Before Roman knew it, the serpent's head blew to shreds while a huge gust of wind blew past Roman, shoving him backwards.
Roman landed on his rear while holding up his arms to cover his face.
Once the wind had subsided, Roman looked up only to see the poor bird on the ground beside the dead Greedy-eyed Mud Serpent's corpse.
They had done it!
However, it wasn't without certain costs.
The gray bird was severely injured because of its proximity to the wind gust attack that it had launched from inside the mouth of the serpent that caused instant death through the sheer force of the winds attempting to penetrate the serpents head to escape.
However, due to how near it was, the bird had also experienced great damage.
Roman rushed over from where he stood to pick the bird up as it lay among the grass. Now that the fight was over, Roman finally had time to observe his surroundings in greater depth.
Although most of the cave was covered in dark moss and gravel, this was the only place that contained a field of green.
The islet was the only place in the cave that a direct source of light, and as a result, a small field of grass had grown. It was a little ecosystem of its own.
Right in the middle of the grass field stood the tree that Roman had climbed up. It was presumably the home of the bird.
Roman quickly carried the bird while climbing the tree hoping to lay it down in its nest to rest. The bird noticed Roman's kind intentions and nudged its head against Roman's arms.
Roman climbed higher into the tree in hopes to find the nest as the bird could not continue to suffer in such a vulnerable position. Who knew if there was another beast like the Greedy-eyed Mud Serpent in the waters around the islet.
In fact, the waters had already closed on the path, but according to Roman's conjecture, the waters would once again reopen the path after a period of time. He could only trust his instincts on this one.
As Roman approached the peak of the tree, Roman finally noticed the bird's nesting point lay in between two sturdy branches. It was a work of art. The base of the nest firmly clung to the thick branches, wrapping around them to secure the nest in place.
The nest was mostly made up of aged twigs and branches that had previously fallen off the tree, and was sufficiently large. It could easily hold two to three birds of its species.
As Roman was setting the bird down, he also noticed that a light blue egg with black spots on it lay in the corner of the nest.
Roman finally understood why the bird and its mate had rushed forward to combat the Greedy-eyed Mud Serpent. It wasn't purely to protect Roman due to its affinity with humans, but also to prevent the serpent from harming its next of kin.
The map that Roman had followed after using the search token must have been leading him to this point. However, after experiencing battle alongside the bird, Roman felt bad about stealing the egg.
He could very easily do so since the bird was gravely injured.
However, Roman's moral principles of honor and kindness prevented him from doing so. He had recently made a pledge to bring wrath upon his enemies, but uphold his values to those that treated him well in kind.
He could not and would not do harm to the gray bird.
It's complex and interesting how certain bonds form between individuals after experiencing combat alongside each other. Those bonds held firm even in the face of temptation.
Roman firmly decided that he would not claim the egg for himself and give in to his selfish
desires, even if he had to take on a lower ranked beast on his first try. He still had a bit of time left to the Egg Hunt if he set out searching for a second egg soon.
In fact, the injured gray bird had caught Roman staring blankly at its egg. But after it noticed that Roman backed off after setting the bird down, the gray bird was visibly relieved.
—-
Robert backtracked his way towards the area of the forest where Matthew had left the group to take on the task that was assigned by Crid.
However, Robert encountered a few problems when he arrived at that point. Matthew was tasked with tracking Roman to lead him into an ambush. As a result, Matthew had to be as sneaky as he could.
While Matthew was a bumbling idiot, for the most part, he could carry out basic duties well enough since this wasn't his first rodeo. Consequently, Robert had to reverse track Matthew's sneaky steps, which made this task quite challenging.
Robert was at a point in his search where he felt extremely worried for Matthew. Matthew had been gone for far too long. Something definitely had happened to him.
In a moment of frantic searching, Robert was finally able to pick up on a minute sign. He noticed that there were bloodstains on the ground that didn't quite match.
First was the spot that he remembered the Grass Rabbit lying. The color of those stains were prominently darker as they had oxidized under the sunlight and turned a darker brown.
However, not too far away, Robert found another dried up patch. It was a bit lighter and formed over a larger area. Robert couldn't recall that being the spot that Roman had laid when he was getting picked on by Crid.
After the process of elimination, Robert concluded that it couldn't have been Romans. The only possibility would have been that the blood belonged to Matthew.
Robert's heart skipped a beat as he came to this realization.
"It couldn't have been that Roman killed him right? There's no way!" Robert thought to himself.
Robert couldn't envision how it would have been possible for Roman to take out Matthew who had successfully pinned Roman down multiple times in the past.
"Was Roman hiding something all this while?"
Robert was confident that this entire event smelled fishy.
He continued to search the area for quite some time but could not come up with any other clues.
He decided that the best decision would have to be reporting the news to Crid and let him figure it out from that point.
With that, Roman headed back into the forest in search of Crid. He had to make haste just in case Matthew was still alive.
It was entirely possible that Matthew could have just been seriously injured. However, it would have never crossed their minds that the culprit behind Matthew's disappearance was, in fact, the Red Ash Fox.
In Robert's mind, Roman was the prime suspect.
After rushing toward's Crid's direction, Robert soon arrived. He conveyed what he had noticed to Crid.
This time, instead of blowing up outright, Crid had just nodded his head as if to take the losses and move on.
However, internally, Crid was royally pissed. He thought that Robert didn't even bother investigating the situation or even if he did, he must have missed a thing or two. However, now was not the time to deal with this.
Crid's other companion managed to find his egg. In fact, it was pretty good. It was a bronze ranked egg from an Earth type bird species. But Crid had yet to gain his chance.
He had to pick up his pace.
—-
Several good things had happened to Roman, in fact. He had gained experience in cooperating with a beast in combat. This would be the starting point to a lifetime of adventure for Roman and he learned valuable lessons.
In respect for the valuable lessons he had learned, Roman backed off from attempting to take the egg that lay in the nest. Roman noticed that the bird had managed to settle in easily. It's just that it would take a bit of time before it recovered back to its original state. The severe wounds would have to tide over and only the test of time could tell.
However, the bird seemed to know something that Roman didn't. As it noticed Roman rise from his position into a deep bow before turning around and getting ready to leave, the gray bird chirped out loud at Roman.
Roman turned around to see what the issue was and found the bird hobbling around to him. It then nudged at his hand and used its beak to pull him towards it.
Roman was a little surprised. What was the bird doing?
The gray bird gradually moved behind him and pushed him further into the nest. It then made its way towards the egg before pushing it at Roman.
Was the bird trying to give Roman the egg?
The bird actually knew something Roman didn't. Roman assumed that the bird's wounds were terrible but still stood a chance at surviving and rearing its young. But the truth of the matter was that it had expended way beyond its usual amount of energy to defeat the Greedy-eyed Mud Serpent.
Knowing this, and after observing Roman's sincere actions, it decided to entrust its egg to Roman.
The bird believed that Roman was someone worthy of trust. They had, after all, fought hand in hand and barely survived to tell the tale. But nonetheless, its had allowed them to form a sort of closeness that would rarely be seen between an untamed beast and a human.
Roman approached the egg and laid its hand on it gradually just to make sure that he understood the intentions of the bird clearly.
Seeing that the grey bird did not do anything to prevent Roman from doing so, Roman smiled, thanked the bird out loud and loaded the egg into the incubation sack he had attained from the system before settling the sack into his backpack.
For the time being, he had no idea how to transport the egg into his system. He just figured that he would ask the system in the future.
For now, he could only roughly guess at the intentions of the gray bird and the surmounting eggy responsibilities that he was left with.