Chapter 171: A humiliation ritual.

The beasts in the pavilion took full advantage of the offer. A medium bear forced Zyra to scratch a very specific, hard-to-reach spot on its lower back for twenty minutes straight. When she stopped, it growled until she kept going. It was not until Armillo begged it to stop that it gave up hesitantly.

Squirrel handed her a brush and made her style its messy tail fur into tiny, ridiculous pigtails. Every time she tied a bow, squirrel and the others rolled on the ground, pointing at her and screeching with laughter. "What is this!?"

The other beasts laughed.

"Don’t laugh! You asked for a makeover!" Zyra snapped, her face burning hot with embarrassment. She wasn’t finding their childish bullying funny at all, but she had to swallow her pride and keep going for the sake of the location of the two evolution ingredients.

Zyra was as sure as the sun rose daily, that the system had deliberately set this up in retaliation for withholding her energy stones from it.

In the corner, the pavilion workers and Bianca stood frozen, watching the great, powerful Zyra being paraded around like an unpaid servant by a bunch of giggling animals.

"Is__ is this normal around here?" Bianca whispered to a nearby worker, her eyes wide with confusion.

"Every once in a while. The Divine maiden cares about our half-life beasts and she goes out of her way to make them comfortable. Just don’t laugh at her when she is done," the worker whispered back, backing away slowly. "One punch from her and you might black out."

The antics continued. She trimmed nails, massaged heads, sung songs, made animal sounds and danced. Just when Zyra was at her breaking point, scrubbing the bottom of a monkey while grinding her teeth, Beauty finally took pity on her.

[Alright, alright, stop! The beasts are just picking on you now, it’s not even fair,] Beauty chuckled.

"It’s about time we ended this humiliation ritual." Zyra announced as she kicked the monkey in the butt.

The beasts raised voices of displeasure saying the fun had only just started.

[Ding! Location unlocked: The abandoned Snake Dungeon at Moon fall is where you will find the mid-level python and many snakes. Another option for the python is a venomous queen bee. For that, you can just go raid the Bandaris Honey Farm and steal one from their hives!]

Hearing this, Zyra froze. A second later, she burst into a loud, mocking laugh.

"Ha! Hahaha!" Zyra laughed dryly, wiping a non-existent tear from her eye. "Are you serious right now, Beauty? The whole point of me humiliating myself for your little task was so you could give me unknown locations! The Bandaris Honey Farm is literally on the map of Zenith! And a snake dungeon? Everyone knows about Moon fall!" She paused, her mocking smile faltering slightly. "__Okay, fine, I didn’t actually know the Moon fall dungeon was abandoned but that is a minor detail. Why is it abandoned anyway? Did something happen there?"

Beauty snickered, floating down right in front of Zyra’s face with her arms folded smugly. [My, my. Host doesn’t seem very thankful for my hard work.]

"Because I am not thankful!" Zyra snapped, crossing her arms tightly. "You made me scratch a monkey’s butt for locations that I know!"

Beauty grinned mischievously. [If that was the case then you should have figured it out on your own. But let me enlighten you then.]

With a snap of Beauty’s fingers, then a map expanded in front of Zyra’s eyes.

[Look closely, Host. The next dungeon marked on your map leads you exactly to Moon fall! I figured that out before you did.]

Zyra looked at her hand and then scanned the map on the virtual screen. "How long have you been holding on to this information?"

Beauty didn’t answer with words. Instead, she transferred a glowing stream of data directly into the map tattoo etched onto Zyra’s forearm. The small interface flared to life, overlaying itself onto the map of the world.

The view rapidly zoomed in, passing clouds, mountains, and rivers, until it pinned down a dark mountain range marked with bold red lines: Moon fall Dungeon.

Zyra let out a long, heavy sigh that seemed to drain all the frustration out of her. She rolled her shoulders and rotated her stiff neck, listening to it crack.

"Well, __ I guess I must thank you because at least I don’t have to wander blindly." Zyra muttered, staring at the map. She tapped her chin, weighing her options. "I’ll deal with the snakes later. We’re starting with the Dew Fruit first. It’s in the Frozen Forest, so it should be the easiest one to track down, even without Hunter’s help."

She turned on her heel and began marching out of the Beast Pavilion, eager to leave the cackling beasts behind.

"Wait for me, Zyra!"

Bianca quickly scurried after her, clutching a hand to her chest. Having officially appointed herself as Zyra’s bodyguard. "Where are we going?"

Zyra twisted her lips, "For a walk in a cold place."

******

Rocket and his group had been stalking Ocean ever since they got reliable intel that the man had slipped back into town.

From their observations, Ocean was walking around with a brand-new kind of arrogance. His chest was puffed out, and he carried himself like he owned the streets. Rocket knew exactly why. It was because Ocean had managed to team up with some remarkably strong companions. Because of those powerful guild leaders, Ocean felt completely untouchable.

Knowing they couldn’t fight his whole entourage head-on, Rocket and his team had decided to wait for the perfect moment to catch Ocean completely alone. The man always did the same thing every night, no matter what he was doing: he always had to eat fried pork liver.

Tonight, Rocket and his team were crouched behind a stall selling pork liver. The disguised cook was one of their men, whom everyone called Bullet. They were all sure that this was the night the search was ending.

But they had been hiding for over an hour, in the same position, and some of the men were already tired.

Rocket noticed and he hissed. "Stay sharp. I heard Ocean and his group are planning to leave town tonight. This is our last chance. The boss gave strict orders, if we can’t take him alive, then we have to take him out before he steps foot outside this town."

The three men in hiding nodded silently, their eyes fixed on the entrance of a bustling local bar where Ocean and his friends had been drinking all evening. They inhaled the greasy smell of hot oil and fried pig liver as they waited in the shadows.