The Meat Tribe lived in the northern reaches of Dadaupa Gorge.
To the north of their camp was a sheer cliff—and if you listened closely, you could even hear waves crashing against the rocks far below.
In both territory and population, they were the biggest of the three major hilichurl tribes in Dadaupa Gorge.
Early that morning, Kaito brought Razor up to a hillside overlooking the tribe so he could observe the camp with his own eyes.
The Meat Tribe loved eating and drinking. Inside their camp, they'd actually built pigpens to raise boars, and they even had dedicated "swineherds" assigned to watch them.
They also used Pyro Slimes as a natural stove—propping a massive cauldron over the heat to cook meat soup, which the tribe members ate from whenever they pleased.
"They… are raising boars."
Razor pointed toward a simple pen made of wooden stakes. Inside were several boars, and three unarmed hilichurls—the "swineherds"—stood watch.
There were multiple pens like that scattered throughout the Meat Tribe's camp. Each one held five to seven boars.
Kaito already knew those swineherd hilichurls didn't carry weapons. Normally, if enemies appeared, they'd just pick up stones and throw them.
"How… do I learn from them?" Razor asked.
His clean red eyes held something close to longing.
"Didn't Dr. Livingston tell us?" Kaito folded his arms. "First—you beat them into submission."
He'd climbed this hillside to get a full view of the area anyway, searching for the crimson Tear Crystal.
But it wasn't here either.
Which meant it was most likely at the last tribe—the Eclipse Tribe.
He didn't want to waste time.
"Kaeya," Kaito said, pointing. "That's the Cryo totem. Your turn."
Kaeya stepped forward, studying the terrain with a wary look.
"From what Dr. Livingston said," he muttered, "I'm not sure I'll be able to leave cleanly."
The Cryo totem that unlocked the Sword Cemetery's seal was placed right on the tribe's large arena platform.
And the moment you stepped onto it—you'd be surrounded.
"Razor and Noelle," Kaito said. "The three of you do it together."
"Leave it to me," Noelle answered instantly.
"I will… defeat them," Razor said, completely serious.
The three of them spread their wind gliders and dropped toward the arena below.
Klee tried to follow—
and got caught by Kaito.
"Brother Kaito! Klee wants to go play too!"
She wriggled and shook her small body in protest.
"You can play in the afternoon," Kaito said flatly. "For now, stay quiet and watch."
"But Klee can't seeee~!"
Klee bounced in place, annoyed.
There were trees near the arena, blocking her line of sight.
Kaito sighed, then lifted her onto his shoulders.
"Better?"
"I can see! I can see! A big guy ran onto the arena!"
Klee grabbed his hair with both hands and squealed as she stared down.
"Boom-boom~ Razor! Hit him!"
On the arena, a shield-bearing mitachurl charged in.
Nearby were two Hydro samachurls and two hilichurl archers.
The instant Kaeya, Razor, and Noelle stepped onto the arena, it was like the entire Meat Tribe camp had been alerted.
Around the arena was a crude circular spectator stand built from rough planks.
Hilichurls swarmed in from all directions, gathering to watch as Kaeya, Razor, and Noelle fought the shielded mitachurl—and the hilichurls that poured in behind it.
"Eleka mimi— a domu!"
"La—la—la!"
"La—la—la!"
Their chanting rose in waves—
like a festival.
At first, Kaeya and the others were tense, worried they'd be mobbed by the crowd.
But when they saw this—
they finally relaxed.
The first wave—the Wooden Shield Mitachurl and its helpers—was quickly beaten off the arena.
"Mimuheye!"
The hilichurls roared again.
This time, two shielded mitachurls climbed up together.
Kaeya started to suffer.
He darted and circled, constantly slipping behind them to land strikes whenever he could.
He was using a one-handed sword.
Against those wooden shields, unless you used fire, you needed a claymore to break them efficiently.
During the first wave, he'd intentionally avoided the shielded mitachurl and focused on the smaller enemies instead.
"Kinda… underestimated that," Kaito muttered, slightly surprised.
If Klee were down there, she could burn the shields away in seconds.
But the arena was too confined—Klee's wide-area explosions were exactly the kind of thing that caused "friendly fire" incidents.
And these mitachurls were lv20.
Half an hour later, the three of them finally forced the second wave off the platform.
The Meat Tribe's cheering didn't stop.
Now they sent up two axe-wielding mitachurls—plus another shielded one.
It had to be said: the Meat Tribe's combat power was brutal. They had an absurd number of mitachurls.
If the Fatui had come here first yesterday, they wouldn't have had as easy a time as they did against the Sleepy Tribe.
But the third match ended faster than the second.
Noelle built up enough Geo energy and unleashed Sweeping Time, clearing the arena in one explosive swing—sending all of them flying off the platform.
"Yo—mita!"
The Meat Tribe hilichurls erupted.
They bounced and hopped all over the spectator stands like they'd lost their minds.
Two samachurls approached Kaeya and the others, raised their staffs, and chanted a string of hilichurl words no one could understand.
Then—like the end of a ceremony—they scattered off the arena with the crowd and surged toward the tribe's enormous cauldron.
They grabbed boars from the pens—
and threw them straight in.
"…Are they about to invite us to drink meat soup?" Kaeya asked, looking faintly green.
He didn't even want to think about how murky that pot was.
But what really made his skin crawl was the casual way they tossed whole boars into the boiling cauldron.
He immediately retreated back up the hillside.
"Razor," Kaito said, "looks like you can stay here later and observe how they keep boars up close."
He paused, then added, "We'll split up here for today."
Razor shook his head. "Still… Eclipse Tribe."
He looked at Kaito with quiet stubbornness.
"I will return here later."
Kaito was going to deal with the Eclipse Tribe. Razor wanted to help.
Kaito didn't bother arguing. "Fine. Then we rest and recover. We go together."
The Cryo totem had already been activated during the arena fight—Kaeya had triggered it with a Cryo skill in passing.
When they returned to the small grove near the Sword Cemetery, Dr. Livingston was visibly excited.
Only one seal remained.
But the last tribe—the Eclipse Tribe—was also the hardest.
Not only were there Abyss Mages there—
according to her research, even the powerful Meat Tribe hilichurls seemed wary of the Eclipse Tribe.
It didn't appear to be purely about overall combat strength.
It felt like… heritage.
The Eclipse Tribe carried a far older tradition than the other two tribes.
Their samachurls also possessed stronger, deeper power.
After resting at the grove campsite—
in the afternoon, the group headed east, following the uphill path toward Cape Oath.
After walking a short distance, the Eclipse Tribe's camp came into view—south of the road.
There were watchtowers.
The hilichurl archers spotted them and raised their bows.
Kaito lifted a hand—two Geo walls rose and thrust upward, smashing the towers' platforms and sending the archers tumbling down.
The commotion instantly alerted the tribe.
In the middle of the Eclipse Tribe camp stood a Pyro totem.
And above it floated a Cryo Abyss Mage—already watching them.
"Keheh…"
With a blink, it flashed closer, swaying a gnarled branch—more advanced than a Ley Line Sprout—and began forming icy spikes to fire at them.
A lv22 Abyss Mage.
And the hilichurls here were strange.
There were far fewer of them than the Meat Tribe—
but their levels were unnaturally high.
Most were at least lv18.
Near the Pyro totem, the three closest enemies—the Abyss Mage, a wooden-shield mitachurl charging in, and an Anemo samachurl—were all lv22.
—There was a minor ley line beneath this place.
That didn't surprise Kaito.
He'd fought the Electro Hypostasis before, and it had been nourished by that same small ley line.
"Klee," Kaito said. "Bomb it."
"Okay! Okay!"
Klee whipped out Jumpy Dumpty and tossed it at the Abyss Mage. The bomb detonated against the outside of its elemental shield, then split into countless mines that scattered across the ground.
That single throw tore away nearly a third of the Cryo shield.
The Abyss Mage seemed startled. In midair, it condensed a falling shard of ice and slammed it down toward Klee.
"Da-da-da~!"
Klee dashed away, circling it and pelting it with smaller bombs as she ran.
"Razor, Kaeya—handle the Anemo samachurl," Kaito ordered.
"I'll hold off the surrounding hilichurls."
"Noelle—stop the shielded mitachurl."
As he assigned targets, Kaito's gaze flicked toward the deepest part of the Eclipse Tribe camp.
A tall throne—a raised seat built like a crude altar.
And above it…
A crimson crystal floated there, glowing like a heartbeat.
"So they moved it inside," Kaito murmured.
The cursed power inside Dvalin's tears was the Abyss Mage's work in the first place.
For a Cryo Abyss Mage, it was a toy—something to twist however it pleased.
"Brother Kaito! I broke its shield!" Klee shouted.
Pyro shredded Cryo shields quickly.
The Abyss Mage had blinked in carelessly—and now, even if it wanted to blink away, it was too late.
It needed time to gather elemental power.
Klee didn't care what it wanted.
She simply broke the shield and knocked it down.
"Good."
Kaito flashed in, grabbed Wolf's Gravestone, and brought it down in a crushing blow—smashing the Abyss Mage's body with a single heavy strike.
Killing an Abyss Mage was a huge gain.
"Klee," Kaito warned, "don't activate that Pyro totem yet."
He didn't want her getting excited and lighting it up.
They couldn't leave immediately.
Kaito needed to retrieve the Tear Crystal.
And Noelle, Razor, and Kaeya still had to clear the remaining hilichurls to absorb ley line energy and level up.
And besides—he wasn't careless.
If they broke the final seal right now and the Sword Cemetery's treasure got swallowed up by Dr. Livingston before anyone noticed, what could they even do?
They'd have no proof.
"Klee knows!"
Klee saw she wasn't urgently needed anymore and ran off to "play," yanking out a bomb and tossing it into one of the hilichurls' low, round huts.
BOOM!
The hut instantly became a sea of fire.
"Blehh blehh blehh!"
Klee laughed in delight.
After last night's bombing spree against the Sleepy Tribe, she'd clearly discovered a brand-new form of entertainment.
Kaito felt sweat crawl up the back of his neck.
He walked straight to the Eclipse Tribe's deepest altar-throne.
The Eclipse Tribe worshiped a crude symbol resembling a black sun, and they bowed to that Eclipse totem.
At the deepest part of the camp, they'd built this "throne" for their strongest samachurl—the Anemo samachurl Kaito had seen earlier.
That symbol had a murky connection to the Black Sun Dynasty of the fallen nation of Khaenri'ah.
But no matter what—
if they were working with Abyss Mages, they had to be wiped out.
Kaito placed his hand on the Tear Crystal above the throne, purified it, and stored it away.
"Second Tear Crystal recovered."
"This trip only leaves the Sword Cemetery."
"It better have something good."
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