Prologue - Welcome to the Villain's World: Chapter 18; An Endless Hunt

The screen turns on as the chapter title plays "Chapter - 18; An Endless Hunt".

It opens on the interior of the mine and does a little recap as Grim makes the fire in his ears go bigger for a second before shouting at the two "We got the magestone! Now let's get outta here!" Ace nods, shouting "Roger that!"

They then start to run as the monster comes in from a different path screaming "MYYY STOOOOOOONE!"

It chases after them as they make it to a more open part of the path still not that far from the cottage.

Ace only now letting his guard down a little due to the distance they now had from the monster and from the scare they all got from the scream shouts out "Are you kiddin' me?! It's still coming! It pushed off all that weight!"

The monster then bursts into the main pathway from the forest screaming "Oooooooooogh…! Give it baaaaack…!"

They then start to run farther as Deuce shouts "It's too fast! It's about to catch us!" Yuu thinks 'It's kill or be killed now!' as she yells to them "But we've weakened it! If we strike now…!"

Now stopping in a clearing as Ace yells "Aw, fine! Let's just smash the thing. Try not to wet yourself, Deucey!" But Deuce instead yells back to Ace "Some to you, Ace!" Grim on his own then yells out "I'm gonna show ya why they call me Grim the Great!"

Then he powers up his fire.

They then start to fight it but everything's blurry as it's unclear exactly what's going on with the fight. But some of the little bits that are clear, such as Grim using his fire sometimes with Ace's wind other times without it. Deuce summoning multiple cauldrons and Yuu throwing random stones and large branches at the monster.

Once it clears up they're all slightly injured but relatively fine, nothing that won't heal by tomorrow.

Deuce is panting as Ace asks "Is it…over?"

Grim then looks around and sees the monster's body lying limply on the ground, dead. He then shouts "I think…we won? I think we did it!" in response to Ace's question.

They all celebrate as Deuce shouts out "All right!" and Ace yells "Woohoo!" and Grim goes up to the two magic boys and yells out "Gimme a victory high-five!" as he raises two of his paws up. They then high-five as they yell out "Yeaaah!"

Yuu, who didn't contribute as much to the fight, had a fond smile on her face as she thought out loud mumbling "We're all really good friends now…" then laughed lightly bringing attention to her as she said "Shared adversity sure brings people together, huh?"

All of them then look at each other realizing just how they were acting as Deuce says "Uh…I don't think that had anything to do with it." Ace then complains "Yeah! Spare us the clichés, Yuu!" which she just chuckles at.

Grim then also defends himself saying "There's no 'together' here! We won 'cause of me! This is all from me bein' a magical genius!" but this doesn't bring forth wrath as they instead treat it fondly.

Ace thinks for a second before admitting "Y'know… I hate to admit it, but…We mostly won because of your plan." Deuce nods as he continues Ace "Yeah… If you hadn't managed to keep your cool and tell us all what to do, we would never have gotten this magestone."

He then smiles as he happily says "Now I won't be expelled. And wow, is THAT a relief!"

Yuu wants to make sure they are also sure they know that it's because of their hard work as well, so she says "We won because we all worked together. Don't short yourself."

Ace ruins the moment though by saying "Yeah, yeah, lessons were learned, etcetera etcetera. Can we just go home already? I'm wiped."

They all laugh at that, then Grim now realizing something continues Ace's thought as he says "Usin' all that magic made me hungry!"

But now looking back where the monster should be there is instead just a black stone as Grim takes notice and asks "Huh? What's this?"

The stone is pitch black and about as long as a lipstick but thicker.

Deuce squats down to take a better look asks "Is that part of the monster we just beat?" He then stands back up as he continues his observation "It looks like…a magestone? But it's black as coal! I've never seen one like that before."

Grim then sniffs it as he asks "What IS this? It smells amazing!" Ace gets slightly freaked out by Grim's behavior as he asks "Are you insane?" But Grim ignores him as he says "Must be some kinda fancy monster candy that it was hidin' from us! If this tastes half as good as it smells…"

He then picks it up and eats it in one bite. This makes Yuu panic as she shouts at him "Did you seriously just eat that?!" It then seems since Yuu hadn't yelled at anyone previously. Grim then screams "MYAAAH!" seeming to be frightened by Yuu yelling at him.

This also gives Ace and Deuce a small scare as Deuce asks her and Grim "Are you okay?!" Ace recovers the fastest as he says "That's what you get for eating trash!"

But Grim hadn't heard anything as he had gotten lost in his own head for a second as he shouts "Oooooogh…Urrrgggh…That…was AMAZING!"

This surprises everyone as Ace and Deuce shout at the same time "What?!"

Grim then rants about the flavor "Rich in flavor and full-bodied… Like sweet, fragrant flowers burstin' into bloom on my tongue. A whole field of 'em! Right in my mouth!"

Ace is now more disgusted as he says "Gross. Monsters must have real weird tastes." Deuce agrees with him as he says "You might be onto something there… Most humans don't take random stuff they find on the ground and just pop it into their mouths."

Yuu is still worried about Grim as she asks him "Are you sure you're okay?" But Grim only laughs as he says "Myah ha ha ha! Man, was that great! Don't worry about me. I don't got a weak stomach like you humans do. Once she got the confirmation she let out a sigh of relief as she thought 'Monsters really will eat anything, I guess.'

Ace then says in response to Grim "Hmph. We'll see if you're so smug when you're sick later tonight." Deuce then looks at the sky and sees the moon is almost down so he says "Okay, let's pull ourselves together. We need to get this magestone to the headmage!"

The screen then fades to black as "To be continued" plays before it turns off fully.