<Shino POV>

“What are the chances of such happening?” Allan said, clasping his hands.

“It’s not uncommon for humans being born with souls too strong for their body to handle, but they are usually born into renowned martial families, even so none of them had gained one of such pedigree,”

Allan then looked at me. “Why are you telling me this?”

“The seal on her mana channels as well as her own body can’t keep up with her growth,” I said, looking up at him.

“Her mana is the purest I have seen, but her body is weak. I am surprised she can even use magic, but here she is, using magical arts.”

“The seal needs to be revised, but I’m not all that good with rune lore or glyphs. So I’m coming to you, the renowned Runemaster himself, the best at Procyon academy.”

“Humph, you know that alright,” he said as he puffed out his chest. “But this is a tall order you have given me. I can’t just slap a rune on her and call it a day, something like this won’t take just a few days to get down either, I’ll need not only to examine her body I also need to know how it reacts to the different seals I place on her. Not to mention I need to path all her mana channels and anatomy.

I turned to him, craning my neck. I had an inkling, yet I couldn’t help but ask.

“What are you saying, then?”

“Basically, what I’m trying to say is this will take several months of trial, error and close supervision.”

I adjusted my sitting position. I knew very well what he meant. Him staying here to monitor Atsumi was out of the question as he had his own duties to attend to, meaning he will have to take her with him.

“I can understand your reluctance, but as it stands now, I can only do so much. I have already sworn to complete my duties in Procyon and I can’t just up and leave.”

Sending Atsumi to a place where I couldn’t monitor her was something I wanted to avoid. She was a curious girl, always getting herself in places she shouldn’t be, so I knew eventually she would want to leave, but I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t exactly sure she was ready.

“I need time to thi...”

Just then, a ripple in the ambient mana caused my body to tremble slightly. I got up and scanned my surroundings. Simple changes in mana would never affect me like this. 

“You ok?” He asked, tilting his head.

I ignored his inquiry, instead paying more attention to this disturbance. I then realized that this wasn’t ambient mana, but my connection with the gate. It’s very faint, as if my senses were being dampened, but I knew for a fact. 

“Something is wrong with the gate.”

As the Gate guardian of this Temple, my duty is to watch over those who enter and exit. If anything malevolent attempts to pass through, it is my job to exterminate it.

It’s a shared knowledge that long-dead civilizations created these gates, but no one knew for sure, and frankly, I didn’t care who made them. But these gates play a major role in this world as they not only bring death and misery, but riches, power, and glory alike.

We raced to the main temple. We ran on for several minutes before realizing we weren’t getting any closer.

“What the hell is this?” He said looking around. “Didn’t we just pass through this area?”

“Damn, this isn’t good,” he replied.

It’s obvious we were in a trap, made to keep us here. This only worsened my sense of urgency. You don’t just get trapped in a straight path by pure chance.

“We seem to be caught in a bubble dimension that repeats itself as we near the end,” Allan said as he scanned the area.

Trapping us in a strange loop and dampening my connection to the gate meant that this was no ordinary person.

“Magic on this scale. Why is someone at this level targeting the temple?” Allan said, still contemplating his next actions.

“I could only think about that cultist group,” I replied 

“So they have started moving again then,” 

I stood pondering why they would attempt anything, and that’s when I thought about Atsumi.

That shouldn’t be the case, as they didn’t know of her existence. I made sure of it. Even if they knew about her, she would just look like a regular human to them.

So why…

“Oh, it seems that in their haste to trap us, they left a few cracks,” Allan said, as if he had figured out something.

“Or maybe they never intended to trap us for long.”

He held up his staff and runes appeared out of thin air, forming some sort of terminal which he then fiddled with. 

As soon as the spell runes manifested, the firmament cracked and shattered. A single minotaur suddenly burst from the falling fragments and charged us.

We both jumped out of the way as the hoofed creature landed before us. 

I summoned my Odachi and faced the monster.

“Did they really send a mere minotaur to hold me?” I said aloud.

With the wave of my hand, a screeching wind blew through the cryptid, shredding it to pieces and stripping every tree within the vicinity of their leaves. 

“Well, that was kind of disappointing,” Allan said, holding his chin.

With that, whatever had entrapped us crumbled, and I immediately felt the countless beings wandering through this crimson hellscape before me. Extending my senses over the entire mountain, I quickly identified the unfamiliar mana signatures.

To think they could nullify my mana since this much. 

“There in the armory,” I said to Allan, who was running beside me.

As I neared the scene, I felt them scurrying like rats. They knew we were coming.

“They are giving us the slip. We won’t make it in time,” Allan said, as he pulled out a long sword.

With that, I channeled my mana to my arms and grabbed my odachi. 

*Great Gale Magical Arts- Verdant Crescent*

A wind slash in a crescent shape, as tall as the tallest of forest trees, shot towards the building. The attack cleared the half-a-mile distance in a matter of seconds and it destroyed the small shed in a massive windstorm. Only it did not seem to hit its targets.

An additional person appeared from the thick fog. I had not even sensed their presence before then. They blocked my magical arts and then, after conjuring a portal. Needless to say, they had escaped 

I entered the destroyed armory, Allan close behind me, and took to the stairs that lead to the underground chambers.

Weird, they don’t seem to have taken anything. 

The runic blade that Mirion used was still hidden in a special place that only I knew of. 

Maybe I stopped them before they found the lock for the underground chamber, or maybe they simply didn’t find what they came for. I wouldn’t know for sure.

I turned toward the others and scanned the area. I sensed Timothy, who seemed to be with a muscular guy. Atsumi was not with the main group, and she was unconscious. 

I returned my odachi to its sheath and turned to leave the underground armory.

“Allan, let’s go. We need to help the others.”

<Atsumi POV>

I came to an unfamiliar place. It was bright out, but looking through the window, I could see it was nighttime. The room I was in was strange. All around me were walls forged of a strange crystal that glowed dimly. 

Curious I ran my finger across it and it glowed more brightly, as if my touch spurred it to life. I got up from where I was sitting and walked out of the room. I then found myself in a single corridor with multiple doors on each side. They were all locked shut, not even budging when I tried the handle.

After trying multiple doors, I lost interest and followed the corridor all the way to the other end, where a single door stood ajar.

I walked through it, and I saw my mom just outside the exit. There she was, deep in conversation with a woman I had never seen before, but also didn’t feel like a stranger. She had three pairs of snow-white wings and draped over her shoulders was long beautiful golden hair that had pink highlights at the end.

“Mom, where are we?”

“Oh, you’re finally awake,” they both said in perfect sync.

“She’s been wanting to meet you all this time. Let’s go see her,” the other woman said.

My mother remained silent, but nodded enthusiastically.

I looked around as we traversed the single pathway, all I could see was a vast white landscape and a night sky filled with stars. There were few noticeable features apart from a few towers, but anything smaller proved too hazy to see properly.

We came to a place that seemed to be an oasis, a lake surrounded by bamboo trees.

We approached it, and I spotted a young woman in a long dress. She was completely pale, and she danced elegantly on the lake. A veil covered her face.

Upon noticing our arrival, she stopped her dance and approached me with her hands held out.

Her presence was strange. More accurately, it was like I was looking at a dead person. Her mana was completely and utterly benign, yet still held a weight of absolute authority. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, no a beast, a monster, a being with an unparalleled existence. 

I backed away as she approached, digging my face into my mother’s chest. 

“It’s alright, she won’t hurt you,” she said as she caressed my hair.

I returned my gaze to the woman, her unblemished face half hidden by the veil, her outreached hands patiently waiting.

“Would you like to dance with me?” she said.

Encouraged by my mother, I walked over to her to take her hand. 

But before I could do so, she had removed her veil, and I got a full view of her face. At that moment, I froze.

It’s not that she was ugly or beautiful, it was as if she had no face or more accurately I couldn’t make sense of what I was even looking at. A creeping dizziness took hold of me and before I knew it I fell to the ground. When I tried getting up the stars were gone and I found myself looking at yet another unfamiliar ceiling.

A dream?

I had awoken in a small room; the air here was much cleaner than the miasma I was in before I fell unconscious. Bandages covered most of my body. My arms had numerous tendrils that spread up to my elbow. They were gray and gave off an ashy residue.

It was a clear sign of mana burn. Intense mana flow that not only fry your mana channels, but burns and chars  your body.

From what I understood, tempering your body through immersion in ambient mana and physical training helped increase your tolerance for mana.

Even though the Murasaki shrine was rich with wind attuned mana, my naturally weak body made it difficult to adjust to high concentrations of mana. My volatile internal mana only made this issue worse.

Ugh

I heave over in a coughing fit. My throat felt as if I had swallowed hot sand.

The attendants standing outside heard this and came to my aid.

“Lady Hoshiko, you’re awake.” 

“Some water please,” I said.

“I’ll go get the master,” said the other attendant.

I gulped down the jugs of water presented to me, not paying attention to the lone attendant that stared at me. 

Shino arrived 5 minutes later. She came in and sat next to me, concerned, as she scanned my body. She then looks at my face almost timidly.

“How are you feeling?” 

“My body hurts all over,” I said, almost in a joking manner.

“I’m sorry that I wasn’t there. This is my fault. I should have been there to protect you,” she said as she placed her hand on mine.

“What happened to the shrine?” I asked. “One moment I was walking toward the main temple, then suddenly  these things were coming out of nowhere.”

“It was a gate breach,” she answered.

She explained the situation to me and how she was unable to make it in time.

“I will take responsibility for falling for such a simple trick. I am unbecoming of a gate guardian.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “What happens now?”

“I might have to go into the gate. I’ll let you know what I will do later.” 

She placed her hand on my cheek and then gave me a gentle smile 

“For now, just rest. I will return to discuss with the others.” 

She then left without saying another word.

 

<Shino POV>

“Seriously, when we could finally secure funding after so long, this happens,” said one master, named Sanje.

“With this, our progress is reset. We don’t have the resources or manpower to enter the gate. Is there no way we can wait this out?” Seimei inquired.

I tapped the table with my redwood stained pipe and let out a puff of smoke, letting it fade before I turned my gaze to the room.

“Unfortunately, we can’t. Whatever those cultists did caused a strong cryptid to bind itself to the gate. As of right now, our only option is to get rid of it. We potentially risk this issue getting worse if we don’t deal with it.”

“A pity, with the lack of manpower and funding, we need help. I think we should just contact the elders in the capital.” Master Kinzoku then said.

Semei then shot up from his seat, clearly against the proposed idea.

“Are you crazy?”

“We don’t really have a choice. They should be able to gauge the danger level of this being, we also risk the chance of running into the culprits that caused this whole mess in the first place and if they are as dangerous as Shino says, we need at least adept level fighters,” Kinzoku replied.

“Adept? What makes you think those old bastards will just hand us skilled explorers and fighters like that for free?” Seimei rebutted.

What he was saying was true. Even though the emperor and the governing bodies in Idai had more than enough manpower to assist, they have been trying to get all gates present in Haakuni to integrate and fall in line. If we accepted help, there will most definitely be strings attached.

Gate sites themselves have always operated separately from their governing body. Of course, basic laws must be followed, but they can’t dictate how the shrines and temples containing the gate operate. But lately, they have started heavily taxing shrines that either remained neutral or downright refused their new unfounded mandates.

We, who were once one of the most prosperous temples in Haakuni, are now reduced to the state it is in now. Explorers now rarely use our gates because of this.

“I have no choice then, all  who are  in favor of accepting help from the capital say I?” Hashibara said, as he raised his hand.

Four of the masters followed suit, including all with a resounding “I.”

Seimei and I were the only ones who had not agreed. Even as the guardian where all my votes counted by two, there was still a majority. There was nothing I could have done.

“Then we shall prepare for the expedition,” said Hashibara.

…

Later that day, the meeting had already passed. We had taken refuge in the village located to the south side of the mountain. The temple was basically unlivable because of the miasma that still lingered there.

I headed to the Elf man with green hair. He listlessly sat on the branch of a tree, looking into the distance. On my approach, he turned around as if expecting me.

“Seems you have made your decision.”