The walk up the hill was an incredibly arduous task. Despite her gait being significantly less than the other two, her stamina was surprisingly good. She was tired, but was considerably less exhausted than the paladin dudebro. She did wear cloth instead of Albrecht's plate. That helped, for sure. Her tiny legs couldn't beat out the smelly hobo in terms of energy consumption, though. Still though, six hours of walking. A thought crossed her mind. [i]What if she rode her fist?[/i] By flexing it forwards, she could essentially accelerate infinitely. Wait, wouldn't that be a bad idea? If she could just accelerate, she'd probably get thrown off and get horribly injured. She barely had proper control over the fists despite her massive brain. If she just did things haphazardly, she would probably die horribly. It was probably good to just wait. Yea, maybe experiment with it later.

Behind them was a village. Before Albrecht could even finish his sentence, a flash of light came from behind. Then came the rumblings. Knowing what was about to happen (possibly from an ASMR video), Jyu-in plugged her ears with her fingers. The metal arms, naturally, formed a shield that protected her from the wave that pushed them all back. A distant earth shattering roar of energy. The tingling all over her body confirmed that it was mana. The same mana that she had compressed into a marble. The marble of destruction. Was that why the goddess told them to go south? Probably was. Most importantly, were the other students okay? There was the lizard noises, then this massive beam of destructive light. 

Albrecht gave the advice to just keep calm. Irene pushed her forwards. Could Jyu-ni simply ignore her comrades and push onwards? She even said that she'd run back in case of danger, could she just so easily break the promise?

Yea. She could. Rather easily, in fact. The left-behind gang probably didn't even know what hook it meant.

A certain feeling known as 'self-preservation' overcame any heroics that Jyu-ni had in her body. It was better to be alive with two friends than a corpse with four. Plus, six hours out. By the time they went back, something would be dead, making the trip back kind of worthless. 

[color=5DFF03]"... 'ea. Hook it opp'site that."[/color] Her tone was rather serious, despite her drunk-speech. She didn't want to die horribly. That would have sucked big time. Her pace quickened away from whatever the fuck was happening behind them. Despite a brief gap, she still dragged the long groove behind her.

Just in case.