It has been three days since Adelram has taken Kris under his wing, and things aren't looking very well. Under the scorching heat of the sun, a jet black figure wearing a witch hat stands beside Kris, who's lying down struggling to breathe. Her face filled with sweat and tears, probably from training, and her clothes almost dripping. Contrary to the black mage, who's simply standing and watching Kris' attempts to master a single spell. It made her sigh seeing her almost dying from exhaustion, "You'll never be able to master draconic magic if you won't focus."
Kris lifts her arm and wipes her sweat and looks at the black mage, her smooth and alluring voice makes it hard for her to hate her. But with her new pair of eyes, she finds it hard to believe that it's the mage's voice, for all she sees on her is just pitch black mist with white smokey eyes. "You don't even have draconic mana, someone who was the 'greatest' mage." She quotes herself when she said ‘greatest’ and closes her eyes. "How did master Adelram find your soul anyway?"
"Obviously, our Master had to climb the Gennaio mountains to obtain our bodies and summon us."
"Gennaio mountains?" Kris had one of her eyebrows rise, "What is that– where is that?" She crossed her arms and the training stopped for the meantime. The mage's eyes grew a bit from the shock after hearing Kris' question, she fixed her hat and cleared her throat.
"You don't know about the Gennaio mountains? It's just north of Madhy town."
With the realisation of what she's talking about, Kris nods, "Oh! You mean Barren Peaks! But don't the legends say that you guys split up after the Battle of Vriaddeotria?"
"Bullshit…" The mage snorts in amusement as she tries to hold her giggles in while listening to these legends Kris were saying, "Those corrupt Nobles really love to spread nasty rumours about us. But, truth be told, after the world is in a balanced state again, we have been together until our last breath, living peacefully in Gennaio mountains, although I don't get why it's called barren now.~" Their conversation continued, and they never got back to training.
Although, even seeing how they were enjoying themselves by the window of the room, Adelram had his eyebrows narrow. He looked back to what's in front of him only to see an annoying thick mustache from a middle aged man who's twice as wide as him, showing expressions of great worry to him. Adelram can't help but feel like he only did it out of pity, and with no time to waste, he quickly asked, "What do you mean they need to raise their ranks, aren't I alone enough?!" The room is very spacious compared to the normal rooms for renting, so his voice almost echoed, as expected for the guild master's room.
"Sir… It is true that your rank alone is enough. But your teammates, they're underleveled to be able to actually meet our highness. Your whole team must have a general rank of eight(VIII), right now… You have six(VI)."
"YOUR, highness." Adelram stands up from the sofa as he emphasizes that he is not bound by any ruler, even if the Kingdom of Volmagia is where he was born, it won’t chain and pin him down like one of the king's dogs. He walked by and went straight to the wooden door, "Let us meet again after a week, Mr. Chozzaster. I'll make sure we'll end up with more than just rank eight(VIII)." And slammed the door shut.
The guild hall is busy as always, with all kinds of adventures gathering up to accept quests and earn money. There were twenty tables in the hall that could be used by up to ten people. And with each table filled with mugs and plates, Vanessa is lucky enough to get herself a spot without any spilled drinks or dropped food on the table, with everyone in her team busy, she wants to do something for herself as well. So she took out a piece of paper, a quill, and her glass of black ink.
⸢ Dear brothers, Baines and Isaac,
How are you guys? It's been like three days since I left our home. I already missed you guys every second I think of what to write for this letter. Have you guys been eating well? Don't worry! I'll send over the gold I earned from the last raid I took. And as usual, it's so scary! We had to face a dragon… And we were almost wiped out, there were only three of us left out of nine members in our party. The paper I only have right now is small so the letter may be very short. Baines, here are TWO GOLD COINS!! Yes! Gold coins! This is a lot for you guys, but there's more of those in my pocket right now so don't worry about me going broke! I will be keeping the rest with me as I fear that we'll be having our equipment repaired more often. Please take care of yourself and your brother, you don't know how much you guys mean to me.
Sincerely for you guys, Vanessa Holderim Dimitri ⸥
Vanessa rereads her letter almost twice just to make sure it won't be made fun of by her brothers when she gets home, knowing how annoying and playful Baines and Isaac are. Her eyes went moist from the memories she had with them. It's unfortunate that she had to go, but if she were to stay back home and do nothing, who knows what will happen with the three of them? She mustered her courage and started standing up from her seat. The distance between her seat and the table is just too near, it felt relieving now that Vanessa is standing, sighing while stretching her legs and wished that it would be the last time she sat like that.
Even if the crowd may seem overwhelming, Vanessa smiles seeing them telling their own stories in their dungeons. The warmth of their smile as they live another day won't make one feel out of place, as everyone relates to the feeling of fighting for their lives. As she continues to walk towards the reception table to give her letter, she turns her head to her right, looking above the stairs and seeing Adelram going down, however, it seems like he's not in a good mood. She'd love to come to him and ask about what's wrong, but the receptionist woman on the table already got her attention and simply asked, "How may I help you?" Smiling stiffly at Vanessa and quickly looking at what she's holding then back at her eyes, "A request paper perhaps?"
Vanessa shakes her head with the anticipation of her saying that, "No no haha. It's a letter for my siblings back home, I'd like to have it sent by tomorrow, including this–" a light clank on the table made the woman look at where it came from. She was speechless seeing two gold coins on the table and her eyes wide in shock. With the atmosphere beginning to be a little awkward, Vanessa responded with a chuckle, and watched the woman clear her throat while fixing her composure, "I apologise, back to what you were saying… You want the letter and the money sent?"
Vanessa nods, "Yes. Here's the address." She took another piece of paper, a smaller one, and placed it on top of the gold coins, "I know it's very near, but I can't go home right now," the next words she's about to say made her smile, "it's because we will be departing right away." The thought of her being a permanent member in a strong team feels like a huge achievement to her, for she's always a temporary member on all the parties she joined. The woman nods in acknowledgement and understands the situation, "Very well, this shall be delivered today later in the evening, have a nice adventure out there." Finishing their conversation, she took the gold and the address in a way that no one else could see the money, to prevent any possibility of getting it stolen. Trust is the most important thing to clients, and she doesn't want to lose the trust they placed on her. She bows and waves at Vanessa as she walks fast into the reception room.
Vanessa sighed with hopes high to get the letter sent by today, or at least tomorrow, because who knows how much money they have left. But now that it's over, she turns to the stairs and sees Adelram leaning on the handrails, probably watching the whole thing with a frown, “Someone’s looking gloomy.” She chuckled once again.
“You’d be feeling the same if you knew what happened.” Adelram replied, "Say, what are your goals, Vanessa?" He looks at her, calming down as his frown slowly disappears. "It doesn't have to be something big."
Taken by surprise, Vanessa got lost in her own thoughts. She placed her hand behind her and fiddled with her fingers while thinking of an answer, though she already had one in mind, it might not be the answer Adelram would accept. "I… uh…" With each second passing by, the pressure of the question and Adelram's eyes staring at her with curiosity only becomes heavy. She wants to leave so bad, but she knows that it will only leave a bad image of her. Still having nothing to say, she decided to go with her first answer, "I just wanted to be in a strong team, you know? What a normal adventurer would want! Grow strong, earn a living, and live a fun life."
Just as Adelram is about to open his mouth, he keeps the words in as he looks at Vanessa in an entranced state, her eyes looking beyond what it sees, being lost in thought. "Though there's one thing I've been wanting to find out–" She mumbled as if she was urged to say it by something she's trying to remember, "I want to know where my parents are."
Adelram nods, "That's a goal." He shrugs with his attempt to brighten the mood, "I'm sure we're gonna find your parents soon enough. But first," He looks at the reception counter and at the huge leather map of the kingdom hanging at the walls beyond the counter. Several receptionists passed by, doing their job and keeping the guild hall running, temporarily blocking their vision of the map. Adelram looks back at Vanessa, "We need to level up."
"[Fireball]," A drop of sweat ran across Kris' cheeks as she casted a spell and a ball of flame lit up on her staff, and she breathed heavily as she looked at the black mage. The black mage is just staring at her, but she knows that she is expecting a lot from her, "here it goes!' She closes her eyes and holds the staff with both her hands. With the staff in front of her, she chants, "Beings who stood before the mountains, those who have shaped the world, grant me thy power…" She suddenly felt a different type of mana coursing through her veins, hot! Draconic mana is so hot! She told herself as drops of sweat on her face turned to streams, her clothes starting to get stained, I need to cast the spell now! "[C-contract!! Dra…dragon's Flame]."
The black mage smiled when she saw runic words appearing on the ball of flame Kris casted earlier. The inscriptions encircle the flame, changing its colour and decreasing in size, "You made it." The black mage giggled in excitement, "Your first draconic spell… Now remember the feeling of how you gathered the draconic mana within you." Although her excitement was cut off short when she saw Kris panting hard, steam can almost be seen from her mouth with every exhale she does. The ball of flame quickly extinguishes and the half-conscious Kris falls down from exhaustion, with her eyes slowly closing, she’s expecting to hit the ground and get knocked out.
“[Anti-gravity]”
The sudden spell that was casted made Kris turn to the black mage, and finally loses her consciousness. The black mage approaches her and silently casts [Pandora’s eyes] to check what’s wrong. Her hunch was right, I knew it was mana depletion, she’s using draconic mana wrong. She thought, and suddenly rushed back to the guild hall with Kris floating beside her. She pushed the door wide open, making a loud thud and getting most of the adventurer’s attention that created an awkward moment of silence. The adventurers started whispering to each other upon seeing the unconscious Kris, but she didn’t mind and continued running across the hall to get to the stairs, and went straight to Adelram’s room.
“My liege!” Not even panting from all the running she did, she calls out for Adelram, who seems to be talking to Vanessa while looking at a map laid out on the ground. “Kris ran out of mana.” She calmly states as not to be rude.
Adelram halts from speaking and turns his head to face the black mage, “Can’t you just help her with that on your own, Anastasia?” He looks at the floating Kris and her skin looks different. “A transfer would fix the problem.” With one of his eyebrows raised with how simple the solution is. Anastasia shakes her head, “My liege, it would be useless if the mana I will transfer will be depleted again, it seems that the draconic mana took over.” She looks at the room and sees a kempt bed standing at the corner of the room, so she walks in the room and waves her hand towards it, carefully placing Kris on the bed.
“Then, you have to go in there and teach her.” Adelram declares in a commanding tone, and looks back at Vanessa. Anastasia moves forward to say something but she stops seeing Adelram's hand raised against her, and without looking at her, he responds, "I am busy." He pressed his words enough to finish the conversation, a warning that things won't be looking good if she continues any further, so Anastasia simply bows and her form starts to disperse like black smoke.
"Back to what I was saying, the best way for you and Kris to level up fast is hunt monsters with levels higher than the two of you, and speaking of monsters..." Adelram looks at the map, and stares at the map and looks at the huge symbol of a dead tree located at the southwest of the kingdom. The dead tree was surrounded by mountain ranges, and the place was coloured in shades of yellow, indicating that the place is dry. Adelram points his left finger on it, and Vanessa follows to where his fingertips are, “Thanatos’ tree? Isn’t that where Tarbidoids are?”
Adelram completely ignored the question, as if he already anticipated she'd ask that, "They're the perfect source of experience,” he removed his finger from the map and rested his hand on his knee. “Tarbidoids are spider-like monsters with upper bodies almost similar to a human's, but they still have mandibles and venomous saliva. Their venom is so potent that the surrounding flesh of the spot where it bites will melt, so try not to get bitten." Adelram sighs, "They can also speak, so don't let yourself get swayed with their pleas."
"Then where do we stay at night?" Vanessa fixes her hair while asking, the strands are getting in the way on her field of vision, "It's very time consuming if we were to go back and forth from Thanatos' Tree and Monosapii city." She quickly placed her fingers on the city symbol located northeast of the tree symbol, "Considering that we still need to cross the forest just to get to the city." She encircles the thick layer of trees that serves as a barrier to separate the desert from the city using her hands.
"There were stories that there is a settlement near the tree," Adelram finally stands up, which only means that their conversation is almost over, "Let us just get ourselves some euklisia rugs if those stories turned out to be fake."
It's dark… Kris calmly told herself, and suddenly chuckles as she reminds herself that she's blind, oh right… I'm blind. She realises that she's back to the world where she got blasted by the dragon, her semi-unconscious world. Now that she's expecting a greeting from the scaled beast, the place is rather quiet. The eerie silence is making her nervous, it's making her feel that something might have gone wrong, so she starts wandering aimlessly and begins calling out, "Hello? Is anyone here?! Hello?!?"
Silence entered once again after a minute of only hearing her own echoes that answered her calls. Kris continues walking, but tears have already started forming on her eyes, she's scared. With her final call, "HELLO!?!" She suddenly felt a hand pressing down against her right shoulder, telling her to snap out of her miserable state. It didn't feel heavy enough for her to feel threatened, but it's strong enough that the hand slightly bounced when it touched her shoulder.
Kris quickly turns around and hugs the person, she doesn't care who it was, she's too happy to care. She's just glad that she isn't alone in this place, and when she opens her eyes, the familiar black mist is standing in front of her, and it was the one she hugged, "The greatest mage…" She mumbles and hugs her again while sniffing.
"It's Anastasia, Anastasia Rhiannon Villamagius." Anastasia replies as she accepts Kris' need for comfort and pats her head, followed by stroking the ends of her hair. It took some time for Anastasia to calm her down, and she gently pushed her away to get her attention. "Now that things have finally abated, have you forgotten that your body is in a dangerous state right now?"
Kris sniffs one last time and remembers that she successfully used the draconic mana residing in her, but she passed out afterwards. "What happened to my body?" She asks while wiping her tears away. Anastasia stared at her for a second, and answered, "You are using your draconic mana in a very wrong way." She taps Kris' nose gently and sighs, "Remember that draconic mana uses regular mana to maintain the contract, so it must burn the mana where it is the most abundant." She sits down and looks at Anastasia, "Yes, however, I don't see how that is related to my problem..." She placed her hand on her heart. Anastasia didn't speak further, and waited for her to realise something. Kris' eyes dilated, it didn't take long before she realised what's wrong, "I see now!"
Anastasia smiles at Kris’ realisation, she’s clearly impressed that Kris got hold of the conundrum, not that she considers it as one. "Now, focus on disabling your draconic mana so you will start regenerating mana. I'll go back and give you a small amount to wake yourself, do you understand?" She didn’t wait for a response as her form dissipated, leaving Kris alone again.
“Where could that dragon be?” Kris asks herself and starts folding her knees to sit down while looking around, she used to converse to a dragon that speaks highly of itself. Those recent memories made her laugh a little, and she shakes her head knowing that now isn’t the time to be trifling around. “Now, to disable it,” She inhales deeply and slaps her cheeks, I can do this! I must. She thought as she started feeling her mana around. She closes her eyes and tries to awaken herself, and a sudden heat enters her body. This heat again, damn it! I need to control it! She groans as the heat intensifies, her body gives up and she realises that she’s falling on the ground, but she quickly puts her hands on where her head’s gonna hit, and presses her weight on them, cushioning her fall. The cold sweat trickling down her cheek feels comfortable to her body as it constantly heats up, I… She tells herself, followed by an exhale, she knows that steam comes out of her mouth as the air around her gets cold every time she seeks for air. I’m not giving up! But her body does otherwise, her consciousness starts to fade away. She’s running out of time, so with her final push, she screams, “[CONTRACT - TERMINATION!!]” her body starts cooling down, but the problem now is that she can’t even lift a finger, and her eyes slowly close as she passes out.
“Master.” Adelram hears Anastasia’s voice whispering to him, “Please summon me, master.” He ignored her for a moment and continued packing his things up, a bota, sleeping rugs, and… he took out a worn out dagger with a long piece of leather strapped to the tang, serving as it’s handle. He brushes the blade, and feels the chippings of the edges, he stares at the knife as if he recalls a distant memory, this dagger. He snaps out of it and puts it back inside. Vanessa notices how he’s spacing out, making her a little anxious, but she doesn’t want to get into other people’s business and comes out being a nuisance, so she remains quiet and continues to fix her things as well.
Now that Adelram is done preparing his things, he simply waves his hand, and he begins to feel a strong pressure coming from the ground. “Anastasia, [come forth].” The smoke that comes out slowly takes the form of a woman coated in jet black magic, and a mage hat appears on her head. Her eyes opened, revealing nothing but white light, and she answered his call, “Master.” Witnessing such a scene never gets old for Vanessa, all of it just seems so beautiful, and in the end, she’s quietly shocked in awe.
And just as Anastasia steps down after the summon, the bed suddenly starts lurching, but it holds on. Kris’ heavy breathing echoes through the room, so Anastasia starts running to her. Adelram and Vanessa follows her, and sees that Kris is sweating profusely, her eyes still closed and her hands clenching to the mattress of the bed. “Her draconic mana is now disabled.” Anastasia informs the two and touches Kris’ forehead, and it feels a lot cooler than before, and the fact that she has cooled down made her smile, “You did well, Kris.” she closes her eyes, “Now, let us bring you back.” And the hand on Kris’ forehead begins glowing.
Adelram walks away from the two and sits down on the wooden chair against the wall of the other side of the room, he looks to his left where a window stands before him. The sun’s ray shines on him, but the sun is already setting, so looking directly at it didn’t hurt his eyes. Getting bored from the view, he leans his body forward and looks outside the window. Seeing a forge standing three houses away got him worried about his shortsword, might as well do something while waiting, he thought. “Hey, I’ll go to the blacksmith’s shop while waiting–” Adelram got disrupted with a sudden yelp, which made his eyes dilate slightly, it seems that Kris has awakened.
“AHH!!” Kris quickly rises from the bed, shaking it lightly, with the two magical energies she sees in front of her, the one that got her attention the most is from the person at the other corner of the room, That’s right… It’s master Adelram. When things finally start to get vivid, she feels energetic, so she looks at Anastasia and asks, “I thought you’d only give me a small amount of mana?”
Anastasia giggles from hearing the question, so she nods, “I did give you a small amount, a small amount for me, that is.” She sits beside Kris, making the bed squeak, “So, what is the solution to your draconic trouble?” She asks loudly, making sure that Adelram hears it on his seat.
Seeing Adelram looking at her, Kris felt shy to answer, but shakes her head and looks at Anastasia, “It was definitely my blunder, I’ll make sure to use the mana from my surroundings and not use my own mana.” Then the two start laughing at each other, leaving Vanessa out of place. So she quietly steps back and goes to Adelram’s side.
“In necromancy, a summon shouldn’t be able to speak right?” Vanessa mumbles, making sure that only the two of them can hear it. Vanessa stares at him as she waits for an answer, which is followed by a nod from Adelram, and she opens her mouth and asks again, “Then is it because of the fact that you're already at the pinnacle of necromancy? That they’re able to speak now?”
Adelram looks at Anastasia, who’s talking with Kris, and shakes her head, “Remember that Anastasia Rhiannon Villamagius was the greatest Archmage when she was alive right?” He looks at Vanessa, “Do you know why she’s called the greatest during her time?” Adelram smiles as he remembers the first time Anastasia got summoned, “She doesn’t have draconic mana, but she can keep her flames burning like that of a dragon’s. Her mana is so large, she had the power to alter necromancy itself, that she successfully removed her submissive state and deciphered the magic that binds her soul to mine.”
