[10 minutes before Jeanne leaves.]
A ghost-vampire hybrid was standing in front of a tavern called 'The Crooked Candle'. The sign was a simple wooden plank with a roughly-carved image of a lopsided, melting candle.
Neither of the two had talked since the restaurant. Aria was giving him space. Jack had told her that he needed to think about his reward. However she had to ask where this tavern was and why they were going there.
"Are you sure you can trust this priestess?" Aria asked.
She didn't even want to step inside the building. Her red eyes peered at the people inside. Their laughter spilled out onto the cobblestones.
Inside her satchel, Jack rested.
"I trust her to be predictable," Jack squeaked. His voice was muffled by the leather and her rapid heartbeat.
That sounded like an asshole thing to say. To admit he couldn't trust Jeanne. But he never could get over the feeling that the correct thing to do in this new world was to be cautious. Trust was a luxury that got your brain drilled and eaten. Or turned into a living shoe-insert.
"She lives by her doctrine yet wants to be free... Don't get me wrong I empathize but I can't trust those who blindlyfollow doctrine," he added.
Aria nodded. At the end of the day, Jack wasn't an ally yet.
10 minutes later on the dot, a priestess with one arm emerged from the shadows.
She wore the tattered robes of a woman on the run. A simple cloth was tied around the stump of her severed arm.
"Jeanne," Jack hopped onto her shoulder.
The priestess flinched at the contact, but relaxed slightly as she got used to the sensation of being 'mounted'.
"You're alive," she said. Her tone was one of neutral observation.
Then her gaze fixed on Aria. Her clothes were different, her entire demeanor had shifted.
"And you managed to save this demon and give her a new outfit."
Jeanne crossed her arms, a small smirk on her face.
"I only have enough money for the two of us. To buy a passage to Vylara," Jeanne said with a hint of challenge in her voice. Her one hand instinctively went to the small pouch at her belt, the pouch holding the only thing that could offer them a potential clean slate.
"Are you jealous?" Aria shot back, stepping forward, her crimson eyes locking with Jeanne's blue ones. "Because he saved me and didn't let your precious goddess burn a hole through my chest."
"You kidnapped him. He helped you because he has the brain of a slime and the libido of a lion in heat."
Feeling the conversation taking a heated turn, Jack squeezed the leather with his slime body and decided to de-escalate.
"Okay okay ladies." He hopped from Jeanne's shoulder onto the street, getting in between them.
After that he told Jeanne that they received money from a very generous husband who he absolutely didn't fornicate with. She seemed to suspect but she didn't press for further details. Jeanne reluctantly agreed to travel with Aria. It seemed that Jack bought clothes for Jeanne too.
"How did you know my size?"
She was inspecting herself in a puddle of reflection. Her robes were replaced with a dark green traveler's tunic and leather leggings, more practical for movement than the cumbersome, stained vestments of a priestess on the run.
"A husband knows," Jack winked. This earned him a look that said he'd be flattened if he kept talking.
Thus the group of three was formed, a small chaotic party of an excommunicated priestess, a half-vampire fugitive, and a talking slime with a bizarrely complicated life.
Going out from Cyros was easier than entering because they looked like adventurers who were about to go into the forest and not suspicious-looking individuals.
About 30 minutes of walking down the road to Vylara, still near Uryen Forest, the winds changed. Clouds dispersed. The sky turned a greenish hue above Uryen Forest. The entire forest seemed to warp slightly at the edges, a mirage of heat and distortion where there should be only cold and snow.
Jack's core vibrated with dread.
"What is that?" Aria asked, her vampire senses tingling.
Jeanne on the other hand, her face turned ashen. She quickly grabbed Jack from inside the satchel.
"You... you're being chased by her?!" her grip was painfully tight.
Aria looked confused as to why a priestess was so afraid.
"Her who?" Jack tried to calm her down. That made her shake the slime like it was a faulty toy.
"The Slime Slayer!" The words came out as a choked gasp.
Now even Aria flinched, the bravado draining from her face to be replaced by a grim comprehension.
"She's causing that?"
One split second later, giant vortex of greenish liquid formed in the distance, practically covering the entire forest. It began to spin faster, a hurricane forming, trees were being ripped from the ground. Strangely no monsters were beingsucked in. Then a brown blob shot out from one of the mountains.
[Deep-Earth Slime Level 40.] Jack's system blared.
That slime was huge. Its brown, craggy form was larger than the carriage that brought Jack to Cyros. And it wasn't the only one. A huge amount of rock slimes came pouring out.
The wind was howling now, pulling at their clothes and hair.
As soon as the slimes made contact with the vortexes they evaporated. They just popped like a bubble. They're gone. Their levels and stats, erased from existence.
Jack swallowed.
"That's overkill."
Suddenly Jack felt lighter, felt a pull. Even from this distance he was being pulled towards it, like a moth drawn to a holy flame that cooked them alive.
"Bobo!" Aria tried to grab him as he floated away.
"PULL HARDER!" Jack screamed
Jeanne had to join in, even her glove had some trouble holding on. The gravitational pull was insane.
"Agh," Jeanne grunted and with a final heave they pulled him back.
They were all breathing heavily.
Jack lacked sensation in his body. Being pulled into that thing was the scariest thing he had felt.
"Nope. Nope." he said.
Immediately the slime started to hop away towards Vylara. Every bounce was faster than the last. The howling wind made conversation impossible, but he didn't need to speak; his terror was a silent, universal language.