As the hours passed without any sign of Toi, concern grew among Ryoshi, John, and Kuroshi.
"We've been searching for Toi for hours now! Are you sure he's not hiding or something?" Ryoshi questioned, frustration evident in his voice.
"No, if Toi was hiding, he would have come out by now. I'm worried," John admitted, his brows furrowed with concern.
Ryoshi pressed further. "About what?"
"What if Toi was taken?" John voiced his fear.
"The possibility of that is high. Baldassare was probably a part of a team of other vampires," Kuroshi added, his tone grave.
"I hope that he didn't run into one of them," John muttered anxiously.
Fuyu, curious about Toi's identity, interjected. "Who is Toi anyway?"
John took a moment to explain. "After Denshin put my soul in this toy and threw me away, I landed in a large city called Tragyo, which is north of the spring season mountain and is where people from other villages go to work. I stayed there on the streets, powerless and looking for help for about 1494 years until I saw five armed men walking ten children out of a building and out of the city. So, I followed them deep into a dark forest, and it turns out that those children were failed experiments of some weird project called the M.A.G.I.C project, and the armed men were taking them out to kill them. I saw them mercilessly kill 9 of the 10 children, so I took the chance to take out all 5 of the guards with a powerful barrage of huge fists and ran away with the kid. I ran back into the city and asked the kid a few things about themselves. Toi was around four years old at the time and only knew how to talk in short sentences. The M.A.G.I.C project made it so Toi and the other kids were emotionless and made them not care about dying, but that was actually a side effect of a few enhancements he got. He was much faster and tougher than people his age. He could use strong magical attacks without any drawback, and his Magical weapon was somehow modified into an artificial weapon. I took him in as my own and taught him how to live again, and we took a 6-year journey to the Negative point-"
Suddenly, Toruri interrupted with disbelief. "WAIT A SECOND!!! WHY IS THERE A TALKING SOCK MONKEY?!"
Ryoshi tried to clarify. "I thought that you already knew that. You gave him a nickname and everything."
Toruri shook his head in disbelief. "Yeah, I did, but I thought I was hallucinating! And I nicknamed him off of my preference, but I didn't know he was actually a talking monkey."
John attempted to respond, "Um-"
Toruri cut him off with a critical remark. "Your voice is annoying, by the way."
John took the criticism in stride. "Noted."
Kuroshi's straightforward comment drew attention to his no-nonsense attitude. "You just speak your mind, don't you?"
A crow swooped down, dropping a bag in front of Fuyu before swiftly flying away.
"What's this?" Ryoshi inquired, eyeing the bag cautiously.
"Step aside; it might be dangerous. Let me open it," Fuyu cautioned, moving to inspect the bag's contents.
As Fuyu opened the bag, a voodoo doll tumbled out, accompanied by a note.
"Hi," the voodoo doll greeted, startling Ryoshi and Toruri.
"There's a note," Fuyu observed, picking up the paper.
The note revealed crucial information:
"Hey, I found your friend Toi's soul wandering throughout the forest, so I took his soul and put it in a voodoo doll I had. This is the work of a vampire named Atanasius. He was the first-ever vampire who's been surviving solely off human bodies. He's using some sort of spell that allows him and his comrades to survive in daylight. Vampires are just un-evolved demons because demons used to have a sunlight weakness just like vampires do, and demons used to not be able to see and touch souls, so they ate human bodies. But demons evolved and obtained immunity to sunlight and obtained the ability to see souls, so we punish and eat souls. Vampires, on the other hand, used to be referred to as demons, but due to problems with some genetics, they didn't evolve alongside us and were banished from hell. They were more than happy to leave that hellish landscape, but they quickly discovered that they should have stayed in hell. Vampires wanted to live among humans as equals but were outcast and soon slaughtered by me. Humans used to crucify vampires and leave them out to burn in the day, but when vampires decided to strike back, the humans were very surprised. The first village to feel the wrath of the vampires was a large village named Emi. All of the vampires in the village sucked all of the villagers dry by drinking their blood. The village is now a destroyed wasteland called Endorando Land. You'll need to go there to find and defeat Atanasius.
Love,
Denshin"
Toruri expressed his confusion. "Why so much?"
Ryoshi questioned the sign-off, "Why did he put 'love, Denshin' at the end?"
Fuyu was taken aback. "Denshin? You mean the demon lord himself!? How is he back to life???"
John admitted, "I revived him..."
"Why?!?" Fuyu exclaimed, surprised by the revelation.
John defended himself, "So he could give me back my body... I DIDN'T KNOW THAT HE WAS A DEMON!!!"
Fuyu attempted to ease the tension. "Erm, it's fine. As long as he's on our side, we have nothing to worry about."
John turned his attention to Toi. "Toi, what happened to you?"
Toi replied simply, "I was killed."
"By who?" John inquired further.
Toi's response was straightforward. "Vampire."
John sighed, "Well... at least you're still alive." He lamented their shared uselessness.
Fuyu intervened with a new directive. "I have a mission for you guys: travel to Endorando Land and deal with the vampires. We can't afford for them to expand upon their race; it might come back to get us in the future."
Toruri, ever dutiful, sought clarification. "Yessir, but where is Endorando exactly?"
Toi, with firsthand knowledge, offered insight. "I know where. I went there."
"Good," Fuyu affirmed. "You three take Toi with you and travel to Endorando. Good luck."
Ryoshi attempted to voice a protest. "Wait, you can't just send us out like that—"
"Good luck," Fuyu reiterated, cutting off any further objections.
"Yessir," Ryoshi conceded.
Toi perched himself on Toruri's shoulder, eliciting a startled reaction from him. "AH, don't scare me like that," Toruri exclaimed.
"Sorry," Toi apologized meekly.
"Okay, let's go!!!" Ryoshi declared enthusiastically.
But moments later, Ryoshi collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
"Ryoshi?" Toruri called out in concern.
John explained, "Ryoshi used a lot of blood ice magic during our battle with Baldassare and might be on the verge of dying."
Fuyu, frustrated by the situation, took action. "Ugh, not again. Healing ice magic: thousand-year shelter."
Fuyu encased Ryoshi in a solid block of green ice, aiming to facilitate his recovery. "This should heal him up."
Five minutes later, Ryoshi broke out of the ice block, exclaiming, "I'M ALIVE!!!"
Fuyu proudly revealed his solution. "I used healing ice magic to heal you up! Clever, right?"
Ryoshi, understandably puzzled, questioned, "If it could have done that the whole time, why didn't you use it to heal me the first time I used blood ice magic?"
Fuyu, evading the question, replied, "If you forget about it, I'll teach you how to use healing ice magic once you come back."
"Forget about what?" Ryoshi pressed.
"Good," Fuyu replied cryptically.
Ryoshi, deciding to let the matter go for now, refocused on the task at hand. "Okay, NOW let's go."
Toi pointed southward, and they sprinted into the forest, embarking on their mission to Endorando Land.