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Chapter 450: Prolog: The griffin (4)

"Umm... I\'m not complaining, but didn\'t you two say that taming a griffin was next to impossible? You know, before we started hunting them?"

The blond prince asked the red-haired and the brown-haired girls, staring rather obviously at the yellow baby griffin munching happily on the dried meat while snuggled in-between Arion and Mary.

"Raor."

The black wolf squinted his eyes at the prince and growled, before leaning down and nuzzling against the top of the healed chick\'s head.

"Arion...! You can\'t speak like that to the prince!"

...which prompted Mary to gasp in disbelief and pout at her first familiar.

"Wha...? What did he say about me!?"

Roan raised his brows before furrowing them and glaring down at the wolf watching protectively over the little griffin.

"Haa... Hey, Roan, why won\'t you help me with this mess – it looks like the dead grif..."

Cranberry standing by the bloody mess in the nest sighed and called out to the blond prince before she glanced at the baby griffin and hesitated.

"...it looks like the bones are covering a tunnel of some sort. Help me bury the remains and we will check what is it about."

She ended up saying and beckoned the boy before he got his answer – though it certainly didn\'t look like Mary was willing to reveal what name Arion used to describe the first prince of the kingdom...

"Sure."

Funnily enough, judging by his response, Roan wasn\'t actually that keen on learning that either, as he didn\'t even try to argue back and approached the red-haired girl.

"What a mess..."

Roan sighed looking at the bloody outcome of the sibling war that they didn\'t witness.

"Well, what I can say for sure is that every dead chick here has pieces of feathers and even meat in their beaks, so it really looks like they all tried to eat each other."

Cranberry reported while leaning down and inspecting the messed-up nest.

"Then, you are saying that what Mary told us that the griffin told her is the truth?"

Roan raised his brow and asked for confirmation.

"I suppose so... I don\'t expect that a chick so small to even understand the concept of lying."

The red-haired girl shrugged her shoulders and nodded.

"How about shame – you said that griffins are very proud and protective towards their family – maybe this one is so ashamed that he killed his siblings that he made up the story about them starting fighting first?"

The blond boy pointed out.

"..."

Cranberry furrowed her brows in consideration before looking over her shoulder straight at the young prince.

"You are making a valid point – but why does it sound like you are just jealous because Mary\'s attention will be taken away from you because of the chick?"

"Gah...!"

She asked and Roan groaned as he almost tripped and fall face-first into the rotting corpse of the adult griffin.

"Let\'s change the subject, okay?"

He blushed heavily and used a handkerchief as a face mask to protect himself from the smell before he began moving the decomposing monster towards the hole that Cranberry created with magic right after she finished healing the tamed baby griffin.

"Uwaah... Poor thing – look, then it must have crashed landed and broke all its ribs or something..."

He mutter, motioning at the shattered bones with jagged edges sticking out from the places that they had no right to stick out from.

"Not bad observation, though I think that it was already messed up before it landed."

Cranberry shrugged her shoulders while moving back and forth the nest moving the tiny monster corpses to the hole one by one.

"Fighting off a threat?"

Roan glanced at her curiously.

"That or hunting went wrong – the griffins are one of the proudest monsters but that also means that they sometimes overestimate themselves. Despite their size – or maybe because of their size – their bones are much more brittle than those of the land-only beasts – I imagine that a well aimed or just lucky headbutt from an upper low-level horned monster would be enough to cave in a griffin\'s ribcage like this."

Cranberry added while using water magic to wash off her hands from the half-dried blood.

"Come here too."

She added, seeing that Roan was just about done with the remains and the only thing left to do was for her to cover the hole with earth magic.

"I\'ll wait a bit with that – I want to check that tunnel you mentioned before."

Roan raised his hand and shook his head in refusal before approaching the wall and leaning down.

"Suit yourself."

Cranberry shrugged dismissively while moving the soil and stones to create a grave when...

*tap* *tap*

...she heard something similar to a muffled knocking coming from behind.

*tap*

"...?"

She furrowed her brows and looked back, but the nest shielded by the cliff and thicket there, with no traces of anything that could make such peculiar sound.

"..."

A little bit concerned that it might be a sound of a monster lying in wait to ambush them, the red-haired girl activated her detection+ [hearing] skill and...

*WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM*

"!!!"

She flinched as the sound that she expected to be coming from far away or at least a moderate distance turned out to be something origination a few steps away – which ended up as the tapping sounds turning into defining thunders for the girl\'s enhanced ears.

*bu-dum* *bu-dum* *bu-dum*

*creak* *creak*

"SK...! SKWEEEE!"

"!!!!!!!!!"

But then, she heard something else – the sound of a heartbeat and the sound of tiny talons scratching against something hard, followed by a desperate distorted screech, muffled, but clear.

"Umm..."

Cranberry looked towards the baby griffin, but the yellow chick was pampered by the wolf and the tamer alike, so she looked at the blond prince, but he seemed to be completely smitten by the hole in the cliff that ended up being just an empty burrow of a frenzy rabbit.

"..."

Since she was done with the undertaker side-job she walked towards the nest, guided by the heartbeat, scratching sounds and screeching and...

"...ha..."

...just as she expected, she found an unhatched griffin egg that somehow managed to get buried under all the nest\'s components... or maybe the adult griffin that their party killed before was the one to do that to keep the egg warm...?

"Mary! There\'s another one alive here!"

The red-haired girl straightened her back and called out.

"Mhmm... Eh... EH?! THERE IS WHAT?!"

Mary nodded not really paying attention before she suddenly realized what she was told and gasped in disbelief.

*WHAM*

"URGH...! W-weren\'t all the other\'s dead...?!"

Roan slammed his head against the ceiling of the small tunnel as he jolted up, and asked while massaging the sore spot.

"Yeah, the ones that hatched early... but this one is still..."

*crack*

Cranberry nodded, standing over the egg while looking at the prince massaging his head with a pained expression.

"...unhatched..."

She finished her sentence and looked back down...

"Skwee!"

...meeting the gaze of trusting, clear eyes of a freshly hatched baby griffin, screeching happily at the sight of a first living creature it ever saw.

/Newborn griffin requests to become your familiar

/You have 1 registered familiar

/You have 1 spot open

/Do you agree for the newborn griffin to become your familiar?

Yes/No

"Uh-oh...."

The red-haired girl gasped, staring at the message that popped up in front of her eyes.