Grimm had been moping around for days. He hated that Lefay was not being supportive of his plan. He watched her lying next to him and asked himself.
"Is she the right one? She seems to be pushy and controlling. And she couldn't think less of my esteem sometimes!" Grimm was torn by this idea because he loved her.
Would Lefay be a boon to Grimm on his road to be a great a sorcerer? Nobody knew. Would she be a hurdle then? That was not known, either.
What was clear was that Grimm slipped out of the tent the night when the third mirror arrived.
Under the cloak of darkness, Grimm moved along alone through the forest towards the mirror drop site. He made his way as slowly as possible to keep his energy signals under check. One little inattentive action might cost his life now since the seven Desperators had congregated.
As Grimm drew near to the mirror place, he found a house similar to the one where he had obtained the stick. There were seven entrances leading inside of it. The Desperators were garrisoned at the four corners of the house, their eyes sweeping across the forest.
"Why are they just watching the house? Why don't they go in there?" Grimm became skeptical.
The next day, a few students, who had exaggerated opinions of their abilities, intruded on the house and ended up as dead bodies.
Grimm was lurking in a position facing a house corner that had low security. The rest of the corners were either guarded by the Sun Child, or by two or three Desperators together. Because of that, most of the students driven by the mystery inside the house had aggregated here, biding their time.
To avoid unnecessary conflicts with the others, Grimm had hidden himself underground using the Cylix, one of the gifts from Sorcerer Elaine.
On the third day, seven or eight bold students broke the frontier, and unsurprisingly, they were killed in varied, awful ways.
On the fourth day, two students were emboldened and challenged the Desperators' authority, because they also had the "bead". They thought that the guardians might be easily deterred by the power of this bead. It turned out to be a stupid move. As the two students threatened to enter the house by detonating the bead, the Machine Heart, who had recovered from his injury, swung his tail at the bead, which was knocked a kilometer away. And they were then mercilessly destroyed.
To the Machine Heart's amazement, the bead exploded after receiving such a strong impact. Following a loud explosion, a mushroom shaped cloud was lifted off the ground.
For the next few days that ensued, no students had the guts to take a step forward towards the house. Now they knew this truth:
"The pursuit of one's dream has a cost!"
It was the 26th day of the First Year Students Test and there were only four days to carry on through this inferno.
Safe being under the ground, Grimm had collected six bodies that had not been hashed up for a study of the Desperators' way of killing.
When sorcerer Elaine gave Grimm the Cylix, she also offered him the Buzzing bugs. As Elaine had exhorted, if the bugs were nurtured in dead bodies, they would integrate into a large Buzzing bug to safeguard Grimm for a day. Breeding a Buzzing bug moved up into high priority because Grimm had made a decision to make a move on the house.
After some careful research, a superficial conclusion had been made: Some of them died from sorceries related to the Earth element[1] and the Wood element[2], and one was poisoned to death.
Grimm didn't know how exactly the elements killed the students, neither could he figure out the poisoning. Yet Grimm did bring with him two vials of potent antidotes. One was to reduce the effect of floral secretions, and the other was for metal element intoxication. He had bought them from the trade market on the ground floor of the Black Tower.
After Grimm had set the bugs free into the bodies, an intensive buzzing noise was heard. The droning sound kept on for about an hourglass after which the bodies turned into bare skeletons. No human flesh was left! All the mature bugs were then polymerized and grew to be a three meter long beast.
What distinguished Grimm's personal mount was that they were mentally connected. In other words, the huge Buzzing bug was his Soul Slave and would serve him without a complaint, although the service expired a day after.
Followed by the majestic-looking monster, Grimm surfaced out of the ground.
As Grimm made his way through the jungle, he "saw" someone slide right before him using his Ashen Mask's echo-location feature. Yet, as Grimm sent out more audio signals trying to catch it, it vanished from his sight.
"Strange! How can someone disappear like this? It was so fast!" Grimm sniffed, "No! It's you. Show yourself!"
No one replied.
"Come on, stop the hiding. It's you. You are the man who had stalked me once!" Grimm sounded firm.
"Haha, great! You've earned the name! You have been on fire these days." A man bored the ground and exposed his upper body in the air.
"What name? Who are you? And what are you here for?" Grimm sulked because this mysterious man had followed him constantly.
"A potential Desperator! That was what they were saying about you. You shielded Kyrie's offense, and nearly wrecked that pathetic Machine Heart. I'm the Phantom Thief, by the way." This Desperator displayed a look of contempt when saying this, although he did not mean it. He was accustomed to sneering!
The Buzzing bug was enraged. It was not enraged for no reason. As said earlier, its mind and Grimm's were associated. It was infuriated because Grimm had lost his temper and got ready to take this sly enemy down.
In two seconds, the Buzzing bug arrived before the Desperator with a terrible crash. The large footprints stirred up the dust around and almost blurred the scene.
As the dust cleared, the Phantom Thief had vanished from the point where he was standing, and the next moment, he reappeared on a tree that was located a dozen meters away.
Before the Bug went for him, Grimm produced the Firebird to be after him.
The Phantom Thief played the same trick again. Just before the Firebird caught him, he transported himself to a hill a kilometer away in the twinkling of an eye.
"You are so crabby! I will ask the other guys to deal with you!" The Phantom Thief's voice reached Grimm through a certain frequency spectrum, so even though he said these words from several kilometers away, every word could still be heard clearly.
~~~~~~~~~~~
The Desperators had received the Phantom Thief's message that Grimm was here. It seemed that the Sun Child and the Machine Heart were definitely going to attack Grimm but for different reasons.
