The journey towards the mountain was longer than the two of them predicted. While the mountain looked quite close when looking at it from the city, the actual journey proved to be much longer. While Grizz had prepared the basic necessities needed to travel, Orou had grown used to the lavish lifestyle of being fed multiple times per day. He went out of his way to try and find any food he could but along the way, he saw no signs of life. This was clearly evident from the run-down road that looked like it rarely saw any travel, but besides beastmen, even animals and birds would give this place a wide berth, avoiding it like a plague.

Orou’s stomach was rumbling at the end of the first day and Orou himself was in a terrible mood. He had to leave the city because of war and although fighting was quite fun, it ruined his leisurely lifestyle of studying black strands and spells, as well as simply resting and indulging in the pleasure of eating. Besides, he wasn’t here on his free will and if there was one thing he hated the most, that was being denied a choice in the matter. The least he could do was hope that there would be something to eat and something to study on the mountain, but his displeasure overcame his hopefulness.

Grizz was strangely silent throughout the journey, whether it was because he was often lost in thought or simply because he sensed Orou’s horrid mood and decided to not agitate him any further. Creating a small campfire a small distance from the road, he laid down onto the ground and closed his eyes, though he, similarly to Orou, had difficulty sleeping this night. To ease some of his displeasure, Orou decided to practice his spells, but no matter how many flashy tricks he did with the two blood serpents, he couldn’t calm down. Finally, after a few hours of spellcasting, he laid down his head to rest until morning came, but even then, something wouldn’t let him sleep. Whispers barely audible to Orou were on the edge of his hearing, but as he tried to make out what the whispers were saying, they quieted down, still loud enough to barely hear but not loud enough to make out the words. As soon as he stopped listening, the whispers became louder, repeating the cycle enough to drive Orou mad.

As he lifted his head in anger and laid his eyes on the mountain in the near distance, he felt a calling to it, a strange attraction that he never knew existed within him. He had experienced this when he first laid his eyes on the mountain, but now that he was so close to it, he could very clearly feel it calling to him. As soon as he looked away from the mountain, the calling disappeared but in its place reappeared whispers. He was conflicted on which he hated more, the strange feeling or the whispers that drove him mad and he couldn’t decide for quite a while, alternating between the two of them to keep his sanity intact.

Fortunately for Orou, morning came and the sun shone over the mountain, which seemed to lessen the whispers and the calling by a considerable amount. Orou found himself beginning to hate the mountain more and more by the second, but he had to persist in his journey. The sun had begun to set before they reached the end of the road, that is, the base of the mountain. The first thing that greeted them was an old, worn down sign, which read: “Foolish adventures, turn back while you still have the chance. This isn’t the mountain of promise and dreams, rather, a mountain of death and carnage. You won’t find riches here, but die like the rest who have tried to scale the mountain.” The sign was covered in dried blood, chunks of it missing with bite marks left on the sign.

There was a single entrance to the mountain, held up by heavy wooden supports. Before the two of them entered the mountain, Grizz turned to Orou and said to him: “We’re not going to be scaling it like you would a regular mountain. The inside of the mountain is hollow and while the stone is jagged and uneven, it’d be a much easier journey than scaling the mountain from the outside. Keep an eye out for the workers, we should ask them for information regarding the mountain. They’ll likely call us foolish, but we don’t have much of a choice.” Grizz’s melancholy and thoughtfulness was gone, his eyes sharpened and he constantly scanned his environment, looking for any threats to their safety. Always holding one hand close to his short sword, he motioned for Orou to follow him.

As the two of them walked inside of the mountain, the surroundings became a lot darker. Although there was a lantern every now and then, it wasn’t nearly enough to illuminate the way forward for a regular person. Of course, neither of them were regular people. Orou had the thought of conjuring a scintillating spirit to light the way for Grizz, but he was able to avoid every jagged rock along the way, all while constantly looking forwards. The stone that made up the mountain was dark-grey and the tunnel wasn’t dug out evenly, instead, there were wider and shorter passages with several holes seemingly dug at random in the ground. The tunnel wasn’t straight, but rather, it curved towards the left and the right every few hundred meters, making sure that navigating this path was a challenge on its own.

After several minutes of walking through the tunnel, Orou saw the tunnel become brighter, illuminated by a blood-red light coming from the distance. What greeted them was one of the more impressive sights they had ever seen. The place was huge, glimmering with several crystals embedded within the walls, reflecting the light from the numerous lanterns lighting up the massive area in front of them. What was more impressive than the natural beauty of the jagged mountain was the technology that was used. Several huge metal machines were roaring with flames, almost deafening Orou from the sound alone. The truly strange thing was that the sound couldn’t be heard within the tunnels, as if this place was isolated from the rest of the world.

The machines were constantly in motion, the ores containing the blood crystals were moved forward from one container to the roaring machines. One of the machines was constantly in motion, crushing the ore into several smaller pieces and sending it further down the line. Next up, one of the machines would swallow the ore, making direct contact with the roaring flame inside of it, and spew out a crystal, though nowhere as bright as the crystals Grizz had in his backpack. After that, the crystal was precisely cut into shape and thrown into several more flames, ranging from blue to pure white flames.

The once large crystal became much, much smaller, but subsequently, much purer. It was delivered to a huge metal container, which was large enough to hold thousands of these crystals, but surprisingly, the container was overspilling, filled completely to the brim. Orou wondered why he didn’t see any machines like this in the main city and why a road so important to the entire empire was so rarely travelled, but as he turned to Grizz, he found him to be staring at something in the distance, completely ignoring the buzzing machines. Orou thought there would be nothing that would distract Grizz from a pile of crystals lying before him, but clearly, he was wrong. Turning his head to look at what Grizz was looking, he found that the once magnificent scene had completely turned to hell, more than fifty corpses were lying on the ground, all of them horribly disfigured.

The ground was completely stained in blood, further enhancing the beauty of the crystals that were embedded on the ground. The beastmen that were lying on the ground were missing pieces of their flesh. The least mutilated beastman had a single bite wound on his throat, taking out half of his neck. The more mutilated beastmen didn’t have a complete body, having their legs and arms torn from their bodies and torn into several shreds by some sort of horrid beast. Every single beastmen that was lying dead on the ground held an expression of horror on their faces, their eyes wide open even if death. Orou tasted blood on the air, but before he could do anything, he heard footsteps behind his back.