Feeling oddly comfortable after passing out yesterday, Kazami awoke to an attractive site of Brenda's beautiful face peacefully sleeping. Lying on Brenda's soft charming legs made Kazami felt like the whole event yesterday was worth it.

After the whole events of yesterday, everyone was eager to rest up, and she didn't even mind Kazami resting on her lap.

Shifting around a bit, he saw everyone else in the group was still sleeping, but they all have much better complexion than yesterday.

His moving around cause Brenda to awaken from her slumber, and after a little bit of dreariness, she finally notices what caused her to woke up. Face to face with a beaming Kazami, a large blush adorned her cheeks, and she quietly told him;

"G-Good Morning...Are you not going to move?"

"Oh? And leave this wondrous spot. I see no good reason to move."

Brenda didn't say anything to but pout cutely at him. Though suddenly she got a weird idea.

Without warning, she began to continually shake her legs at a quick rate, disorienting Kazami, who had closed his eyes."Alright, alright, I'll get up. Sheesh, is this your way of thanking your savior?" Kazami reluctantly moves from his comfortable spot as he shook his head to reorientate himself.

"Thanks? As in reward? I'll reward you then, weirdo."

And without a chance for him to respond, Brenda took the initiative to grab his hand holding it in place.

Kazami couldn't understand what kind of reward Brenda was giving him, but as they gaze into each other eyes, the world seemed to stop for them.

Since that moment of holding Kazami bloody form in her arm, Brenda was gaining unknown feelings in her mind when thinking about the boy. The way he fought so hard to protect them and even gave her a warm smile after fighting undoubtedly caused waves in her heart.

And Kazami, ever since he first laid eyes on Brenda, felt a strange attraction to the girl, furthermore with her odd and unique mannerism, he was growing to like her more and more.

Her beautiful golden eyes bore into his pure charming silver ones as a strange connection was forming between them. Unconsciously they began to pull in close nearing each other faces until

"Is this the fable sudden kiss scene?!... Oh, well, I guess now it's the legendary blocking scene, hahaha..." Kuzumi had rushed up and surprised them, causing the two to jump up and glare at her.

This ended up in Kuzumi, laughing awkwardly to the two glares.

"Err, oh, hey Yu! How's your injury this morning?!" Kuzumi desperately attempted to shift the focus from her as she spoke to Lun Yuo, who joined the three.

Though Lun Yuo in her mind couldn't help but praise Kuzumi a bit for a reason, she refused to admit and told her,

"I'm doing just fine; I take it the three you are as well?"

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Haaah, yea just fine, well anyways now that we're up before the others get up let's go over some last-minute strategy for the unexpected."

Kazami sighed up and focused his attention on something as well, but Brenda was staring off into space, carving that little moment they shared in her mind.

…

On the trail that leads up through Ashes mountain, the whole group was fresh and prepared to take on anything that came their way.

The path was still the same black ash trail, and this specific trail they were on had vast black rock terrains making so one can cover themself up in a cave. Before going on, however, Elder Wayne told them all;

"Now listen up here, you all must exactly follow us and not stray out from us. The path we're going to lead you all is, exact and one wrong move could mean the end of all of us. The advantage is we can set up camp at several stops since the terrain would allow for that."

They all nodded their head in understanding, and then Elder Michi picked up with,

"And we will be setting up an orderly formation for us to travel in. The two of us will be on the front line, but setting you guys up in a specific way will let us deal with all the Spirit Formation and Origin Formation beasts that come our way quickly and efficiently. You must understand these won't be ordinary beasts; the white slaughtering tiger had done something to give all these beast unique and powerful abilities."

After the explanation, the order that got decided on was Joe Xiu, Hu Tou, Hiles, and Eran at the front, Lo Zu, Witha, Azus, and Myla in the middle of them. And Slade, Muji, Dyria, Alain at the back. At the far end of the group was Kazami, Kuzumi, Lun Yuo, Brenda, and Ju Jia.

Once the formation settled, the two elders took the lead and started guiding them using the map they craftily drew out and marked from all past retelling of this place.

Their formation proved to be effective when they were traversing as they soon met their first beasts. When they were slowly moving around, the group felt the group shaking and heard a vicious growl ahead of them.

Long and behold, two large fearsome-looking Onyx rushed to them. The group all were wearing their masking aura cloaks, making it harder to detect them.

Although the surrounding beasts can catch a slight whiff of their sense and chase after them, it's why the Elders chose this route as every beast roaming this trail was only equivalent to low-level grunts and use to take care of trash.

Both of these beasts were only at the 3rd level of Origin Formation, but they had a white fluffy fur coat on them, giving incredibly tough defense far outstripping their current level plus at the tip of their horns had a green, sickly substance on it.

This kind of beast could have the ability to stall and drag out any surrounding monsters, but before they could even reach them, their vision became wrapped with snow disrupting their senses.

The two beasts surprisingly stopped and attempted to clear their senses before rushing back.

Such a display of smarts was unexpected behavior as normally monstrous beast won't have much intelligent thought until the Heaven Ruler realm showing the white slaughtering tiger tinker with all the creature under its rule.

The sharks they fought yesterday were a significant exception to this rule as even if they were exotic God Realm race, they were only even able to act exactly like humans cause of the constant power up through their tridents.

But while the Onyx attempted to regain back their senses, strong earth Qi coiled up their legs and crush down on it which get the beasts to open their mouth ready to roar in pain however not even a second later two blue axe Qi blade shot in their mouth destroying their vocal cords.

Not giving them any chance, red and green fire with a hint of silver in the depths of the fire popped out of the snow and silently burned them to ash in an instant.

Not even a groan heard as the tough Onyx got killed off in such a quick manner. Ju Jia made sure when the snow covers them up, it only affected their areas and made sure no other beast could sense them.

And while in the back, Kazami silently manages to power up Eran and Joe Xiu fire by flashing his divine powers in them. After yesterday's battle and some experiments this morning, Kazami notice he had grown more control over his divine powers and can use it to even if it a little bit power up someone move.

And just like this with everyone in the group alternating between attacks, they slowly traveled their way through the mountain.