No sooner had the group freed Isa and Rai and gotten everyone healed up did they hear the sound of something extremely large rushing through the foliage. Less than half a minute after they first heard it, they spotted it: a humongous running centipede some fifty feet long with a body held five feet off the ground. It weaved through the jungle at high speed, heading – in its seemingly aimless way – for their location.

“Fireball!” the third-circle scholastic mage cast.

“Flameshock Flower!” Rai cast a moment later, using his fire and lightning version of his spell Elemental Burst, whose fire version would have been another Fireball.

“Mana Bolt!” the other two scholastic mages cast, sending a total of four glowing white bolts zipping through the air.

“Sizzling Blood!” cried Isa, sending an arrow of corrosive blood streaking toward the centipede.

“Hah!” shouted Yua, unleashing an arrow that had a nearly-visible gale surrounding it.

A massive fireball exploded over the centipede, followed by the arrow blowing straight through one of its segments and the acidic blood splashing on its face while the mana bolts cracked apart pieces of its carapace, and then an opening blossom akin to a carnation made of red flames and violet lightning appeared with a roar and a crack, engulfing the centipede. It slowed, tottered, leaned, and collapsed.

“Thank the gods,” one of the divine mages said. “That thing could instantly kill someone with a single bite!”

“That was close,” Rai said.

“A little unfortunate, though,” Isa added. “I’d have liked to see if I could take it down.”

Rai gave her the side-eye. “You’re insane; you know that, right?”

“How am I ever going to evolve if I don’t push myself?”

“…You and I both know that’s not the actual reason, just a justification. You just like fighting strong things.”

“…It can be both,” she said mock-defensively.

“Let’s eat while we walk, people,” Yua said. “We don’t want to draw even more predators with all the dead bodies.”

And so they continued. When it became too dark to keep going, they set up camp, which mostly involved putting up tents, alarm wards, and bug repellant wards and setting up a rotating watch. Miraculously, they passed the night without anything attacking them. The following day, they continued further inland.

As the days passed, the hot and humid weather, the swarms of bugs, and the repeated encounters with hostile wildlife, including a sneak attack at night from one of the camouflage cats and a crocodile lunging out of a large stream, began to wear on the group. They catalogued and studied creatures and plants, keeping the scholars occupied, but they saw no signs of ruins. Rai was unsurprised; the island was large and completely covered in jungle, so anything short of a particularly large building, such as a tower or castle, would likely be impossible to spot. Even so, he began finding himself growing frustrated.

When, nearly two weeks into their search, they came across a lake with a broken tower reaching up over a hundred feet high from an island in the center of the lake, an enthusiastic cheer went up from the group. It was hardly the sky-piercer that the Magic Towers were supposed to be, but the last Tower he had found had sunk underground, so that this one was broken was no real shock. That the Tower still existed was a wondrous thing, and considering that the “civilized” races had no society on the Savage Isles, the worn structure had to date from a time long past.

There was just one problem.

“How are we supposed to get across?” Isa said after a moment.

“I don’t think that the Water Pendant will be able to let us pass,” the captain said.

“We’ll have to build rafts and row across,” Yua said.

“You can’t be serious,” one of the scholars said.

“Well… the guy with the Flight spell could get a few of us across, but only a few,” one of the scholastic mages said. “Like, four.”

“That’s not good enough,” another scholar said. “Is building rafts really our only option?”

“The guy with the Flight spell? I have a name…” grumbled the third circle mage.

The scholars started discussing whether there were any alternatives to hard labor. After a few minutes, they grudgingly admitted that there were not. Unfortunately, nobody had an axe; the closest thing was Isa’s halberd.

Isa succeeded in chopping down a single, very large tree, and then everyone with a bladed weapon chipped in on removing branches, cutting off the secondary branches from them, and lashing the main branches together with vines. The process was long, slow, and tiring, and they only managed to complete two rafts (large enough for three people each) by the end of the day.

The next day, they were in the middle of working when the sound of many wings drew caught them off guard. A cloud of cat-sized, six-bat-winged, many-legged mosquito-look-alikes approached from along the lakeshore, reaching them before they realized what was happening. Screams rent the air as the creatures latched onto various members of the expeditionary group with their barbed legs and plunged their proboscises into vulnerable flesh – or, in Isa’s and Serpa’s case, right through their scales – and began to suck blood. Rai was the only one who managed to dodge out of the way of the things, cutting two out of the air with a single slash. Others ripped them off or used knives to attack them. Serpa chomped on them.

The struggle with the swarm was relatively brief, but eventually all twenty of the creatures were dead. Everyone but Rai, however, had been drained – to varying degrees – of blood – and considering the size of the creatures, the drain was significant. Yua and both divine mages used up all their second circle spells for the day casting Recovery to replenish the blood lost, while Isa used the Recovery Rod to restore Serpa, who had the most blood drained.

“We’ll have to keep an eye on our health,” Yua said. “It’s very likely that some or all of us have been infected with disease. I have a spell that can fix that, but it’s third circle, so I can only use it on four people a day. I’ll go ahead and cast it on Rai, Isa, myself, and the captain.”

“Actually, I didn’t get blood-sucked, so…”

“Then, our other third-circle mage.”

They had returned to working on their rafts and were most of the way done with the third when they were suddenly surrounded. None of them had noticed the approach of the ones blocking off every avenue of escape; the creatures had even come out of the water. Rai had never heard of them before, but he could only call them snakemen: they were snakes with bodies as big around as a human’s, which held the front half of their bodies upright to a height between five and a half and six and a half feet, and which had a pair of arms with humanoid hands (with which they held either spears or blowguns). Most of them were some shade of green, but some were a shade of blue and one was red with black markings.

The red one slithered forward and spoke in a hissing language that none understood… except for Rai, who had kept the Strap of Tongues on.

“You strange creatures are trespassing in the domain of the Orochi. The only reason you are not already dead is that you travel with a serpent. Identify yourselves and state the reasons for your presence! This I demand!”

Rai addressed the speaker in the same hissing tongue. “We are an expeditionary team of scholars and their protectors, come from lands outside of these isles to search for and study the ruins of the ancients. My name is Rai Flamme, and I am the leader. Only I can speak your language, thanks to an artifact of the ancients, for our peoples speak a different one. We mean no harm, no offense. We saw the tower in the middle of the lake and were trying to build rafts to reach it.”

The snakeman stared at him.

“Scholars? You seek to learn?”

“Yes. We seek only to learn.”

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“I do not believe you! You carry weapons!”

“Many of us do not carry weapons. Those who do, do so in order to defend and hunt for food.”

The snakeman hissed thoughtfully. “Even if this is true, you are still strange creatures trespassing in our territory. And you tried to get to the Sacred Tower! That place is a holy place; only the shamans and the Emperor are allowed there.” They turned to Serpa and began hissing, but Rai could not understand it.

Oh, he realized after a moment, they’re using a magical ability to converse with snakes, not a real language.

Serpa hissed back.

“It would seem that your serpent companion trusts in your group. For this reason and this reason alone, we will take you prisoner rather than kill you. Surrender yourselves to us! This I demand!”

“They want to take us prisoner,” Rai said to the group. “I explained our purpose here. Apparently the Magic Tower is sacred to them, and we’re in their territory. The fact that we have Serpa is the only reason they’re not killing us anyway. Considering the fact that we’re outnumbered and surrounded, and that they all look like warriors, fighting them now will definitely end with casualties on our side, even if we win. Thoughts?”

“We should surrender ourselves and try to talk our way out of it later,” Miransa, the independent scholar, said. “We’re guaranteed to have some of us die if we don’t. Besides, I can’t be the only one curious about a monstrous race that’s never been recorded before, can I?”

“True, but…” another scholar said hesitantly.

“Survival is more important than freedom, at least in the short term,” the captain said. “We should go with them.”

There was some more murmuring, but no one disagreed loud enough to be understood.

“We will go with you,” Rai told the snakeman. “May I know the name of my captor?”

“I am Sierv, patrol captain of the Iron Scales of Orochi! Know that if any attempt to ready their weapons, they will be slain!”

“We will cooperate.”

Surrounded on all sides by the two dozen snakemen, the group was led through the jungle, around the lake. Several hours later, they finally reached the Orochi’s city.

“Fascinating,” Rai whispered.

The city was the perfect fusion of stone and tree. Some buildings were overrun by plants; some trees had structures built off of them. Some fragments of buildings were clearly ancient; some mostly-whole edifices were far more recently constructed. There was no stark delineation between city and wilderness but a gradient, where the further into the city they went the more complete the structures and the more cultivated the arrangement of the plants. This was no mere village, nor was it even just town-sized, like the kobold warrens; it was truly a city. Stonemasonry and metalworking notwithstanding, it appeared relatively primitive in terms of technology and magic. As they were taken further and further in, Rai noted the ever-increasing population density and found that he could actually tell the difference between civilians and fighters by more than just the fact that the latter were armed. He couldn’t tell males from females, but he did see plenty of children.

“Hey, Captain Sierv!” a particularly thin individual called out. “What are those things?”

“I don’t know, Cams,” Sierv replied. “Intruders we captured, though.”

“That lizard one looks out of place compared to the rest ofthem! And they have a serpent with them?”

“That serpent’s why I captured them instead of killing them. Now, if you’ll excuse us, I’m taking them to the Pit.”

Rai raised an eyebrow. What’s the Pit? he wondered. I hope it’s just a literal empty pit.

It turned out that it was indeed a literal empty pit… a large one big enough to hold the entire group. It was also forty feet deep and the lip was ringed with spikes. Fortunately, there was a wooden ramp that the snakemen lowered into the pit before forcing the expeditionary group to walk down it and then pulling it up; Rai had been afraid they’d be tossed in.

They remained in the pit for nearly an hour before a vine rope was lowered in (dangling off a protruding platform) and Rai, Isa, Serpa, and Yua (the last of whom added when the snakemen were informed that she went everywhere Serpa went) were ordered to climb out. Sierv and several others escorted this select team toward one of the larger buildings, which was covered in vines and flowers. Inside, Sierv presented them to a pair of headdress-wearing snakemen, one albino and the other black-scaled, both of whom carried a staff made of some sort of purple-black wood.

“As ordered, shamans, I present to you the leader of the intruders, the lizard woman, and the serpent. The pointy-eared one is the serpent’s companion.”

“Well done, Captain,” the albino said. “These mammals are strange-looking indeed. You say that the leader is the only one who can speak our tongue?”

“That is what he claims. He says it is due to an artifact of the ancients.”

“Is that so?” the black one said. “Intruder-leader. You will answer all of our questions. This I command! We are the head shamans of the Orochi. Who are you?”

“I am called Rai Flamme. I am the leader of the scholar expeditionary team come to study the ruins of the ancients.”

“So you are scholars?” the albino said with interest. “But why come to Orochi territory to study the work of the ancients?”

“In the lands from which we hail, it is very hard to find the works of the ancients. So rare are they, that some even doubt the existence of the ancients. But here, in your lands, one can clearly see them.”

“So your people are not blessed by the True Spirits,” the black one said. “The ancients are holy, and their artifacts sacred. We shamans know this. We shamans form pacts with the True Spirits, the divine spirits of the ancients.”

Wait, so they think that the ancients still exist as divine entities that are also spirits? Rai thought in surprise. So are the shamans some sort of divine mage spirit mage combination, then?

“We know so little about the ancients,” Rai said aloud, “and so we wish to learn.”

“But you are not shamans. It is not your place to study the sacred,” the black one said. “You are also ugly mammals wearing strange things to cover your bodies.”

“In our culture, mammalian peoples were these clothes to cover our bodies at all times, both for warmth and propriety,” he said, saying ‘clothes’ in his own language because there was no equivalent in the tongue of the snakemen. “Also, in our culture, anyone may learn about the sacred… but only those chosen by the divine may actually touch it.”

That’s actually true, Rai thought. Only priests can touch what is deemed sacred, but they willingly teach scholars about it. Of course, nobody thinks ancient artifacts are sacred, but…

The albino hissed at Serpa, who hissed back. There was some more back and forth before the albino turned to Yua.

“Translate this, Rai Flamme; this I command. Companion of Serpa, how do you see your relationship with Serpa?”

Rai relayed the question.

“Serpa is my friend. We support, provide for, and protect each other. Where one goes, so goes the other. We spend time doing nothing together. We hunt together. I would lay my life on the line for her.”

Rai relayed the answer.

The shamans shared a glance.

“You have proven worthy of your freedom. Sierv, have one of your underlings escort the serpent and her companion to a place to stay. This I command,” the albino said.

“This I obey,” Sierv replied.

“They’re freeing you and taking you to a place to stay,” Rai told Yua.

“Because I’m friends with Serpa?”

“It seems so.”

Sierv gestured to one of the other snakemen and Yua was then escorted out, Serpa following alongside her.

“Translate this, Rai Flamme; this I command,” the black shaman said, looking at Isa. “Name yourself and explain why you travel with these mammals.”

After Rai relayed the words, Isa replied. “I am Isa Bloodscale, warrior of the Blackfang kobold tribe. I travel with them because I am Rai’s partner. I aid him in his search for Tower Era stuff, and he aids me in my quest to become stronger and evolve.”

The shamans hissed in surprise when Rai translated her answer.

“Evolve? You wish to evolve?”

“Only someone blessed by the True Spirits can evolve!”

“Such as our Emperor.”

“They say that only someone blessed by the True Spirits – that’s what they worship, which they believe is the same as the ancients – can evolve, like their Emperor.”

“Do they know how to evolve?” Isa said excitedly. “Is there some sort of trial to undergo or something? Tell me!”

“Isa Bloodscale wishes to know if you know a way for her to evolve. Her kind, the kobolds, are naturally weaker than your kind, or even my kind, and though she is quite strong, she has reached the limits of her kind. The only way for her to get stronger is to evolve and raise her limits. Is there some sort of trial placed by the True Spirits to receive their blessing?”

“To undergo a trial of the True Spirits requires great faith. You do not even know of them,” the black shaman scoffed. “The only way you could be allowed to attempt such a trial is to get permission from the Emperor to travel to the Sacred Tower. And the Emperor wouldn’t give permission to weaklings like you.”

“What if she and I could prove that we are not weaklings?”

“Hm? So you would test your strength?” the albino said consideringly. “I may have an idea…”

“You mean the arena.”

“Yes. There is a battle tournament being held soon. Contestants can fight in teams of three. First, they will face a group of weaker monsters. Then, they will face a strong monster. Then, those who have succeeded will face against each other. Finally, the winners will have the honor of battling against the Emperor. If they survive and meet his approval, he will grant each survivor a boon. It is a yearly tradition. We even welcome outsiders to participate.”

“Outsiders? I thought that yours was the only people here.”

“No. While the Orochi are the best, there are also the bugbears and toadians, which live on other islands, as well as the inferior serpentsia, who do not acknowledge the True Spirits – they are normally banished to other isles, except during the tournament.”

“Then, may we participate?”

The shamans looked at each other.

“Yes,” they said simultaneously. The black one continued, “However, should you lose, the lives of all your companions, save Serpa and her friend, are forfeit. In exchange, should you win, we will allow you all to leave unmolested.”

Rai briefly explained the situation to Isa, who gave her consent with a little too much eagerness.

“We agree. The two of us shall participate; we will select our third once we are reunited with our companions.”

“So it shall we; this I declare,” the albino said, tapping their staff on the stone floor with a sense of finality.