The King's Beloved

[Music Recommendation: "The Ancient City" by Masayoshi Soken (Final Fantasy XIV OST) - available in Spotify or Youtube]

While the team rested, Rania opened up to everyone regarding the thing she noticed when they were fighting the Dark Grypus.

"There was this darkness—like a black smoke coming from the monster's body," Rania explained. "Then it went to Fauna, and her head started to ache. I thought it was the miasma, but none of you seemed to notice it."

"Yes, I didn't see anything like that—only the miasma around the shrine," Elliot replied, caressing his chin.

The others shook their head as well, confirming it was the same for them.

"Indeed," Fauna agreed. "It only stopped when Rania came to me and created a  barrier using her holy energy."

"According to your story, it only targeted Fauna, not Luna and Ducis. Therefore it is safe to assume that it's not particularly targeting Guardians but maybe just the Guardian of this shrine," Clavis concluded. "Or it could also be because they were both griffins. But then again, normally, when monsters absorb other monsters' powers, they're only targeting their spiritual energy. And that Dark Grypus could have absorbed spiritual energy from the others, but it didn't. That leaves us with the question—why was it only targeting Fauna? What exactly was it trying to take?"

"I'm not sure. All I felt was my head aching, and I felt angry for some reason."

"Maybe it's trying to control you?" Luna guessed, to which Fauna shrugged.

"Or maybe it was trying to take over your body. Can monsters do that to a Guardian?" Selena asked out of nowhere. The idea of Guardians was very new to her, so her perspective was somewhat different from the others.

"That's quite impossible," Illuminaire answered her. "Guardians are Sacred Beasts unlike any other. They have a longer lifespan than most and a clear distinction in terms of power. Even their spiritual energy composition is different from any Magi or any normal beasts despite being both spiritual. And that special kind of spiritual energy is what gets passed on from one Guardian to another."

"Yes, that's right," Clavis agreed. "In a sense, Guardians are far superior than normal beasts. They cannot be controlled by anyone—except for the king."

"Oh, I see. I didn't know that," Selena shrugged. "I just thought that if it wasn't trying to take your powers, then maybe it's trying to take over your body so it can become a Guardian itself."

At those words, everyone's eyes widened.

"Ahm… Did I say something wrong?"

"Selena," Clavis said, "that's—what you said—actually, you might be right on that. And if that is indeed true, then it's going to be a huge problem should one of them succeed in doing so."

A huge tension filled the air.

"I never imagined about monsters forcefully taking a Guardian's ability on their own," Elliot said. "We need to be more careful moving forward."

"But we don't have much time. It's already our 5th day here, and we're still on the second shrine. There are ten of them left, and we don't know how long it will take us to subdue each one. What if the monsters are stronger on the other shrines? It took us half a day just to defeat that Dark Grypus. Plus, the travel time. Once we start moving to the west, it will take us days to arrive at the next shrine," Illuminaire pointed out.

"Wait a minute," Selena butted in. "We're already on the 5th day? But didn't we just arrive the other day?"

"Time flows faster here in Gaia," Clavis answered her. "One day on Earth is almost two days here."

"What?!" Selena screamed. "Wait, then you—are you really 23 years old? Or are you younger than me?"

"Ha-ha-ha," Clavis chuckled and patted her head. "Don't worry. We use the same 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and twelve months in a year when it comes to time and age. It's because we used to travel a lot from one planet to another. A universal standard should be kept, or else records of time and the like will be confusing considering each planet are light years away from each other."

"Phew! That's good then. I almost thought I—well, never mind. Anyway, doesn't that mean we only have around 20 Earth days and around 35 Gaia days? Oh my goodness! We need to be quick! Why don't we group ourselves?"

"How? It took us everyone to subdue this shrine."

"We were planning to use the other Guardians as well, right?"

"Then should we divide ourselves into two groups?"

"Why don't we check out the next shrine first, so we have at least one comparison. What if the next shrine suddenly becomes an extremely hard shrine to subdue?"

"Yeah. And if it turns out about the same as Fauna's shrine, then we can proceed with grouping ourselves to two or maybe even three."

"Alright. Let's do that."

And so, everyone agreed. After that, they went on their way and traveled towards the next shrine nearest to Fauna's—the Shrine of Caligo.

It took them almost the same amount of travel time to go from Fauna's shrine to Caligo's. When they got near enough to see the shrine, they noticed how darker it was compared to Fauna's and Ducis' shrines. The miasma covered a larger area outside the shrine—so big that it was double the size of the whole shrine! It was so apparent seeing it from the dragon's back.

Before going near the shrine, Rania asked Elliot, "Shouldn't we try to take Caligo somewhere far from here? What if the thing that happened to Fauna happens to him?"

"You're right. I should tell him to stay here for now until we're done with his shrine."

The others agreed, and Elliot called Caligo out of his Zweihänder, explaining the situation to him. Caligo was hesitant, but he agreed after much rambling.

"My master doesn't love me! Hu-hu-hu-hu…" he bawled like a child and set up a barrier, hiding himself.

"U-uhm…" Elliot sighed. "I'm really sorry, Caligo, but it's for your own good."

"But I wanted to fight with you."

"You can definitely do so in the next shrines, but not this one, okay?" Rania butted in, seeing Caligo wouldn't let the matter slide. So she gave him a smile so sweet that it made him shiver down his spine. Seeing that smile, he suddenly agreed.

"R-right! I will stay here, like what master said!"

With that resolved, they continued on towards Caligo's shrine.

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