Unsealing Emptiness

“Will it be alright, Irvin?”

Listening to the worried tone of his wife, Irvin had ripples of emotions pass through him before he took her hands in his.

“Haley, I don’t think there is any danger. If they wanted to harm us, you could also feel that pressure. Do you think we would even have a chance to escape?”

“...I understand.”- Irvin’s reassuring words calmed Haley down as the former continued;

“Even if they do have bad intentions, at least we will die together...”- Irvin tightened his grip on her hands. He embraced Haley in a warm hug; they stayed like this for a little while before some customers came, and they returned to their things.

All this while, without even them knowing, Ozul had all his attention focused here. Although he wasn’t able to hear everything that they said, no walls could stop him from sensing those emotions.

.....

Earlier, Ozul had thought that they could be a part of some organization, and this couple hid here to gather information. A hotel is one of the best places where you could keep tabs on random people.

However, now he realized that this might not have been the case all along. This situation disappointed him as well since he had many uses of a secret organization used to gather information.

Nonetheless, this couple could also be useful to him in some ways or another. Of course, he wouldn’t just start to torment them, since a relation set up based on fear is fragile.

If he were to force them to do something, he would have to constantly keep an eye on them since they would not need a reason but a mere chance to betray him.

However, all this planning was for later. For now, Ozul wanted to have a good nap that would probably last him the whole day, and maybe even the night.

Some sane human would probably question how he could sleep so much, but they would have to keep this in the mind that for the first 5 years of his life, Ozul had passed his days while only sleeping in that dark warehouse.

Raven and Blaze had already gotten used to his overly sleeping habits, and they did their own things for the whole day while Ozul chose to sleep.

Surprisingly, just when Ozul had gone to sleep, Jinx appeared out of nowhere! She jumped on his bed and laid there with her back resting against his chest.

Even though she was only a cat, Raven still felt jealous of her since Jinx could do everything that she had wanted to do with Ozul.

But she masked this jealousy by convincing herself that she was only worried for Ozul since Jinx was a weird cat. Where did she even appear from!?

Both Raven and Blaze would always have their guard up whenever Ozul was sleeping, so it was kind of impossible for anyone to sneak in on them. However, this cat was like a ghost and had appeared without any sound at all.

Out of curiosity, Raven tiptoed before the sleeping figure of Ozul and tried to touch Jinx with her hands.

To the horror of both Raven and Blaze, who was also watching this scene, Raven’s hand passed through Jinx as if she was just some kind of illusion!

She quickly retracted her hand in fear since anyone would be spooked out when their hand just passed through a seemingly solid surface.

At this moment, Jinx opened her eyes and raised her head to look right into Raven’s eyes.

For a second, Raven felt as if she saw Jinx smirking, and her eyes flashed amusement before she went back to sleep. This action of the cat further freaked her out as she moved away from it.

There were many things that she did not understand about Ozul, and now this cat had increased the tally.

For the rest of the day, both Raven and Blaze kept thinking about the weird cat. Why couldn’t Raven touch it even though Ozul could pet her before?

“*Sigh*... we will just ask the Master later. No need to worry about it now.”- Blaze tried to calm Raven down since she was freaking out.

From what they had remembered, only a few rare beasts had some innate skills, but even then, they had never heard of a black cat with such abilities before.

Later that day, Ozul did not wake up while Raven and Blaze did some shopping.

Raven needed to buy clothes for Ozul with better quality, and since this was the Capital city, she could buy almost everything from here.

And since they were already in the market, Raven decided to buy some spare clothes for herself as well.

There were many useful Magical Items that they could afford as well. However, they did not buy it since Ozul had told them not to rely on artifacts. Even the ‘health potions’ made from Ozul’s essence were also only used in case of emergency.

When they came back from shopping, Ozul was still fast asleep as the cat had gotten even bolder and was now sleeping on his chest!

This scene of Ozul soundlessly sleeping while Jinx on top of him irked Raven to no end, but she couldn’t even do anything.

Blaze did not waste any time and directly went to bed. Though the trio could go without sleep for days, they still slept every night because of Ozul.

Though he did not talk much about himself, he would occasionally preach about how good sleeping is. And even when both of them knew that this was just his personal opinion, it did not stop them from imitating him.

———

The next morning when Raven and Blaze woke up, they saw Ozul sitting on the bed, passing his hands through the silky black hair of Jinx.

Raven was again jealous since she could not even sleep on the same bed with Ozul because of the bed sizes.

Before she could question him anything about Jinx, Ozul stood up from the bed;

“Let’s go. You guys have a test to take, don’t you?”

Raven grumpily listened to him and pushed her questions to a later date. After a few minutes, the trio was ready, and they left the hotel without having another encounter with the old couple.

Twenty minutes later, the trio was before the Mercenary Guild’s building. When they entered, they saw that Lucy was behind the counter, discussing something with a Mercenary group.

When they came before the bar, Lucy shifted her attention towards them, and when she saw Blaze, even with all her control, her cheeks still reddened a little.

This scene confused Blaze since he was sure that just yesterday, this girl already half hated him!

“Follow me...”- After composing herself, Lucy led the trio to the back of the building.

When they got to the place, the door opened to show the trio a vast training ground that was connected with the building.

Looking around, Ozul saw that Emory, the Vice Guild Master, was also standing on the side while there was some equipment set in the middle of the ground.

Ozul did not know how they would test them, but he did not need to ask since Emory came before them and started explaining things.

“You guys are here after all...”- Emory mocked them, trying to get a reaction out of the trio.

“Oh, you are not so blind after all.”- Blaze retorted back. Even Raven was surprised since he was a mute like Ozul, but his retort made Emory tongue-tied.

“To pass the test, you will just have to fight against a Rank-6 Mage. He will evaluate if you are qualified for being a Gold Rank Mercenary.”- Emory explained after the little clash with words.

After Emory had explained all the conditions, a middle-aged man entered the ground. He had small strands of white hair mixed between the black.

“This will be your opponent. The moment he declares that you’re qualified, the match will end.”

“Will they be fighting alone in 1v1 or will they fight together against him?”- Ozul asked.

For some reason, he did not include himself in the test! Raven and Blaze both noticed this and remembered how he also just said, ‘Your promotion test...’ and did not involve himself in it.

Emory though, did not find anything wrong with that since, in his eyes, Ozul was just a regular human. And for some odd reasons, he was just leeching off of the duo.

“It’s up to you. But if someone is not so confident in your strength, we recommend you to team up against the judge. The judge would also declare the group as Gold Rank even if their combined strength is up to par.”

This time, Lucy answered Ozul’s question.

This meant that even if the individual strengths of the party members were not strong enough, they could just work together to pass the test.

After they had discussed all the details, Raven entered the training ground...