With doubts, Zephyr followed the phantom maid to the destination. The phantom maid walking ahead of him suddenly stopped, turned to look at Zephyr, and grabbed a small tree beside her.

  The tree began to twist and transform into a gray phantom, its face contorted, vastly different from the tranquil-looking phantom maid. Comparing the two, it seemed the latter had higher combat abilities, yet this gray, clearly malevolent phantom was the one being beaten!

  "You mean... they are all pitiful." After a beating, the phantom maid chased away the phantom and noticed Zephyr's strange expression. She gestured as she walked.

  Seeing that Zephyr understood her, the phantom maid quickly nodded. She pointed to some bones under a tree and then in the direction where the phantom had been driven away. Having understood her words many times before, Zephyr picked up on her meaning again.

  "Huh... This forest has many phantoms; they were all people who died here?"

  "..." The phantom maid nodded again, confirming Zephyr's understanding. Then she thought of something and made another series of gestures, which were much more complex this time. Zephyr had to confirm several times to understand.

  In the Illusionary Demon Forest, the wandering phantoms were highly aggressive. Gray ones could be ignored—they weren't bad people before death but became aggressive due to the hallucinations they experienced at death. These hallucinations were never pleasant.

  Even good people would become twisted after becoming phantoms in the Illusionary Demon Forest. As for black phantoms, there was no need for mercy; they should be destroyed immediately!

  This minor interruption didn't take much time. Approaching the site of the incident, Zephyr faintly heard a piercing scream.

  No longer needing guidance from the phantom maid, Zephyr ran over first. Several young men and women were displaying vivid expressions of terror, with two of them already unable to hold back their impulses.

  One girl had scratched her face bloody, her screams coming from her mouth. The reason she hadn't harmed others was due to a middle-aged man in the group restraining her.

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  Looking at their clothes, they seemed to be wearing uniforms—probably school uniforms?

  Zephyr wasn't sure since his knowledge of this world was limited, and he hadn't learned about many things.

  The phantom maid brought him here to help. Through her explanation, it seemed this mess was caused by Zephyr himself. If he hadn't burned that tree, they wouldn't have encountered trouble.

  Glancing at his claws, Zephyr hesitated briefly but still stepped forward. The moment they saw Zephyr's dragon head, the few remaining sane youths instantly went berserk!

  It was unclear what hallucinations they were experiencing, but they appeared to see unspeakable horrors, frantically pulling their hair, scratching their faces, and even biting their classmates. One person even tried gouging out their own eyes. The previously calm middle-aged man also succumbed to the atmosphere and couldn't hold out any longer.

  He reached out to grab the neck of the young person he had been restraining.

  This sudden change made Zephyr's lips twitch. A faint glow emerged from his fingertips, and a cone-shaped ice mist burst forth, enveloping those who had fallen into madness.

  The young people's resistance to the ice mist was weak, and in their frenzied state, they didn't resist actively. Ice quickly formed on their bodies, slowing their movements significantly.

  Zephyr didn't expect this move to snap them out of it; his goal was to slow them down before they could harm themselves. He approached and knocked each one unconscious.

  The middle-aged man was more troublesome, ignoring the soft control of the ice mist and even showing strong aggression... but it was useless.

  Zephyr pinned him to the ground with a single claw.

  "Hey, I'm pretty good, huh!" Tapping the middle-aged man's head, he fell unconscious. Zephyr had long mastered precise force control.

  Since starting gravity-enhanced training, Loris required him to hunt only living creatures, forcing Zephyr to adapt to his rapidly increasing strength.

  He didn't try many spells engraved in his consciousness now. While reading introductory books, he noted that everyone's mental capacity for engraving array patterns wasn't infinite. Engraving more required greater mental power. Although Zephyr had engraved quite a few, he hadn't felt the supposed pressure.

  But mastering too many spells made it hard to choose. Besides, these were basic spells, and their quantity didn't matter much right now. Loris mentioned it once, and Zephyr remembered.

  Only after reaching the entry stage did professional practitioners truly begin. To ordinary people, someone who had acquired enough power before the entry stage was considered strong.

  There were so many spells in this world... Even powerful beings chose which spells to master purposefully because stronger spell arrays took up more "memory."

  After subduing these people, Zephyr was troubled. What should he do with them?

  Leave them alone? What if they woke up and continued their madness?

  "If I take them outside the forest, they should be fine, right?" Zephyr looked at the phantom maid standing quietly beside him.

  She nodded lightly, then shook her head immediately, making a gesture of lighting a tree on fire and inhaling deeply. Seeing this, Zephyr was conflicted. Why did he have to burn that tree earlier? Couldn't he have tested it during the day...

  The phantom maid indicated that while it was safe to throw them out before, they had now inhaled the smoke from burning trees in the Illusionary Demon Forest, making their condition worse and requiring time to recover.

  "Huh... In that case, you go back first. I'll watch over them until they recover and then send them out," Zephyr said to the phantom maid after thinking.

  The phantom maid shook her head and gestured for a while.

  "You're saying I can't return without you?"

  The phantom maid nodded and pointed behind Zephyr. He hesitated for a moment, then leaped up using his legs, flapping his wings only after leaving the ground.