Elemental Cats

Though, it seemed slightly inappropriate to say that Lucy was fighting the buffalo leader.

Toz, Nil, and Scrael headed toward where the others were, fully thinking that Lucy was still busy and entangled with the other buffalo leader. Since, as far as they knew, Lucy wasn't as good at offensive magic as he was with mind manipulation and stealth. He was also pretty decent at making barriers, but that wouldn't help him end the fight with the buffalo leader any quicker.

No one expected Lucy to lose, even if he did stick to his promise of not using mind manipulation to kill the buffalo.

However, Lucy didn't even fight an extended battle.

Toz, carrying Nil, and Scrael, barely started walking before Lucy, Mindle, and Asilean appeared in front of them. The one thing that delayed them was dispelling Nil's magic.

Far from being stuck in a fight with the buffalo leader, Lucy finished his fight far earlier than Nil.

Nil ended his battle with his opponent shortly after Toz and Scrael arrived at where he was fighting. Mindle and Asilean probably hadn't walked much faster than Toz and Scrael, and based on their expressions, they hadn't seen much of Lucy's battle, if any.

Toz was curious about what Lucy had done, but he didn't look guilty, so Toz didn't think he had broken his promise regarding his mind manipulation magic. But there wasn't time for questions.

Before anything else, they had to get to somewhere that was safe, at least temporarily, so that they could rest, recover, and ponder their gains and growth. But most importantly, they also had to let Nil heal before they did anything else.

And Nil's state also prevented the others from needlessly chattering since they were busy worrying about him and checking their surroundings. They put leisurely conversations on hold until they were safe.

The only problem with that was that they didn't know when they would find a place to stay safe and lay low. Or if they even would find such a place in the middle of the battlefield.

With how wreaked with destruction the plane was, Toz would be surprised if there was a single intact building outside the base camp. And even if there were, there wouldn't be any guarantee of it remaining that way, which meant that Toz and the others would have to find some kind of natural cover.

However, natural cover probably wouldn't be very likely to exist, so it was more like cover built by the aftereffects of battle.

Eventually, they found something that they could use as a foundation to hide themselves while recuperating and resting.

They were worried that it would be some kind of ambush or trap, but nothing happened even after inspecting and entering the rock formation.

After confirming it was safe, they suspected that it would be too conspicuous to use as a place to hide, but that was before they noticed how wide the forest of stones spread out. As long as they hid properly, nothing would be able to find them amidst the several meters tall stones that poked out of the ground at infrequent intervals.

Toz, Nil, Lucy, and Mindle felt comfortable staying in the forest of stones since it reminded them of the Quarry outside Sleepless Brights, where they had slaughtered Stone Balls in order to get money.

After entering the forest of stone pillars, Toz and the cats found a place that seemed to be comparatively quiet. It didn't have quite as many signs of battle as the other areas they went through. There were still demolished pillars and their fragments scattered here and there, but it was still not as bad as some places where there was barely a single stone still standing upright.

They would have chosen such a place since the fighting should be over and would thus have been safer. But they noticed that the signs of battle didn't all occur at the same time.

The places in the forest of stone that were demolished and turned into a forest of stone fragments weren't the results of singular battles. It had happened over the duration of several battles at different points in time.

Toz and the cats didn't know why it was like that, but there had to be a reason. And if it had already happened several times, it could happen again. So an intact location seemed safer, which was why they chose it.

After settling on a location, they backtracked and hid their traces so that no one would stumble upon them and follow them to Toz and the cats' hiding spot.

With their tracks covered, Toz and the cats could almost rest easy. Even if they had found a place to hide and rest, they were still in the middle of a battlefield swarming with high level beings and enemies that possessed all kinds of mysterious abilities.

Only hiding their tracks might hide them from discovery by ordinary means, but Toz and the cats knew that there existed weird abilities and talents in the universe. So it wouldn't be strange if they were still discovered and dragged into a fight.

Even if they weren't found because someone discovered their tracks, it was still possible someone would stumble upon them while in the middle of a fight.

A chaotic battle could easily affect the cover Toz and Lucy set up. And even if it wasn't destroyed, if someone landed a stray attack on where they had hidden, they would notice the abnormality.

In the moderately unlikely scenario where someone found or stumbled upon their hideout, Toz and the cats stayed alert. But since Toz and Lucy's magic hid them and their presences, they only had one person spare some attention to their surroundings at a time.

Toz or one of the cats would make sure to be ready in case someone got close or discovered them while the rest could recover from their fatigue and injuries or process what they had learned during their battles.