---
"Who are you?" Kai narrowed his eyes. "Show yourself. I don't even know what you are asking me to do."
At first the mist paused. Then, like the air of someone delivering pizza to a haunted mansion, it began to shift again. The roiling crimson fog condensed at the center, forming something. Not a hand. Not a weapon. Just... a shape. A wobbling, vaguely circular lump.
It coughed. No, not coughed, it sneezed? Then something dropped from the mist and landed in front of Kai with an audible plop.
Kai stared at it with wide eyes.
A fuzzy little bat hovered above the dropped object, flapping lazily like it had just awakened from a two week nap in a wine barrel.
It wore tiny round sunglasses. It had chubby cheeks and wings covered in mystic runes. Its ears twitched.
Kai blinked. "Why… did you just drop a Nine Star core at my feet?"
The bat adjusted its glasses with one wingtip. "Yes. That is my humble offering."
"Your what?" Kai asked with a confused face.
