"So what was the point in that?" Cade asked right after Aurelius made his way down the mountain.

Aurelius grinned, squinting his eyes so they almost looked completely shut. "I just felt like doing it."

He was then startled by his own bag being thrown in his face. "Don't tire yourself out yet, dumbass."

"Huh?" Aurelius said, taking his bag and putting its strap around his shoulder. "But you said stamina wasn't that important right now, since we won't find that beast for a while."

Cade walked past him without a glance and headed towards the mountains Aurelius had descended from. "I meant that it didn't matter if you took a couple more running steps. I didn't tell you to run up to the mountaintop just for the sake of it."

"Eh." Aurelius shrugged. "I'll be fine," he said, catching up to Cade. "After all, there are two of us and one of him."

"Him? It's an it," Cade corrected. "The beast is not a person. Don't think of it as one. And don't rely on me. You're responsible for your own life."

"Ah, yeah," Aurelius said with a wary smile. "So how are we going to find this thing? Do we just look from the mountain tops?"

"Mountain tops? What makes you think that? Did you see something at the top?"

"A beautiful scenery. The beast has reached its life goal, right? After you do that, you have nothing more to look forward to, so you just relax in a beautiful place somewhere. Isn't that what you would do?"

"Oh." Aurelius could see Cade raise her brows slightly. "Well, that is what some people may do, but beasts usually seek a cozy place to rest. That's something closer to a cave than a mountaintop."

"But what's the point of just locking yourself in darkness after having achieved something so great?" Aurelius asked with a slight frown.

Cade looked at Aurelius and then back at the mountain. "Sometimes when you achieve something great, you lose something valuable in the process, and suddenly, you start feeling a desire to go back to how things were. So even though a cursed beast has no rival in nature, it feels the need to dig itself into a cave to dwell in just to feel like a mere beast again. To feel like it's all back to how it was."

"What about you? After you get all the money to the people who rely on you, where will you go? The cave or the mountaintop?"

Cade looked to the sky. "There will always be more people relying on me. Not that I dislike that. I'll carry all the weight I can."

"But when will you rest?"

"Maybe someday. But for now, this is all I have," Cade answered, bringing her gaze back down and then to Aurelius. "What about you?"

"Umm... Well, after I fulfill my potential and get wealthy, I'll return home, get my mother and go live somewhere nice."

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"Where do you plan on finding that nice place in this world?"

"Ah, well maybe... I know, Zalfari! I'll take us to Zalfari." Aurelius hadn't thought about things that far yet, so his heart was pounding with enthusiasm as he gave birth to such an idea.

Cade was quick to shoot Aurelius' hopes down. "Zalfari has a history full of war."

"Really? Not more than a place like Mircrest thought, right?"

"Much more."

"But there's no war right now," Aurelius said.

"Not that I've heard of, but then again, I'm not very knowledgeable about these things."

"Well, I'll think about that after I reach that stage," Aurelius said and started looking around the mountains. "Now, about that cave."

"Oh, that. It should be in one of those mountains. At least my source says so. Someone saw a creature fly into the mountain and disappear. I couldn't get any more details than that, so we'll have to just look for a cave of some sort all over until we find it."

"Well then, let's get to it."

***

It was beginning to get dark as the sun slowly hid itself behind the horizon. Aurelius and Cade had split up in the search for an entrance to a cave, but they weren't sure from which height they were to look, and the varying shapes of the mountains made it hard to tell the difference between caves and simple depressions.

Aurelius sprinted hopefully for probably the hundredth time, up to something he thought could be the entrance, only to be disappointed again as all he found was that the shadows were playing tricks on him.

Then he was startled by a voice coming from behind.

"Rey, how about we stop searching for today?"

Aurelius turned to Cade, who was standing above him on a small cliff. "Rey?"

"Yeah, as in an acronym of Aurelius?"

"Oh, but what for?"

"Yelling Aurelius in battle is a bit much."

Aurelius scratched. "But are you sure about Rey? What about A—"

"Rey's fine," Cade interrupted. "So about the cave, I think we should look for it tomorrow. It's already getting dark."

Aurelius agreed and was about to cut off the essence being supplied to his brain, but he looked around one last time as he said, "Yeah, I guess that'll—" He gasped. "Look there!" Aurelius yelled, pointing at one of the mountaintops, before rushing off again.

At first, it didn't seem like Cade was going to follow him, but before he knew it, she was running on his side.

Eventually, they stopped close to what had looked like a cave from afar, which was just a few tens of meters below the sharp peak of the mountain.

It was only after they got closer that they realized it was real. It was the real cave.

Aurelius jumped up to it in a hurry to confirm it and was surprised to see that it went straight down. The cave was just a drop into the depths of the mountain. Cade came up as well and looked into the pitch-black darkness that the hole with a diameter of about 3 meters offered.

He frowned and sighed before crouching down to pick up a rock and throwing it into the hole. There was no sound of it hitting anything.

"This is going to be a long day, Rey," Cade remarked, emphasizing the nickname.

Aurelius believed her.

Then a faint blue glow appeared for just a split second, and right as Aurelius and Cade both turned their heads to the hole where the light had come from, an ear-piercing screech came from behind. No, from both sides. It was everywhere. The pair turned around and looked around with their backs to the cave.

"Was that the beast?" Aurelius asked.

"Sure sounded like it," Commented commented with a hand on her chin. Then her eyes flew wide, and she turned to Aurelius, reaching out. "Get away from the entrance!"

Aurelius turned with his eyes wide and was about to interlock his hands. He had neglected reinforcement for the moment to make the toll of the constant enhancement of his senses and legs more bearable.

Then there was a flash of crimson. Something exactly the size of the hole flew out of the cave at a surely uncontrollable speed. Before his hands touched each other, it smashed into Aurelius with rage.

There was a series of cracking and popping sounds as Aurelius' mind went blank, and he was launched far enough by the impact to cause him to tumble down the entire length of the mountain to what seemed to be his certain death.