Elemental Cats

Kolt was brought to a small clearing not too close to the edge of the herd. If what he said was false he needed to be punished for it and to keep him from escaping the consequences of his actions the easiest way would be to hold him prisoner. The deer naturally wouldn't care about Kolt's opinion regarding that. Kolt also knew that there was no point in resisting, besides it wasn't like he was going to stay there forever.

Lucy hadn't bothered waiting outside the herd for Kolt to return since they both knew he wouldn't, and the time wasn't ripe for a prison break. Instead he continued roaming the mountains, increasing the hostility between different groups and generally doing his best in spreading chaos. But compared to previously there wasn't much he could do on short notice since most groups had already solidified their stance and position in the mountains, it would take something drastic to move any of the beasts at all. However Lucy didn't have the time to plan anything drastic and while waiting for all the leaders to return from the pit he himself returned to sleep in Toz's embrace.

As the beasts in the mountain continued rioting and fighting, both Toz and Nil gained a greater understanding of Lucy's abilities and what his daily walks had been about. Although it might be considered wicked, how Lucy's actions had led and would lead to a lot of deaths, neither of them were worried about any missing morals or thought what he did was wrong, just that he was a little too mischievous. However they were anxious about what would happen if someone caught wind of what he was doing or if Lucy would fail.

Since neither would be good they decided they might as well help Lucy when needed. It was still unclear to them if Lucy enjoyed spectating chaos unfold or if the joy came from being personally responsible. If it was the latter he might not appreciate their help, and if the former it might turn into an interesting pastime for them, even if Toz and Nil weren't as sadistic as Lucy, just planning and doing things all together could bring a smile to their faces.

But all of that is matter for the future, this time rashly interfering could sabotage Lucy's plans and even if they wanted to do something they didn't know where to begin. While Lucy had been busy plotting, Nil and Toz had been training their mana, enjoyed some food, and further studied the egg to try and find out what kind of spirit beast would be born.

The egg would obviously be a fire attribute spirit beast but the blurry shadows inside the egg kept changing shape making it impossible to discern anything from it. The egg itself also held no clues except it being perfectly clear, with no blemishes whatsoever. Although Toz hadn't seen many eggs previously, all of them had had markings and coloration that came from the mixed mana of the parent's union. Most spirit beasts had different ways to grow and utilize their mana so even if they were of the same element, the egg would show these differences in some way. The differences would usually be even clearer if the parents used different attributes. One of the cooler eggs Toz had seen was from an Iron Jaw Ant and a Zapper, a four winged lightning attribute bird, the size of a hand. Their egg had looked like an exploding star in the night sky.

Although in almost all cases only one of the parent's attributes were inherited there were exceptions, and those exceptions could sometimes be determined before the birth of the beast by looking at the egg. The Iron Jaw Zapper was one such case, where the attributes were not easily separated from one another. The Iron Jaw Zapper was also en extreme rarity in the way it's physical form was a mix between it's parents, becoming a four winged ant, in addition to it's ability to use both metal and lightning.

However the egg Toz had picked up showed no such markings nor displayed any inheritance from it's parents. It was completely orange, the epitome of the color of fire. Toz wondered if maybe the long years below ground had somehow purified or washed away anything that might have been displayed by the egg when it was first conceived, turning it into pure fire with no outside influence.

Toz continued thinking about it but he was sorely lacking in any relevant knowledge and could only document it in his travel log and hug it in front of the campfire. There was no real need for the fire but since the egg might require some extreme heat to further condense it's body Toz decided he might as well keep a small one going instead of trying to light one when the need arose. With Lucy's magic blocking the entrance there wasn't any need to worry about being spotted either.

Considering he had a constant campfire going on and having been in a fire plane for some time now, Toz thought that he would be used to the heat by now but he could still feel himself growing hotter than he would have liked. At first he thought that maybe the heat from the fire had gotten trapped in the cave and that was why but as he continued getting hotter without even adding fuel to the fire he suspected something strange might be going on. However it was in the middle of the night and the heat hadn't grown to the extent he needed to worry, he had just grown sensitive enough to notice the small change in temperature.

But the heat might continue to build and would probably get even worse during the day so Toz decided to scout things out a bit before relaxing. First he removed Lucy from Nil's back, then shook Nil awake to keep a watch over Lucy, the egg and the campsite, and then he removed the egg from his lap and left it next to the flickering flames.

Toz stretched his slightly stiff legs before he left the cave and started investigating the mountain range, he hardly needed his instinct to tell him it was related to the center of the mountain range again. Since their cave was located on a mountain in the inner layer, but facing outwards Toz only needed to walk around the mountain to find a weak, waving orange glow being emitted from the hole. Toz wasn't the only one who had noticed it despite how weak the light was since a lot of beasts kept watch over the hole. Although some were worried about their leaders, most were anticipating the treasure that would probably soon make it's appearance.

Although a few beasts had escaped the pit earlier on none of them had spread the fact that Toz had gotten the treasure, mostly because no one would believe it but also because it might put them in danger. Not to mention redundant, even if Toz had gotten it, how would he escape from the pit alive? Most of the beasts had escaped soon after Toz got his hands on the egg and didn't know about his disappearance. If that became widely known some beasts might actually scour the mountains for his tracks in a desperate attempt to find him.

Thus at the moment practically only Toz knew that the glow coming from the hole had nothing to do with the treasure. When he thought about how the earth surrounding the orb had melted down and left a hole after flowing down deep underground he had his suspicions about what the light source might be. But considering how the light seemed to grow closer there was no need to confirm those suspicions at the moment and he headed back into the cave to wait for morning.

Toz told Nil and Lucy about the situation. Nil was mostly uninterested but Lucy was almost bursting at the seams. It seemed he couldn't wait for tomorrow to happen and started jumping around in impatience. It was to the point where he couldn't bear to sit still and decided to take a walk around the mountains leaving only a sentence behind.

"Don't wait up."