As the two of them walked down the streets, they saw the Black Knights sweeping the streets, cleaning the dead corpses off of the streets and dragging beastmen out of their hiding spots. The Black Knights relentlessly searched each house and each alley and as soon as they spotted the hiding beastmen, the only fate for the beastmen was to submit or to die. The Black Knights didn’t hurt the beastmen at first, but emotionlessly asked the beastmen to follow them. No matter how the beastmen begged, the Black Knights remained emotionless, awaiting the answer with dead silence hanging in the air. Many trembled in fear simply by being near one of the knights and followed them without any resistance, but many let the fear overtake them by either fleeing or even worse, attacking the Black Knights.
No attack could penetrate their armor and those that attacked were put down by force, either by making them gravely injured or even in some cases, killing them. Those that were killed were absorbed by the Black Knight’s swords, making several small changes to their demeanor, their size and their armor and weapons. Seeing the fate of the beastmen that resisted, only the truly brave or foolish ones would try to run from knights, only to be hunted down seconds later. Vaar hadn’t given them anything to distinguish themselves from common beastmen, but somehow, the Black Knights knew to not hurt them, only ignoring them as they passed by.
Both of them made their way towards the gates, but as they did, they saw more and more cases of beastmen being captured. The strange thing was, all of them were going in a certain direction as if combing the city while walking towards a specific place in mind. Orou didn’t see where the beastmen were being shepherded to, but likely, it wasn’t anything good for them. Of course, there was a limited number of Black Knights to sweep the city and many beastmen had either gotten lucky or hidden too well. Those who had evaded notice tried to flee the city, but as they approached the gates, they saw the beastmen who were once fleeing towards the gates, flee from them.
Several beastmen with black strands sticking out of them, resembling Vaar’s soldiers before they were transformed to Black Knights were standing around the city, licking their lips at each beastman that tried to escape. Unlike the Black Knights who had no emotion, the soldiers didn’t give the beastmen a chance to submit The black strands wildly flailed around as the soldiers started chasing beastmen, who came within sight. In fact, as the two of them stood near the gates, they saw one of the soldiers’ black strands pierce the chest of one of the beastmen. Following that, the soldier’s chest opened like a giant maw and chomped down on the arm of the beastmen before devouring the rest of the beastman’s body.
Orou and Grizz expected to be able to pass through without any problems, but that was not the case. One of the beastmen who had recently feasted on a beastmen turned his gaze towards the two of them. He stood still for several seconds before the black strand elongated and soared towards Orou. Reacting much faster than Orou, Grizz bent forwards and pulled out one of his hidden daggers, chucking it towards the soldier and dashing towards him, all while pulling out his two short swords. A bit later, Orou took action by using one of the simpler spells he knew, the water serpent spell. Using both of his wills to work on the formation at the same time, he conjured the water serpent in less than five seconds.
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Orou sent the water serpent to crash with the black strand, but unsurprisingly, the black strand simply passed through the water serpent. The soldier twisted his body to dodge the dagger and using the sword by his side, he slashed towards the rapidly approached Grizz. Ducking below the swing, Grizz used both of his swords to cut at the soldier arm, who clutched his hand in pain and dropped his sword in pain. The black strand turned towards Grizz instead, but the water serpent had already reached the soldier. Using its full momentum to crash into the soldier, the water serpent bit into the throat of the beastman as well as wrapping around his head, suffocating him in the process. Wildly flailing around and struggling while unable to breathe, Grizz stabbed both of this short swords into the beastman’s heart, who drew his last breath immediately after.
As the black strand was nearing Grizz and was about to pierce through his body, it suddenly stopped and detached itself from the beastman’s body. Plunging downwards into the ground, it started wriggling through the earth and travelling through the sea of black strands towards the rest of the soldiers. Using this chance to observe the black strand, Orou slithered closer and closer towards the gates, all while looking downwards and inspecting the black strand. Although he didn’t notice this during Vaar’s and king’s battle, the black strand was struggling to make its way through the rest of the black strands.
The black strand was quite noticeable as it swam through the rest of the black strands. Usually, he didn’t really notice the shimmering force around the black strands, but when one compared a strand with it and a strand without it, it was like comparing black and white, a total contrast. As Orou looked at it, he distinctly felt that the strand was out of place, like it didn’t belong together with the rest of the strands. The lone black strand was isolated by the rest of the strands and weighed down by some strange pressure. It almost sunk into the earth a couple of times, but with great difficulty, it reached one of the beastmen before merging with his body, travelling from his feet towards his shoulder, where a wild black strand was sticking out of his body.
Before Orou had realised it, he had moved right next to one of the soldiers, who was staring directly at him. Orou bared his fangs as he controlled his blood core to spin faster, sending blood waves towards his head. As he was ready to lash out at the soldier, he noticed that neither he or the black strand was attacking. The rest of the soldiers were warily looking at Orou, raising their weapons in fear. The soldier right next to Orou nervously gulped down as he said: “You may pass, my comrade was way too careless attacking you, the great serpent.”
Orou dispersed the waves gathered in his body and passed through the soldiers, Grizz silently following behind him. He looked as if he was lost deep in thought and as they started walking towards the mountain in the near distance, he suddenly said to Orou: “As much as I love my own race, I hope the humans win the oncoming war. These things are not beastmen, they’re monsters, abominations.”
Opposite to Grizz, Orou didn’t find the beastmen to be weird. It was natural for every creature to hunt and to kill in order to satiate its hunger. Although feeding on their own race was uncommon, the beastmen who only fed on fruits and vegetables seemed stranger to Orou. He was fascinated by the wild black strands that were embedded within the beastmen and if he had a chance, he would gladly sit down with Vaar and learn what everything he knew about the black strands. From Orou’s understanding, the black strands made up everything that was living and having the opportunity to see the black strands made him understand much more about the world around him, even though many things were still shrouded in mystery.