The tiger’s face scrunched. “Is this how you feel, Seri?”

Seri nodded. “…I do.”

Surrounded by his peers’ looks, White Tiger finally conceded: “Fine. I don’t see what’s wrong with the boy,” He glanced over, saying, “he’s taking quite a leisurely nap—” Then choked. When Seri noticed this, she looked to the portal, visibly confused as he, but lost to the meaning. It wasn’t just him alone, suddenly, a deep quiet took the stage. Again, another first of firsts.

The sleeping boy through the portal hadn’t changed a wink since then; and she wondered as to what’s the case, Seri blinked, “Master White?” The tiger looked down but didn’t answer. The other three’s beastly visage was still. Stuck trying to scrutinize something they couldn’t pin down, like being lost on a math problem with nobody to inquire with.

Grisla twitched. And that—put her heart aflutter. It was strange, that reaction of hers. But she wasn’t too concerned with knowing the why or stepping back for a perspective. That time was for later. Her two dimples flashed out, and she started: “Looks like he’s fine, I think? Well, I’ll ask him what happened right now.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Azure Dragon said, eyes squinting. “Something about the boy has… changed.” When Seri was about to flash him with the same dramatic face as before, he swiftly said, “But I will not stop you.”

Seri took her victory; then bowed to her masters. “Thank you, I will bring him here shortly.”

Her foot moved with a little more quickness too; also, strange. She’ll think of the cause, again, later. With a small hop she passed through from Limbo to the world she described as “Endlessly drab.” However, with her first friend in it, it wasn’t so bad. She quickly repaired the scrapes and tears in her dress her friend complimented, and walked to him, worry and excitement intermixed.

Grisla’s body lay across a slab of stone lifted from his encounter with Ji Nan; speaking of him, his corpse was blown off to another corner to rest. The portal behind her shrunk, as though the zipper was being pulled up, till the rend repaired itself and became one with reality. He was as fine as she hoped, least, on the outside. However, while she stepped over rock and phased through the boulders she was much too bothered to step around, with a closer look, the boy’s face struggled in half-breaths; relaxing, then strained. Relax, strain. She scanned his core and felt an odd peculiarity—nothing she could discern too deeply without disturbing his rest. She’ll let him wake on his own.

Taking out a blanket—another one, as the reckless idiot destroyed the previous—she laid it over him, taking temperature for some reason, as if a common cold could do him in, such an idea was ludicrous but… she did it anyway. Again, she didn’t know why. But does it matter?

Her hand burned with his forehead. Much warmer than usual, but it was just a random thought and not a serious consideration. So now Seri’s own face was strained with anxiety.

“Hey, Grisla.” She said, throwing out a feeler. With a nod of confidence, she continued: “I remember back when, and you do as well, when you asked me why I picked you? Why you, in particular? I don’t really know myself. Well—that’d be a lie. I kind of do. Kind of. You’re… different.”

Her gaze ran over him… head to toe. But mostly she was fixed at his face, and her head leaned. “Not the smartest I’ve seen. Without a doubt, not the most talented, either. Even I won’t blow your head up. In truth, Xinrei has just as much potential as you do. I know. It’s a hard thing to swallow but… he does. You’ve probably always known that, though. His issue is entirely different from yours. All this time he’s been forcing his progress with talent, and that’s saying a lot.”

“The boy has issues, in here,” she tapped her head, saying, “A little read on his emotions and he’s not the most stable dumpling. You’re somewhat the fault of it.”

She tucked her legs to her chest and locked them tight with her arms. “Not one, but two geniuses. And you’re probably destined to kill each other. A sad thing, but nothing too new in our world.” Seri shook her head, “No, it’s your world. I’m… I’m… just—”

“Seri, that’s it. And that’s fine, for now. I think.”

Grisla’s status hasn’t changed much at all, but it didn’t matter to her right now all too much. She had confidence, no—more than that, up to a fact, that Grisla was alright. That he would wake up, at any moment and get right back to his adventure within the Well of Wonders. “You’re annoying, you know that?” Her lips lifted. “Always prattling on about… cultivation this, get stronger that. I’ve never seen such a fall-from-grace loser try so hard. But… I guess, that’s the reason I picked you.”

“I take great pleasure in watching an idiot, and a bit too sympathetic one, at that.”

She looked around, checking suspiciously but after a mischievous joy overtook her. Her slender finger jabbed Grisla’s cheek, dancing in it as if it were putty. “Wake up already, I’m gettin’ bored, Grisla Orlith.” Suddenly, like the magic words—the boy’s eyelids fluttered and he snapped awake.

The little ball of self-amused happiness ballooned into something bigger on his waking. Grisla coughed, blinked, and squinted and looked up, down, left, and hesitantly right at Seri, and then any observer could see that the boy withdrew into his own thoughts, licking his lips for seemingly no reason.

“Welcome back. Done playing like you were the one who got killed?” Seri said.

Grisla, whose hair began to waterfall down into his Northern Wilderness wildman days, glazed over her with a look. And Seri… noticed a change. He hadn’t even spoken a word—but his look—was as dispassionate as a man who’s seen a thousand years in a thousand lifetimes. Never to be amused again.

What’s up with him?

She thought she was just being a little too anxious, and said, “Well? Cat got your tongue or am I just too beautiful for words?” What was she even saying?

However… it was like she just spoke to a wall. Instead, Grisla’s eyes which locked onto hers drifted—a look interested in other things inspected her as if she held a different value. Not as a man to a woman but as a curator for interesting trinkets. He smiled not a smile. “Already mine, then.”

“What?” Red colored her face.

But after he said that, he didn’t spare her a glance again. He stood up immediately and looked around. A thought clicked in her head, what had just happened didn’t relate to that thought at all, no, far from it—something insidious was veiled in it and she couldn’t know what.

Grisla casually engaged ‘Steps of the Alpha: Godspeed’, bringing him to Ji Nan’s corpse at speeds akin to teleportation. But that shouldn’t be possible. Seri knew Grisla’s Juva reserves were more than spent, and he wasn’t resting long enough to recover his energy thus far. Where did it come from?

His neck was an owl’s over the body. While Ji Nan’s corpse was unsettled from the dignified pose before his death, Grisla yanked his throat forward, hand now rummaging in his robes like he was a treasure sack. Seri raised an eyebrow, “What happened to your squeamishness? A good bout of sleep and it’s…gone?”

No response. After a moment the corpse’s everything in life littered the floor; Grisla, at one point looked as if he felt like looting the body’s very own clothes, but a headshake cleared that out. When he was done, he tossed the body away as an afterthought.

Seri frowned. “Uh…? Grisla? Were you not the person that just gave a bow of respect to an enemy such as he? Mutual fun despite your differences? Are you even listening…?”

Grisla, who was now crouched over Ji Nan’s belongings—now his, gave her a side-eye. “Woman, where’s the others?”

A flash of ire crossed her face. “What did you call me? Did you hit your head while I was gone?”

“Others, I want,” he said after collecting everything he has in a pile, as if a child had yet to clean up their mess, “help, or don’t. Will go either way.”

She had never been so…so…annoyed at the man under her tutelage, her friend. Did he really bump his head and become some sort of, new person? Grisla watched her as she did for him. But his gaze separated, and he walked off as some sort of animal on a new impulse. I wouldn’t recommend it, something about the boy has… changed. Her eyes widened.

It wasn’t some fluke after all, but what? And why?

Without her doing anything, the portal reopened and she voluntarily let it take her.

The Cardinal Four offered a look, the ‘I-told-you-so’ one. Never has Grisla taken some dramatic personality shift, he looked at her as if… as if she, and everything surrounded her… was uninteresting. When looking through the portal, she noticed that the boy hadn’t even bothered to organize the stuff, even his original loot he carried with him before the Well of Wonders opened. He was supposed to get things in order to continue on, but suddenly he changed direction?

“What’s going on…” she said.

“As of this moment, I’m unsure.” Black Tortoise said.

“Maybe he’s grown tired of you?” Vermillion Bird said, and instantly received death stares from the other three.

For some reason, and the first time with her other master, the Vermillion Bird; she was annoyed.

White Tiger snickered. “Playing with fire.”

Azure Dragon said, “But she’s too daft to realize.”

“Hmm…?” Seri curiously asked.

The four broke eye contact with her. Instead, they went back to the portal’s image of Grisla sprinting through the hallways. Seri noticed something. “Wait, why is he going back the other way?”

“Beats me,” one said. “Mortal humans still have to defecate, after all. Maybe…?”

“Doubt it. He drops boulders when it’s time and leaves a new river yet to be named.”

“And you know this, because?”

“He’s our substitute candidate, right? One must know the idiosyncrasies of their pupil.”

“You’re a walking idiosyncrasy.”

“…I could use a leather wallet.”

Seri turned around. “Guys! Please! St–Stop being foolish already and help me, help him!”

“Okay, okay, fine. But you’ve been forgetting that we aren’t your human chum.”

“…She’s lonely already?”

“I feel a poem in the making…”

She just couldn’t figure out who was worse at this moment anymore. But, turning back around her eyes were in for a shock—Grisla had retraced his steps back to the star-shaped intersection. He glanced at all possible pathways, except for his own, and shot forth down another new path. Racing forth with ‘Steps of the Alpha’ recklessly, she wondered what’s driving him to do it. Lightning raced through her.

Wait. The book. Where is it? I didn’t see it anywhere and I was too caught up in the boy’s wellbeing that I….

It wasn’t in the pile. It wasn’t somewhere in the chamber, either. And it assuredly isn’t being carried by Grisla now. So where? Then, with the changes as of late, and the encryption adopted to his freebie, she could surmise that, possibly, possibly…

“A Soulbound item,” the tiger muttered her thought.

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Very rare in these parts. For the boy to be so unlucky…”

“Unlucky?”

Black Tortoise interrupted, “You’re seeing the result of his unluckiness. Getting wrapped up in an item of unknown value and purpose? I’d call him stupid if he knew, but…”

“Apparently, whatever happened to him inside that book warped his mind.”

Seri’s heart tightened. “Is it… is it permanent?”

The tortoise’s black irises turned to her. “Not sure. We’ll stay and watch, if anything happens, I’ll step in.”

She was taken aback. “You? You hate Grisla.”

If a tortoise’s mouth could sneer, that’d be it. “Thank you for saying the obvious. However, he is my substitute candidate honored and in service to the great Cardinal Four, divine beasts spoken of in fear and reverence. To allow our minion to fall prey to such simple tricks is an affront to me! And my mighty title!” Black Tortoise said.

When she turned back, she couldn’t help a serious frown. Grisla now encountered someone, a Jade Fate Sect cultivator, of course.

He himself looked like he was charmed to be a wooden doll, with a small bit of light peeking out. Grisla’s barely lit smile approached the wandering disciple, who whipped around immediately. “Greetings,” Grisla said, as if he was working his tongue for the first time. The disciple was a level above Grisla—sixth cycle and not too far off from Ji Nan’s level of talent, on a glance, anyway.

She frowned. But Grisla knows that, surely. So why is he…?

The disciple, shaken by a man’s sudden appearance in the hallway came up with steel in his voice, “Who’re you? Who allowed you to be in here?” He clicked with a face. “Oh, you’re the one Elder Brother was handholding. Pathetic. Have you no shame as a warrior?”

“Where’s Brother Ji Nan? Did he accidently let you off the leash? He’s so forgetful…”

The boy tilted his head; so hawklike. He smiled. “I, have a proposition for you… friend.”

“What could the likes of you ask of me?” The disciple said.

“Simple.” Grisla held out his hand, palm facing up. “Give it, or I take it.”

The disciple acted as if he’d heard it spoken in another language. His aura climbed up, “What did you say?”

“Do not…understand?”

“I ask, you give. Everything…with worth.”

Back in Limbo, the five exchanged glances. But they returned to watching as to not miss anything. Not even a blink.

The disciple struggled with a laugh. “Brother Ji Nan must’ve caved your head in one too many times! I doubt you’ll survive one strike of mine, let alone three! Just die.”

“So hard way,” Grisla’s eyes hadn’t flinched, not even infinitesimally, his mouth worked again, a bundle of joy dancing on his words, “good. Grisla Orlith…loves hard way.”

The balling of his fists made for a firecracker at his sides.