---

Avan's head swam and throbbed loudly as he heard each pump of his heart's blood flowing through his head. "Arrgh..." He moaned, his mouth parched. Under loud protests from his nerves and his headache recurring like a pulse in his head, Avan slowly opened his eyes. His vision was blurry, and something brown filled his field of vision. Avan squinted and blinked, trying to understand what had happened and somehow trying to comprehend where he was.

Only very slowly did it dawn on him again, and he remembered the situation, his stupid heroism, and a huge slap in the face that had catapulted him straight into a faint.

What had the guy been babbling about at the end? His brother Adrian...? Avan pondered between clenched teeth as he struggled to sit up, still trying to see more clearly. His brother? The one who had chased Yue? OH crap, really now? He groaned further as it dawned on him who the guy must have been and why they had shown up in Cyntha.

Inwardly groaning even louder, and slowly becoming aware of the entire extent, Avan pushed himself extremely slowly and powerlessly off the floor, which he now recognized as such. Below him, and what had taken up his entire field of vision when he first opened his eyes, were dirty and filthy brown wooden boards on which he had been lying.

Groaning, he sat down and let his back rest against something cool that was behind him. Finally sitting up at least a little, he realized with eyes closed again in pain that he had scratches all over his body and his whole head felt like mush. This feels like a fucking concussion. As if I had been hit by a car and thrown a few meters across the asphalt...

He carefully grabbed his head with his right hand and aching limbs, while his left hand rested on the ground to give him a little more balance and not fall over again immediately.

His right cheek burned like hell, and he felt dried blood that must have leaked from his right ear when he received that blow. No wonder... Not only a concussion, but also a burst eardrum, or whatever the blood from my ear means... That explains my extreme headaches and balance problems!

Groaning, Avan dropped his hand again and leaned his head back wearily, only now noticing that the coolness behind him was not a wall, but rather bars of iron or something similar, in the space between which his head now rested. As if I didn't have enough problems already... Avan grumbled to himself, slowly opening his eyes again and staring at his legs stretched out in front of him. But before he paid attention to his situation and the place he was in, he concentrated Akkalon's touch into his body to start the healing. At least he tried.

W-what? Where did my mana go? he suddenly realized with a racing heart, while his body shook and stuttered, almost like an engine without fuel trying to start and failing. I... can't feel my mana anymore!

He frantically sent out his inner feelers and tried to explore his innermost in a partial meditation, but immediately encountered an invisible barrier, followed by a painful cry on his part.

Some giggles and hilarious laughter followed, from some distance to his left, which Avan did not fully perceive at this point, however, in pain.

"Ouch!" He groaned at the painful sting he could feel all over his insides but couldn't pinpoint the source. Avan raised his hands to his heavily throbbing head and blinked again. "What was that?" He whispered as his vision slowly cleared, and he again stared at his legs, this time slightly cramped and contracted.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something metallic glinting, and jerked his head around, causing another groan and a headache, as if he had just plunged a knife into the middle of his left brain. A few seconds later, he looked up again, this time more cautiously, as he stared at the black and silver object, which was directly on his left wrist. What the hell is that?

Startled by this foreign object, he tried to identify this bracelet but received only a yawning blankness as an answer in the back of his mind, as if nothing had happened.

Continuing to stare at this dark bracelet, he didn't notice the rustling sound to his left until something touched him on the shoulder, and he was startled, which only sent another jolt through his head.

"Sorry..." Came a scratchy voice suddenly out of nowhere, and Avan heard a little clearer for the first time, but at the same time, he confirmed that his right auditory canal was really very damaged.

Slowly, this time careful not to make jerky movements again, Avan looked around to his left.

Avan found himself looking face to face with a cautiously smiling old woman, who seemed to smile at him with compassion and uncertainty. He couldn't tell the exact color of the woman's hair, as her disheveled hair stood tangled and dirty short from her head in all directions. Her facial features, despite dirt and all kinds of scars, told Avan enough to at least estimate her age as very old.

The woman watched him closely and when she was sure she had his attention without startling him again, her cracked mouth opened again to speak in rough and raspy tones. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to... scare you..." She addressed Avan, but always with short pauses between a few words, apparently to catch her breath. "The bracelet... prevents you from... from accessing mana..." She continued sluggishly. She shook her head wearily, almost as if she needed to get rid of a bad memory. "But, that... most important thing now... Check on... the little one they threw in here... with you."

At the mere mention of another female person, Avan's head flashed again, and he ignored his razor-sharp headache under sudden adrenaline to look around frantically and also to see properly for the first time where he actually was. Yue! his mind jumped, and he felt awful about having completely forgotten her.

He found himself, much to his suppressed amazement and directly blanked out, in a slightly rocking prison carriage. The dirty wooden boards, which were rough and had splinters of wood sticking out all over, made up the floor of the small cart, and the entire cart was surrounded by metal bars that converged a little more than a meter above him. The metal of the bars had also seen better days and was slightly rusty here and there, but showed scratch marks everywhere.

Aware of the situation, but pushing it far into the background, Avan crawled with a groan and gritted teeth to his right, where he saw a very familiar fox girl lying on the wooden boards. Yue had been slumped, framed by her fiery hair, with her face turned away from him. As he crawled frantically towards her, his hands suddenly became clammy and he stared down in shock for a moment at the soaked boards, which had taken on a reddish-brown moist tone. She was bleeding to death! Avan thought fearfully, and ignoring all the blood, he immediately found himself with her and gently turned her over, placing her head in his lap.

Her hair fell down around his bare legs and soaked up some of the blood, which was now dripping down his right leg. Having her so close, and lying on her back, Avan could also finally see the cause of Yue's blood loss. Where her leather armor had once been, she had only her undershirt on, in the middle of which a red and copper hole was staring at him, which had soaked her undershirt around a puncture wound.

When Avan saw them lying there like that, tears came to him, which at first slowly and then more and more strongly made their way from the corners of his eyes down his cheeks to land dripping on the bloody floor. He blinked, and a few tears landed on Yue's pain-ravaged face. Avan could no longer think clearly, and held Yue's body in an internal stare as tears continued to run down his face, even though he didn't know what had gotten into him.

Another tear landed on Yue's face, and a groan went through the small and fragile body as she suddenly opened her eyelids, startled and dilated.

"Yue!" Avan cried out in a low voice, his own voice also croaky, though not quite as bad as the older woman's. The foxgirl blinked once, then another, and a recognition flitted across her eyes as she looked at Avan. "Avan?" Came a whisper from her to him, and her left hand slowly shakily moved up to land on his right cheek. "I thought... I thought he killed you!" She told him, stuttering, and burst into tears as well. "I saw you hanging lifeless in that man's hand! Oh God, Avan! I'm so glad you're alive..." she whispered hoarsely, and a glint in her eyes accompanied the tears that ran down her cheeks, mirroring his.

Avan, not trusting his voice at the moment, gently caressed her right cheek with his hand, wiping away a few tears.

Suddenly, a voice came from outside the car, commenting sarcastically and nastily. "Oh, if it isn't the oh-so-great Avan that everyone in Cyntha adored so much. The mysterious stranger who suddenly appeared and left everything I had built up in ruins!" the voice ended up angry and dripping venom between gritted teeth. Avan knew this voice from somewhere, and turned his head around to the right, still with wet cheeks, and looked with widened eyes into the face of a person whom he would never have suspected to be here. "You... Traitor!" He hissed angrily, still careful not to make any jerky movements with Yue's head on his lap.

Outside the iron bars of his carriage, with a devilish smile and angry eyes, stood a ranger known to Avan. "Dunkin, you snake!"

The one addressed laughed in a gleeful manner. "Surprised? Not even that filthy cunt of Eve knew any better! And then comes such a good-for-nothing like you, and everything goes down the drain! And my reputation as well, after my boss Adrian was murdered by your doing!" He hurled the tirade hatefully at Avan through the bars, and grabbed the bars with both hands. "And now look at you! Filthy, cut off from all mana! And holding the dying foxgirl of a whore in your arms! HAH! And that was just the beginning, oh mighty Avan!"

Dunkin the traitor laughed loudly and looked Avan in the eye with satisfaction. Avan only growled back in hatred, and blanked out the traitor to deal with him another day, when he wasn't holding a dying person in his arms.

Yue was, immediately followed by Elisa, one of the few people Avan had met on Aorus since his arrival in this world and called friends. Seeing the young girl now so battered and dying broke something else inside him and his tears slowly dried up. The clamor of the man in front of the wagon completely suppressed for the moment, he turned his attention back to Yue, this time with a determined expression on his face and a hard look.

"What happened to you, Yue?" He whispered softly to her as he gave his all, trying to ignore any pain and let his mana flow into her body. As he struggled with this barrier that had arisen within him, she opened her mouth ever so slightly and haltingly told him what had happened after he fainted.

Apparently at the same time that the leader of these slavers had killed the guild master, a kind of determination flared up among all the adventurers in the square, and probably from lack of mana and exhaustion, he had wanted to retreat with avan over his shoulder.

Yue had stood there frozen and rooted to the spot until she saw that Avan was being taken away. She wanted to help him, to reach him, no matter how hopeless it was, but she didn't get far when suddenly Eve's group member Dunkin blocked her way. She knew immediately that he was up to no good, and had rushed toward him with daggers raised, trying to get past him as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, her plan hadn't quite worked out that way, and it had become clear after a few seconds that with her lower level, she had no chance against the more experienced ranger. Hatefully, he had thrown words at her, and when she had tried again to get past him with a maneuver, he had been enraged and had sunk his short sword into her belly.

Yue, according to her story, had briefly collapsed in fright and shortly thereafter fainted from loss of blood, waking only now and then as her valuables were roughly removed and she was finally thrown into the wagon.

During the halting narration, Avan had nodded repeatedly, looking down sympathetically at the weak and now trembling foxgirl, doing his best to somehow let even a hint of mana flow out, but just couldn't access his mana. Not even his character interface was accessible anymore, and after a brief thought, he remembered that the entire system of this world was shaped by his own mana.

"Avan, it is all right..." Yue whispered to him, looking at him with pain but a trace of happiness in her eyes. "I'm just glad you're actually still alive... The only friend I had left..."

Slowly, Yue's eyes fell closed, and Avan, despite his tough facade, got a brief shock and quickly felt for her pulse on the side of her neck. After a few seconds of relentless uncertainty, he sighed once, her heartbeat slowly throbbing beneath his fingertips.

As if this event had broken the spell, he suddenly heard the delighted evil laugh again right at the bars. Avan slowly turned his head to the side, and when Dunkin saw his gaze, he flinched briefly and inadvertently took a step back, away from the wagon and the beast that was staring hatefully at its prey.

Not a second later, as if he had to prove himself, the man who had just flinched took a step backward, grabbed the bars again with both hands, and stuck his face as close as he could in front of two bars. "You can't do anything to me anymore! And what a shame that this brat is already dead, because otherwise we would have had another toy in our ranks. All the joy she would have brought us! And just think of all the new experiences she would have had with us real men! But no! The stupid whore had to die of a simple belly wound!" Dunkin said spitefully and almost spat at the end, when he verbally attacked Yue.

Without realizing it, the traitor suddenly stared directly into Avan's eyes, who, after gently placing Yue on the floor, had lunged forward and grabbed Dunkin by the throat, right between the bars. Gasping and suddenly not so sure of himself, the man tried to push himself away from the bars and wildly punched the hand that had grabbed him by the neck.

Avan, with his sixty levels and stats higher, had no problem crushing the man's windpipe even without mana. After only a few seconds, Dunkin stopped wriggling, and one last effort later, the man fell to the ground as if an invisible puppeteer had just cut all the strings simultaneously.

Satisfied and his rage at least somewhat quenched, Avan turned away from the bars again. Out of the corner of his eye, he could briefly see an anxious flare from the old lady, but it quickly changed to satisfaction as she stared at the dead man.

He crawled back to Yue, took her head gently onto his lap again, and ignored any outside influences as he slowly and gently stroked Yue's hair. Outside, there was a commotion, and black hooded guards had spotted the body, and even the giant of a man who had knocked Avan unconscious with a single blow came by, took a single glance inside the wagon, looked down briefly at the dead man at his feet, and barked a few orders before walking away again. But Avan was oblivious to all of this, lost in his thoughts and feverishly searching for a solution to Yue's problem.

He racked his brain, searching all his memories for a solution, and couldn't even make a bandage for the wound, because everything he found in the wagon had to be more than just dirty and teeming with bacteria.

Avan felt for his bond as a dungeon, and let out a relieved sigh when he could feel a vague but very distant connection that still seemed to be there.

As he thought about this and his uniqueness as a dungeon, he mentally took further steps. He tried to draw mana from his surroundings and let it flow into Yue, but just couldn't grasp it. Sighing deeply, he realized the problem. I have always used my own body as a medium and a way to focus the mana. Unlike Horn, who can use the dungeon directly... I have never learned or tried to use the mana of the dungeon and my sphere of influence directly myself...

And he quickly realized that he couldn't access the senses as a dungeon either, but he could feel that everything was still there, just not accessible without deeper training.

Suddenly, a memory flashed through his subconscious. Avan remembered something important, something he should not forget. Something he had been told only a short time ago.

He sat there, gently stroking Yue's hair, racking his mind about what was on his tongue.

Abruptly, as if someone had opened the floodgates, it came back to him, and Avan was startled out of his thoughts.

Akkalon! His gift, the clue! I can, with mutual consent, bind others to me! And when my bound dungeon creatures die, their souls remain with me until I can revive them!

Suddenly full of energy again, despite aching limbs, muscles and the strong throbbing headache, he shook Yue slightly and looked at her ashamedly and apologetically as she blinked tiredly and opened her eyes. "Yue! Please, accept!" Before Yue could say anything or retort, she looked him in the eye with a weak expression and her gaze slowly slipped into emptiness.

Avan, aware that every second counted, focused on his feeling as a dungeon. On the feeling he had had when he had offered Horn the covenant. How it had felt, groping for the creature, his will to bind it to him.

Yue suddenly groaned, and opened her eyes once more. But instead of looking at Avan, she looked through him. The light in her eyes fluttered briefly, she blinked once, then again. And stared lifelessly into nothing.

Avan didn't know what had happened, but he was shaking. He stared down at the lifeless foxgirl, and into her empty eyes, which seemed to stare over his shoulders into the sky. His heart stopped for a moment, and an incredible sadness overtook him, a tightness in his chest that took his breath away. But instead of crying, his eyes looked hard into Yue's, and he vowed to hunt down and destroy the entire organization of those people who had caused Yue all this suffering, and not to let a single guilty person live. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, despite the painful tugging at his heart and the tightness on his chest.

I will hunt you. I will kill you. And I will not rest until I have found and exterminated the last of you! He screamed inwardly at this injustice.

A few seconds passed, and in the meantime, the old woman had joined him and sadly laid a hand on his right shoulder and pressed it gently.

"I'm so sorry..." She whispered in her dry rough voice, and Avan turned his head to the right and stared hard into her eyes.

She was about to open her mouth and say something else when suddenly there was a shimmer and golden reflection on her face, and Avan jerked his head back to look at Yue's body.

What he saw there abruptly freed him from any tight feeling and a triumphant warmth spread throughout his inner being.

Yue's entire body dissolved into familiar golden sparks, which rose a meter into the air before suddenly fading.

"It worked! Yue you sly fox, you did it after all!" He whispered in awe at the spectacle of golden lights in front of him and above his lap.

All-day long, the guards and slavers tried to ask the new slave about what had happened to the fox girl's body, but all they got from the prisoner was an evil smile. The older woman in the same slave wagon also only told the same story as the other slaves nearby had seen. A golden glow had appeared and the fox girl had dissolved into golden particles.

No one, not even the giant who had captured Avan, could make sense of it.

And so it came to pass that at the end of the day they only whispered about it and simply dropped the case, while the slave caravan moved on towards the west, a somberly plotting new slave in the rear wagon, who finally slept and in his waking hours grinned wickedly at the guards all around.

---