Upon making it to the very end of the wall maze puzzle and successfully scaling it, I had found the lever that turned the wall I just climbed into a staircase so Othelia and the others could climb up as well. Looking off the ledge, we noticed it had already turned nighttime, so we decided to call it a day for now. Setting up a small campfire, our blankets and tents, we had another small snack for dinner before going to bed.

"I have to say, you mortals have truly surpassed my expectations." Aru praised our pace, "I guess I'll have to recalculate my estimated climbing time of 3-4 days to a week. If we continue at this pace then both groups should reach the top in just a day or two."

"Hey now, there's no way we shaved off so much time." I remained skeptical, "You said it takes an average of 3-4 days to scale the mountain, so why the sudden time gain?"

"Didn't I already say why that is?" She giggled, "You surpassed my expectations. I hadn't expected you all to be such good pairings, so my estimate was way more pessimistic than reality is."

"Well, that's nice to hear." Othelia smiled, "But if you said both groups are gonna make it at the same time, does that mean we've already caught up to them?"

Oh, right...! It's true Aru has an omniscient ability, allowing her to see exactly what everyone is doing right now, so I guess she can see how much both groups have progressed without any issues. I hadn't thought about it like that, but just today they were apparently way ahead of us. Something isn't adding up, I just hope they didn't run into any trouble or anything...

"Hate to break it to ya', Edward Saint, but it seems your guess this time is true." Aru shook her head, "They fell off a cliff just now."

"Huh!?" Both Othelia and I sprung up from our sleeping bags, almost waking up the sleeping Cene, "T-They fell? How!?"

Just as we had asked her that question, she had pointed up above her with a slight smirk. Looking up, I had something heavy fall down and hit me in the face, instantly knocking me out. It took a couple of minutes before I woke up again, and Othelia was actually quite worried that I had gotten a concussion or something. Thankfully, it was nothing more than a slight bump on my head that kind of hurt when I touched it. Ow.

"Stop touching it already!" The worried Othelia ordered me, "What if it starts bleeding, or worse...!"

"I'm a doctor of medicine. If anyone knows if it's safe or not to play with, then it has to be me." I brushed her off, "More importantly, what just fell?"

Glancing away from me for a second, Othelia showed me the heavy traveler's bag that belonged to none other than Issei. She tightly held onto it as tears began to form in her Eyes. This was bad, if we're to believe Aru's words, then that means those guys really did fall off a ledge, and this bag only serves as proof of her statement.

"But where are they, then?" I turned to Aru, "If the bag fell right here, then shouldn't they also be here? Not that I'd want them to fall down on this hard surface where we are."

"Yeah, no." She smiled, "I noticed they were about to fall, so I used the same trick I used to save you and me when we fell to safely have them land on the nearest solid ground. Couldn't save the bag though, but feel free to praise me for-"

"Thank you!" I immediately lunged to hug her, with Othelia following suit soon after, "Thank you so much, Aru! You're a golden child!"

"Wha-!? I-I am NOT a child! I'm the Goddess of Water, so bow down to me, puny mortals! O-Oi, stop ruffling my hair up..." She mellowed out as soon as Othelia started pampering her, "Ooohhh, that kind of feels nice though..."

So that's what happened, those guys are safe...! Well, she did say we'd be completely fine as long as we were with her, but I didn't think she'd extend her favor to the other group, seeing as they were so far away. Guess the proximity on this favor of hers is really far, after all. Geez, at this point I don't even care if she's Allucius or not, I just wanna thank her for keeping my family and friends safe!

"T-That's enough, now!" Aru finally shoved us away before hiding in her sleeping bag, "You've had your fill of this Goddess' body, so it's time for bed now! We've got a big day of hiking ahead of us!"

"Please don't phrase it in such a dirty way." I felt like washing my hands after hugging her, "Makes us sound like a bunch of perverts."

"W-Well, you are!" Aru turned her back on us bashfully as she yelled, "Now sleep!"

Glancing at each other before cracking a light smile, Othelia and I too felt it was time to finally get some shut-Eye in. Zipping up our sleeping bags as well, we closed our Eyes, and just as I had done so, a small boy's voice could be heard beckoning me to answer him.

"Uncle, hey, uncle." Cene called out to me, still tightly zipped up in his sleeping bag, "You awake?"

"Yeah, what's up, bud?" I smiled back all tired.

"What's a pewwewt?" He asked innocently enough.

Ah, I shouldn't have said that. I guess we did get a bit too rowdy while he was sleeping, so he managed to overhear that part of our conversation with Aru. Crap, how do I go about this...? Eh, I'll just pretend to have fallen asleep and hope he forgets.

"Uncle?" He kept calling out to me, "Hey, uncle. What's a pewwewt?"

He'll let up soon enough, he'll let up soon enough...

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***

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"Gooooooooood mooooorniiiiing~!" Aru loudly woke all of us up at the very crack of dawn, "Sleep well? Probably not, I assume."

"What made you say that?" I turned around with dark bags under my Eyes.

Yep, Cene didn't let me sleep for almost half the night. A child's curiosity is a frightening thing, and the only thing more frightening is their dedication to never give up. I could use some of that motivation of his, really...

"Yaaawn, morning." Othelia rubbed her Eyes, "Man, I get where we are, but isn't it way too cold outside of the sleeping bags?"

"Just imagine what it's like outside the tent." Aru almost sounded proud, "Thankfully though, Gods don't get cold. Achoo!"

"Bless you." I smirked rather annoyingly.

"And who the hell are you asking to bless me?" She scoffed, "I'm a Goddess! I'm the one who blesses people when they sneeze, not the other way around!"

"Oh, okay. Then I'll be the one to bless you." I smiled back.

"Geez, you really can be a brat at times, despite your age." She opened the tent before hastily closing it back up, "Ah, trouble first thing in the morning. What rotten luck."

"What's the matter?" Othelia asked as she dressed Cene back in his warm hiking clothes.

"Bjorn." Aru replied.

"Bjorn!?" We raised our voice.

"Bjorn." She nodded as we saw the huge shadow looming just from the other side of the tent, "Sigh, I'd push it off the ledge with my water, but it's just too big for that. Bjorns are said to be able to lift entire houses off the ground, so I'm pretty sure it'd just aggregate it."

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"Then what do we do?" I frantically darted my Eyes around the tent before stopping at Issei's bag, "That's it! Issei has tons of useful tools stuffed inside of here, right!? We could make use of that!"

"I don't think we can, actually." Othelia shook her head dejectedly, "The bag looks like it got pretty scorched. I doubt any of that stuff still functions, and even if some of it does, we'll run out of time before finding out which one works and which one doesn't."

Crap, what do we do, what do we do...?! The bjorn isn't yet growling at us, so I assume it's probably just curious about us stumbling upon its territory for now. Even still, if it sees us inside the tent, we'll be gone within a minute. We just don't have any way to fight it off... Wait, do we even have to fight it, though?

"Khm, khm..." I cleared my throat as I stood up proudly.

"E-Edward, what are you doing!?" Othelia tried pulling me back down, "You'll alert it if you do that!"

Yeah, that's the point. I want it to know I'm here, because I want it to know that I am human. Right, of all the people in the world that could have stumbled upon this beast, I believe I am the luckiest one. The proof is in my Eyes, shining the exact same Brown hue as the bjorn's very fur. I of all people should be able to communicate with it thanks to Analyze, and if I do, I might be able to calmly have it go away without us even having to meet face to face. It's a gamble, but it's not like we have any better idea.

"Bestia, homo sum." I spoke with a shaky yet confident voice, "Ego sum in tabernaculo meo."

"Whoa, will that work?" Othelia turned to ask Aru, who was equally as uncertain.

"Guess we'll see." She smirked, "If we live through this, it does, and if we don't, then it doesn't. Simple as, really."

"Bestia, nomen habes?" I asked the bjorn.

"..." It remained silent, still and unmoving, though I couldn't quite hear its inner voice.

"Oh, maybe if I..." I went to just slightly open up the tent's zipper so I could see the trail of thoughts enter, but was hastily stopped by Othelia.

"W-What are you doing!? It'll get in if you do that!" She warned.

Ignoring her, I had instead turned back around and just slightly had it zipped up, going prone to see the words come inside the tent, I was quickly overwhelmed in an instant. The bjorn appeared to be thinking a mile a minute, and my Animal Tongue, or "Latin" as Issei called it, isn't yet at that level of fluency for me to keep up. Even still, I noticed three key words that helped me get the gist of what it was saying.

"Humanum... Weldyr... Territorium meum?" I repeated the bjorn's words aloud, "He knows we're humans, his name is Weldyr, and judging by the question mark at the very end, I assume he's asking us what we're doing in his territory."

"You got all that from that?" Aru smirked.

"Awoo, what's going on?" Cene started shaking from the fear.

"Your cool uncle's saving the day." Aru calmed him down.

"Oh, aw yeah!" Cene got noisy all of a sudden, startling the beast outside, "Kick his butt, uncle! Yeah!"

"Graaaawr!" The bjorn shook our tent up.

"K-Keep your voice down, Cene!" Othelia put her hands over his mouth, "Edward, deescalate things quickly before the bjorn gets us!"

"No, that growl..." I deciphered it in my head, "It wasn't that he's agitated or scared. He's mad that he heard a child's voice."

"Hm?" They all tilted their heads as I cleared my throat to speak again.

"Weldyr, Edward sum. Tutus est puer." I explained to the bjorn our situation, "Mox iter erimus, quaeso abeamus."

"...Vera narras, Edward?" The bjorn's words trailed in cautiously.

"Imo ad cacumen pervenire necesse est." I said just as calmly.

The bjorn had thought about it a bit more, but ultimately went away from the tent. Just how far away, we wouldn't know. We'd have to go outside and find out for ourselves, and that's exactly what we did once I explained what had just happened to the others. We quickly packed everything up and unzipped the tent to pack it up as well. Indeed, the bjorn wasn't waiting for us just outside, but he was still here, hiding behind some bushes and shrubbery. It was kind of goofy seeing such a large and terrifying bear cooping up behind the bushes, waiting patiently to see if we truly were treating Cene right. Maybe he's a father himself, or this beast is just way more gentle than humans have labeled it.

"Phew, we got out safely." Othelia rushed to flee the scene, "Come on, Edward! Before the bjorn comes back!"

"Wait." I stopped and turned back around to call the bjorn out, "Weldyr, gratias tibi. Bene salutatum te volo, sic te ostende."

The bjorn, upon hearing my words of encouragement and gratitude, had slowly left its hiding spot and approached us with great care, making sure not to make any sudden movements and scare Cene in the process.

"E-Edward, it's approaching us...!" Othelia looked like she was about to faint.

"Alright, time for you guys to learn some useful lingo." I smiled as I dubbed myself the mediator of this conversation, "This is Weldyr, he is a beast, but he is kind. He speaks in Animal Tongue."

"Heh, no way you're doing this!" Aru cackled to herself, "You want your catgirls that badly, huh?"

"As soon as possible." I smiled back, "Now, he let us pass through here without issues, so please thank him."

"O-Okay, here goes..." Othelia sheepishly looked at the bjorn, "T-Thank you, Mister Weldyr."

"...?" The bjorn didn't understand anything that came out of her mouth but his name, so it turned to me for a translation.

"No, no. I already said he doesn't understand Entropic, so we have to be the ones to learn his language before anything." I smiled, "If you wanna say thank you, repeat after me: Gratias tibi."

"G-Gratias... tibi... Weldyr." She hid behind Aru like a coward.

"...!" The bjorn's eyebrows shot up in surprise once it saw what Othelia was doing, letting out a funny noise for a moment before turning to me and speaking with its inner voice, "Grata tua, homines. Tutum manere."

"Heh, he appreciates the gratitude and says to stay safe." I chuckled, "Now that's definitely something you don't see everyday, huh?"

"Gratias tibi, Weldyr!" Aru waved as we continued onward.

"Gwatias... tibi!" Cene adorably waved at the content beast, "Gwatias tibi, Wewdiw!"

"See, even Cene's less scared than you, Othelia!" I teased her lightly.

"He's a kid, of course he wouldn't be scared of a beast he's never heard the stories of!" She whined, "Though, I guess that's good. If there are kind beasts like this out in the world, then I feel bad for fearing them my whole life."

"You said it. Though you're right to be scared until you can properly talk to them like Edward Saint can." Aru warned, "But I hope this serves as a lesson - People are way too quick to label things they can't understand as hostile, as do beasts. So the first step to making friends with each other is to understand them."

Sometimes, even Aru can sound mature, it seems... Eh, who am I kidding, she probably read that in a picture book or something.

"Oi, I'm not a kid!" She yelled back at me.