Yuuki leaned against the rock his katana leaning against his left shoulder as he pulled a canteen of water and some ration bars out of his pack. Yuuki took a bit of the bar and a swig of the water as he tried to relax and steel himself for the more difficult part of Salem and Yuuki's journey up the mountain since they had now arrived at the castle Yuuki got an eerie feeling being this close to it, a feeling that made his skin crawl, which caused him to shiver a bit as he took another bite of the ration bar  before taking another drink from his canteen, before finishing up the ration bar and draining the canteen putting the canteen and ration bar wrapper back his in his pack his fished out some weapon maintenance materials and went to work looking over his katana, first cleaning it before he sharpened and polished it and finally adding a thin coating of oil to the blade of the weapon. Yuuki finished his weapon maintenance and packed away all the things he had used for weapon maintenance away in his pack before standing and shouldering his pack and attaching his Katana back to his belt.

Yuuki looked over at Salem and seen the man was also finished with his break "You ready to do this? Something tells me this is the point of no return." Yuuki said in a somber tone "Like once we cross through the gates it's get to the bottom of this or we may not return." Yuuki said in a serious but somber tone in attempt to show Salem he knew the gravity of the situation and did not plan on taking their situation lightly at all. Yuuki took point and head for the castle's main gate and pushed them open only to be hit with a black cloud which he could feel almost immediately began to sap his strength causing him to jump back slightly as he watched the black mist swirl with in the gates but did not proceed outside the gate. "Well this is certainly a very unexpected predicament." Yuuki said matter-of-factly as he looked back at Salem.

"How do you think we should proceed?" Yuuki questioned as trying to pick Salem's brain for ideas "The only way to get to the bottom of this entire thing, is through that foreboding black mist." Yuuki stated even though it was a obvious statement "The moment the mist touched me it felt as if I lost some of my strength and faculties ." Yuuki explained to Salem trying to give as much detail to the healer as he could to see if the man perhaps had a solution to navigate the mist with out being effected by it but either way their only path from this point onwards was forward as Yuuki had never been one to quit on something with out sufficiently good reason to do so. Yuuki wondered if Yumi had made it back to the village again and if at the base of the mountain may have been the last time he would ever see her again since the situation was shaping up to be more dangerous than Yuuki had anticipated as he doubted it was just black mist housed with in the castles walls surely there were more nefarious things awaiting them within.

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