The young warrior's swirling, disordered thoughts were interrupted by a sudden noise. From Ichiro's right side, a flying animal darted before the horse's eyes.

"Hiii!" Ichiro whinnied, inadvertently raising itself up on its hind legs and waving its front hooves in the air. "Hey! Calm down, Ichiro!" Yoichi gulped, clinging to the horse demon's red mane and managing not to fall out of the saddle.

The Inoshuma returned to an upright position and, breathing out of its nostrils, stepped back and looked around. At the same time, Yoichi's gaze was quick enough to identify the small animal that had flown past them without a trace.

"A bat?" he said, pausing to look in that direction. His reasoning lasted a few seconds longer than it should have. "Bats come out to hunt at night and sleep during the day. If there are any in this area, there's probably a cave around here somewhere," he added as if his horse could give him advice.

Being stationary in the same spot for too long, Yoichi began to hear the annoying swamp bugs buzzing around his arms and near his ears. In addition to those intermittent sounds, the constant background noises of demons hiding in the trees.

"Go, this way" - with a light thump of his heels he struck Ichiro's belly, spurring it to follow the path heading west, in the very same direction as the bat.

The road rose in elevation and its muddy edges became even steeper, descending into darkness through steep slopes. The inhospitality of the Boneside Swamp was palpable: since passing that far crossroad, Yoichi had never encountered another human being or seen a settlement.

In such a hostile environment, lone travelers like him had plenty of time to lose themselves in their thoughts, and the damp, enveloping darkness slowed down time, making the journey even longer and more tortuous.

A row of trees with tall, slender trunks sprouted around a bend, continuing past an outcropping of grayish moss-covered rocks. Repeating themselves every few feet, they led the path to a cave, consisting of a small circular cavity in a rocky wall.

Yoichi's intuition had probably been correct: by walking in the opposite direction to the flight of the bat, a nocturnal hunter, he had found its hiding place in a few minutes. However, were the bats its only inhabitants? He thought, deeming that was the exact time to get off his horse.

"That cave doesn't look very big and I am without a torch. The only light source I have is Kenji's flame, but is it really worth it? If I attract wild demons, that hole in the wall could become my grave," Yoichi reasoned aloud.

He dismounted from his horse and stroked the back of Ichiro, always faithful at his side. "Azron!" he called it, caging its body and spirit in the Demon Tooth.

The amount of mud on the road was less than the previous stretch, and a strong smell of wild plants entered his nostrils overbearingly, forcing him to hold his breath for a few seconds.

Just then, his gaze fell on a magnificent red and white flower growing on the trunk of a tree. That flower was so beautiful that it clashed with the surrounding landscape, where everything was rotting and devoured by time.

The thin, transparent wings of a dragonfly glowed under a ray of moonlight as the Jurassic insect swooped down towards the orchid, attracted by its red, succulent pistils.

Yoichi gazed at the scene, enchanted by the beauty of nature and taking advantage of the quiet moment to think about what to do.

The dragonfly's long black legs brushed against the flower's white petals and its body rested on it, folding its wings back and preparing to feed on the nectar. The closer the innocent dragonfly came to the center of the white orchid, the more the outer edges of its petals curved upward, thinning and sharpening their originally smooth shape.

Under Yoichi's confused gaze, thin, sharp white spines sprouted from the outside of the flower, transforming its graceful appearance and making it look like a hostile, poisonous plant.

"N... no!" he stammered, simply letting his thoughts come out of his mouth in the form of words.

*zac* - after the petals grew in size, the white spines closed in on the insect's body, breaking its weak chitinous exoskeleton and breaking its wings.

That red and white flower as beautiful and romantic as a rose was a death trap, that with its atypical beauty had attracted and killed the poor and unsuspecting dragonfly.

The petals closed on the dragonfly, enveloping every spot of its body, and the thorns, moving from top to bottom, pushed the insect to the lowest point of the flower cone, letting it slip through the hollow stem.

Surprisingly, that strange carnivorous plant had devoured its prey and, as if that dragonfly was just its umpteenth victim, it swallowed it. The morsel slid inside the greenish stem that circled the tree's trunk, and its small protuberance allowed Yoichi to follow its trajectory.

With increasing speed, the orchid's meal traveled downward, descending from the tree and continuing its path near Yoichi's feet at the edge of the road. The greenish stem drifted in and out of the mud, blending in with other plants and disappearing into the darkness of the cave.

Only after ascertaining that the flower was nothing more than a limb and that its 'owner' was inside the cave, Yoichi look at the orchid once again. The white thorns were gone, the petals were back in place, and the red, nectar-filled pistils had sprouted at its center, ready to attract its next prey.

What the hell kind of plant is this? What's going on in there? Thought the young tamer. With one hand still resting on the hilt of Ryutaro's katana, he detached one of the dead branches of the tree before him.

Along with it, Yoichi also borrowed a clump of dry moss from the tree, which had slid down over the years, feeding on the moisture of the underbrush.

He rolled it onto the top of the wooden stick and, squeezing it between his fingers, gave it a pseudo-cylindrical shape. Entering that narrow cave without a torch, though it might have attracted wild demons, was out of the question.