Today, just as usual, Orou went out to hunt for food. As he grew bigger in size, the number of times he had to eat each week was increasing. Small critters no longer satisfied him as he started going for larger prey, none as strong as the eagle he had met earlier of course.

Orou still felt lingering weakness from the earlier fight as he looked towards his tail. It looked brand-new, but he couldn't swing it with as much force as he did earlier. To Orou, the most dreadful thing in this forest is his pangs of hunger. Without it, he would have never been so reckless to provoke the eagle, even if he did come out at the end of the day.

Maybe it was the intense pain or the hearty meal which brought him out of his berserk state, but either way, he did not want a repeat of what happened. He spent days moving from place to place, sleeping on trees and hunting enough to sustain himself. When his tail was growing back, he consumed twice as much food as usual and the waves which helped to regrow his tail weren't pleasant either.

He didn't spend much time in one place. It seemed that the place where he killed the eagle was the eagle's territory so he didn't have to worry that much about finding other predators, but once he couldn't find food as often anymore, he had to move even deeper into the forest. While the areas that belonged to various predators weren't quite as clear to Orou, he had to escape multiple times when he was spotted by one of them.

Although Orou could probably bring them down, it just wasn't worth the effort. What if he got as injured as he did when battling the eagle? The eagle's body lasted him a day or two before he had to hunt for twice as much food while still being weakened. Who knew if they had even deadlier abilities than the eagle.

Over these few days, Orou has been experimenting with spirits. The crescent left a deep impression on him and if he could manage to unleash a similar ability, he could take down the eagle with no problems. Unfortunately, his experimentation led him to nowhere. He could easily gather spirits to his eyes, but besides that, he couldn't really do much. He tried looking around everywhere for the green spirits that were at the edge of the crescent, but the only thing he could was an endless sea of regular blue spirits.

Often times, he inspected the formation that was present when he gathered the spirits to his eyes. He had the feeling that without this thing, he could direct an endless source of spirits to his eyes and nothing would happen. He wondered how the eagle knew so many ways to manipulate the spirits. When the eagle covered his body with spirits and made his talons sharper, he didn't see any sort of formation there.

Tossing the matter to the back of his head, he managed to find a herd of deer, peacefully grazing grass. He blended into the surroundings of the forest and quietly snuck towards the herd without raising much suspicion despite his size. He was quite massive, in fact, he had grown even more during this time of relative peace.

Once he was close enough, he struck out with his fangs, spooking the rest of the deer to bolt away in panic. Orou's venom did marvels as in a few seconds, it went limp. He coiled around the deer and thoroughly crushed the deer. Finding prey took much longer than actually killing it.

Figuring that this deer would last him a good while, he began to slowly eat it. Even though he could eat it much quicker than he currently was, he enjoyed the process of crushing all the bones of the prey and the feeling of it slowly entering his body. He had decided to make this place his resting spot for some days as he enjoyed his meal.

Hours passed as he finished his meal and simply lay there, basking in the sun. He was conserving his energy and digesting his meal as he heard the noise of footsteps approaching him. Lifting his head up, he heard human speech coming from further into the forest.

"It was a bitch to fight this wolf, almost lost Jeremy as well, at least we're bound to get decent money it, at least ten times that if we had simply slain it and not captured it," said a rough voice, his voice was like that of metal scraping against metal, irritating to listen to.

Despite that, a more cheerful voice came from his side: "I didn't expect for it to bring out the big guns, it almost got me when it started thrashing about, would've blown my cover and it would've gotten away as well."

A third voice, a bit exhausted and seemingly a bit further away from the two speaking shouted out: "I don't want to step a foot into this forest for a long time, I almost overdrew my mana by healing you. Who knew that the wolf would ignore everyone and rush towards Jeremy, wasting a few scrolls of mine. I guess he really didn't like arrows digging into his flesh every few seconds."

Hearing the word mana, Orou got irritated. He didn't know the reason for his irritation, but this word rubbed him the wrong way. Keeping the words of advice about humans in mind, he still decided to sneak up on them and follow them. While sneaking closer, he marveled at how these humans were communicating and how he could understand what they meant.

This was a completely unique experience for him, sure, he could recall and understand what was said when he didn't understand the language, but hearing them speak and keeping track of the conversation, while occasionally missing a few words was a novelty.

Orou followed them as they headed out of the forest, a few minutes later they entered a clearing in the forest and Orou peered at them at a distance, behind several trees. He saw five people walking in an orderly formation, one of them constantly keeping an eye out for any monsters.

"A couple of days and we should be out of the forest and back to Belor, there shouldn't be beasts as dangerous as the wolf out here but we should still steer clear of any beasts capable of claiming an area in this forest," said the man keeping a watch on the surroundings. He was dressed in brown leather armor with short swords and daggers by his side, a green cloak covered most of his body.

"Right, keep an eye on the wolf in case it decides to do anything funny, I doubt it can bite through mana reinforced iron, but it's shown many surprises throughout the battle," said the man at the front. He had heavy metal armor on and a shield on his back, with a long sword by his side, his voice annoying Orou to no extent, how the rest of the humans could listen to his talking was beyond Orou.

"You two have to relax a bit, with me here, how could any beast be our threat. My iron chains bound him for a good portion of the fight and he got burned pretty badly." At the very back stood a man dressed in flamboyant red robes. In his hands was a weird staff and resembled a snake with a red crystal on top.

By his side was the actual cage being levitated in the air and the wolf inside of it. It looked simply miserable, it had multiple cuts and arrows sticking out of it, patches of fur were burned off and the flesh was singed. A man with the leather armor and a bow with a quiver on his back was intently looking at the wolf. Next to him was a man dressed similarly to the backline of the army that attacked the tower. He was wearing white robes and held a staff with a crystal on top of it, looking a bit haggard.

At this point, Orou couldn't resist his curiosity. Spirits surrounded his eyes as he looked around at these five humans and at the cage, wanting to figure out secrets about the spirits. His mind went blank as he looked at everyone involved, each of them had a weapon enchanted by the spirits, the spirits bound in complicated formations. The crystals on top of the staves held an overwhelming amount of spirits, they seemed to be packed full inside of it and Orou wondered how the crystal didn't explode.

Taking a glance at the cage, he saw that the iron itself wasn't covered with spirits. The spirits had actually merged with the iron. He didn't understand how something like that was possible as he kept inspecting the cage. Below the cage were numerous spirits seemingly holding it up, levitating it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the surrounding spirits were behaving strangely. They were sort of moving all over the place in the area, it resembled a dome with the point originating from the man in the flamboyant robes.

Orou froze as he realised that the party had stopped in place, missing the man with the daggers. The remaining four had a soft glowing light surrounding them the man in the light robes was softly chanting under his breath. An arrow was pointed at his head and the man in metal armor shouted orders: "Jeremy, covering fire, Leon, bind him, Pan, keep chanting, heal when needed, Roy, get to his back and strike, I'll keep it busy."

As soon as the orders were clear, an arrow shot out towards his left, glowing with a faint light. At the same time, a set of iron chains aimed slightly to the right started to race forwards at him, threatening to bind him.

Orou realised his mistake as the arrow and the chains were flying straight at him. The first thing that popped up on his mind was that he couldn't evade this, he reacted a bit too late. His eyes darted towards the chains as he tried to find a gap where the spirits weren't as tightly knit together as everywhere else. The first set of chains flying straight at him were longed and looked more flexible while the second set of chains looked sturdier.

He made the split decision to break out through the front. The thing inside of Orou reacted by sending out waves towards his head as he lunged towards the middle of the long chains. He opened his mouth and bit down on the chains. At the same time, he tried to will the spirits to disperse from the middle of the chain. Unfortunately, he saw most of the spirits bound tightly together, but a small portion of them did disperse.

The chains snapped in two as Orou went flying past them, his fangs hurting like hell. The flamboyant man by the name of Leon stared in shock at Orou, pointing his finger in disbelief and yelling out: "HOW? How did the snake manage to snap my chains? They're not as strong as real iron but they're close, impossible."

"Get a grip, if you don't start chanting spells right now we might all perish, there's no time for emotions in battle," shouted the leader in metal armor as he continued to charge forwards towards Orou, wanting to intercept him from attacking the others.

Orou closed the distance with the leader, his fangs biting towards his legs. The man slashed his longsword at when he was in range, but Orou changed the direction of his bite towards the torso of the man. Still, the longsword cut into his side and the wound felt like it was on fire, delivering a moderate amount of pain towards Orou.

Orou closed his mouth as he naturally knew that biting this armor made of metal and enchanted by spirits was fruitless. He started to wrap around the man, trying to constrict him in his armor. The leader flailed his sword around, but Orou had wrapped around his arms already, leaving him no swinging space to injure Orou.

"Shoot at the darn thing, it's going to crush my armor and me inside it, quick!" the leader shouted after seeing no arrows or spells being cast his way.

Leon grinned while shouting "Be careful not to burn alive there captain." He then proceeded to lift his staff up in the air and started to chant something, the crystal on the top of his staff catching ablaze while still retaining its form. The man with the bow, Jeremy, started to shoot arrows towards Orou's body that was constricting the leader. The arrows were no longer glowing as Pan had started to chant a completely different spell, pointing at the leader.

While the rest of them were doing that, Orou wasn't slacking off, he was using all of his might, helped by the rolling waves inside of him to crush the armor. Orou saw various strange drawings on the armor flicker as the armor practically groaned under the pressure. Before the first volley of arrows could reach him, the runes shattered as the armor began to cave inwards, the man let out a gasp trying to catch his breath, but his armor was gone and he was next.

A volley of arrows struck Orou's body as he let out a hiss of pain. They struck deep into his flesh but Orou was close to killing the leader that he didn't relent and let the strike him full force. The next strike came from Pan who pointed his finger at the leader and he started glowing like the sun itself. Orou felt like he was constricting someone ablaze as the scales on his body badly singed for every additional second that he held onto the leader. Orou knew that if he wanted to kill him, he would suffer injuries enough for the rest to potentially kill him so he let go of the leader.

As the leader dropped down towards the ground catching his breath, Orou started charging past him and aimed towards the flamboyant man still chanting his spell. Orou could see the spirits collecting to the spot above Leon's head and forming into a huge formation in the shape of a lance. From the red crystal came a different spirit, small but completely red, shapeless like a liquid of some sorts. As it settled into the middle of the lance, Orou could see a burning lance appear above the man's head. He could feel the heat emanating from the lance from some distance away as the lance started to charge straight at him.

It started out slow but it picked up speed as it approached him. Orou wondered how it was possible for one man to conjure such a massive lance of flames as his body darted out of the way. The lance didn't hit him directly as it landed a few meters away from him, but Orou did not escape unscathed. It blew up in a sea of flame around the place of impact, engulfing Orou within it.

Despite the burn marks on his flesh, he continued to charge forwards, dead-set on laying his fangs on the flamboyant man. Another volley of arrows struck him, but a few more arrows wouldn't do him much harm if he could eliminate them all in one swoop.

What caught Orou's eye was a spot to his left that was almost devoid of spirits. It formed a human shape as it slowly approached his side. He couldn't see anything with his normal vision, but his action was set already. Using the momentum from charging forwards, his tail swung out at the invisible figure. He saw the shape leap backwards in order to minimize some of the impact, but as the tail hit him, he went soaring through the air, hitting one of the trees at the edge of the clearing.

The three men at the back were quite confused at why Orou would do that, but once they saw Roy flying through the air at crazy speeds, the reactions were quite distinct, there were cries of concern and shouts of rage coming at Orou. He didn't pay any attention to them as he continued his charge towards the flamboyant man in particular, he couldn't allow for him to cast more of his spells, especially ones as deadly as the flaming lance.

Orou was charging at impressive speeds, but the distance he had to cover was equally as impressive. He saw Pan finish chanting a spell, though he couldn't see any immediate effect on the surroundings. Jeremy had temporarily stopped shooting as he pulled three yellow arrows from a separate quiver. Orou could see that within them multiple short, thin, yellow stripes, constantly moving. Jeremy aimed an arrow at Orou but didn't shoot yet.

Orou got an uneasy feeling from these arrows but his mind was set on filling his stomach with this flamboyant man who was chanting another spell. It was done extremely quick as the spirits he had summoned formed a layer of blue armor around him. He didn't have any time to chant another spell before Orou was before him.

Orou was determined to sink his fangs into this man as he lunged with lightning speed. Orou was going for a bite on his right arm, as it seemed the spell was the weakest there. Orou got a good glimpse of his face as he lunged forward, the human didn't seem to be scared, his face was that of regret and anger at the same time.

Orou didn't manage to get closer than a meter to the flamboyant man's skin. Orou saw a necklace on the man's neck shatter into countless pieces as a blue barrier appeared around him. Orou felt like he had hit solid metal as he couldn't stop himself in time, his head was spinning as he hit the blue barrier. The barrier shuddered for a bit but remained there, blocking his path.

Orou was standing still as he recovered from the concussion when he heard Jeremy shout out: "Move back, let me deal with it!"

Orou saw the barrier rapidly move backwards as he was lying on the ground. The closest thing to him was the now flashing arrow as Jeremy drew back the bowstring and released the arrow. It was much faster than a normal arrow. Orou was still dazed, his head spinning as the arrow arrived. Orou managed to move his head out of the way as it hit his body.

He didn't know that spirits could move so quickly as he experienced the full brunt of the arrow. The yellow spirits inside the arrow escaped into the air and in a blink of an eye covered an area of five meters. The yellow spirits were using the blue spirits in the air as a medium to rapidly hop between each other, moving thousands of times in a second.

Orou's muscles started to spasm and the world around him started to fade to black. It felt like someone had lit a fire inside of him, Orou had never felt as much pain as he's currently feeling. He lay in pain for a few seconds before the waves inside of him soothed his spazzing muscles, he looked towards the culprit, his eyes filled with rage. However, when he saw another arrow of the same kind being pointed at him, he lost all will to fight and he turned around.

His head met with more iron as a shield slammed into him. He saw the leader, his armor thoroughly crushed. He looked to be healed as he held a sword in one hand and his shield in another. After shield slamming Orou, he retreated back, escaping well past five meters from Orou. His head was pounding as first he had slammed into the barrier, struck with the magical arrow and now taken a shield to his face, he tried to move but his body wouldn't obey him as all he could do was despair, a second arrow flying towards him.

Orou didn't have time to admire the flashing spirits, this time, it felt like something hit his head with a sledgehammer as the world went completely dark. The final words he heard before blacking out were: "Lock him up and transport him to Belor, he'll fetch a good price there."