Despite Winter still hanging around and being obnoxious, we had plenty of things to do these days. Learning magic, tending to the mana tree, Willow and Chad studying the texts on the walls, the two girls learning Elvish, and Chad learning English, as well as listening to various stories the two of our oldest members had.

“So, are you telling me the devil is more like a friendly uncle rather than an evil overlord set on taking over the world?”

“Yeah. Only people outside think he’s evil. They even call him the demon lord. But he’s actually really nice.”

“Well, if he’s so nice, then why didn’t he help you out of that before us?” I pointed to where the crystal had been.

“I… Well… I might have run away from the underworld to go on an adventure?” Kelly looked to the side, avoiding my gaze.

“Ah, right. The classic protagonist move that usually ends with an epic journey of slaying dragons and making friends along the way.” I nodded in understanding. “I dreamed of it too when I was reborn here!” I crossed my arms and frowned. “But then… Hmph!”

“Yeah… I’m pretty sure my adventure didn’t last too long before the crusaders were on to me. My memories are still quite fuzzy from that time,” she said with audible sorrow towards the end.

I rolled my eyes. “Typical! Instead of being excited by cultural exchange with a demon, they called to seal her away! Stupid bigots.”

“Yeah…” Once again, she looked to the side.

I decided to drop the subject.

Other than Kelly, Chad had plenty of stories for us as well. About Dean, about hunting in the forests, traveling, and many more.

That aside, we also had awesome things to show to him.

Well, the elf’s reaction to our unique abilities was quite disappointing, to be honest. Probably because he’d already known about them since he could still hear us from within the stone.

Still, my bubble space astonished him, and he theorized it to be a sub-dimension similar to the underworld. Just as Kelly had said, he confirmed it was filled to the brim with mana.

Speaking of which, my blue and green bubble duo was slowly but surely inching closer to the coveted red bubble. It was already within an arm’s reach even though it would still take a couple of weeks to get there. I was getting impatient, but the others talked me out of trying to reach out of my bubbles to touch the red one. Apparently, outside of the bubbles, the space was filled with even more concentrated mana. Enough to give me mana cancer or something.

“I am curious though. Which of the crests do you have, Feinerena?”

“Eh, don’t have enough mana to test it. And maybe I don’t even have one at all! Still, haven’t we already established that the prophecy is bullshit?”

Chad shook his head. “Maybe the prophecy was misunderstood. Knowing which crest you possess would help us unravel this mystery.”

I rolled my eyes but didn’t say anything.

“Uh, too quick. I only understood crest and mana,” Willow commented from the sidelines.

“He’s just curious about which crest I have. But who cares! It’s not like I’ll be destroying the world or anything. And I mean, if I get a chance to save the world, then sure, why not? Don’t need no crest to do that.”

“Well, that’s true. But I’m also quite curious which one you have.”

“Curiosity killed the cat!” I yelled out whilst raising my arms. “Just leave it be! All of this is dumb and pointless!”

“Actually…” Kelly murmured, her hand on her chin. “There might be a way to maybe find out which one you have…”

I groaned. Why was everyone so set on pointless things?!

“Uh, well, I can’t guarantee it will work, but if it does, then not only can we find out about your crest, but maybe you might even be able to use magic.”

My mood flipped one eighty degrees. “Really?!”

In an instant, I found myself next to Kelly holding her hands and hopping in place.

“U-uh. I said maybe! Don’t get your hopes up. Also, it might be kinda dangerous.”

“Who cares about danger! I’m not just gonna die from this if I’m fated to save or destroy the world, after all! Plot armor for the win!”

“What? But didn’t you call the prophecies bullshit? I thought --” She interrupted her own sentence with a deep breath and a sigh. “Okay. We can try doing this, but we need to be careful.”

I let go of her hands and gave her my widest smile of anticipation.

“So… First thing. You said you can take out part of an object from your bubbles instead of the whole thing, right?”

“Yeah. I’m not very good at precision work, but I can!”

“Okay… Next thing, can you do it with air as well?”

“Huh? Uhm…” That caught me off guard. Mainly because I’d never even thought about doing that.

I quickly tested it and withdrew some air from the green bubble. Other than a slight breeze, it was impossible to tell anything had happened, but I could clearly feel the volume of air being transferred to the real world.

“Yeah! I totally can!”

Part of me was thinking about ways to utilize this. It would make for some great pranks.

“Okay, good. Now… Is it possible to dispense air straight into your lungs?” Kelly asked.

“What? Well, I mean…”

Again, something I had to quickly try. I pulled a tiny amount of air from the bubble and tried to dispense it directly into my lungs.

“Whuaaa!” I half burped, half involuntarily yelled. Then I was sent into a coughing fit.

Once it passed, I wiped my sweaty eyes and looked up to meet the concerned gazes of everyone. “Uh, yeah. I can. Bad idea, though.”

“Sorry, I didn’t think you would have such an extreme reaction,” Kelly whispered. “I think we should end it here. What I’m thinking is even more dangerous.”

“No no no! I’m fine! Please go on!”

She sighed but continued as I requested. “Alright. So you can dispense non-solid things, you can dispense just part of those things, and you can dispense them inside your own body, right?”

I nodded, eager to hear the grand reveal.

“So the last piece of the puzzle is… Your bubbles are filled with mana, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, they--” I realized mid-sentence what she was trying to say. “Oooooh! You are a genius!”

“Wait, wait, wait! Before you mana bomb yourself, let’s take this slowly, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, I got this! Don’t worry.”

“No, I mean seriously. You still haven’t quite learned to control the mana from mana fruits, so before you do any experiments, you should try to get better at that first.”

“Fiiiine!” I rolled my eyes.

She was worrying too much. What was the worst that could happen?

BottledChaos

A friendly reminder that you can read ahead on my patreon.