Waking up in a cramped cage is never a pleasant experience, especially when your head was pounding. Orou focused on his surroundings still distracted by his head-splitting headache, the first thing he saw were iron bars surrounding him from all sides. He was slowly moving forwards while being levitated a few meters above the ground.

Still, looking around for a while , he didn't recognise the surrounding area. The trees here were sparser and shorter, there was less foliage here than where he usually rested. He stirred in his cage, his body weak and powerless, he has most likely been in this cage for several days by the looks of it.

His body stirred and that attracted glances from every party member. It seemed that everyone was alive, Roy, who got hit directly by the Orou's tail was relatively unhurt. The leader and he were missing their armor, probably destroyed beyond use. A different amulet now hung on Leon's neck, it looked completely different from the last one, made completely out of silver.

"It has woken up, keep a clear distance from it. It has some kind of strange detection ability and the ability to interfere with mana, Leon even has suspicions that it can make out the mana in the air," said the leader, his hand by his sword.

Even if Orou did want to act out, he had no energy left and he couldn't focus enough to make use of his spirit vision. He let out a weak hiss before coiling up, getting in a more comfortable position. The metal he was lying on was cold and hard, while he couldn't look at it with his spirit vision, Orou assumed that this was the spirit infused iron.

It seemed like the rest of the party was keeping away from Orou, even the flamboyant man who was next to the wolf at the time was keeping his distance. They whispered to each other as the cage continued to levitate in the air. A day passed as Orou slowly recovered. His wounds were mostly gone but he was starving and currently, he was lashing out at the cage, his eyes completely red.

Initially, he had resisted going berserk as he knew it was going to do him no good, but as time passed and he grew hungrier, his weary mind could no longer handle it. He had no room to lash out with his tail, but his fangs constantly assaulted the iron cage, completely fruitlessly. He used his head to bash against the cage but after a while, his head started bleeding and began to pound even harder.

Whatever instinct of self-preservation was gone as he went all out against this cage. Orou wasted all of his non-remaining energy and exhausted himself until the point where he couldn't move any longer. Waves of something were traveling down to heal his head, but for every wave that reached his head, his stomach growled.

He could no longer move as his eyes returned to the normal shade of blue that they were before, Orou thought that the thing must have realised that there's no food to be had and must've given up, if it was a thing that was causing him to lose his mind each time. The rest of the party was further away from him compared to when he woke up and when he calmed down, they collectively let out a sigh of relief.

The sun was setting as Orou finally saw what he assumed to be his destination. The trees grew sparser the longer they walked and when there were no more trees in the area, Orou could make out huge walls, around thirty meters tall. Orou's first reaction was surprise, followed up by amazement. He pondered about how it was possible to create this monstrosity that he saw before him.

As they approached closer, Orou could make out more details. On the walls were multiple ballistae, Orou could see men patrolling on the walls, keeping a watch out for anything coming out of the forest. There were multiple watchtowers and on them were men with crossbows. The men had their crossbows pointed at them, but they clearly didn't believe anyone would attack this place.

Orou got a feeling of danger from this place, he didn't doubt that he would be dead in seconds if all those crossbows and the ballista fired at him. He nervously stared at his surroundings as they approached the gates of these massive walls. Four guards stood at the gate dressed in some kind of metal armor. They had halberts by their sides and as the party came closer, the four guards came a bit forwards to meet them.

"I'm sure you must be busy, watching out into the forest is hard work after all. Here are the papers necessary as well as the usual reward for keeping such a good watch out," the leader said with a smile on his face as he withdrew some papers and a pouch. The pouch jingled as the guard inspected it, weighted it in his hands and looked inside of it. He smiled as well and gave a cursory glance over the papers, giving them back to the leader but keeping the pouch to himself.

"Happy doing business with you Pete, you were gone for a bit so I was getting worried, how could one of my sources of income die out there so easily," the guard laughed and slapped Pete on his shoulder. While Orou wasn't the best at making out expressions, he could see that the leader was forcing a smile, not happy about this interaction.

Their way into the city was unobstructed, the heavy portcullis was lifted and what greeted them was a bustling city, full of activity. The first thing Orou saw was the variety of people and their garbs. There were all kinds of people walking around of varying height, size, and age. He saw people like Pete and the people with him, dressed in heavy armors with swords by their sides. He saw people with long, smooth and flowing robes walking around like they owned the place.

"It feels good to be back in the city, I'm so glad we enter from this side of the city so we don't have to see all kinds of riff-raff wandering about the city," said Leon, the flamboyant man with the snake-like staff in his hands.

"Yes, yes, let's go. Let's get rid of this snake, get paid and I can go get a drink," shouted Roy as he started going forwards, gaining a bit of a distance from the rest of the party.

Pete sighed and started to walk forwards. The huge cage levitating in the sky drew many a gaze, but it seemed like the people here were used to this sight. A few people were looking at Orou and discussing something amongst themselves. Orou felt as if he was stripped bare as he continued to stare at all the people who were staring and pointing fingers at him.

As they walked forwards, Orou saw a variety of houses, most of them lavishly decorated with ornaments and such. The thing that caught his attention was a tower to his east. It resembled the tower where he was born, though a bit smaller than it. It was made out of some kind of light blue material, and while he couldn't see if there were many people there, he saw Leon constantly staring at the tower, not reacting one bit to his companions.

They arrived at what the party called the "business district." There were various shops lining the streets, each flaunting their wares in unique ways. Weapon shops, clothing shops, magic ingredient shops, everything that you could think of was being sold here. The party ignored all of the shops and went further into an area that seemed like the marketplace. People were yelling all kinds of things, the competition here seemed even more intense than the shops as people tried to out outyell each other.

A man in green was sitting in a chair with various potions displayed in front of him, each labeled with something different. Unfortunately, Orou didn't know how to read so he had no idea what they said. The man saw the party heading through the market, stood up and greeted Pete: "You're back! I hope you've got more ingredients for me, especially for how long you've been out there."

As the man laughed, Pete gestured over to Orou and said: "He's our main prize for this trip, you can go and bid for him after a while if you want. Gave us a lot of trouble so he better be worth it," Orou hissed at them, he didn't like whatever was coming, but he didn't have a choice in this.

They exchanged a few more pleasantries before the party continued to make their way through the market. They finally arrived at a huge, open area that was filled with various cages. Orou looked around to see big and small beasts, all on display for anyone who would like to gawk at them. Besides the beasts, Orou saw a few creatures that looked like humans but had fur growing all over their body. He assumed those to be beastmen that he had heard of, but why would they capture one another if they were so similar?

The beastmen were very different from each other compared to humans. He saw a beastman standing up in the cage with majestic fur and mane, another one with two horns that looked like they could impale you and come out the other end.

The most important thing that Orou noticed here was that all of the beasts and the beastmen had collars around them. They were azure blue and looked to be tailor-made for each beast and beastman, fitting them perfectly. It didn't take a lot of thinking to figure out that he was probably going to have one put on him, though he didn't know his fate after that.

It didn't take long to find the man in charge. He was dressed in a truly unique way, his whole outfit was mismatched, each piece of his outfit was in a different color. He had a jester's hat on with bells hanging off each pointed end of the hat. He was walking around and looking at the small crowd that had gathered in front of the cages.

"That guy's eyeing the beastman and I know he has the money for it, that guy's been looking at the silver ape for way too long..." The guy continued to ramble on to himself, looking for potential customers to approach. He seemed to be absorbed in the task at hand so he didn't notice when the party approached him.

Pete coughed to draw the man's attention as the man snapped out of his trance, looked at Pete and abruptly turned around to squeeze Pete's hand. With an enthusiastic smile on his face, he looked towards the cage and then back at Pete.

"Ah, my good friend, you've brought me another pet to be sold. He's quite a big fellow, looks quite tough, surely you must have had a lot of trouble with him, tell me all about it, I'm excited to hear whatever you have to say," the man talked with such a rapid pace that Orou had trouble following him. He was still grasping Pete's hand and it looked like he had no intention to release it as he pointed with remaining free hand towards Orou.

The word pet rubbed Orou the wrong way, he hissed even though he knew that it would be pointless, his body shifted around in the cage as he tried to figure out how he could deal with this spirit iron. He had used his spirit vision to look at it, but the spirits were fully integrated with the iron, even if he could see them, he couldn't force the spirits to move in the slightest. Physical attacks did no good, after a day of thrashing in the cage, it showed no sign of breaking. Perhaps it was due to his weakened state, but even if he had a full stomach and used his tail to hit it, he still wouldn't be able to destroy the cage.

As Orou was considering what to do about the cage, Pete broke free out of the man's grasp and waved his hand to say: "Now now Dirk, let's go and sit down before we talk about the details and the price, I'll tell you all about this snake."

The man named Dirk continued to enthusiastically pester Pete with questions as the continued to head forwards. They passed all of the cages and walked forwards until they reached a place that resembled a circus tent painted completely red. Dirk pushed open the flaps to reveal the area within. The place somewhat reeked of animals as they entered and Orou could finally see the reason why the stench was so bad, this circus tent housed numerous cages filled with all kinds of beasts and beastmen. Whether it was the flying variety, beasts who dug underground and even beasts bigger than Orou, this place had them all. There were several people walking around the area, feeding the beasts one by one.

The workers weren't surprised by Dirk and the rest walking in, they didn't even give the cage with Orou in it a second glance as they continued working. Orou saw some of the beasts he had seen in the beast horde locked up in cages, most likely defeated and captured by adventurers similar to the party that was advancing currently.

They arrived at a separate location in the circus tent that was walled off with a blue barrier, Orou intently looked at the barrier but he couldn't see through it or discern its purpose. While Orou really wanted to look at this with his spirit vision, the last time he looked at something with is spirit vision, the party noticed him and he got caught, so he was a bit reluctant to use it in the presence of so many people.

Dirk pulled out some sort of amulet from his pocket and placed it next to the blue barrier. A few seconds later, an opening appeared in the blue barrier. It looked human-sized, but as Dirk and Pete passed through it, Orou continued levitating forwards into the barrier. Orou was pretty sure the cage wasn't going to fit through the barrier, but in an instant, it expanded to perfectly fit Orou through it before closing and leaving no openings to go back out of.

Orou looked around to see a spacious and lavishly decorated room. It was much bigger than it seemed from the outside. Throughout the whole room was a carpet of luscious white fur, the walls adorned with various tapestries and paintings. Leon pointed his finger at Orou and he floated to one end of the room while Dirk invited the guests to sit at a coach before going over to prepare tea.

Maybe this was the first time the party had come here, or maybe the sight was just something to behold, but apart from Pete who was currently talking with Dirk, the rest of the party were staring at things in this room with greedy eyes. Leon was looking at the bookshelves, Roy was looking at the richly decorated statues with gems as their eyes, Jeremy was looking at a bow that was mounted up on the wall and Pan was intently trying to look at some of the papers that lying haphazardly on a table.

After serving them all some tea, Dirk sat down on a chair next to the table and started to intently observe Orou. Orou was in the middle of trying to make out the text on a book, but it looked unintelligible to him, he was wondering how he could understand the letters, but the task was beyond his hand.

After observing him a bit, he looked to the party and said: "This is a pretty big catch, in order to talk business, I need to know exactly what it can do, how did you guys capture it anyways?"

Pete proceeded to recount the battle from his perspective. While the story was completely new to Dirk, Orou also listened with interest, hoping to glean how they managed to find him in the first place. It turned out that Leon had a spell useful for detecting any spellcasting in the area, this was the reason he was in this party despite his attitude. Dirk's eyes shone when Pete said that he had a way to detect the invisible Roy in the heat of battle and that he broke through Leon's spell, his eyes went completely wide when Leon told him the possibility of Orou having the ability to see mana.

"So, he has above average physical abilities for his size, has a way to quickly heal wounds, can cast spells, has a way to detect invisibility and the possibility of seeing mana that has to be further tested. It also looks to be fairly intelligent from what I've heard, he's even examining the books and trying to decipher the text as we speak, is that all," summarized Dirk.

"That seems to be everything, he could have something hidden but he would've used it in the battle if he did. This has got to be one of the fiercer beasts we've fought as a party, so let's cut to the chase, ten thousand gold and he's yours."

Dirk's face was completely stoic as he thought for a while, before exclaiming: "As wonderful as this snake is, ten thousand gold is way too much. The possibility of him seeing mana is only that, a possibility. I'll have to invest time and resources to find out if he truly has it, and if he doesn't, he's not that impressive. I'd give you half of that, five thousand gold."

The two continued to bicker back and forth, raising and lowering the price. In the end, it seemed like Orou was sold for eight thousand gold, though he had no idea how much that was and what it could buy. They shook hands before they started to reluctantly leave, wanting to stay and admire the objects inside of this room for a bit longer.

The cage started to float outside of the room, into the main area. Orou had a separate area from the rest of the beasts, a bit bigger and more isolated from the rest of the beasts. He looked to the other beasts, his gaze restless, worried about what will happen to him from now onwards.