When Grizz woke up, Orou was still experimenting with the other half of the broken table leg, seeing how close it needed to be to him and how distance impacted the speed that the black strand was corroded. Of course, Grizz was in shock about why the table was missing a single log, but Orou feigned ignorance to the best of his ability, using all of the techniques he had learned simply by being together with Grizz. Sooner or later, he dropped the matter and after eating his breakfast, he strolled outside, motioning for Orou to tag along.

Orou contemplated going with Grizz, but he figured that he would simply be going to various thieves’ dens, so without turning in Grizz’s direction, he continued experimenting with the slightly blackened table leg. Grizz returned back to the shop after a minute, asking Orou if he would like to come with him. Orou absentmindedly hissed at him, waving his tail at Grizz’s direction. Returning back to his experiments, he determined that the closer the object was to his scales, the more black mist it attracted to itself. When he moved the leg a few centimeters back, he found that the mist was still attracted to the object and only after moving it half a meter away did the mist stop zoning in on the table leg.

Still, he had long since determined that this black mist was not good for everyone around him. He remembered that not long ago, he saw Grizz’s hand touch him and immediately after leaving his scales, the mist would no longer do anything, but now, it seemed like he was surrounded by an invisible aura and once something encroached on his aura, the mist would relentlessly corrupt everything that approached him. Orou wondered how the floor hadn’t turned completely black yet, but when he looked down, he saw the answer. There were numerous black strands in the floor that were constantly changing positions and even if the mist got to them, they would soon escape and have other black strands take their place.

Although this was all fun and very educational, he still wasn’t getting to his goal of controlling the black strands. The black mist seemed like it could make the black strands shiver in fear, and most likely, if the black mist completely encircled the black strand, it could make the strand stand completely still, but there was no way to control the black mist. He constantly experimented with the black strands, but everything that he did was ignored by the black strands. He was driven nearly mad as he spent the better half of the day doing everything he could, but his best was not good enough.

Taking a temporary leave from the experimentation with his newest spell, he slithered outside in order to bask in the sunlight for a moment. Contemplating several matters at once, he decided to start preparing for the oncoming. He didn’t know what he would face, but if he started fighting, he wanted to go all out. Following such logic, Orou started practicing constructing the column like formation for the beam of light spell. He practiced constructing it quickly and he practiced packing it with spirits, though he always cancelled the formation at the last second in the fears of causing too much unnecessary destruction.

Remembering the formation to create a shimmering spirit, he practiced quickly constructing an eye with three dots above it, creating several spirits that simply floated in the wind, illuminating the area around him. Then, he started weaving as many shimmering spirits as he could into the beam of light spell, which at his current limit was three entire spirits. If a shimmering spirit could cause a ball of light to shed enough light to possibly blind people, Orou was afraid what the three shimmering spirits would do to the already deadly and destructive beam of light spell. He couldn’t lie to himself, he was half tempted to test it out in the streets before him, after all, there wasn’t a single beastman currently out there. The rational part of him was saying that it was a bad idea, and, fortunately, Orou agreed with his rational part.

For the following two days, his routine consisted of figuring out the secrets of both the rune and the black strands, practicing all of his spells, the beam of light spell in particular and sparring with Grizz in his free time. Throughout these two days, his research on the rune was a complete failure and the black strands remained as elusive as always. He had much better progress regarding his common spells, he found out that by conjuring two blood serpents and controlling them both at the same time, he was able to make the two of them work together and unleash even deadlier attacks than before, creating an elaborate dance in mid-air which would stun any passerby were they to look upon the blood serpents.

In early mornings and late evenings, both Orou and Grizz intensively sparred. Grizz honed his rusty battle skills as he leaped and tumbled to avoid most of Orou’s blows, attacking with his two steel short swords to inflict several wounds on Orou. Of course, the wounds were gone in no time and even when the blood core couldn’t take care of them, he still had his healing spell. Orou practiced combining both spells and physical blows for an extended time period. Using his two wills, he could craft the spell formations much quicker than before and often times, Grizz had to deal with light in his eyes and several small water serpents coiling around him, holding him in place while Orou got ready to attack.

After showing Grizz his entire arsenal of spells, he advised Orou to use the smaller, quicker ones to hinder his enemy instead of trying to kill them with the larger ones. He taught Orou several cheap tricks on how to surprise enemies, that if you see a male beastman, you should always aim your fangs and tail between his legs. Besides the several small tricks that Grizz taught him, Grizz also started thinking of several tactics that the two of them might use, fighting a large amount of beastmen.

At first, their teamwork was simply, Orou often times did as he felt right and the attacks and combinations that Grizz was suggesting were awkward and uncomfortable. At the end of the second day, their teamwork wasn’t great, but the two of them got some combination moves off. Of course, Orou knew that in a real battle, he would ignore Grizz and base himself solely off of his survival instincts and his rage, but he was interested to see whether or not the tactics that the two of them were currently practicing would be of any use.

That night, both Orou and Grizz heard several loud noises at times and panic at others, but the screams quickly stopped and what seemed like peace returned to the city. This night, countless people would try to escape and even more would try to rebel and plot against the king, sewing chaos in an already chaotic city. Still, the night went by peacefully for Orou and Grizz, not a single soul bothered them as they did their best to recover their spirits before the battle. Morning arrived and with it, the sound of drums followed. It was A rhythmic sort of tune that woke up Orou, his body full of energy and his head filled with thoughts about doing battle, to defend the city they were in from any and all enemies that would dare to attack it.

Grizz solemnly started dressing up in his battle gear, several vials of venom and boxes of powder were being opened and prepared. Although Grizz said he wanted to hide and wait for this to pass, Orou saw that he was excited to fight for some reason. After properly securing his multiple daggers and sword, his leather armor and his venoms, he looked to Orou, squatted down, placed his hand on Orou’s head and said to him: “I thought about this for a while and only now have I decided what to do. Even though I would prefer to support the revolutionary cause, I’ve got my brothers back in Onilia and I fear to even think about what will happen to them if the capital gets conquered. Let’s get out there and fight!”