The woman collected old leaves and stalks on the ground in a small bundle. She crouched down before she called him over. He didn't have to be a genius to know that she wanted to show him something.

A naive kid like Artus might be drawing a blank, but he knew for sure that she wasn’t trying to teach him about this world's flora and fauna. Nusia is trying to do something more special than that.

"My class is a [Hunter]," she began. "That means I have access to skills like [Tracking] and [Pathfinder] which you can try to learn. But I’m no [Trainer] so it would be hard."

He nodded to the lady.

"That's said, I also have a considerable [Wood] affinity, something I cannot teach you. No one can teach you how to gain an affinity."

"Well, that's too bad," he smiled.

"We can grow the affinity or any affinity of yours but it'll be hard. But with patience and high enough affinity, and you'll be able to do something like what I'm about to show you. Put your feet on the leaves."

"Yes, ma'am," he said as he followed her instruction. He had a guess what she was trying to do, but he would rather witness it with his own two eyes.

She directed her hand towards his feet as her face turned serious. What happened next had completely blown his mind off the planet.

Slowly and surely, the leaves below his feet turned into his foot ware. The vines acted as laces which covered the top of his foot from one side to the other. The other random things simply melted together to form his shoes until his soles were no longer touching the ground.

It didn't sew together or something as it just melted at the joins and still maintained its previous texture and overall feel. It still felt like he was standing and walking on a pack of leaves if not a lot sturdier.

He got to say that he had never worn anything as comfortable as these pairs of leaf slippers.

"Does it last forever?"

"Well, not forever,” she chuckled. “But it would last long enough for at least a few weeks."

His attention turned towards her pair of shoes. He noticed that there was no seams, thread or yarn at all. The practical comfortable looking footwear wrapped around her feet snugly until the ankle.

"These are made from cotton flowers, leather, and special tree saps, shaped by a professional shaper. Mine couldn't even compare to their skills."

"These feel comfortable enough," he said.

"Wait until you get one of these," she wiggled her feet. "Now, let's go. I'm starting to get hungry too."

Nusia led him into the jungle at a faster pace, but she had always made sure he could keep up. She was pushing him just enough to grow from the experience, the older he knew that much.

He was glad to have someone like her in his life, and he didn't think anyone could replace the lady. Birth mother aside, lady luck might have finally smiled at him.

His life might not be any close to a normal home, in this world or the other, but he was glad to be with Nusia regardless.

Acting like he had no connection to her was easy to him as she did feel like a familiar stranger. Apart from the jumbled up memories, he knew nothing about her or the extended family she mentioned, but there was something bothering him.

'How could anyone want her for themselves. She is like a wildflower that will only bloom in the wild and never in captivity. But I'm able to understand a little after witnessing her ferocious but playful smile.'

The jungle track didn’t take too long before they stopped. He was wondering what was up before he looked past the woman. Before he was something out of this world.

"This is one of the stopping points that only I know of now,” said Nusia, nostalgia leaking in her words. “Our base is further away at the border of the True Wilds, and you'll be really amazed when we get there."

He is pretty amazed already right now. Lay before him was a small waterfall right in the middle of nowhere, just for the two of them to enjoy. The water was crystal clear with blueish algae filling the bottom of it. All kinds of fish swim freely, almost unafraid of the hungry newcomers.

Following her steps, they arrived at a hidden cave behind the waterfall. Behind the curtain of water and a hidden entrance, was a simple round room with what looked like a firepit with its blackened base right in the middle. There was a small hallway leading further in, and there was no way this place had formed naturally.

"Edia is good at shaping rocks, her affinity was not that high, but she had made this camp diligently. I and four others made a group of five. We have made a huge mistake taking that risky loan but now I know better."

"It was a blessing in disguise?"

"Yes, exactly, but where do you learn that?"

Artus shrugged. He couldn't say he had learned it from the internet, now could he? Nusia placed her backpack on one of the raised rock beds before she started to head out.

"Let's gather some firewood and make us some spears," she gave her winning predatory smile.

'Yeap, she would be a rare catch for the damn nobles,' he mused. 'All rich people love them exotic creatures or whatever hard to get things.'

"Yes, ma'am," he replied.

He followed her to the foliages nearby where she started collecting dried woods on the ground. He did the same while making sure to look for any kind of fibers to use as tinder. The lady looked at him approvingly if not a little proud of herself.

Artus wouldn't have known any better if he hadn't wasted his time watching endless survival videos on the internet. After enough of them, a few tips had taken its place inside the rusted brain of his. They brought their spoils from the forest floor back to the cave where he had expected to see her magic once again, and he wasn't disappointed.

Nusia laid a few sticks in a straight line before she started to shape them, well, into spear shapes. She made three tall length spears, one for her and two smaller ones for him.

"You'll need the practice," she said with that smile of hers.

"I'll need to catch my own, right?"

"Smart boy," she chuckled.

He knew that she wouldn't let him starve, but he found the fishing spear lacking. It's perfect in every way as well as he could tell, but an additional change would be great. He wouldn't say he was an expert spearfisher, but he had a few runs. Enough to impress anyone who knows nothing about it.

"Could you make the pointy end split into four equal sharp ends?"

"Why do you want to do that?"

"To make it easier to spear the fish, why else?"

Nusia looked at him in disbelief. She had a complicated look for a moment before she decided that it wouldn't cause any harm to try. He knew this because she even split her spear end into four after a light shrug.

But unlike the old world, she didn't need to stick additional pieces of wood in between the sharp ends to keep it separated. She just shaped the wood into the odd shape for a spear.

They took the short walk towards the lower level with a wider pond and a whole lot more fish swimming around. The result was pretty obvious. Nusia caught a large fish on her first try while he had more than a few tries before he got his share of the kill.

The fish hunting ended when he fell into the water. The blood on his shirt had colored the clear water in faint red, and it kicked the woman’s lacking motherly instinct into immediate action.

Her laughter was cut short before she dived in to help.

Water wasn’t that deep but it was deadly for a twelve-year-old who couldn’t swim. Nusia again had that look of realization. Raising a kid in the middle of the forest could be really challenging and frustrating he would bet.

Finding out that it was just his old dried out blood didn't make her any happier. Nusia hauled his one small catch and her two huge catches to the cave for both of them.

She had refused to let him carry for himself and marched towards the cave without even checking on him. He guessed that you couldn’t get the best of both types. Expecting a wild woman like her to be motherly would lead to a huge disappointment.

Nusia only recovered herself after she had returned with gutted fishes. He wondered if the sight blood had calmed her down a little.

He had already laid the sticks and the tinder in the middle of the cave by the time she was back. She gave him an odd look before she went to her backpack.

This child of hers might be too little too smart for her to swallow down and it showed. Nusia checked the fireplace before she muttered something.

"What are these under the sticks?" she asked no one.

"Those are tindering, it helps to catch fire easier."

He was proven right again after a few moments of lighting them up with flints. The sparks she made from the stones were kind of scary.

"Who taught you all these things?" she blabbed out.

Artus sighed. "The spell formation, the experiments. It had messed up my mind, soul or whatever, Nusia. These things are just there, inside my head. The tons of blood you see was only a part of the price."

She looked at him as if he was spouting nonsense.

He only told half the truth, of course, as he didn't know for sure either. Until he understood more, he would believe this lie as the truth. Artus decided to share one more thing with her.

A piece of a torn journal he had taken for himself. He took the folded paper out of his pocket and gave it to her. Luckily the paper was waterproof, magic or otherwise.

Nusia took the paper in confusion before she started to read it. Her hands shook as she went through the words written on the paper line by line. The page he had chosen was the most gruesome description of the experiment complete with inhuman self suggestions.

The woman almost fell to the side after she had finished. She looked again after a short moment and read the signature out loud.

"Cornelius J.R," she paused. "Jason Reed."

The piece of paper crumpled in her white shaking knuckle. He imagined it would have burned if she had any lick of fire magic inside her. Her eyes were burning with anger as she stared at the floor.

"It was a blessing in disguise," he told her of what he believed to be true.

-

Nusia didn't know how much 'tons' of blood was, or what that word even meant, but it sounded too little to her. The whole pool had turned red from his dried blood alone until the sharp teeth began to show up.

Artus’s survival was no short of a miracle. His awakened spirit was also nothing she had ever witnessed before in her entire life.

‘What kind of awakening ceremony they had forced on him?’ thought Nusia.

The reality might be worse than she had assumed.

Thousands of needles pricked her heart one by one as she read what was written. She knew the handwriting even without the signature below, and the name Jason had only made it more painful for her. Guilt wrenched her until she could barely hold herself up.

'What I was even doing?' she chastised herself.

She believed that she had found happiness with the man while Artus was suffering in his hands. A small fragile kid had gone through all of that and still had a sane mind that would have been a miracle in all miracles.

The pain of someone messing with your soul is incomparable to anything. Not even raw, unaided childbirth could be compared according to the first Artus. The other only person she would believe with her life. He won’t lie to her face even if it kills her.

She was there when Catherine gave birth to the boy she loved so much. Watching her suffer, she couldn't believe anything would be more painful than the experience at that time.

Perhaps not even being gutted alive by a monster. Unlike the pompous ladies, Catherine wanted to feel the pain of child labor in the hope she would learn to hate the child of that man.

But the look in Catherine's eyes made Nusia think all the pain was worth it at the moment the tiny baby quieted down at the mother's mere touch. Did her suffering become the catalyst of her love for the baby?

Mother's love is a strange thing as Catherine had decided that she would rather give up her current life than watch him grow to hate her. All of it because of what the boy's father would whisper to an awakened Artus.

Both of them had never thought the man could be so cruel.

She cooked all the fish, and they filled their stomach in silence. After eating, Artus asked for the paper while she had only wanted to burn it to ashes. It pained her to have something to remind of his suffering.

She loved him more than anything and she didn’t know exactly why. She only knew that she would probably lose her mind if she ever lost him again. Just imagining it made her restless.

Nusia sighed. She just hoped the boy wouldn’t decide that she would cause more harm than good and tried to run away. The boy in her eyes might look exactly like Catherina’s child she remembered, but she wasn't sure who's inside anymore.

NO. The boy still had a part of Catherina’s Core. No matter who he had become, the boy they both love is still inside.

If he was acting distant because he couldn’t remember her, she only had to make him remember.