Orou coiled up next to Grizz’s bed and started watching over him while guiding his blood waves to his worst injuries. While he could try healing himself with his spell, it would much too painful with his injuries. He had noticed other side effects like extreme exhaustion manifesting themselves when he healed himself and he wasn’t sure why it was happening. He had tried adding the formation to create the light spirit in the middle of it, but that simply strengthened the effect, and in return, strengthened the pain he had to face.
Now that Orou had time to reflect on the battle that he had fought, he had multiple questions that needed to be answered. His blood serpent was behaving erratically, it almost seemed like it had its own emotions and will once it devoured blood and then there was the issue with the black thread. He still wasn’t clear on how a beastman becomes feral and what’s the use for blood crystals and if every beastman could do something similar to what the wolf beastman did. If they could, how come beastmen ever get enslaved by humans.
Orou had questions without end he would have liked to ask if only he could speak, but unfortunately, he wasn’t created with the ability to do so. He could only sigh to himself and continue licking his wounds, pondering over each and every single detail that happened during the battle. Over the course of many days, Izz went in and out of the room to apply medicine to Grizz and Kris occasionally visited to look over him, but Kris was very busy now that he had to run several establishments. During these days, Orou didn’t leave the room and instead, kept watch over Grizz. He practiced his spells and even tried to determine if the serpent truly had a will of its own to no avail.
It was the beginning of the fifth day when Grizz finally stirred and opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was Orou’s face, well-illuminated thanks to a ball of light floating above him. The next thing he saw was a wall, completely stained in blood. Orou had accidentally crashed the blood serpent into the wall, which nearly caused it to collapse by itself, but thankfully, Izz hasn’t visited the room in some time.
“I’m glad that you’re safe and sound but can you get your face out of my face,” Grizz slightly pushed Orou’s head aside and tried to stand up before falling back into his bed and laughing at his failure. Apparently, Izz had heard what was going on and opened the door, only to shriek in surprise at a wall covered in blood and Grizz lying sideways. He rushed over to make sure that Grizz was alright and then gave a stern lecture to Orou about using and misusing strange magic. Grizz had found something to plug his ears with and was blankly staring at the ceiling, but unfortunately, Orou didn’t have the same option.
After that Izz started interrogating Grizz about what happened in the fight and lectured him about not moving around for a few days. Of course, there was no way Grizz would listen to him, but he answered truthfully about his battle with Nim, not thinking anything of it. Izz dutifully noted it down, asking for more details than Grizz could even remember. Orou wasn’t sure why he needed to write this down, but he seemed to be very serious about doing this, carefully noting down every bit of their fight.
“God, do you have to be so annoying, I just woke up as well,” Grizz grumbled as he continued to narrate the events, even describing Orou’s heroic battle with the two beastmen, not mentioning the gruesome details of what the blood serpent did.
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“Right, this will make for an interesting scoop. The beastmen have been interested in what happened in there and how Nim was slain,” it seemed like Izz was more interested in the story than Grizz’s health after he told it and almost as if he was dazed, he wandered out of the room. Grizz sighed and looked over to Orou, before saying to him: “You wouldn’t know this as he’s been teaching you magic all the time, but he’s also a very enthusiastic journalist. One of his many, many passions.”
Grizz uncomfortably twisted in his bed before trying to stand up once again. “He got me real good, I would have been a goner if not for you, so thanks for saving me,” Orou looked over Grizz for a while longer before making sure he was fine and capable of somewhat fending for himself before he slithered over to the table and picked up a familiar looking book. Izz had brought back all of their belongings from the gambling house and specifically placed down several books related to magic for Orou to read.
Izz was downstairs, ferociously writing something down on a piece of paper. Orou slithered next to him and once more, with painstaking effort, blood, sweat and tears finally opened up the book and flipped to the right page detailing the two spirits. He patiently waited for Izz to finish whatever he was writing, though it took multiple hours for him to actually finish. Once Izz started writing, there was no stopping him no matter how hard Orou nudged him. In the meanwhile, Orou did his best to piece out the words written on the page.
Izz seemed like his spirit was completely drained from him after he had written his piece and he looked over at Orou with dead, fish-like eyes. His eyes regained a bit of spirit once he saw Orou with a book by his side. He went over and picked it up out of Orou’s mouth and inspected it closer. Orou used his fangs to tap at the big spirit he saw and looked as curious as he could be, trying to do his best and communicate with Izz.
“That’s a greater spirit, one of the first greater spirits to be discovered in fact. It commands the lesser spirits below it, creating an area of influence around it. It’s very hard to force spirits to move under this area, so they’re not used that much in spellcasting and they are naturally created in dense spirit areas,” Izz started to explain this to Orou and the fire in his eyes lit up once more. Unfortunately for Orou, Izz didn’t understand what he meant so after tapping the illustration of the greater spirit for a few more times, Orou frustratedly nudged Izz to come along and went to Grizz’s room.
Izz showed Grizz the book he was holding and pointed towards the greater spirit, asking Grizz: “What does he want for me to do?” Orou looked expectantly at Grizz and very slowly and with uncertainty, he spoke: “I think he wants to ask where he can find this spirit. I saw him being very excited about this matter when he was playing with magic, but I’m not entirely sure,” Orou flickered his tongue in happiness and waited for Izz to answer him.
“Well, I suppose you could find captured spirits in Edum, that is, in the capital. They’re awfully rare and you probably won’t be able to find one in the regular market, though some of the more renown shamans might have it. I know for a fact that the king’s shaman has one, he made a fuss about not being able to find one and had the entire kingdom turned upside down to search for it,” Izz thought for a moment before replying to Orou. It was determined then, they would be heading to Edum next in pursuit of the spirit and nothing anyone said would stop Orou from doing so.
“Speaking of Edum, I’m afraid that you’ll have to head there after you’ve recovered Grizz. We’ve gotten new information about the rebels that needs to be delivered directly to the king, and what’s a better man for the job than you Grizz,” although Orou didn’t notice him there, Kris had silently arrived and was staring at Grizz with a piece of paper in his hands, solemnly staring at Grizz. Both Izz and Grizz were looking at the piece of paper with serious expressions before Grizz replied: “You know that I didn’t want to get involved in all of this, but fine, I’ll do it.