After a few hours, the priests of the giants came to the cave. When they saw the king, they bowed to him in respect, but the king raised his hand and said:
"No need for formalities now. Go and look at what is inside the cave, and tell me what this cursed thing is."
The king's reaction astonished the priests; they were used to seeing him calm at all times, but now he seemed extremely tense. The priests found this strange, for although they saw the black smoke surrounding the place, it initially appeared to them like an ordinary curse, not one so dangerous as to warrant the concern of the King of the Giants.
Nevertheless, they trusted their king and his strength, and realized that what was inside the cave was not as simple as they had thought. Therefore, they proceeded with extreme caution. With every step they took, they collided with that malicious aura lurking within the black fog, and the curse inside it grew terrifyingly stronger with each step forward.
But they were accompanied by the king, so they neither feared nor fled; the king was powerful, and capable of pushing that strange aura away from them with his own aura. They continued walking until they reached the place where the deformed corpse lay.
As soon as the priests saw the corpse, they froze in their places from sheer terror. One of them looked at the King of the Giants and said in a weak, frightened voice:
"What is this, my lord?"
The king looked at the priests, and when he saw that they were unable even to stand upright, he sighed deeply and said to the priest who had spoken:
"It is a catastrophe that has befallen us, O priest."
Then he turned his gaze to one of the guards and said:
"Escort the priests outside the cave, and summon the saint from the capital immediately."
As soon as the guard heard the order, he carried out his king's commands at once. The King of the Giants watched the priests leave the place accompanied by one of the guards, and thought to himself:
"The saint alone is strong enough to resolve this curse."
But the king did not notice what happened in that brief moment; the eyelids of the deformed corpse moved, and a terrifying smile appeared on its strange lips for a short moment, before the corpse returned to its previous state.
Time passed quickly, and the King of the Giants remained inside the cave, waiting for the saint to arrive to deal with this problem and purify it. Despite his many duties and other important matters that required his attention, he did not leave the place until his heart was reassured and that strange feeling of anxiety controlling him disappeared.
The King of the Giants heard many footsteps approaching his location, and sensed the arrival of the saint among those many auras. After a few moments, he saw through the fog the guards he had left outside to protect the cave and prevent anyone from entering it by mistake, and they were accompanied by the Saint of the Giants.
When the king saw the Saint of the Giants, he looked behind him and prayed in his heart that the saint's reaction would not be like that of the priests, even though he knew that the saint was far stronger than them, and that he had been chosen by the ruler of the giants himself and granted great power. Even so, he was not completely confident in the saint's ability to withstand that terrifying aura emitted by the deformed corpse.
But when he saw the saint's face change only slightly upon seeing the corpse, then turn to an expression of seriousness and danger without any trace of fear, the king's anxiety calmed and his sense of danger vanished. He walked toward the saint and said:
"You know why I summoned you, O saint. Do you think this corpse is what was in your vision that the High Priest told me about?"
The saint did not answer the King of the Giants immediately, but continued to observe the deformed corpse. After some time, while directing his gaze toward the king, he said:
"Yes, my king, it is indeed that corpse. But I did not expect it to appear so quickly, nor that the vision I saw would come to pass with such haste."
The King of the Giants did not continue questioning him about the vision after he obtained what he wanted to know, but asked another question:
"Can you purify it, O saint, and eliminate the curse within it before it spreads?"
The saint said in a voice filled with uncertainty:
"I do not know, my king, but what is certain is that it will require a great deal of time and effort. I cannot purify it in this cave; I need to transport it to our temple so that we may cleanse it, and so that the situation will be safer without any hidden danger."
The king thought for a moment about the saint's request, then said:
"And how will we transport it without touching it? I do not think teleportation magic will work on it, for the cursed aura will interfere with teleportation magic, and the attempt will fail."
The saint considered the king's words and found them to be correct. As he was about to say something, the king suddenly said:
"Is it necessary to purify it at all, O saint?"
The saint did not understand the king's words, so he said:
"What do you mean, my king?"
The king did not answer, but took some time to think, then arrived at a strange plan in which there would be no need for the giants to intervene directly, and by which they would distance that curse and possibly benefit from it through a new ally. He said:
"Does this cursed aura remind you of something?"
The saint thought for a moment about the king's question, and after a short while his body trembled and he said in a low voice:
"Are you thinking of the werewolves, my king?"
The King of the Giants smiled and said:
"Exactly. Are not the werewolves specialized in matters of curses? In fact, they can absorb them into their bodies to become stronger, like vampires, except that vampires absorb blood instead of curses."
When the saint heard this, he was astonished by his king's words and said once more:
"Do you wish, my lord, to form an alliance with a race that does not even have land of its own? They are merely a race that lives in the shadow of the human empire, like vampires."
The king looked at him and said with calm determination:
"It does not matter. Any force that joins us in the impending storm that will strike us will be useful, even if they are werewolves."