minutes to reach the edge of the clearing where the owls from the Roost had currently gathered.

Right now, both the team of low tier awakened beasts and peak fiend beast, as well as the team of high tier and peak awakened beasts that Katrina and Anneli were apart of were setting up in the same area after being transported by the warp gate.

And standing in the middle of the area next to two spiraling branches that formed a gate was the singular tyrant rank owl that was heading the team that Anneli and Katrina were a part of.

'He has a humanoid form.' Evelyn observed.

Heading over to him, the owl that had found Evelyn brought her to this tyrant rank beast before quickly going on his way.

"So, you are the one that went missing, huh. Katrina made quite the fuss about it, especially when she received your message. Glad we were able to find you without much difficulty. It would have been a bad omen to lose one of our members before the expeditions even started." The tyrant rank owl said.

Not long after, the commander for the lower ranking owls came flying over with an obviously furious look on his face.

"You there, Evelyn. What sort of nonsense did you do to get yourself knocked out of the warp gate?" He said, accusing her of doing something right off the bat.

It was clear he believed that she must have been messing around during the warping and that was why she had been separated from them.

Of course, she had not done anything and figured that it was likely the work of Silas trying to get her lost or killed.

Though it was also possible it could have been some malfunction, but her gut was telling her that it was a malicious attack.

"You certainly moved fast to blame her. But what could a fiend beast possibly have done to accidentally or even purposefully break out of a warp gate begin stabilized by a peak sovereign beast?" The tyrant rank commander asked to Deshal.

Flustered by being rebuked by his superior, Deshal back pedaled and apologized for jumping to conclusions.

At this point, another owl came flying in, and it was Katrina. Naturally she had heard of Evelyn's arrival.

Before she even landed, she had already begun extending a strand of magical energy for communication and did not even wait for Evelyn's permission to connect.

"Evelyn are you alright? What happened?" Katrina said in a rare show of worry.

She used to be incredibly cold to Evelyn and aloof, but now that they had started training together, they were actually pretty close.

"I am fine, but I do not know exactly what happened." She said, not wanting to divulge her theory in front of others.

Even if she did accuse Silas of trying to harm her it would not get her anywhere, and she would likely face far more repercussions if she tried.

Over the next few minutes, she answered the questions of the two leaders of the expedition, telling them exactly what had happened before she was knocked out of the warp gate.

"I see, it sounds like you were supremely unlucky." The tyrant rank leader said.

Evelyn, Katrina and Deshal were still confused though, but it seemed that he knew something they did not.

"Commander Evander, what do you mean?" Katrina asked.

"Well, it is quite rare ,but when warping over such long distances the gates can sometimes have their anchor to each other weakened. This is likely what happened, and Evelyn here got caught up in an area that was no longer stable and was shunted out of the portal."