After smashing the hound into countless pieces and smashing the ground a few more times for good measure, Orou calmed down and looked all around him, scanning for any signs of danger. Although the countless dead corpses were an unsettling sight, there was nothing besides them and the machines tirelessly working in the distance. Nervously shifting around and recovering from the exhaustion of the fight, Orou slithered over to Grizz and took a closer look at him. Orou had seen Grizz snap out of his trace and his eyes regain their clarity, but regardless of that, he was still motionlessly lying on the floor.

Slithering right next to him, he saw that Grizz was constantly twitching, proving that he was still alive. There seemed to be nothing wrong with him until Orou saw Grizz’s bare arm. Blood mist had settled right next to him, silently enveloping him from all sides and tightly sticking to his body, slowly being absorbed into it. Now that he noticed the mist, he took a closer look at himself and true enough, there was a similar mist surrounding him, almost unnoticeable to the naked eye. The mist was having trouble absorbing into his skin and the mist that succeeded in doing so was instantly purged by the blood-waves, who didn’t even bother to report this to their master.

Looking at it using his black and white vision, he saw countless tiny black strands freely swimming in the mist without a single care in the world, but even if he saw the tiny strands, it didn’t help him figure out how to get rid of the mist. The first thought that popped up in his head was to destroy it with the beam of light spell, but with it came the consequences of completely annihilating himself and Grizz. Deciding against that action, he started casting the spell most similar to the beam of light, that is, the healing light. This time, he very carefully modified the spell to become much larger and envelop Grizz’s entire body, all while creating several simmering spirits to enhance the spell’s effects.

Orou didn’t know what the mist would do to Grizz, so he did his best to speed up the process all while creating the formation as carefully as he could. Only after several minutes was he sure that the spell was as perfect as it could be, and as the formation completed itself, a dazzling light enveloped Grizz in an oval shape. He lied in the oval light for several minutes until the dazzling light started fading, revealing a completely pure and untainted Grizz. It looked like he had aged a few years backwards, once more looking like what he would look like in his twenties. His wrinkles were gone and the blemishes on his face had smoothened, his hair and fur became much darker, but at the same time, much purer.

Most importantly, Grizz’s eyes were open and the blood mist was completely gone from his body. He leaped up with surprising agility and looked at his arms in surprise, exclaiming: “You’re a miracle worker you know!” Following that, he drew his shortsword and slashed at the air all while circling around an invisible target, delivering strike after strike on his target. After a few more tests, he sheathed his sword and happily said: “I didn’t think I would be able to fight like that again, I feel a couple of years younger.”

As long as Grizz was happy, Orou was also happy and he wondered if he cast the same spell on himself, would his scales look shinier than they already were? Deciding to test his theory, he cast the same spell multiple times to envelop each individual part of him at once and after several moments of bathing in light and feeling bliss, he looked over himself. Just as he predicted, his scales were gone of all the scratches and bite marks inflicted by the countless opponents he had once fought and the exhaustion he felt from earlier was completely gone.

“I’m starting to regret entering this mountain already. If you weren’t there to fight off the hound, I’m pretty sure I would be in the same state as the rest of the workers, that is, mauled to death by that horrid thing.” Grizz heaved a sigh of relief as he started going over to the scene of carnage in the distance, wanting to inspect them for something or other. Orou followed Grizz, distracted in his own thoughts. He wondered about why his spell would have such an effect now. He had cast it many times on Grizz and while he had never enveloped his entire body, his skin never changed. Now that he thought about it, his blood serpents were way stronger than he expected. Orou smashed into the hound countless times and could only crack it while the blood serpent was able to break its leg with only some difficulty. Unfortunately, he didn’t know the cause for this as there was no spiritual anomaly in the air.

After some time, they arrived next to the beastmen corpses. It was truly a horrid sight as the hound didn’t have any remorse towards mutilating and disfiguring the beastmen. One beastman had his face completely eaten, the other was torn into several bits and once Orou took a closer look at the beastmen, he saw the same blood mist, though much thicker, around the beastmen’s bodies. It was behaving quite a bit differently than in Grizz’s case, it was floating into the beastmen’s wounds and coming back out a few seconds later, this time, much thicker and deeper shade of red. Some of the mist dissipated, scattering towards the nearby walls and crystals, but some of it remained to continuously circulate through the beastmen’s corpses, each time drawing more and more blood from their bodies.

After marveling about the mist for a few more minutes, Grizz got up close and personal with the corpses and the mist. He started searching through the bodies of the beastmen, digging through their pockets and opening up various containers they had with them. Orou closely inspected how the mist reacted to Grizz’s hand’s, but luckily, it didn’t seem to care in the slightest, only continuing to do repeatedly fulfill its task. It was a long and arduous process, but after the better half of an hour, he came back to Orou with a frown on his face. His hands were covered in blood and so was the rest of his armor, but that didn’t stop him from laying his hands on Orou and petting him for his own happiness. Of course, this meant that his shiny and pristine new scales were covered in blood and it took all of Orou’s will to resist slithering away.

“There should be a map of the mountain somewhere around here. It contains the explored parts of the mountain so we won’t be able to rely on it to climb the entirety of the mountain, but it should set us in the right direction and let us hopefully avoid any more of those hounds. None of the beastmen were carrying the map on them, so there should be another place they kept it.” After smudging some more blood on Orou’s scales, he stood up and exclaimed to Orou, pointing forwards with an uncertain expression on his face. There were more tunnels towards their east and west, though there weren’t any signs of one path being used more than others, not simply by looking at the rocks beneath them.

Orou was rather distressed by Grizz’s uncertainty as fighting more than one of those hounds would prove to be very challenging to Orou, but there was no way to turn around now either. Following behind Grizz, the two of them started slithering down another long and jagged tunnel, hoping to find some sort of sense of direction in this place.