We travel through the trees listening, panning left and right, circling around vines, dodging giant spider webs, and generally wandering around like lost puppies. Doing all of this in the heat of the midday sun sucks terribly.

After twenty minutes of our hopeless search, we conclude that our strategy isn’t working. We need a new plan.

Katherine fans her hands at her face. “Do you think we could search for the spy while flying on your dragon?”

“No. It would be hard to see a person in the trees while airborne. Besides, even if we saw him, my dragon can neither hover in place nor land in small areas. We’re better off doing this on foot.”

Katherine pulls out the map that her mother gave her. “Well then maybe we could look at the map and pick out a few hotspots where a spy might be.”

We look at the map and see an area circled on the page. There’s a scribbled note by the circle that reads “beautiful cerulean trees.” I point this out to Katherine. Cerulean trees yield a mana-intense superior-grade wood that’s used to craft weapons, armor, and building resources. I’ve only ever seen a few scattered ones, yet according to the map, there’s an entire grove of the trees nearby. I suggest to Katherine that we go there. Not only would a patch of cerulean trees serve as a great tourist attraction, but also if the spy turns out to be a prospector from Âme Kingdom surveying the local resources, then the patch of trees would be an irresistible draw. We go there immediately.

When we arrive, surely enough, we find a man with a magnifying glass and his nose pressed against one of the trees. It’s just as I suspected. We sneak around the man and ready our weapons.

“Freeze!” I shout for lack of anything better to say.

“Ahh!” he screams. He drops his magnifying glass and turns around with his hands in the air.

When I see his face, I lower my weapon. “Nathan Bram!” I call. “What in the world are you doing here?”

Nathan recognizes me too. “Hey Souladonis! Sheesh you scared the life out of me. I could ask you the same question.”

I rush to greet Nathan and clench his hand shaking it up and down. “Nathan!” I say excitedly. “The immortality elixir worked! I saved Nadine!”

He pats me on the shoulder. “Congratulations buddy. I knew you could do it.”

“Thank you so much Nathan. I never could have done it without you. I practically owe you my life.”

Nathan scratches his head. “I wouldn’t go that far, but something like that. Hey check this out.”

He picks up his magnifying glass and presses it against the cerulean tree behind him. The tree towers high into the air like a cedar except that its trunk is literally colored cerulean and its thick leaves are dark blue. In terms of size, the leaves look much like the banana tree leaf that I used to shield Katherine from the sun earlier. I don’t know if the leaves have any practical properties, but the trunk of this one tree alone would be worth at least 100,000 âmes, and considering that there’s a whole grove of them here, the Ouroban rain forest sternly denies the old adage that money doesn’t grow on trees because right now we’re standing in a treasure trove.

Nathan beckons with his hand for me to peer through his magnifying glass. When I do, I see the effervescent mana energy coursing through the pores of the tree. I pull my head back. “Cool! Katherine take a look.”

She does the same. “Wow!”

“I know,” Nathan says proudly. “This forest is amazing. There’s all sorts of awesome creatures here. Wait until you see the caterpillars!”

“Caterpillars?” questions Katherine.

I almost forgot. Nathan has a thing about caterpillars. It’s a bit weird, but he’s the guy who helped me turn my life around, so I’ll give him a free pass.

“Actually Nathan, we’re not here sightseeing. We need to get into Ouro village, but they won’t let us in until we find the spy who some women and children saw snooping around earlier. I think they were talking about you.”

Nathan frowns. “For whatever reason the people wouldn’t talk to me. They just ran when they saw me coming, but it was all a misunderstanding. I didn’t mean them any harm.”

That’s actually not that surprising. I imagine the people here don’t see too many foreign visitors. And given Nathan’s somewhat pasty skin tone, it wouldn’t even surprise me if they mistook him for a ghost or something superstitious like that. “Well, in any case,” I begin, “let’s go back. It’s imperative that we see Chief Hekima as soon as possible. We have to warn him that the army of Âme Kingdom is on its way.”

Nathan asks, “Why is the army of Âme Kingdom on its way?”

“To destroy the Yugallan people,” I answer plainly.

“Oh,” Nathan says. “Wait, what?”

“Exactly. We have to hurry.”

We rush along the paths leading back to Ouro village. Along the way, we suffer the inconvenience of being attacked by random monsters yet again. This time we face two small cockatrices and two green tigers with black stripes. The cockatrices look like chickens with green snakes for tails. They can cast a weak version of the petrification curse, so we have to be weary of them. As for the tigers, well they’re tigers, so they’re obviously dangerous, and they should probably be eating the two snake-tailed chickens, but they seem to not notice them. There’s a bizarre phenomena in the world of monsters that causes them to target human beings exclusively whenever they’re in the vicinity. Why this is the case no one has ever been able to explain.

Katherine and I ready our magical weapons. Nathan unsheathes his mother’s golden rapier. We form a horizontal line with Katherine to my right and Nathan to my left. Opposite of us, the two cockatrices are in the front and the two tigers in the back. They make a square formation.

Acting first, Katherine casts the Root Smash spell on the cockatrice on the right. The giant root that she summons smashes the little critter to the sound of a loud “ba-caw!” Stupid thing never saw it coming.

The other cockatrice casts the pink beam of the petrification curse at Nathan. For us this is like déjà vu. Together Nathan and I fought the Earth Ruling Golden Cockatrice. Apart from Arch Lord Horatio’s gargoyle familiar, Cornelius, the Golden Cockatrice was the most fearsome creature that I’ve ever had to face in my life. Fighting a cheap imitation of a cockatrice is nothing to us. I cast the Boulder spell in front of Nathan to block the spell. At the same time, he jumps on top of the boulder and casts a quick uncharged version of his Divine Mana Gun. The blue ball of mana energy that he emits from his finger causes the puny cockatrice to go splat. Two down two to go.

The green tiger that’s aligned across from Katherine charges at her. I feel a mild panic at seeing the beast charge her. Consciously I know that Katherine can handle it, but my emotions supersede my logic and I can’t help but jump in. Literally, I jump in front of Katherine to intercept the tiger, which swipes me with its paw. I fly off to the side and crash into a tree.

“Master!” Katherine shouts.

The tiger continues its assault on Katherine, rendering my pitiful act of valor useless. Even worse, my interference threw off Katherine’s plan of action. The tiger closes in on her so quickly that she has no choice but to cast the defensive Bramble Armor spell on herself. Even still, the tiger swipes her thorny armor, tossing her through the air like it did me.

“Katherine! Noooo!” I scream.

I engulf myself in a purple aura of Soul Magic. I then instantly warp to the tiger and smash its head into the ground with my staff. I kill it in one blow. At the same time, Nathan finishes his battle with the other tiger via a series of skillfully timed sword strikes. I rush to Katherine to check on her.

She lies flat on her back staring up at me with a mean frown and lowered eyebrows. “Master Souladonis!” she chimes. “What is wrong with you? You don’t think I can handle a few monsters by myself?”

She rises to her feet, more or less unharmed. But for good measure, she casts the Heal Party spell on the three of us.

“I’m sorry Katherine. I didn’t mean to insult you. I was just worried.”

Katherine hugs me, forgiving my mistake. I wrap my right arm around her waist and hold her close to me. Tilting my head at a slight angle, I stare deeply into her eyes. Our faces are well within kissing distance. I’m tempted to do it. I even start to, but Nathan interrupts, “What no hugs for me?”

Katherine breaks away from me and turns to Nathan with a chuckle. She then rushes over to him and gives him a big hug. Nathan glances at me over her shoulder with a toothy smile on his face. That is, until he notices the evil eye that I’m giving him. At once his smile fades and he releases his hug.

“Oooh,” he hums, getting the drift.

Katherine looks behind her. “Oh what?”

“Nothing,” I say.

We extract 4800 âme crystals from the defeated monsters, and then head on our way. As we walk back to the village Nathan tells us a lot of, let’s say, interesting facts about the surrounding environment. With encyclopedic knowledge, he prattles on about the valuable resources that can be found in Ouroboros and expounds upon the natural beauty of the rain forest. Yet out of the blue, he interrupts his informative lecture by freaking out and shoving Katherine aside. “Look out!” he screams.

I ready my staff thinking that more monsters are attacking. Yet when I see nothing, I look down at the dirt path in front of us. As I suspected, there’s a small caterpillar inching its way across the path. Nathan dives to his knees next to the creature and whips out his magnifying glass. He peers at it, spellbound by its wonder. Whatever wonder that might be.

“Guys look!” Nathan calls.

I sigh and kneel to look at the disgusting critter worming its way around. I don’t see anything special about it. Nathan, however, is beside himself.

“Guys this is an Ouroban thorny milkweed caterpillar! It’s really rare to see one in person!”

Katherine is unconvinced. “You shoved me aside over this thing?”

Nathan stands to his full height, a sudden darkness covers his face. I shake my head. “Here we go.”

“Caterpillars are the most underrated creatures in the world. People trample them without the least thought, yet when they see butterflies those very same people laud them with praise and admiration. Yet where do they think the butterflies come from, huh? They’re born from the pain of the dirt-crawling caterpillars that they so carelessly trample!

And yet what do the butterflies do? Do they a hold grudge against the lowlifes who dared trample them while they were weak and vulnerable? NO! They forgive them! They forgive them and fly about on their pristine wings as if all were right about the world! Yet why? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY?”

Nathan has to stop due to becoming overwhelmed with emotion. He wipes at his tears with his blue coat sleeve. Katherine stares at Nathan with her eyes widened. “Ooookay,” she bellows. That’s her polite way of saying, “You’re crazy and you need help.”

I take a more sympathetic stance and pat Nathan on his shoulder, pretending like I have any clue as to what he’s talking about. “So have you been able to become a butterfly?”

“I’ve tried, but I can’t,” he answers.

“Why not?” I ask.

He snaps his arm down and spins towards me. “Because I am not as forgiving as a butterfly!”

I back off with my palms up. “Alright, we’re all friends here, so you know, calm down.”

Nathan takes a deep breath. “Sorry about that. You guys probably think I’m weird, huh?”

I look at Katherine and she looks at me. “No,” we answer together.

Katherine and I make a production of moving around the caterpillar. We then gesture for Nathan to follow us. He does, being extra careful not to step on the creepy bug.

With the issue settled, we return to the gates of Ouro village without further incident. When we arrive, the same lock-haired daddy’s boy comes out to see us while brandishing his pointy spear.

“This is the so-called spy that you were looking for,” I tell him.

“Hi, I’m Nathan. I’m an alchemist from Wyrmscale Academy.”

Suspicious, the man squints his eyes at Nathan. “What were you doing spying on our women and children?”

“Women and children? Oh! That was all a misunderstanding. Actually, I’m here studying the plants and insects. I just happened to see them in the forest, so I wanted to talk to them. Unfortunately, they ran away as soon as they saw me. I don’t know why.”

“Tch,” the man scoffs. “Alright fine, come supposed daughter of Shaman Terranostra. I will introduce you to my father, Chief Hekima. He will decide whether you are who you say you are, or whether we should kill you.”

“Lovely,” I say.

We follow behind the man and enter Ouro village for the first time. I keep my staff ready all the while in case I have to fight the guy leading us, which at this point, is something I’m dying to do anyway.