Edel and Salia were both preparing themselves for their trip with both of them having backpacks of their own and salia carrying an extra small one for seraphina

Akko was making sure seraphina was wrapped in tons of layers of clothing to which the child was too proud to admit despite a waterfall of sweat running down her barely visible face

"Yeah no"said Salia tearing off the heavy clothes that seraphina wore and holding onto her

"I can just make our own heat"she said as heat started to emanate to which seraphina immediately clung to her

Edel laughed at that as he turned to Akko

"Don't worry,she'll be safe" he reassured her

"Thanks,knowing that makes me more at ease and I'll probably be able to focus more on finding the other eggs in hiding" she said

"Gotcha,good luck with that"

Edel then turned to the other girls

"You girls ready?"he asked them as they both raised their hands in the air and cheered,except salia having done that let to for a second but immediately picked her back up

"Onwards we go!"he said

And so their travels started to the mountains antlya

Salia was hovering above the ground with her boots on fire and flying at an extremely fast speed

Meanwhile Edel was running at high speed with his legs having shapeshifted into those of a leopard and his tail into that of a fox as it was wrapped around his stomach to give seraphina a comfortable spot to rest in

"So what's the mission?"asked Salia

She usually never asks about what the mission is about as she's happy just knowing she's going on a quest so she usually leaves those questions for when they're already on their way

"We need to protect a village from raiders,if we succeed then they'll help us fix the giant hole in our tree" explained Edel

"Oh sweet!that's a great deal!" Shouted Salia as she was overjoyed from the news,and with more excitement than before she propelled herself faster to their destination along with Edel who was trying to catch up

The two eventually arrived near their destination over several hours of traveling as it was now night time and they were all wearing very thick clothing with salia keeping seraphina under her jacket while also increasing her body temperature to a comfortable degree

Edel looked at the map and pointed to the top of the mountains that looked so up ahead that the more you climbed the farther it seemed to get go

"Just how far is this village?!"asked Edel

"Seraphina is starting to feel mighty uncomfortable over here!"said Seraphina who had turned up her heat as much as she could without burning the fabric of seraphina's clothes

"I-im fine" lied seraphina

"Now isn't the time to be prideful!!"shouted edel

Edel hearing that started to look in all kinds of directions as his eyes had turned into ones of an eagle,he looked around

At a long distance he noticed a cave as he turned back to salia

"Get over here so I can shield you two!"he said as she nodded

White Fur started growing out of his skin as his nose elongated,his nails turning into claws and his teeth into fangs as he started growing in size

He had transformed into a large polar bear

Salia jumped in front of him with her stomach or in other words seraphina,between both of them while edel put his arms around her and started walking towards the cave he saw

On his way there however he noticed something move around the bushes but decided to act like he didn't notice and continued his walk

After having eventually reached the cave something loud stomped behind them

It was a large monster that was following them

Edel seeing this put down salia and seraphina to go inside the cave as he turned back to the monster and roared as he towered over it

But the monster wasn't done

Then several of it's kind appeared suddenly completely surrounding the cave as they outnumbered edel six to one

The first monster hissed before jumping at him as edel smacked it away with his strong arms sending it flying out of the mountains

Three more attacked as edel also charged towards them roaring,swinging his head downwards so he doesn't get hit with their pointy head but also slamming them down all three at the same time breaking their heads in the process

Then his hands were bitten by the other two as they were pinning him down

As a bear he didn't have enough strength to push them away and he was freezing even in that form

What he didn't know however was that there was a third one behind him that slid down from the top of the hill over the cave about to attack him

When suddenly

"THUNDER BAGUA!!"a feminine voice yelled out as something crushed the monster's head into nothing

Edel having noticed something was behind him immediately bit the right monster's head with his fangs and having his right hand released caved it in the left monster's skull which let go of him

He turned to the girl and was completely surprised

She had purple hair that reached to her shoulders along with horns on her head,large breasts and most importantly

She barely wore any clothing in the chilling cold

"Hey there big guy,you must be the friend that the little salamander girl was talking about right?"edel nodded in his bear form before slowly returning to his original body much to the girl's shock

"Thank you for helping me-ACHOO!!"he sneezed at the end of his sentence

"Woah there buddy,let's get you inside in the warm with your friend" she invited him as he followed as they ran inside the cave as he looked at how deep it goes until he noticed it wasn't a cave,but a tunnel

As they continued they noticed a light that kept getting brighter and brighter until finally

He could see it

An entire town inside the giant mountain that they had to climb with the temperature being back one they could manage

"What the...."

He turned to the girl

"Welcome to antlya friend,my home!"