---Unclaimed Mountains, about 1 Month Later---

  A giant body crashed into the mountainside, setting off a snowstorm and a small avalanche as it slid into the valley. Buckled wings, broken bones, cut tubes, bent metal, this bundle of broken parts of the corpse of the hashing bird.

  The cat beastman that had been riding the corpse on its slide down, sat on it, fatigued. It was the eight hashing birds Mike met since they separated from Lydia and Ray, and the second he defeated alone.

  When they started going north, aiming for the route that would lead to the mine of , these things appeared more and more often. After they were attacked by three at once, they suspected that they were after Ceres, because he had killed one at Morranto. Since Ceres could not protect him when there were more than two, they decided to separate.

  Yet, despite Ceres leaving his side with Blotches, Mike kept running into these things, leading him to the conclusion that these things were not just after Ceres, but more numerous in this region in general...bad news in and of itself. Was he getting closer to their place of origin?

  A single of these owls was no problem for Mike, the Chosen of Maahes, but if he had to fight two it would become problematic. Mike was not specialized in ranged attacks or aerial battles, which made such fights dangerous and tiresome. But meeting them more often was not the only thing.

  The trade route that led to the Border Storm was supposed to have around ten smaller and bigger settlements. After two months, Mike had crossed a little more than half the route but only come through one that had people inside. It was a town called Sventin. Inc Town at the very beginning of this broken road. This begged to question: What were these birds doing with the people?

  Another question was: What were they doing with the monsters? Mike had also met next to no beast on his way. The only creatures he found in these mountains were stealth hunters, with incredible camouflage skills. He had lost his Alpeka to one, four weeks ago. Assuming this lack of normal beasts was also the doing of the hashing birds was only reasonable.

  Since then, his speed had significantly slowed down and he started to worry about his rations. When he separated with Lydia, he still had two fully stacked item slots with ordinary rations, and three not fully stacked ones with Link's meals. The ordinary rations had halved, and he started eating buff-meals to improve his stamina on the journey, as he didn't know when he would have to fight.

  He was not hurting for food for now, but he didn't know if there was enough until he reached his destination. Looking at the