Perhaps it was because I was a little too engrossed in my worries and ended up showing them on my face, Mo Na who seemed to have picked up on my mood, and was busy hugging my neck while gingerly asking: “Mama, why are you frowning?”
To avoid worrying her any further, I forced out a smile before lightly kissing her on the forehead: “It’s alright, it’s just that there are some matters your Papa can’t figure out, the more he thinks about them, the more engrossed he becomes.”
“What’s worrying Mama so much?”
“Nothing important, sweetie, don’t worry, your Papa is fine.”
While the changes in her body concerned me, that much was certain, there was nothing I could really do about it at the moment except to continue observing her. Fortunately, the Grimoire didn’t seem to want to hurt her, I just hoped that remained true for the future as well.
After having that little chat with Mo Na, Sinmosa and the others returned from their foraging. Their harvest wasn’t bountiful, merely five fruits were handed to me by Sinmosa using her mouth. At the same time, Big 4 handed over four fruits they picked from their side.
While nine fruits might not have sounded like much, considering this was Purgatory, such a harvest honestly wasn’t that bad.
I handed over the fruits to Mo Na before instructing her thusly: “Keep the fruits in your little box for now, those are for Cinderel so don’t try and steal them.”
“Hmph, like I would even.” Mo Na carefully stowed the fruits.
Having settled that matter, our group continued eastward in search for the Purgatory Shadowcats. Because we were still in the outermost regions of their territory, the cats we would most likely encounter would be solitary ones, two at the very most. In some sense, it would probably be more accurate to say that we were hoping some adult cat would stumble on us, rather than us stumbling on them.
Thus, while we travelled through their lands, we took extra care to observe our surroundings. Whenever we encountered those dark red strawberries, we would naturally stop to harvest them.
Other than plants, the lands of the Purgatory Shadowcats had lava lakes as well. However, they were noticeably smaller and shallower; creeks would probably be a more apt name for them.
Within those bodies of lava, there were traces of Flame Devouring Fishes. There were however, quite a number of Demon Flame worms. Moreover, judging by the depth of these ‘lakes’, I highly doubted any Demon Fire Salamander would even be able to live in them.
For now, those were our basic food sources. The worms became our main food source while the fruits we harvested were all handed over to Mo Na for safekeeping. Whenever Cinderel got hungry, she would head over to find Mo Na for those fruits.
For the most part, hellhounds were meat lovers, while they were able to consume souls as well, those were more of snacks to them; it was fine if they had them, but it didn’t matter that much if they didn’t. Because of that, the majority of the souls we harvested ended up being consumed by Mo Na and I. As for Cinderel, she ended up joining us in the Soul Squad as well because of her unique constitution.
Just as we were munching on our respective food sources and wondering how long more it would take for us to encounter a Purgatory Shadowcat, a black and red shadow came speeding right at us from a distance away.
First to react were Sinmosa and Sasani, who until not too long ago, were chewing on worm meat. The couple warily glanced in the direction of the approaching figure and howled.
“Nyaaaa!!”
Before the shadow even entered visible range, we heard a piercing cat meow. However, thanks to its lightning speed, I still wasn’t able to visibly discern what kind of creature it was; not that it was even necessary anymore since that meow=– gave me all the information I would ever need.
The Purgatory Shadowcat standing before us resembled a normal cat except it was a lot bigger. It had a mostly black coat of fur that had red patterns streaking all around. As for its size, it was roughly the size of an average Chinese dog, moreover, its eyes were golden yellow. However, because it was furious right now, those beautiful pupils were marred by streaks of red instead. It opened its mouth and howled, showing off a couple sets of razor sharp teeth in the process. The fur on its back stood up simultaneously as if to show exactly how angry it was right now.
“Grrrrrr!” Naturally not one to take such a provocation lying down, Sinmosa and Sasani immediately put up an aggressive front as well. Yet even though the two of them were noticeably bigger than that cat, their stature seems almost diminished in comparison.
The Purgatory Shadowcat in question clearly didn’t like the hellhounds either. Its angry hissing didn’t stop for a second as it arced its back and circled the hellhound couple. Moments later, its pressure wave came rushing out in full force, forcing the couple to retreat a few small steps back. Because Sinmosa and Sasani blocked the majority of its pressure for us, we were mostly left untouched.
“Sinmosa…can you communicate with it?” Seeing as we were the ones seeking their aid here, I didn’t want to get into a fight right away with a Purgatory Shadowcat. Thus I made sure to remind Sinmosa not to act rashly, if possible, I wanted them to communicate with words instead of claws.
“Devil?” Finally noticing us, the Purgatory Shadowcat made the conscious switch to the tongue of the devil. “Impossible…there are actually devils still alive in the Remnants of Sable Radiance?”
From its tone, I could clearly sense the shock it felt towards our mere existence. However, was it really to be blamed for that? After all, the devils all disappeared 80 000 years ago and this entire region was sealed up for some unknown reason.
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