Hamza dozed off, the long journey drained his energy. His stamina isn't equal from his younger days when he could pull off all nighters with no effort.

"My admirer is not one prone to tardiness." Hilda conveyed her trepidation.

"My thoughts exactly." Kyro concurred with her.

By now Jiya or the monster should've showed up. Yet there's no sign of either of them. Considering that I'm not sick, she's not hurt… probably she found it but couldn't defeat it. Then she's most likely hiding coming up with a strategy.

Since our souls are connected blah blah blah and considering that we aren't that far away. It doesn't matter which way I take, I'll certainly bump into her!

"Sometimes I can be such a genius." He nodded self-approvingly.

"Your precipitated credence daunts me." Ignoring her comment the fox dashed out from the town's square.

"Hamza, take care of things here!" 

"Uhumm.. take care, son." Years of single parenting made him master the art of sleep-talking. Though Hamza doesn't remember anything of the conversation, he answers perfectly.

The moonlight illuminated the underbrush as he went further in he found two distinct footprints, shortly afterwards he came across its owners, a silver fox at an irking closeness from Jiya who was stuck in a trance for,conceivably, hours.

His kin gains power by crushing people's sanity, his mother abandoned him because he refused to live through inflicting misery upon others. His illusions were weak on purpose, he didn't wish to hurt anyone.

But this silver fox couldn't care less about a stepping stone welfare, willing to do whatever it takes to attain more power. If Kyro insisted on accompanying her, Jiya wouldn't have to undergo a mental ordeal.

"Are you so engrossed in your acting that you've fallen for your own lie?" Nukpana merely stared back at the blade pointed against neck, certain it was a hoax.

"Release her now." Gritting his teeth, he gave an ultimatum to his counterpart.

"Oh my, don't tell you actually care about your little archer?" The antagonist derided.

"Yes, so what?" Kyro replied unperturbed.

"Romanceless bastards! How many more must I kill until I hear a heartfelt love confession?!" He rebuked, somewhat vexed.

Appalled to the extent of becoming speechless, Kyro couldn't even fathom the degree of this absurdity. This guy killed that many people for the sake of witnessing a love confession. That's outright madness.

"Sophr." When Nukpana uttered this word, multiple arrows hit the soil, Jiya fired even more this time to impinge his vital points.

Mind control? Tsk, nobody ever taught me the cool tricks.

Despite his efforts to dodge as much as he could, the point of one arrow gashed his left arm. Luckily not only his injury healed up, she also ran out of ammunition. The odds couldn't be more favorable.

"I wasn't serious when I said all that about... you know, right my dear friend?" Nukpana nervously smiled as talked things out of this unfortunate turn of the tables.

"Without doubt, dear friend whose face I've never seen before." He played along in disdain.

"A-At last you do understand, I did you a favor! Well, then excuse me." The coward promptly turned his back to leave.

"Don't forget to take your generous retribution." He chopped off the whack job's tail that somehow fell into a hole that wasn't even there.

It's no superstition, cutting off a fox's tail gives them extreme bad luck until it grows back, but since his tail was cut with a magic sword that won't happen. He'll be on a bind for the rest of his jinxed life.

"Cutting off all his limbs would've been more appropriate." The sword suggested very mercifully, one could sense her empathy from a thousand miles away.

"Not one bit vengeful." He pointed out Hilda's pitiless exhortation.

"I'll have you know, I have the heart of a maiden." She protested against his on-point accusation.

"And the mind of a bloodthirsty warrior."