Sky was woken by a ray of sunlight hitting his face. He squinted and turned his head to the side to avoid the light. He slowly sat up, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. He looked around and noticed that the plants around him had grown slightly overnight.

He yawned and stood up, stretching his arms above his head. He then started to walk toward the cave where he presumed Avis would be.

"Now, where do you think you're going?" A familiar voice spoke out.

"Just trying to find a weird little beast before it starts creating chaos."

"It must be quite valuable considering you're off looking for it~."

"You could say that, but I would rather see it as a parent taking care of its child, if you know what I mean~."

"Hmmm, I see."

Avis was floating against the tree Sky slept on. He looked the same, acted the same, but something felt off.

"Have you eaten breakfast yet?" Sky asked.

"No, not yet." Avis sneered, "Somebody was supposed to grab me dinner but decided playing around with his plant friends was more important."

Avis pushed off the tree and started floating away. "I'll be at the cave if you need me."

Before Sky could say anything, a system message popped into existence.

"Quest: Trap a Wild Beast with Nature's Affinity.

"Reward: +1 Level to Nature Affinity

"Failure: Heavenly Judgement (Death)"

"Heavenly Judgement?" Sky muttered to himself. "That doesn't sound fun."

He took a deep breath and traversed the complex forestry to look for a suitable beast to trap. Unfortunately, he felt it wouldn't be as easy as it seemed.

As Sky wandered through the forest, he couldn't help but feel like he was being watched. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and a cold sweat ran down his spine. He quickened his pace, running through the forest as fast as he could. Suddenly, he was tackled from behind and sent rolling down a hill. While tumbling down, he saw glimpses of a small, furry creature with large teeth following him.

Sky came to a stop at the bottom of the hill and quickly got to his feet. The small, furry creature with large teeth looked like a cross between a rat and a weasel. It was about the size of a house cat and had beady eyes that glowed a pale white.

"You must be the beast I'm supposed to trap," Sky said as he slowly backed away from the creature.

The creature hissed and lunged at Sky, sinking its teeth into his leg. Sky yelped in pain and tried to pull away, but the creature's mouth was clamped shut. He punched the beast, causing its teeth to dig in further. He felt warm blood running down his leg, and he knew he had to do something fast.

He reached for a small twig on the ground and shoved it in the creature's ear. The creature didn't react to the sudden discomfort and instead wriggled its head, attempting to rip Sky's skin off. Sky began pushing the ether's nature attribute around him through the stick, causing it to slowly grow and wriggle further into the creature's ear. The creature's grip loosened, and Sky was able to pull away.

He quickly made distance away from the creature and guided more nature attribute into the surrounding plant life. He simply willed the plants to bind the beast. The vines and roots obeyed his command and attempted to wrap tightly around the creature, to constrict it until it was nothing more than a furry lump. The creature hissed and masterfully avoided the roots and vines, but it was slowly being surrounded. After a few minutes of struggling, the creature was finally immobilized by the plants.

"Congratulations on completing the quest," the system message said. "You have earned +1 level to your nature affinity."

"Now, what do I do with this thing?" Sky muttered to himself. He didn't want to kill the creature, but he also didn't want to let it go. He supposed he could take it back to the cave and let Avis deal with it.

He picked up the creature and started making his way back to the cave. It was going to be a long walk, but he had a feeling that Avis would be happy to see the creature. Before reaching the cave, he looked down at the feral creature once again. Its adorable eyes stared back up at him, and he couldn't help but feel a little sorry for it.

"Fine," he said softly. "You win, but be more careful next time. I don't want to have to kill you."

He unbound the creature and watched as it scurried away into the forest. With a heavy sigh, he turned and headed back to the cave. Hopefully, Avis would be happy with the results of the quest and not the fact that he let lunch run away.

Avis was waiting for him just inside the entrance when he arrived back at the cave. "Well?" he asked eagerly. "Completed it already?"

Sky didn't really think too much about the quest, to begin with. Thanks to all his training with the nature attribute, he already had a handle on manipulating smaller plant life to a certain extent. "Yeah, it was easy enough," he said nonchalantly.

"Now, how can you say that with a bleeding leg?" Avis scolded him. "You're lucky that thing didn't kill you."

"Yeah, well, I managed to trap it eventually," Sky said as he walked past Avis and collapsed onto the soft brush of leaves.

"Good job," Avis said as he looked down at Sky's leg. "The system will patch that up in no time, so just relax whilst I get you some lunch."

Avis paused as those words exited his mouth. 'Get him lunch?' he thought, 'Didn't he just catch a creature?'.

"What did you do with that little creature you caught?" he asked cautiously.

"Oh, I released it back into the wild," Sky said casually.

Avis stared at him for a moment before he started laughing. "You released it? You actually let it go?"

"What's so funny?" Sky asked, not understanding.

"This can go one of two ways," Avis said, blinking away his tears from laughing, "the creature will simply be thankful that you let it go out of pity, or~."

As if orchestrated, multiple screeching sounds could be heard surrounding the cave entrance. It sounded as if an army of the creatures was outside, ready to swarm in and tear them apart.

"~or they will see you as a threat and come after you in full force," Avis finished with a grim look.

Sky darted to his feet and peeked out of the cave entrance. There were at least a hundred of the rat and weasel-like creatures glaring at him with hatred in their eyes. It looked like he had made himself an enemy of the forest.

"What do we do now?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the entrance.

"We?" Avis said, about to burst into laughter again. "This is your mess, and you can clean it up."

With that, Avis turned and floated deeper into the cave, leaving Sky to face the creatures alone.

"Great, just great," Sky muttered as he drew on the ether around him. Unfortunately, it looked like he would have to fight his way out of this one.