Reincarnated into a Snow Griffin-Chapter 131

The huge blade’s tip comes rushing up my face, and the sudden hostility does not take me by surprise this time as I push his sword away with my metal fan embedded with a Wind Shield to soften the blow, and yet in the last moment as I find myself defending from his attack, I notice something...

That, surprisingly, his attack is not aimed at me.

In the end defending myself is unnecessary but still I move my head out of the way, the blade close and almost hitting his target which, from being so light and small, takes me a time to notice is gone.

"By love, by obsession, by greed, are you satisfied with how all came to be?" The creature swings the sword in the air back in its place on the ground with expertise, flowing smoothing and akin to his bulky size as if that thing did not weight a tone and was made of solid rock.

The wind brushes the naked skin of my neck as if to reinforce the lack of a certain fox on there, and as I confirm it with my hand and turn around, stepping away from the Spriggan and having my back guarded by Ethan, I get to see the small fox standing beside us now, already with some distance in between, fur bristled.

In such a small form his cute animal face seems unreadable, but soon a glint of something else crosses his eyes and a smirk shows his canines.

"Old man, really now, after all these years you are still around to be a pain in the ass? Should have guessed that you simply disappearing was too good to be true, how about you just go and die already for me will you?"

The creature seems to fume in anger but manages to still his heart by narrowing his vertical eyes, and turning his sword in an arc in the air he prepares a piercing attack, but the fox simply stays there, sitting without a care about the world as he watches, and quickly I notice why; the roots, when Eanraig tries to launch the attack his feet are caught in it and he is unable to reach the mocking fox by little.

"Ha, serves you right! Thank the Goddess for small blessings!"

The joints of the tree mushroom creature seem to creak in a growl when provoked, but indeed he is too rotted in place to even move.

"Tsk tsk tsk, old man old man, staying put for so long waiting for a chance to stop me that you ended up literally stuck makes it quite pathetic, haha! It couldn’t be funnier!" And with that, with no explanation or last words the smirking fox dashes away in a blur, quickly hiding under the cover of many shadows and small places around us that it could hide in.

If our confusion isn’t enough the tree creature’s voice throbs at our side: "Do not let him escape, all must destroy it craves!"

His commanding voice is fierce but we do not act upon it as both strangers point fingers at each other, unable to pick a side in this battle.

"Sorry but you have to give me more than that, we are not going to act just because you said so, hell, we don’t even know you two!" Ethan says, being reasonable for once and I agree with him, we cannot simply attack any of them without a good reason.

"Oh, don’t worry, I’m sure this old oak will be delighted to finally share his ancient knowledge with someone, or rather maybe I should do it myself and steal the pleasure of him sharing his ’treasure’." Says the fox with a mockery tone of voice akin to the one used so far, the little pitiful fox façade gone.

"Dare you not I’ll tell you, for one life stop it to breed, when the blindness took away any coloring, when the city of freedom caged it’s demons you were there, polishing the iron bar, pulling the strings only to feed you’re hungry inner beast ."

The small fox rolls his eyes before saying: "As cryptic and boring as ever, do all of your kind speak tht way? If so thank the goddess that your species are so hard to find otherwise I would have a headache everytime I talked with one of you. And you know what is even funnier in all of this? Yeah, I was the one responsible for all this mess, and as much as you knew it all along, guess what? It did not work in your favor did it? No matter how much you think you know, old oak, it wasn’t enough, and here you are, stuck forever by your mistakes, surrounded by those locked away to hunger by the fog, must have painted a great image to watch all slowly die and fight each other like beasts for a piece of bread, until every single last scrap was gone uhm?"

The sword flies quickly and hits hard, but even throwing such a huge projectile does not manage to calm the great oak mushroom down as the fox, small as is, simply dodges the attack, easy to hide and flee in this small form of his.

The malicious smirk that curves his snout manages to be as cold as my attacks, wicked and indifferent, truly enjoying the taste of the poison dripping from his tongue.

But what shocks me the most is that, with his intentions exposed as he had, the fox finally shows his true colors, and yet, as much as I did not trust him part of me did not distrust him enough to think so badly of him.

As silly as it may sound, part of me was resistant to not believe in others even the slightest, in accepting that I could trust no one, not even a little bit, and that I should accept such fate.

And yet here I am, surprised by this side of the fox we entrusted to guide us, here I am surprised at all.

Was I that easy to trick? To be made a fool of, or I just wanted to believe and trust so badly?

I am been too harsh on myself, not wanting to believe in the worst of people is only natural and the healthiest, but still when confronted with the worst being shown in front of you, with a betrayal, no matter how small, one starts to think and wonder, question their decisions.

Is a small worry that is always there, in the corner, and would surface from time to time, but I did not expect it to bloom the next days, nor to start here.

But here we are, with the traitorous fox, and to make things worst in the next attack, as the roots pull and throw the sword back at the Spriggan, a surprise sparing slash appears to block the attack.