As Ryder makes his way into the basement of the distillery he notices a plethora of people running out in the direction attempting to escape the burning building. It can’t have been more than 10 minutes since this place went up in flames if all these people are running out, Ryder thought.

“I can’t believe someone actually took down the Lion,” someone says.

“Yeah that fiery runt was something else,” another person says, agreeing with them.

The comment “fiery runt” was all Ryder needed to know exactly who caused all this flame and helped confirm his suspicions. Right as he wondered where Nerva was, a wood door swung open revealing the flaming girl herself.

“Fuck there goes my lunch,” Nerva complained as she swiped away the bit of saliva on her lips.

Her face looked pale as if she had recently thrown up as a result of food poisoning or the sort.

“Nerva there you are, why’s the place on fire?” Ryder asks her.

“Got into a fight with a big fat lion,” she responds as she notices Ryder’s presence.

“Lion? Like one of the guys wearing lion masks that the bartender told us about?” Ryder questions.

“I dunno, probably, just help me haul the guy out of here. I beat him up right before I puked my guts out,” Nerva needlessly adds.

The two enter the circular arena where they find the lion masked wrestler lying on the floor unconscious as bits of smoke come off his body.

“This… is not what I expected,” Ryder says, witnessing the big man Nerva defeated.

“What? It's a guy in a lion mask, so I beat him up.”

“I was expecting a shady guy in a hood with an actual lion mask, not a wrestler. Now how are we gonna get this guy outta of here- wait I got it,” Ryder claims as he stares up at the hole in the ceiling Nerva created in her fight.

Ryder positions his cannon so the angle matches the hole and shoves the lion masked wrestler into his cannon.

“Heck yeah, let's blast this guy to the moon,” Nerva says as she realizes what’s about to happen.

Ryder ignites his cannon and sends the masked fighter through the roof of the distillery.

Outside as Remi continues putting out the burning building with her water magic she notices a large man fly out the top of the building and proceed to land on the pavement next to her. The next thing she notices is Nerva soaring out the top as well and then using the man to cushion her landing.

“Oh, what’s up hoe,” Nerva says, greeting Remi.

“What the heck?” Remi says in disbelief.

Ryder then races out of the building using the front door like a normal person.

“Is someone gonna explain why a buff man in a leotard just came flying out of the roof?” Remi questions.

“We’ll have Nerva explain it later tonight, but for now let's drag this guy back to the place we agreed to meet Nazuko at,” Ryder tells her.

3 Hours Later

“So you really just beat the crap out of him for the sole reason that he was wearing a lion mask,” Remi speaks out in disbelief.

“Hey he fucking started it. He was totally asking to get destroyed,” Nerva defends.

“Seems Legit,” Nazuko chimes in.

“Gotta agree,” Ryder concurred.

“Seriously! And where have you been all day,” Remi interrogated.

“Scouting the city for rumors and stuff, but I haven’t found anything. So as far as our search for these lion mask guys, Nerva’s come the furthest. What have you guys done huh?” Nazuko argued back.

“We were on track to find those lion guys too, it's just Nerva got lucky and found them first,” Remi claims.

“Yeah riiiiight, I’ll be sure to believe that,” Nazuko says sarcastically.

“You’ve been hanging around with Will too much. Anyways, what are we even going to do with this guy?” Remi notes as she points to the unconscious wrestler tied up in a chair in the corner of the room.

Five people stood in the ruins of the fight pit debating just what to do with the suspect in question.

“Will that chair even hold him? Seems a bit too big for that treatment,” Ryder observed.

“True, hold up I got an idea,” Nerva says as she moves the big man towards parts of the destroyed cage and starts heating it up to change its shape.

Nerva ends up reshaping the metal cage into a makeshift pillory and shoves the big man inside the contraption.

“There, what do ya think,” she says proud of her work.

“This seems a bit cruel don’t you think, we’re not gonna execute the guy,” Remi states.

“Speak for yourself, I got a few things I gotta get this guy back for. Now let’s wake him up.”

Remi holds up her hands and splashes the guy with a face full of water.

“Who, what, where, wha!” the man yelped in surprise as he rudely awakened.

The wrestler takes a look at his surroundings and assesses the situation he’s been placed in.

“Who are you people, what do you want with me, rrghh,” Leo said as he struggled to free himself from the metal he’s been encased in.

“Hey! Remember me jerk,” Nerva commanded as she pulled his head down to look at her.

Even though the man was strapped in a pillory and bent over he still had to look down to see Nerva.

“YOU! If it wasn’t for those cheap tactics you employed, I would have won that fight,” Leo complained.

“Shut up you're just a sore loser. Now you’re gonna answer all of my friends' questions here or else we’re gonna have to get rough,” Nerva threatened as her hands lit on fire.

Nazuko walks up to Leo and quickly steals his mask revealing a head of blonde hair while also examining the mask itself.

“Neat mask, mind telling us who you got it from?” Nazuko kindly asks.

“Screw you short stuff, AGHH!” he yelps as he feels his behind get hit by a fireball.

“Keep up that attitude and it's only gonna get hotter,” Nerva threatened as she cracked her knuckles.

“Grrr, fine I work for a certain ‘research group’ who all wear lion masks. Never seen their real face nor do I care. They pay well, so I just carry out their orders,” the large man revealed.

“Interesting, one of those orders wouldn’t happen to be about kidnapping a local alchemist would it?” Remi asks.

“Got nothing to say about that you elf hoe.”

A few seconds pass before Remi realizes Nerva hasn’t harmed the man.

“Uhh Nerva you gonna do something?”

“Huh, but he didn’t say anything wrong,” Nerva snickered.

“Tch, fine I’ll do it myself,” Remi says as she snaps her fingers and her spirit wolf comes out and bites the man in his left buttock.

“AIEEEEEE!! GET THIS RABID BEAST OFF ME! I’LL TALK, I’LL TALK!” he screamed.

“Now that’s what I wanna hear.”

Remi signals for her wolf to cease its assault and releases the man’s buttock from its jaw. A large bite mark could be seen, appearing as if it could leave a lasting mark.

“It was a midget sized dwarven woman, who gave me quite the trouble and almost burned me to death trying to kidnap her. That crazy alchemist incinerated every single one of my henchmen and nearly gave me third degree burns. I was told to take her to a warehouse on the edge of the city, and didn't care what for. She’s probably still there.”

“Looks like we found our next lead then,” Ryder presumes.

“Seems so, but what do we do with this guy then?” Remi asks everyone.

“Don’t care we got the information we wanted. Could just leave him here and be on our way unless anyone has any ideas,” Nazuko says.

“Hey now there’s no need to do anything drastic, I told you guys everything you wanted to- agh!” the wrestler says before getting knocked out with a fire punch by Nerva.

“Fuck that guy, has no respect for people’s height,” she spouted.

“Hey can I shoot him out of my cannon at max power? I recently upgraded my cannon’s specs and I wanna see its max range.” Ryder eagerly said as a malicious grin started to form on his face.

“Sure why not, it's not like anybody will miss this guy,” Nazuko agreed.

A few minutes later the large man is placed inside Ryder’s cannon. A bucket of freezing water hits the man waking him up right before the upcoming blast.

“COLD!!! What’s g-going on!” Leo stuttered as he saw Nerva and Nazuko playfully waving to him.

Ryder counted down the seconds before the blast by lowering the fingers on his right hand, while Remi placed her hands over her ears predicting the impending sound of the blast.

“Five.”

“Four.”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“ONE!”

The force of the blast was so strong that the man fired out of Ryder’s cannon broke the sound barrier and it took no more than 10 seconds for the man to fly so far that he was no longer visible to the human eye. Even by the eyes of someone from the archer warclass.

“Oh my Vienna, how far is that man gonna go?” Remi asks, astounded by the distance that Leo had flown.

“I’d say he’ll go far enough to enter another state, but since we’re kind of on the border of Oclana that’s not really that big of a feat is it?” Ryder humbly remarked.

“Far enough to enter another state?!”

For a split second Remi debated where to hop in Ryder’s cannon in order to head directly to Colonus, before realizing that she’d have no way to land and doing so would put her in a world of pain.

“Alright so I guess we’re visiting that warehouse he spoke about?” Ryder asks Nazuko.

“Yep we should hurry, once word goes around that someone defeated that Lion guy, his allies might start to do something,” she answers.

The four adventurers journey on towards the warehouse at the edge of the city, all while enjoying wine that Nazuko stole from the distillery. They stop atop a hill overlooking the warehouse hidden under the cover of nightfall. From atop the hill they can see various cloaked men standing outside guarding the perimeter. The most important fact being that these men we’re all wearing lion masks similar to the men Ryder and Remi found in the basement of the alchemist’s shop.

“Hmm, how do we wanna go about this,” Remi starts.

“Do we just go in with the usual plan of destroying everything in our way?” Ryder suggests.

“I’m all up for that suggestion,” Nerva agreed.

“Wait, our primary goal is just to rescue the alchemist. Beating up everyone else is secondary,” Nazuko decides tactfully.

“So what do you want to do, you might be able to sneak past a bunch of guards with your speed, but we can’t,” Remi tells her.

“True, we don’t need to change the destroy everything plan that much, just make one little change. If you three can just create a large enough distraction, then I can sneak in and rescue the alchemist with my speed. I can’t go as fast carrying someone but it’ll be enough,” Nazuko decides.

“Ok, then is that good with everyone,” Remi says.

“I call dibs on attacking first!” Ryder says as he jumps off the cliff towards the warehouse.

“Hey no fair, those guys are mine!” Nerva yells as she jumps off after Ryder.

The two landed then no less than a minute later the sound of flames and explosions perforated through the air.

“I bet they don’t even need my help,” Remi sighs.

“They probably don’t to be honest,” Nazuko concurred.

“Ok then, good luck with finding another person of your race,” Remi proclaimed as she jumped off after the pair of battle hungry adventurers.

“Hey I’m not a dwarf!” Nazuko yelled angrily at Remi.

Nazuko took a moment to calm herself as she made a plan to infiltrate the warehouse. The front door was obviously a no go, she could be seen and reinforcements would come from there. The backdoor is always a rookie thief mistake and tends to be the most heavily locked option. She didn’t feel like picking locks for the next 5 minutes if there was a better option. Therefore judging from experience that leaves the roof. Nazuko infuses herself with light energy before zipping to the roof of the warehouse. This reminds her of the time she was paid to break into a heavily guarded building to steal a corrupt noble's legal documents. Since she didn’t exactly know what floor the noble resided in, she ended up entering from the roof and walking all the way down to the second floor just to find them. She would have rather dealt with picking the locks on the backdoor then, but hindsight is 20/20.

From the top of the warehouse she slips in via glass panels on the top of the building. Nazuko overlooks the inside of the warehouse from the top of the catwalk she landed on. After scanning the place thoroughly she finds more lion masked people working on making some kind of mixture. There’s a large vat of black liquid similar to the vial Ryder found back when they exterminated those demonic plants. However the thing that caught her eye was a short brown haired woman with a beard in the corner instructing the lion masked people on stirring a much different kind of fluid. This one however smelled more like alcohol than the other one. Either way the target was found, now she just needed to wait for these people to be drawn away by the distractions happening outside.

“Come on guys, give em hell,” Nazuko whispers as she moves along the catwalk to be directly above the dwarven woman.

A few minutes later one lion masked guy desperately runs into the warehouse screaming like a maniac due to the fact that he is on fire.

“AHHHH IT BURNS, EVERYONE THERE’S A CRAZY MIDGET AND A TERRORIST OUTSIDE BOMBING THE PREMISES. EITHER HELP OR RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!” he yells before rolling around on the floor trying to put out the flames.

This causes the majority of the lion masked people to draw weapons and run outside as reinforcements. Three guards stay behind to guard the alchemist but it’s not enough to prevent a rescue mission.

“Right on cue, now to play my role.”

Nazuko jumps down from the catwalk landing on the first of the guards as she forces the guards’ head into the floor. She quickly dispatches the order two by smashing their heads together homeless man style.

“That takes care of that, now then,” Nazuko begins as she turns to look at the alchemist.

“Who, who are you?” the dwarven woman asks.

“A friend, now let’s get out of here and we can talk,” Nazuko tells her.

“Watch out,” the alchemist suddenly shouted.

Nazuko quickly turns around and moves just in time to avoid a needle being thrown directly at her heart. However she wasn’t quick enough as the needle ended up hitting her shoulder instead. Nazuko sees the person who assaulted her as the person she slammed into the ground a few seconds ago. She didn’t even notice the person’s aura got activated on contact. Clearly this person was trying to fake her out and kill her when her guard wasn’t up.

“Tch! Gunva if you hadn’t opened your mouth I would have skewered her through the heart,” the person claims as they address the alchemist.

“Like I wouldn’t take any chance I get to get back at you Hari,” the alchemist fired back.

The person throws aside their now cracked mask, revealing a woman’s face, she’s wearing makeup that makes her look like a geisha. She throws her cloak aside showing that she’s wearing a robe similar to a yukata.

Nazuko pulls out the needle from her arm and tosses it aside. For some reason she feels like she can’t get full range of motion on her arm and it's difficult to move. It has to be due to the needle she got struck with, could be due to poison or an ability, but either way it would be bad to get struck with any more of those needles.

“Careful she’s a lancer and her needles can paralyze you if you get hit in the wrong place,” the alchemist says.

“Thanks for the tip. So the name’s Gunva huh, I’ll pay you back by dealing with this crazy lady right now,” Nazuko says as she pulls out her short blade with her left hand.

It's not her dominant hand, but she’ll have to make do for now. With her right arm disabled there’s no way she’ll be able to carry Gunva and use her speed to escape the warehouse, so she’ll have to dispatch this threat as soon as possible.

“I don’t know who you are, little pest, but your death was predetermined the moment you stepped in here,” Hari threatened.

Nazuko vs Hari Fight Theme

Nazuko disappears into a flash of light as hordes of needles are sent in her direction. Each individual needle doesn’t seem to have much power as they bounce off the walls and fall to the floor. It’s only if they hit her that they’ll be that dangerous. Also now that she’s aware of the enemy, her aura should provide some resistance to the needles piercing her skin. Nazuko zooms in towards her enemy’s blind spot and kicks Hari right in the back of the head, sending her flying forward. In response she flips and lands directly on her feet.

“I see you’re fast, so maybe I’ll need to try this,” she says as she stabs one of her needles directly into her legs.

The sudden increase in Hari’s speed surprises Nazuko and she nearly gets stabbed by one of Hari’s needles.

“Wait if that’s the same kind of needle then how-”

“How is it making me stronger? You see the human body has many different pressure points, depending on which one I hit, it could either make me stronger or weaker,” Hari explains as she licks one of her needles.

Hari rushes forward stabbing at Nazuko with her needles like how one would use a rapier. Nazuko dodges and weaves between the stabs before dodging under her latest strike and inflicting a minor slash on her legs.

“Your ability means nothing if you can’t hit me with them,” Nazuko boasts as she currently has the upper hand in this fight.

Nazuko employs the same tactic as she had used in the past, bouncing off of objects in the nearby vicinity in order to accelerate her speed and attack from every conceivable angle. Minor cuts are starting to add up on Hari’s body as her needles are unable to keep up with Nazuko’s speed. She realizes that even with her ability enhancing her speed it's still not enough to keep up with Nazuko’s blazing fast assault.

“You’re fast I admit, but how well can you fight when your mobility is limited,” Hari states as she unleashes needles all over the warehouse with needles sticking out of the ground and the walls.

This makes it incredibly difficult for Nazuko to employ her increasing momentum strategy as she’s standing on the catwalk near the ceiling looking down at Hari. Nazuko creates light constructs in the shape of kunai and throws dozens of them down at Hari. She counters by matching each kunai with needles as both objects clash and fall to the floor. Hari jumps up to the catwalk Nazuko is standing on and the two continue hurling sharp deadly objects at each other. The two seem even in their clash, but eventually a few of Hari’s needles slip by forcing Nazuko to dodge. One needle ends up hitting her in the arm that she already couldn’t move that well, causing her to lose complete control of her right arm. Nazuko knew that she couldn’t win in a battle of attrition against her so she needed to end this fight quickly. She blitzes forward forcing a close combat confrontation. Nazuko swings her short blade fast enough to put Hari permanently on the defense with her needles. Hari knew she would be defeated at this rate if she didn’t do anything so she spawned needles directly above Nazuko and forced them to fall down on the short girl. Nazuko barely sees the needles in her peripheral version as she immediately does three consecutive backflips to avoid the onslaught of needles. Hari lets loose so many needles in Nazuko’s direction that Nazuko is forced to jump off the catwalk disappearing from Hari’s view. A few seconds pass as Nazuko is nowhere to be found. She must have fallen to the floor and gotten skewered by all the needles on the floor, but there’s no body.

Suddenly Hari feels immense pain as her foot gets stabbed through the catwalk by a light kunai. She buckles under the pain as she realizes Nazuko was hanging underneath the catwalk. Nazuko takes advantage of her opponent’s pain as she emerges from beneath the catwalk, and spins in midair to gain momentum and cleanly cuts Hari’s left arm off.

“AHHH, MY ARM! YOU’LL PAY FOR THAT YOU PEST!” Hari hysterically shouted in pain.

At that moment it seems like Nazuko is clearly winning the battle before she feels something wrong with her left arm. She looks down to find 6 needles lodged in her arm before she loses control of her hand and her short blade falls to the ground. In that confrontation she must have been hit with needles at the last moment.

“You may have taken my arm, but I’ve rendered you harmless. In return I’ll take your life!” Hari claimed as she made a rather sadistic smile. One could see the crazy in her eyes as she twisted her head somewhat unnaturally.

She then uses her right arm and stabs herself in the neck with a needle. For the next 2 hours Hari will feel no pain, and usual limits that prevent one from using the full strength of their muscles are removed.

Nazuko knows how dire of a situation she’s in. Both of her arms are disabled, and her opponent seems nowhere close to being defeated yet. However, Nazuko still hasn’t lost the ability to wield a sword yet.

“Don’t count me out yet you crazy woman. Time to use the legendary sword style taught to me by Master Akane,” Nazuko says before kicking her blade up in the air and catching it with her mouth.

Nazuko remembers the stories Akane told her about the legendary tale Two Piece where a famous swordsman wielded a blade with his mouth and eventually became the strongest swordsman in the world. She hoped that she could even wield a remnant of that strength.

Nazuko dashed forward creating a barrier of hard light to protect her from all the needles. As she drew closer Hari pulls back her right fist before punching right through Nazuko’s barrier and hitting her in the stomach. Nazuko gets punched hard enough in the gut to send her flying back into the wall at the end of the catwalk. The impact is almost enough to make her drop the sword from her jaw, but she pushes through the pain. Nazuko constructs a few light clones of herself and sends them forward to distract Hari in order to buy a few moments to catch her breath. To her that almost felt like getting punched by Lilith, but it would be an insult to Lilith to make the comparison. If it was Lilith that punched her she would certainly be knocked out right now.

The light clones fail to inflict damage on Hari as each one gets skewered by needles before exploding into large flashes of light. At best Hari is slightly disoriented by now, at worst it just made her angry. Hari slowly marches towards Nazuko, but she is getting close to her limit now. Even if she couldn’t feel the pain, the amount of blood gushing out her wound would kill her if she didn’t do anything. The majority of her aura is diverted to forming a clot at the center of her wound to prevent further bleeding.

“I can’t believe it's come to this but, I’ll have to use this,” Hari says as she whips out a syringe filled with black liquid similar to the one in the vat below and stabs herself with it in her heart.

A familiar yet terrifying feeling

Nazuko watches as the aura of her opponent grow and her body starts transforming into something sinister. It looked like Hari was suffering immense pain as the fluid overtook her. Like she could almost die at any second. Nazuko’s felt this feeling before, during the Ayana rebellion, but back then it was much stronger. What was happening in front of her eyes right now was naught but a pale imitation of that person’s power. She took a look at Hari’s appearance, in which it almost seemed like she was inhuman, her face had turned dark grey and her eyes had become a shade of dark yellow.

“What, what are you?” Nazuko gasped.

“I have ascended, I have become one step closer to those whom I seek to serve,” Hari boasted.

Hari lifts up her right arm and needles sprout from her hand seeking to impale Nazuko. The short girl uses the railing as a foothold to jump through the glass panes in the ceiling onto the roof. Nazuko guesses it must have been a few minutes since the fight started but she can finally feel something in her right arm again. The effects of those needles must only last around 4-5 minutes, she guesses. Hari jumps to the roof to chase after Nazuko, determined to not let the girl escape.

“Heh, now that we’re outside, it seems I’m back with the advantage,” Nazuko boasted.

“Really, I feel like you’re mistaken there, you little runt,” she responds as her left arm suddenly grows back.

“What?! How?” Nazuko says taken aback by the woman’s regenerative ability.

“How indeed? Demon blood truly is a mystery, we have many more tests we need to run and I’m afraid your interference is getting in the way of that.”

As Hari begins attacking Nazuko notices her needles are way bigger than before, now the size of a spear. Forget having your arms disabled, if she gets hit with one of those, chances are her arms are coming off. Nazuko retreats by immediately throwing down a smoke bomb in Hari’s vicinity and disappearing out of her line of sight.

“Where did you go? You know it's no use hiding right? I can smell the fear that oozes from your body. I bet you’re really terrible at Hide and Seek.” Hari declared.

Hide and Seek. Those words were enough to trigger Nazuko’s ptsd and consequently that drove her fight or flight instincts berserk. She focused on gathering as much of the environment’s magical energy into herself as she prepared her attack. When the smoke clears Hari sees Nazuko before hearing her utter two words.

“Vorpal Blade.”

A massive barrage of light swords spawn and immediately eviscerate the demonic woman standing before Nazuko. Due to the sheer speed of this attack, escaping is rendered a useless tactic. Even to Nazuko who was the attack’s user it appeared as if it was just an intense explosion of light. When the light dims and her opponent can be seen again, Nazuko counts at least a dozen light blades sticking out of her opponent. Particularly one blade of light was stuck directly in her opponent's throat.

“I don’t typically enjoy killing, but you really shouldn’t have said those three words,” Nazuko spouted.

Nazuko walked away preparing to find the alchemist, when she suddenly started hearing laughter.

“Heh. Hah. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Nazuko turns to see Hari laughing even with a blade of light lodged in her throat.

“Ah crap,” Nazuko muttered under breath.

Hari started pulling each individual blade out of her body as each wound started to quickly close.

“I really have to thank you little one. Thanks to you I have confirmed that I have started evolving past humanity.”

Nazuko’s thoughts started racing, she didn’t know how to deal with someone with such powerful regenerative abilities. She didn’t have the kind of firepower needed to completely eviscerate an enemy all at once. It was because of that black liquid, she would have won this fight by now if it wasn’t for that. A sinister thought then crept across her mind, what if she were to intake that black liquid like this woman did? Would that give her the strength needed to defeat this opponent? She contemplated this thought for a moment before deciding. No. The sheer idea was stupid in and of itself. Plus Will would never accept her if she did that. However, that black liquid did give her an idea.

Hari wasted no time using her demonic-like speed to rush up to Nazuko and stab with her spear-like needles. Nazuko blocked it with the blade in her mouth, but Hari smiled as she used her free hand to generate another needle to finish Nazuko. She would not let her run away this time. Right as she was about to get skewered, Nazuko ducked and used her right hand to stab Hari in the heart with a light sword she generated. This attack was a clean and perfectly executed critical hit. An attack strong enough that it would take minutes for her to fully regenerate.

“Your right arm?!”

“I just wanted to give you the impression I still couldn’t use my hands,” Nazuko said, faking her out.

Nazuko followed it up by having four light clones kick Hari into the sky. Nazuko jumped into the sky before using the rest of her strength to kick Hari back to the ground, sending her through the glass panels on the roof right into the vat of black liquid inside the warehouse. All that could be heard was the screams of the demonic-like woman before suddenly going quiet.

Nazuko looked down from above, waiting to make sure her opponent was truly dead, before looking for the alchemist. She would not be surprised by seeing immortal opponents twice in one day.

A few minutes pass until she’s sure that no abomination climbed out of the vat of liquid. Nazuko sighed in relief as everything was dealt with.

Nazuko jumps down from the roof to find the alchemist she was looking for.

“Is it done, is that woman finally dead?” Gunva asked.

“I sure as hell hope so, but just in case, let's not stick around to find out. My allies are waiting outside, they probably have dealt with the grunts outside,” Nazuko responds.

The two walk out the front door of the warehouse to see a horde of unconscious bodies with Nerva sitting atop of them.

“What happened in there, we saw large flashes of light coming from the roof?” Remi questioned.

“Oh you know, I just fought a semi immortal demon lady, no big deal,” Nazuko answers.

“Cool and who’s this?” Nerva asks as she points at the dwarven woman.

“Hello, I am Gunva, the alchemist of Urbossa’s Valley,” Gunva greeted.

Nazuko goes up to Ryder as Remi and Nerva talk with the alchemist.

“Hey Ryder, could you do me a favor and blow up the warehouse, there’s some really bad things in there that really shouldn’t get into the outside world,” Nazuko tells him.

“Didn’t even need to give me a reason, if you tell me to blow something up, that’s enough for me,” Ryder says as he launches a few bombs into the air which land atop the warehouse setting the whole thing ablaze.

“Good riddance, now I think I’ll be able to sleep tonight,” Nazuko claims.

The two walk back to where Gunva is talking with the others.

Remi appears to have this grave look on her face and she begins to speak.

“Ryder, Nazuko, something urgent came up that we’re gonna have to put the herb thing on pause for now. The entire valley is in severe danger.”