+++ Alfon’s Perspective +++

“Ha... ha...” We were both panting by the time we had come in the door. Feeling unsafe in the smaller streets that the diner was located along, we ran for the last part of the return trip.

I stood in the dimly lit storage area, gripping my knee trying to catch my breath, while Saphira finally let go of my hand and just flopped onto the ground. I breathed a sigh of relief when she let go, she had been constricting my hand in a death grip.

For a girl that little, she sure has some strength. 

“Alfon? Saphy? Is that you?” A frail lady gingerly walked into the room with a concerned frown, “What happened?”

Saphira, upon hearing her words, jumped straight into the arms of her sister. The sight of her frightened younger sibling seemed to have surprised her greatly as she returned the hug.

“We ran into some trouble on the way back,” I informed, “don’t worry nothing happened to your sister.” I dusted off my legs as I stood up. “Sorry about the candies though, we dropped them on the way here.”

I moved to exit the room before I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned swiftly to observe Belserai’s worried face.

“What about you?” She asked gently.

“I’m sorry?”

“Are you alright?” She fretted.

“Oh,” I gave my best smile, “Yeah I’m fine.”

We shared a moment of mutual understanding before I retreated into the game room. Before leaving I could scarcely hear Belserai worrying over her little sister.

“Whatever am I going to do with you.” She sighed; “I told you not to go out didn’t I?”

+

Hm.

The events in this book are getting more concerning the more I examine them.

“Alfon Adelmire grew up as a troubled youth after losing his mother to a monster outbreak soon after arriving in Halyis.” I read to myself, “He was neglected in the manor, but soon became a troublemaker after realizing people would pay attention to him that way.”

Wow, that’s certainly a grim prophecy. 

“Through his antics it was discovered that he was a gifted mage, and the appropriate treatment was then awarded to him. He began to flaunt the favor he received and began bullying the other children. His actions only stopped when he was savagely beaten by Saphira Telderane. By the time he recovered the decision was made to send him to a mage school in Darisport in order to fix his behavior. ”

Ouch.

That would certainly hurt.

Though I am curious as to what I did in order for her to beat me that badly.

“Saphira Telderane.” I whispered to the book.

The prophecy book works in weird ways. From what I’ve gathered, you can ask about people or events if you have a clear image in your head and it will give you a vague description of what you’re asking for. If you ask it about things you don’t really understand or don’t have a clear picture of, it will give you an answer that is unintelligible.

It’s rather counterintuitive honestly. 

The only exception being the events at the Felhastor Academy  at Felinion. Both the characters and the occurrences there are described in shocking detail up until a certain point, with, or without prior knowledge. Afterwards, all entries in the book seem to stop.

The original Alfon Adelmire is granted a place in the Academy solely due to the magical ability he has and gets into... a lot of trouble with what I call ‘the main cast’.

Well, thankfully it's a long way off so I don’t have to worry about it. I entered the academy at age 17 or so, according to the book.

Snapping back to reading, I murmured the entry for Saphira Telderane. “Saphira Telderane, a gifted orphan from Kalsteris. Adopted into the household of Glyake Takemasu. Experienced a loving family before Glyake was called to take over the work of Cruthun Telderane. Lost her siblings in the Outbreak of Scorluk Forest and threw herself into swordsmanship and magic. Was called to serve as a knight for the upcoming war.”

Wow, she had it rough as well. Looks like the monster outbreak was really bad.

“Outbreak of Scorluk Forest.” I asked the book. Fortunately the Felhastor Academy events had a picture describing the outbreak in the character description of Belferon so I could visualize it in my mind for the book.

‘An outbreak perpetrated by an agitated monster population and made deadly by the appearance of a demon type creature.’

Oh.

I remember Prisilla telling me how deadly those things are. The demon-type monsters. So the outbreak was that bad huh?

Well, fortunately it seemed avoidable. Since it comes shortly after arriving in Halyis I can just wait it out by convincing mother and Glyake to go elsewhere in the meantime. It should be pretty simple convincing them if I have Rafine’s words backing mine.

I’ll inform her on the route to Halyis.

“Alfy. What doing?” I heard the soft voice of Nina.

“Oh.” I turned around to meet her watching over me, “There you are Nina. Where have you been?”  She wasn’t in the game room when I got back. Did she go upstairs?

“Clean up. Dirty.” She replied.

Oh she went to the washroom.

Seeing her close up I wiped a speck of red sauce off her face, it looks like she didn’t properly clean up after eating. “Did you eat some snacks while I was outside?”

She nodded once again, beaming with delight. If we had such good tasting snacks in the shop, why did Saphira even bother going outside?

“You didn’t trouble Glyake or anyone right?”

She shook her head.

“Hey Nina, while you’re here.” I didn’t plan to reveal it to Nina, but it would be nice to have someone to talk about this to. Nina also wasn’t dumb either, judging by how she still joined me during master Rafine’s lectures, so maybe she could see something I couldn’t. Though, I don’t think she’d believe me if I explain fully, so I’ll just give her a rough truth. “I stumbled on a really cool book. I think it tells the future.”

“Future?” She asked with a tilted head.

“Yes. I think there will be a monster attack after we get to Halyis. If we use your ability to detect when it will happen, we can save a lot of lives.” I proposed.

“Ability?” She tilted her head in the other direction. She looked like a metronome while doing that.

“Your ability to sense emotions. Can you sense monsters with that?” I asked. There seemed to be some evidence of this during our trip: whenever she wrapped her tail around me during our carriage rides it seemed to indicate that something bad was about to happen. This happened with Orily as well as some other monster encounters. I always thought it was her instinct but it was clearly more than that.

She thought for a bit before explaining: “Far away. No feel.”

“Ah that would be a problem then, since I don’t think the monster attack hit Halyis. In that case can you sense particular people if you know what they look like?” It was a long shot, but I pointed to a passage in the book.

‘The monster outbreak caused significantly more damage upon the death of Belferon’s mother, Helena, who was the only one capable of controlling the demon.’

If mother’s party wasn’t there to stop the demon, the outbreak might get out of hand fast, so I figured if we could also save Helena, then our chances for survival would sky rocket. Furthermore, given that Belferon was also someone close to the main cast, having someone like that in my debt was also a great result.

The problem was that the book of prophecy gives vague descriptions, so I don’t even know where she resides. 

Nina looked at the passage, then back to me, stared at me for a little bit, before responding: “No far. Okay.”

“I see, I see. Actually, could you tell me a bit about your ability first?” I realized that I haven’t properly asked about what her emotion sensing ability actually was. Maybe I’m getting the wrong idea here.

“No.” She answered plainly. 

...

Woah.

Alright then.

The smile on her face made it seem like she was mocking me, so I got a little upset. “Why not?” I asked, rather disappointed.

She moved her head side to side in a rhythmic fashion like a pendulum.

“Hey are yo-'' I began, before being cut off.

“Can’t.” She said monotonously.

“What do you mean?”

She remained silent.

I didn’t quite understand, but I figured it would be bad manners to push the topic when she herself didn’t care to talk about it. “Okay fine, but can you let me know if there is a woman nearby with braided bronze hair, dark green mage robes, and a ruby brooch?”

She nodded.

“Alright. Excuse me for a moment, I need to visit the washroom.” I picked up the book of prophecy with me.

Nina gave me a strange look.

I’m sorry Nina, but I have my ways.

I made my way upstairs and went into the furthest room on the opposite side of the restaurant. It was used for meal preparations I believe, but I wasn’t interested in that right now.

I took a careful look and made sure no one was around before I whispering to the book:

“Ninamoritis.”

The entry was as follows:

‘Ninamoritis Ashlyni Hascritor Melphis of Blackhorn. [Information unavailable] Rescued from the slaver den by her mentor and surrogate mother Freya [information unavailable] ability to sense [information unavailable] in a wide area around her. Very suitable for [information unavailable] and detection. [information unavailable]’

The entry stops there.

The whole ‘information unavailable’ thing wasn’t new, I had seen it several times already in the book. The situation with my mother and father was also unavailable. 

Still, that was because I didn’t really know my father. In comparison I had spent half of my life with Nina already, I thought the entry would be pretty detailed.

“So she was supposed to be saved by Freya huh?” I felt quite bad about taking her with me now. She would have surely had a better life with Freya. Speaking of which.

“Freya.”

‘Freya, Thousand Spirit, Fox of the Lost, [information unavailable]’

Well darn, it was worth a try.

++

“Alfon? Where are you?” I heard the call of Belserai, “Your adventurer friend is here to pick you up.”

I went back to the game room and tried reading in there, but Saphira was making so much noise talking to Belserai that I went upstairs after being unable to concentrate.

Nina followed me and snuggled up against me. 

It was nostalgic, and reminded me of our carriage rides while traveling. 

I am glad that Nina felt so comfortable with me, though her horns had grown longer recently so I felt them more when she turned her head.

I hope it doesn’t grow too long, or maybe it should be long? I’m not sure how Outlanders feel about their horns.

That being said, I need to be more wary of Nina’s ability now that I know about it, but was there any way to be wary of it in the first place?

Let’s just hope we don’t have to hide any emotions from her.

Nina lazily lifted her face hearing that we had to go, but she must have forgotten about her invisible horns because she sort of stabbed my chin with them. It didn’t hurt, but it was disorientating bumping into something you couldn’t see.

“Nina, be more careful.”

She nodded.

Our conversation was cut short as I heard a loud stomping coming up the stairs. I quickly hid the book in my backpack and pulled out some homework from Master Rafine.

“I’m here to bring ya back nya.” Prisilla announced as she swung open the door.

“Alfon? What were you doing in here?” Belserai was with her too.

“I wanted to find a quiet place to work on homework.” I answered, gesturing to the sheets of paper.

Prisilla shook her head, probably expecting something like this from me already. “Can’t say I’m surprised nya.”

“Prisilla I have a question” Out of habit I raised my hand, which made the beastwoman quite amused, “why do you carry healing potions when our party doesn’t have a priest.”

“I dunno. Ask your mother, she usually takes care of supplies nowadays.” She declared. “But if I were to wager a guess, it's probably because the church commits wayside robbery if you buy potions at their temples; better to just use your own. Plus it's not like we’re totally incapable of healing spells, Rafy can do the simplest ones nya.”

“Oh.” This was quite valuable information.

“And I suppose, it's a bit of an old habit that Donovan never dropped. There’s quite a tale to that one nyahaha.” Her tail flicked back and forth as she explained all this to me. Belserai, who was listening right behind her, also seemed quite interested.

“What’s with the question nya?”

I held up my left hand, revealing the wounds on my palm, “I scraped my hand when I was playing, would it be okay to heal this?”

Prisilla appeared rather uncensored and dismissed my worries upon closer inspection  of the wound, “Surface level nya. It would be a waste of coin, I’ll wrap you up later.”

“Oh, by the way Prisilla.” I spoke up before leaving. Given the name ‘Outbreak of Scorluk Forest’, and the fact that we passed by that same forest on our way to Halyis, it would be prudent to prepare more monster attacks than usual.

The creatures roaming about must be pretty agitated already.

“Nya?”

“I do remember you owe me three and half gold coins.”

“Nya...”

+++

The days leading up to the departure were quite busy.

Besides the magic lessons I had with Master Rafine, and the mealtimes I spent with mother, I spent every waking moment scanning the book or going out with Prisilla to buy items.

I gave the pretense of wanting to shop in the big city, and Prisilla treated it mostly as the antics of a child. That being said, it wasn’t like I could buy anything of serious value.

So I settled on objects that would distract or slow down monsters should they get too close.

Prisilla did have some questions why I was buying so many dried seafood snacks.

Monsters of this region like the taste of fish was the reason but I couldn’t say that so ‘I like them’ was the excuse I gave her. She ruffled my hair while complimenting me on my taste.

Perhaps I underestimated the buying power of gold coins because things were so cheap that I barely spent six silver, which was about a twentieth of a gold coin. Thus, Prisilla still owes me about three and a half gold.

It occurred to me during shopping that the outbreak could happen during our trip there, but that would have meant I changed the future somehow to trigger the attack earlier, which, despite how hard I think, shouldn’t be possible.

When Prisilla was busy I took full use of the extra time to gather every detail I could think of regarding the monster outbreak in the book, but given my limited knowledge I only managed to scrape up bits and pieces.

‘Monsters occurring around Halyis are frequently cleared out of the trading roads. The creatures that appear are often agile and the humanoids among them carry crafted weapons, as such, adventurers of this region specialize in dexterity and quick takedowns. ’

“Hm, what do you think Nina? Think I’m strong enough to take one down?” I asked her, lounging on my bed.

She shook her head.

“Hey! Master Rafine says I’ve got the makings of a great mage in me you know.” I jokingly acted hurt. “By the way, how come I never see you during my practical magic lessons?”

She pointed at me. “Mana. Different.” 

I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and quickly performed the practice motion of swapping my book for homework papers.

“Alfy dear, let’s go take a shower before bed. Sorry Nina, could you head back to Rafine’s room?” Mother told us. “We need to sleep early today, so we have energy for tomorrow.”

“Okay.” I put away the papers I had just taken out. While walking to the bathing area, it occurred to me that I really shouldn’t be so calm about taking a bath with a beautiful grown woman like my mother while having memories of my previous life.

I wonder just when I had gotten so comfortable with my life here. It wasn’t a bad thing, settling into this world, but the more I felt myself getting acclimated, the more I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was losing something.

That I wasn’t supposed to be here, that something or someone was still waiting for me, back in the world I left behind.

“Alfy dear, could you wash my back for me?” Mother smiled at me.

“Okay mom.”

Looking at mother, I wondered if it was truly okay to take the role of her child when someone else was already destined for it.

I shook my head abruptly.

Enough.

There were more important things to worry about.

The convoy leaves tomorrow.

And after that...

Halyis.

And the Outbreak of Scorluk Forest.