“Baltis asked me to choose a single man I can trust with this information, and that man happened to be you Grizz. A few days here or there won’t matter much in the general scheme of things, but we’ve seen no king’s men coming around here recently and we’ve heard unsettling rumors coming from the west.” A few minutes had passed since Kris had arrived. He was sitting on the bed next to Grizz and looking at the paper in his hands. Grizz was grumbling about something or other as he read over it, saying that there’s plenty of men to involve in this besides himself, but despite all of his grumbling, he was treating this matter seriously.

Orou stuck his head between Grizz’s and Kris’ heads to try and read some of the words. And unsurprisingly, his progress in learning the beastman language was proving itself as he could decipher some individual words. “...West... ...Danger... ...Found... ...Safe...”. Unfortunately, the language used was very formal and thus it was hard for Orou to make out more of what was written.

“I’d figure the king would have this information already, would he not? There are people on the lookout for this kind of stuff near the border and news do travel quickly. The only unique thing here is the report on what the city found and I don’t think this weird thing can do much harm even if it gets spread around,” after calming down and rationally analyzing the text for a few seconds, Grizz turned to Kris and questioned him on why he was being sent.

“Perhaps the governor has more information than me, or perhaps it’s due to the fact that one of the king’s men is supposed to arrive soon. It does good to no one if he finds out that we’ve had this for several days and haven’t brought it to the king,” and as Kris said that, he reached over to pull something out of a bag that Orou hadn’t noticed before. He seemed to be very careful in handling whatever was inside as he took several seconds to finally lift it out, and once he did, Orou saw something familiar to him.

It was a glass jar with several runes on it, most likely to reinforce the glass or to make sure the thing within doesn’t break out. Inside the glass jar was a single twisted black line that was silently bashing against the glass jar, trying to get out of it. It twisted and turned and changed into countless shapes, but Orou could instantly recognise this thing, after all, he had seen it recently. Although the black line was much thicker and more vigorous, Orou recognised it as the black line that ran through his blood serpent.

“This is the thing that you need to deliver to the king. It looks a lot more menacing once you see it for yourself. The beastman tried to sneak into the city but he was caught by one of the newly instated guards, panicked a whole lot when his backpack was opened and this strange thing was found,” very carefully, Kris placed it on the table and stared at the black line currently dancing from spot to spot. While Grizz took a single glance at the thing and proceeded to ignore it, Izz excitedly rushed over to it before getting stopped by Kris, not letting him approach closer in case he destroys everything.

“Can you see how it stands out in the contrast of everything when you look at it. I can’t even properly cast spells in the presence of this thing, I simply must have it,” Izz’s greedy eyes looked up and down the line before continuing: “How about we keep quiet about this thing and keep it here to study. An opportunity like this doesn’t come often,” Izz exaggeratedly put his finger up to his lips and looked towards both Grizz and Kris, giving Orou a sneaky nod and an excited smile.

“Absolutely not, that’s a crime punishable by death and I don’t plan on dying over some black line. You can observe it from a distance while Grizz is still here, but never walk in touching distance within it and under no circumstance let that thing out of the jar, got it?” Kris looked like a parent lecturing his child, but this lecture was surprisingly effective as Izz didn’t dare to get closer, at least in Kris’ presence. He looked around for a blank piece of paper and ran out of the room once he found out that the room had none. Grizz was oddly silent as he looked at the line and after several seconds of silence, Kris excused himself and went back to resolving “business”.

“The more I think about this the more severe the situation seems. I wonder if what you did back there was the right decision,” Grizz had more to say, but he stopped himself when Izz rushed in with all the necessary writing tools he needed. He started to scribble down some notes as he observed the thing and tested casting several spells, only for all of them to fizzle. The spirits simply didn’t want to be anywhere near the thing and as a result, it was increasingly hard to command them. Whenever a spirit approached too close to the black line, it lashed out only to hit the glass jar and angrily retreat back, trying again and again.

Orou wondered how he was able to control the blood serpent if it was the same thing running through it as this thing. There was also the question of why was someone trying to smuggle this thing in, though Orou didn’t spend long on trying to figure it out and tossed it to the back of his mind. He spent his time observing the line for any strange behavior together with Izz and trying to read the notes that Izz had written. Grizz was grumbling even more now that Izz was constantly in his room, saying that Izz had no respect for the injured, but according to Izz, research was more important than this thing called respect.

Throughout several more days, Izz wrote down what the line did and how it behaved, though he complained that he couldn’t do any reasonable experiments with it being in a glass jar and constantly urged Grizz to convince Kris about keeping it as a pet. While Grizz’s complexion got healthier each day, his expression got angrier each day. Grizz was out of the bed by the second day and he was gone all day long, helping Kris in settling in through his “contacts”, though who knew what he meant by that. Orou was pretty sure he wasn’t actually doing that much and was just escaping from Izz’s constant nudging.

By the fourth day, Grizz was practically begging for Kris to let him leave and get away from Izz, though he had pretty much packed up all of his things before even receiving an answer from him. With Orou by his side, he walked down the staircase, meeting both Izz and Kris along the way. Both of them sighed and said nothing as Grizz waved to them: “We’ll be back in a few days, won’t we? I’ve still got a few things to settle here, so don’t worry, I won’t be running off again.” Both Kris and Izz wanted to say something to him, but before they got a chance, Grizz was already off.

As the two of them started heading towards the eastern gate, Orou noticed a few differences from a few days ago. There was a guard posted up by every important building and multiple guards patrolling the streets and the alleyways. While the atmosphere of the city was wild and untamed before this, now it seemed more restrained and tame, though Grizz pointed out that this was the case only on the surface and that this forced for the thieves and assassins to hide deeper.

Both entering and exiting the city required your belonging to be searched, but fortunately, Grizz had an official pass from the governor. Of course, Grizz being Grizz, unknownst to all but Orou whom he told this in secret, he was using the governor’s pass as a chance to smuggle something illegal out of the city. Orou didn’t know what any of the drugs that he was smuggling did, but Grizz told him that they were highly sought after in the capital and people would pay huge amounts of blood crystals for it.

The two of them passed through the gate and Orou couldn’t help but compare his experiences both in the beastman kingdom and in the human kingdom. They were so similar, yet so different in both culture and their behavior that one would be surprised if you were to compare them side by side. If they weren’t fighting for food, what was the need for bloodshed? With those last few thoughts, Orou decided to imitate Grizz and wave at the city using his head, which made for quite a comical scene. The usually stout guards were pointing at him and laughing, no doubt planning to share the story about an eighteen meter snake trying to wave to their friends.