The two of them hastily made their way past the guards and exited out of the palace. They were greeted by countless eyes, who didn’t dare to enter the palace but had enough guts to spy on it from a distance. Seeing that it was only the two of them, many heaved a sigh of relief and one beastman even approached Grizz, most likely wanting to ask him about the ongoings in the palace. Before he could get close to Grizz, he flashed the beastman a toothy grin and revealed his short sword by his side, which scared the beastman into running away at full speed.

After that incident, no one else approached them and they made their way through the desolate streets of the city, though not towards the mountain in the distance, but instead, towards their old house. Grizz was silent throughout the journey, his facial expression changing every few minutes into something different. Lost in his own thoughts, Grizz lead them into the shop, which was surprisingly still intact, and sat down on the couch nearby, putting his arms on his head. After a few minutes, a shiver that ran through his bones woke him up from thought and after suffering through its effects, he turned to Orou.

“Now that we’re away from Vaar, tell me that you can get rid of this curse. If I have to experience this every half hour, I’m not even sure I could make it to the mountain, not to mention have the ability to deal with the horrors within it.” Throughout Grizz’s speech, Orou experienced the same shudder that Grizz felt, but the effects of it were barely noticeable. As soon as the cold waves started spreading across his body, they were encircled by the blood waves and devoured, restoring warmth to his body.

Thinking further about what he could do, he visualised where the curse was located in his body and tried to coordinate an assault on the face, commanding the blood core to do his biddings. He kept building up waves until soon after, he released them all at once to get rid of the curse once and for all. Unfortunately, the shrieking face was too resistant even to the mightiest of waves, it fought back by unleashing cold waves on its own, completely freezing and shattering the attacking waves. Orou kept on trying for multiple times, but it seemed that no matter how much he assaulted the face, it simply wouldn’t give up, not weakening in the slightest throughout all of the attempts.

Next up, he tried magic. Simply guiding the spirits didn’t do anything, so Orou used the only healing spell he knew to try and get rid of this ailment. Carefully expanding the formation of the spell and including as many scintillating spirits inside of it, Orou directed the light to form directly in the middle of his body, but as the massive waves of healing light engulfed his body, he felt the face resisting in the same way that it resisted the blood waves. The healing light was a much more formidable foe as inside of him, he could feel the chilling grow weaker and the face beginning to unravel itself into black strands, but his healing spell ran out before it could completely cleanse the curse.

As Orou kept experimenting with various ways of freeing himself, Grizz continued his speech, this time, speaking of the mountain that they were to visit: “I’d much rather take any other task from Vaar in exchange for not doing this one. The Fallen Mountains are the place where blood crystals are mined and many people wander into the Fallen Mountains, hoping to quickly get rich, but never returning in the process. The miners who work there only mine at the base of the mountain and even then, the purity of the crystals are abysmal. Throughout the years, technology has advanced and you can refine low and mid quality blood crystals from the common rocks there.”

Orou kept listening to Grizz’s tale as he started experimenting with black strands and the face. Concentrating on his core, he made it spin and rotate at an even faster pace than it was before and immediately, the effects could be seen. The black mist concentrated around his skin and started escaping upwards and sinking downwards, but even though Orou tried his best to direct the black mist to the face, it simply wouldn’t listen to him. The same thing happened with the black strands, although he could see them on the outside and he knew that the face was made out of black strands, his will simply couldn’t grab the face and unravel it piece by piece, the black strands were too elusive to catch.

“If we went to the base of the mountain, we would be perfectly safe, but that’s not what Vaar wants us to do. He wants us to find a crystal so big, it could be extracted into several top-quality blood crystals. To do that, we would have to climb up and through the mountain, which is where so many beastman lose their lives. Strange creatures made from shadow and blood roam the mountains, attacking and slaughtering those, who encounter them. Not a lot is known about how they attack or how they look like, only rumours of them being the personification of blood crystals or the evil spirits, which haunted the once living Noble Beast.”

Orou was running out of ideas as he carefully listened to what Grizz said. Orou had full confidence in himself that he would be able to get out of there alive, but simply obeying one’s command wasn’t in Orou’s nature. No matter how much he manipulated the spirits to twist and bend and no matter how many spells he cast, nothing got him rid of the face, which almost seemed to be rejoicing in its victory over Orou. He hissed out towards Grizz, who slightly jumped in shock before sitting down once more with a wry smile on his face.

“Guess we’ll have no choice but to scale the mountain and do our best to find the darned crystal. Who even knows whether there’s a crystal that big up there and if Vaar will complete his part of the deal, but I don’t wish to find out if he was bluffing about the curse. If you get any ideas, even ideas that would seem very stupid, go ahead and try them. I’d much rather suffer through your magic than scale the mountain,” Orou thought about what Grizz said for a few seconds and he had a few choices in the matter, perhaps ripping open his stomach and shining healing and purifying light onto the face, or perhaps even making the blood serpent assault the face, but there was a line he had to draw at inflicting harm on himself.

If there was no other option, Orou wouldn’t hesitate to try out the methods he thought of, but in his mind, Grizz was exaggerating about the horrors in the mountain, and even if he wasn’t, that simply made it all of the more exciting to scale the mountain. Any unnatural creature would surely have magical nature and perhaps he would even have a chance to further study the weird blood crystals, which he was still confused on. Orou shook both his tail and his head in response to Grizz’s previous suggestion and flickered his tongue towards the door, looking back and forth between Grizz and the door. With a sigh, Grizz stood up and picked up his backpack, adjusting his shortswords to be much closer to him than before. Opening the door, he stepped outside and pointed towards the large mountain in the distance, which almost seemed to be pulsing every once and again.