He begins to notice Morgan and Rachamah’s stares. Rachamah looks at the young girl’s corpse with indifference, meanwhile, for Morgan, it’s just another layer of shock, she’s losing color in her eyes over the sight before she murmurs “thank you” under her breath.

  Arata steps closer to her, kneeling down in front of her after taking a look at the script. I was wrong to think along the lines of her having seen something. It’s more like she’s made some mistakes.

  Bending down to her eye level, he asks her a question, “Mary wanted me to tell you something… You deserve a thank you for the things you sacrificed. Your father's apology is still due for your collection.”

  With that note, Arata outstretches his hand, pulling Morgan back up onto her feet. We need to keep moving, it's a lot to ask her at this moment but…

  Arata is interrupted by the sound of Rachamah's stomach growling. There's nothing edible in here, she doesn't look happy and Beelzebub is still on the run.

  “Hey Rachamah… I want to offer you up some new prey. If I can get you information on the Erlking, you could kill him, right?” Arata suggests as Rachamah’s eyes light up.

  Rachamah nods, “Oh, I see, another one of the demon lords? You have some info on him too… I’ll hear it first before I agree to anything.”

  According to the scripts and learning about the Erlking’s army… “The Erlking’s ability is to corrupt life. He does this through corrupting their mana, it’s why his army is completely made up of fairies, they’re basically mana in its physical state. However, I can’t make too many assumptions about the limitations but he’s created a whole army so that’s about our current baseline. He maintains mana from casting by luring children into the woods.”

  After hearing that last bit, Rachamah’s face looks slightly apprehensive, “He’s a bit risky for me to fight. Let’s cooperate then, we’ve got to get a rendezvous point though… I’ll reach the forest in about 2 days but I have no idea how to reach you specifically… can you come a bit closer?”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Arata comes slightly closer as he feels Rachamah’s small hands grasp onto his arm, examining him. Huh? Not what I expected-

  *CRUNCH*

  Rachamah bites off a small piece of Arata’s flesh, swallowing it down with an irritated look on her face, “Your meat tastes strange… alright, I can track you now. It’s the only way I can track people but you took it well, I presume.”

  Arata was shaking, blood spurted around as Morgan quickly rushed over to apply pressure to Arata’s wound. Arata’s face contorted into a look of pain over what just went down. AH GOD! OW SHIT SHIT THAT HURTS! I guess it’s less painful than the amount of times I’d probably be dying without Rachamah’s help.

  Rachamah has quite the awkward look on her face after taking a healthy chunk of Arata’s skin off with a bite. She tries to divert the conversation. Rachamah glances over at Arata’s sword, pausing… “Hey, that sorta flame whip attack you use… molten slag gets into the enemy’s wounds, right?”

  Arata glances down at his sword, he had never realized it but, the cutting edge was deteriorated. Arata cries out, “But I thought this blade had good metal, plus it wasn’t cheap!”

  Rachamah sighs a little, “The blade is of good quality yes, but not to heating up the metal like that… metal needs to be heatable to be forged into actual weapons… you’ll need a new weapon, if you’re altering the sword with magic the quality of the blade becomes a non-factor anyways.

  Why is she explaining this to me like I’m a moron… maybe she’s onto something but I’m just forgetful. Arata stops putting pressure onto his arm, inspecting his sword when Morgan rushes over to assist Arata.

  Morgan rips off a bit of fabric from her sleeve for a makeshift tourniquet. The injury wasn’t deep but was definitely quite painful. While being treated, he feels his eyes being forced closed, his vision being sucked away from the mirage of the Ripping.

  Now awake in the real world, Arata takes note of the pair of shears next to him. Arata picks up the item to try and assess it before choosing to summon Ravenna. These were from the ripping… I dunno how I got them, they just kinda appeared inside my hands.

  Ravenna already knew, reaching out her hand, “Hand it over, Arata, I’ll do some testing in the theater… I’ll get back to you- uuuh when I feel like it.” Ravenna rubs her eyes; her sleep schedule clearly wasn’t that great.

  With that, Ravenna heads on out, leaving Arata alone with his thoughts. Arata was alone until he heard footsteps. Alexander dashes over to Arata.

  Alexander cries out in horror, “We’re under attack!”