Renota stared down at Arin with a grin, and he stared right back, his blue eyes engulfed with pure hatred. Arin was about to go his second racist tangent of the day when the Ishogian greeted him. His laid-back tone was backed by a surprisingly strong and firm voice, uncharacteristic for whoever Arin had assumed the man was.
"When I read that a Tetsuya was in my Campaign, I was ecstatic... But I'm taller than you! I thought you guys were supposed to be muscular giants, not weak-looking little boys. I should've known it was too good to be true..."
'So, he can read? Wait... Weak-looking little boy?! Who the hell does this Ishog think he is?!!'
Arin seriously considered arming himself with his katana and slicing the man's head clean off, but decided against it. After all, he knew the consequences of harming your own Campaign's members.
Also, although he didn't exactly realize it, Arin suddenly lost the impulse to just mindlessly yell slurs at Renota after he spoke. Instead, he decided to mindfully speak slurs, alongside other words, to Renota.
"What the hell would someone like you know about the Tetsuya family?"
"Do you really think I'm that stupid? They tell the legends out in Ishogi Village, too."
That should've been obvious to Arin. After all, anyone who even knew what Campaigning was would know the reputation of the Tetsuya family. And the small Arin fully lived up to all of the facets of that reputation. All except for the part where they were giant, muscular, powerful, brawny, and talented, of course.
"That's not..." Arin paused, unable to formulate a good response.
Renota's yellow eyes widened and his slightly yellow grin became slightly wider.
"What's not?"
Arin had finally come up with a response that sounded good, at least in his head, and was about to say it before he came to realization.
'What the hell am I doing...? Why am I even wasting my breath on him?'
Throwing away his clever and witty response, he simply said, "Whatever, Ishog."
But Renota's quick mind already had a response ready for anything he could've said, especially something as predictable as Arin's words.
"You know it's 'eesh-ohg', not 'ish-ahg', right? You don't look like the smartest man alive when you can't even pronounce your favorite word right."
Every single word that Renota spoke infuriated him beyond belief, but he still had that strange urge to continue conversing...
'No! Just focus on something else.'
As it turned out, this idea of Arin's was a rather good one. Finally taking his eyes off of his obnoxious companion, he took his first look at his surroundings since he laid eyes on Renota. And the environment he resided in was, to say the least...
Refreshing.
Considering his recent stroke of bad luck, Arin expected that he would be transported to some vicious hellscape full of vile creatures and death. But instead, he had ended up in—if he ignored the supposed 'vile creature' he was stuck with—a perfect and beautiful field.
The gorgeous plain of vibrant green grass expanded in all directions as far as the eye could see, its surface textured by light hills and the occasional large oak tree. The Shippai Campaign were placed somewhere in the middle of this humungous grassland, with one of the great oaks providing them with shade.
Far in the distance, a sun—one more orange and ever-so-slightly larger than the one Arin and Renota were used to—was slowly descending towards the horizon of the field, setting the stage for a beautiful sunset. Arin could already imagine it... A beautiful symphony of nigh-impossibly vibrant colors, such as the various deep oranges, the many light pinks, and every shade of red in between, all layering between each other to form-
Arin suddenly let out a monstrous yawn, and with it came an unbearable wave of fatigue. Finally, the drawbacks of staying awake for multiple days on end had caught up to Arin. In his dazed state, he completely forgot about the wonderful sunset he was looking forward to, his fellow Campaigner that he despised, and his personal mental baggage in favor of one overbearing thought, or rather, one overbearing instinct: Go to sleep.
Arin, essentially unconscious with exhaustion already, stumbled towards the great oak tree, garnering some concern from Renota. Arin slung the sword bag off of his shoulders, nearly dropping it in the process. He carelessly threw the sword to the ground, and soon after, he himself ungracefully collapsed onto the tree, instantly falling asleep with loud snores.
In fact, Arin had been so tired that his mind did not even care to procure a dream, instead focusing purely on recovering it and its body's health and energy. After a few long hours of recovering himself within the unthinking darkness of his resting mind, he was returned mostly to the state he was in before going on his no-sleep marathon. Of course, not even deep sleep could fix his mental instability, but that was a problem to be dealt with later. Because right then, there was something far more urgent happening.
He was awoken by three distinct sounds— those of a sword slicing the air, punches being thrown, and flames burning. Arin's now somewhat energized blue eyes opened from the darkness of his eyelids into the darkness of the field's moonless night. Arin noticed a few things when he first woke up; First of all, the 'sword' he had heard slicing through the air was, in fact, not a sword. In reality, the sharp edge being swung at Renota belonged to the scythe-like arms of a gruesome creature, which was currently obscured mostly by the darkness of night. Arin was only able to see the scythes because of Renota, who also happened to be the source of the other two sounds.
The first sound Renota was emitting was easy enough to explain- he was fighting the scythed beast with his fists. The second sound was also emanating from his fists, via a strange yellow flame engulfing them. Although the fire was somewhat different in both color and texture, Arin assumed that it was something akin to the white electricity the woman in the building had used to transport Arin here.
This yellow flame was, as far as Arin could see, the only source of light in the entire grassland.
'Why did I ever think I'd be able to catch a break...'
With that thought, Arin suddenly realized the urgency of the situation. Without a second thought, he quickly felt around the ground until he found his sword bag. He untied the top and pulled his beautiful blade from out of the bag, situating it nicely in between his belt and pants on his left side with the edge pointing upwards. However, by the time Arin was prepared, Renota's killing blow was already flying towards the creature's face.
As Renota's yellowed and bloodied fist flew towards the creature at lighting speed, its ugly head was briefly illuminated. It looked like a terrible cacophony of all that's disgusting in the world. Its face was somewhat spider-like, specifically akin to a tarantula, possessing similar leg-like mandibles on its hairy face. However, it's ten eyes were much less arachnid-esque. Instead of the typical reflective black balls that a spider would have, this creature's eyes were much more similar to that of a human. Eerily similar.
Beneath its eyes was a gaping black maw, and beneath that was a disgusting single row of teeth. The stark imbalance between each putrid tooth's height and width was jarring, not to mention the giant, almost tusk-like canines. Its cavity-riddled mouth was something similar to what Arin had expected Renota's dental to look like.
Currently, the creature was heavily battered, its own azure gore dripping from the leg-like mandibles and disgusting teeth, with a few of its eyes bashed in. Renota's flame and blood-bathed fist landed directly on the beast's skull, and the impact was enough to fully crush it in, leaving his right hand covered in the gray chunks of its mind and seemingly gallons of blue blood, alongside a good amount of his own crimson ichor.
After the monster fell to the ground, Renota quickly extinguished the yellow flames on his hands, returning the field to absolute darkness. He quickly called out to Arin.
"It's too bad you missed out on that sunset. It was beautiful!"