When Orou saw what was happening around him, the thing he relied on to save Grizz weren’t his spells, but his body. Almost instinctively, Orou controlled the blood core to make the largest amount of blood waves inside of his body, and, guiding them to his tail, he rushed out and swung his tail against the shaman. There was no way the shaman would survive this hit if it landed, but the shaman only had a slight smirk on his face. The tail hit him head-on, but it seemed to practically phase through him, hitting the ground beneath him instead. It was like a large scale explosion had happened at the site of impact, the stone and the dirt beneath it was blown in all directions, raining down onto the soldiers close to him. This drew more than a few gazes, but the soldiers had more important things to worry about, that is, whether or not they could live through the current moment.

Orou panicked when the shaman’s sceptre passed through Grizz’s body, but upon a closer look, Grizz was perfectly fine. Only now did Orou notice that the shaman’s body was made entirely out of spirits and although he didn’t know why he couldn’t hit the shaman, he was confident the shaman couldn’t do anything to them either. He was half correct, the shaman’s body dissipated into the air, the spirits that made it up scattering everywhere, but a strange sort of pentagram was floating right above Grizz’s head, which didn’t bode well for his well-being. Orou looked around in hopes of finding the shaman’s real body, but upon an initial glance, he had hidden too well, likely casting several strange spells from who knows where.

Deciding to take a look at the pentagram above Grizz, he could determine that it wasn’t complicated, there were only a few spirits making it up, but every few seconds, the pentagram slightly lit up, sending a barely visible pulse to somewhere. If Orou had to guess, this was either a medium for a different spell or a way for the shaman to track Grizz. Either way, Orou wanted it gone and thus, he got to work. It was a much easier process than he thought, the spirits were held in place by some sort of force, but they couldn’t resist the pull of two separate wills. One by one, Orou dismantled the pentagram and immediately after, he started looking around for any anomalies in spirits around him.

Grizz was about to drop the matter and rush into the battlefield when Orou nudged him with his head and started dashing towards the north, into an abandoned building. In Orou’s spirit vision, he could see that there were several spirits gathering towards a particular spot in the distance and although it could be a regular shaman hiding from the battle, there was a much larger chance that it was the king’s shaman, plotting his next move against the two of them. Deciding to not give the shaman the advantage of terrain, Orou once more used his blood core and his tail to deliver a single strike towards the building. Even a new building couldn’t take a hit from Orou, not to mention an abandoned, half-ruined house that was on the verge of collapsing by itself. The entire thing toppled down, directly onto what Orou assumed to be the king’s shaman.

As the building hit the figure, its spell was interrupted and a large number of spirits went rushing off into the distance. Orou wasn’t sure if he could even gather as many spirits as the shaman had gathered, but in the end, it didn’t matter if the spell was interrupted. Orou thought about aiming a beam of light spell above the buried figure, but he was interrupted by Grizz dashing off towards it. Orou used his two wills to simultaneously construct two blood serpents, already in a position to wrap around the shaman if he didn’t move. The figure coughed a few times and slowly stood up, revealing the figure of the king’s shaman. He looked in surprise at both Orou and Grizz and he barely had time to react as a poisoned shortsword came flying in his direction.

As Grizz’s blades were approaching his neck, he touched his sceptre and drew a large oval in front of Grizz. Similarly to the cane, there were a few black strands trapped within the sceptre and using the black strands to draw the oval, several more black strands shot out from the stone, the earth and the skies around them to fill in the empty space of the oval. Moments later, the shield-like thing started shimmering, forming something solid out of nothing. Grizz’s blade, and subsequently, his entire body and head crashed into the black shield that had all of the sudden appeared in the air.

The shaman used that opportunity to retreat back, starting to wave his black sceptre in the air in and casting some sort of strange spell. It was completed even before Orou got a chance to complete his spells or Grizz had a chance to recover. The stone beneath his feet started to crack and the dirt started to blacken, and surprisingly, Orou saw three different actions in his three visions. In spirit sight, Orou saw a strange rune float out and attach itself to his chest, constantly drawing in more spirits. What was surprising was that he could move just fine, without even maintaining concentration on the rune, just like Orou’s spirit vision. The spirits entered within his body, as well as surrounding both him and his weapon.

In his black and white vision, Orou saw the black strands from the earth rise up through his body, pushing against his skin in order to make room for more black strands. The black strands weaved together and through the spirits around the shaman, creating something that looked like armor. The black strands in his sceptre escaped their bounds and formed a thick staff, reinforced with several more black strands from the stone before him. In his regular vision, he saw the shaman become twice his size all of the sudden, his black sceptre turning into an ashen colored staff and black armor, thicker than a usual piece of plate mail appeared around his body. With a heavy step forward, he launched himself towards Grizz, flying like a giant arrow shot from an even bigger bow.

Grizz regained his wits the instant he saw the black armored monstrosity come charging towards him. He sheathed his two short swords and pulled a flask of something thick and viscous out of his pockets. His feet moved as they have never moved before, but the sheer wind from the ashen colored staff was enough to knock him off balance. A similar explosion, resembling the sound that Orou would make when swinging his tail came from the spot where the staff landed. Somehow, the staff had both blown away the stone around it and pierced the dirt in front of it, lodging itself deep within the ground. Pulling the staff out from the ground with ease, the shaman deftly spun around with his staff, hoping to catch Grizz unawares.

A single hit from the staff would mean Grizz’s doom, but going face to face with death didn’t scare Grizz. He dodged every hit and waited patiently, for a chance to strike, for whatever Orou was doing to be completed. Just as the two blood serpents appeared in the air, Grizz made his move. The shaman was in an awkward spot after missing Grizz, his own massive strength making it hard to consecutively swing the staff and that was the opportunity that Grizz capitalized on. Although he couldn’t quite get the head of the shaman, he smashed the flask of the green substance against the shaman’s shoulders and immediately, the substance took effect. The jelly-like thing was corroding the armor that the shaman was wearing at a considerable pace, almost reaching into the shaman’s bare flesh.

The shaman used his armored fists to prevent the substance from doing just that, but as a result, the substance splashed over the rest of his armor, creating several holes in his armor. Appearing out of nowhere, two large blood serpents started rapidly approached the shaman, aiming directly for the cracks in the shaman’s armor, hoping that they could finally taste some flesh again.