‘It was this thing!?’ Roa’s eyes widened at the sight of the familiar draumadite box. ‘A year from now, a root appears in the middle of the academy—no wonder! They were using it to perform yearly assessments!’
According to his memories, a calamity would befall Luveris Academy in his second year. The initial wave of occurrences regarding the Spirit Domain would ensue as Erduin’s roots appear for the first time—Luveris Academy being one of the first points of emergence. Now, merely one week since his return, that root had emerged.
‘What did I do wrong? How could this happen?’ Roa broke out in cold sweat, his thoughts being that he had messed up majorly.
Could he clear the domain as he was now? Maybe not, but there were other people capable of doing so present. However, he refused to leave the problem alone for them to solve.
‘They would take too long. A lot of people might die, just like back then.’
Currently, he couldn’t recognize a lot of the people inside Luveris Academy. Most of them had been present in the academy for only one year.
The young noble, Novis, Roa only had a vague impression of; Yuria Illyas as well—the person it seemed that his good friend Lucas Hargan was searching for—for Roa to not recall a single thing about her despite attending the academy at the same year, it was most likely that she perished within the Spirit Domain’s first root.
Roa took a step forward, intending to go towards the root. But before he could return to the mana curtain, his path was barred by the shade with his old likeness.
“Son of a lich! —Get out of the way, you one-armed bastard,” Roa cursed, but as he spoke, he shifted his gaze from the shade to the root, noticing an abrupt change occurring to it.
The root curved in towards itself, forming a half circle. At the center of its arc started a small, ethereal hue of blue slowly enlarging within the confines of the root—a vortex of mana spun into existence.
A pleasant sound similar to the toll of a bell rang from its conception, then peculiar-looking butterflies emerged from within the vortex. One fluttered ahead of the others and landed on the shoulder of the shade standing in front of it.
Silently, Roa’s shade bent down, picked up its blade and raised it towards the mana curtain, with the edge pointing directly at Roa. It spoke, with a small hint of awareness awakening in its eyes,
“I dare you…to say that again… you son of a lich.”
At the sound of its gravelly voice, its blade was engulfed with corrupt mana similar to what it emitted from its body, but instead of a haze of black it flickered with plumes of ghastly white.
“Jack…!” It yelled. “—Eat!”
The next thing that Roa knew, a gap was cut across the mana curtain and a butterfly that came from the root appeared in front of his eyes. Its appearance was illusory, as if his fingers would pass through if he tried to catch it. Nevertheless, it flew down and landed successfully on the tip of his nose.
It was then that he was overcome by a wave of nausea. His vision blurred and he suddenly couldn’t feel the ground on his feet—nor could he tell up from down.
This lasted for about a few seconds before Roa regained his senses. When he did, he was hit by a strong urge to vomit, but managed to hold it in.
Roa was familiar with the disorientation.
The sensation of using an arcane waypoint to instantly travel to another location, albeit with some subtle alterations; but it was those alterations that made all the difference. He knew he wasn’t simply whisked to another location. After a gap had been slit across the mana curtain, it seemed Roa had been pulled into the Spirit Domain.
“Haa… Can’t say I’ve missed this place…” he scratched the back of his neck, slowly taking in the familiar air. “It was like this the first time as well…”
Walking forward, each step sunk slightly into barren, lifeless soil. Overhead, and encompassing the borders of the horizon, a thick white fog prevented outside light from permeating, making it difficult to distinguish the exact time of day.
The seemingly bad weather suggested that the scattered mists weren’t in any way, shape or form, natural, as Roa could feel neither the dampness nor humidity cling to his skin. Nor was there the musty smell of the numerous dead trees scattered across the distance.
In the area where he was, he crouched beside one of the dead trees and spotted an eerie blue glow.
‘Once eaten, they’ll induce a state of euphoric hallucination,’ he observed.
Roa came upon a troop of mushrooms and singled out one that had an almost imperceptible difference in property to the others. After he took it into his hand, he bit off its cap, then sat down and closed his eyes to await its effect. A few minutes later, a peculiar sensation swept through his senses.
Strength had returned to his tired body, while an invigorating effect stimulated his red-tier spirit.
‘Hard to find these in the outside world—this particular one that has a beneficial effect, only a few sprout from a cluster of these Luminous Crowns.’
Roa stood up and stared into the distance. There was an eerie blue glow emanating from random locations, an abundance of Luminous Crowns making for a haunted atmosphere.
His aptitude for magic had always been a tragedy, but with the advent of the Spirit Domain and knowledge about the future, an opportunity to improve had arisen.
“It’s time to pick up mushrooms. —Fortunately, I got my hands on this thing!”
Roa grinned, taking out the storage pouch that a certain young noble once used as a mir pouch. He proceeded to munch on a few caps of Luminous Crowns while collecting, and was only satisfied after taking all the beneficial sprouts in the area.
“Bleh! They taste horrible!’ Roa heard a voice ring loud with disgust. “I thought they would taste good since you kept eating them—you must not eat much good food, savior.”
Roa turned to look at his surroundings, but there was no other presence other than his. Eventually, his gaze landed on his left arm. Roa pursed his lips and sighed, “The silence was good while it lasted. I was wondering when I would start hallucinating.”
The beneficial sprouts of the Luminous Crowns also had the effect of inducing hallucination. However, ingesting enough of it would have supposedly built up his immunity to the side effects.
“Hallucinating? What’s that, savior? Can you eat it? I want to try!” Roa heard the voice once more. Regrettably, it wasn’t that he was hallucinating—mentioning such nonsense, there was only one such person he could think of…
–Solitaria was here!
“It’s not something you can eat,” Roa replied sullenly. “Hallucinating is something that happens when you eat weird food—you end up doing weird stuff. You dance like an idiot; you talk to someone only you can see; or in my case, I’m talking to my hand. —Ah! If only I really were hallucinating…”
“You must talk to your hand a lot, savior, since you like eating weird things. What is dancing idiotically? Do you do that as well?”
Roa raised his head to the sky and took a deep breath, all while rubbing his temples to ease his growing headache. He would lose his mind if they continued this discussion, so he opted to change the subject.
“Solitaria, what happened back there at the training grounds?”
“Eh? What do you mean? I don’t remember.” Solitaria replied.
Roa was unable to tell whether she was playing coy, so he repeated her words,“—We were caught! We were caught! Ring a bell?”
“Caught? Ooh! Are we playing a game?”
“No!—Are you playing dumb!? Or do you really not recall?”
Inconceivable. Counting the time he was transported here, only a few hours must’ve elapsed. Roa could hear Solitaria’s grumbling, like she really was trying her best to fish out her memories. But how bad could one’s memory be to forget what had just happened?
“Then, can you tell me anything about how I came back from the dead? Or how is it that you say you are inside my arm?”
“Savior, you can come back from the dead!? Show me! Show me!”
“How about you come out from my arm? If you do, I’ll show you how to come back from the dead.”
“Ehh, no thanks—dying is no fun. They say it hurts, don’t you know?”
Roa raised his hands to his face and pulled on his cheeks, exasperated. What did he expect from this lunatic? He could waste hours going back and forth with Solitaria, but time was limited. If he took any longer then people would start flooding through Erduin’s root. It was best he ignored her and moved on.
A little while later, ahead of his path, were two small bushes that slightly shook.
One would have thought that it was because of a passing breeze, however, Roa’s keen eye caught a glint of something hiding in between them.
“He’s here. Time to greet the little runt,” Roa grinned.
He moved his hand up into the air, over his head, and then down to his side—his face followed the motion. A push of the left foot while his right foot slid forward; an arch formed from his back as he did a graceful leap.
“Savior?” Solitaria giggled in the background, “Is this dancing idiotically?”
Truly, Roa was moving in a way that resembled a rough dance. If one had to describe it in words, then a dog trying to do ballet would be a good fit. Roa held back on answering and continued with the performance, however, the flush of his face could not hide his embarrassment.
He tried to console himself, ‘—Can’t avoid the eyes of this lizard, but I can endure the shame as long as nobody else sees!’
As soon as the fear was voiced in his head, a chill ran down his spine. His ears caught a stifled laugh coming from behind one of the trees. However, he couldn’t stop the dance to check to see if someone was hidden as the two bushes ahead of the path had already begun to vigorously tremble.
‘I knew it was you! Hah! I wasn’t dancing for nothing! Hurry up and come out you little runt!’ Roa cursed with an eager and excited expression.
His efforts had borne fruit; a pair of red, beady eyes glowed between the bushes. It belonged to the creature that Roa was coaxing out, one that he knew had a particular fondness for dance. It was ready to reveal itself, and when it finally stepped out from the foliage, the loudest shriek that Roa had ever heard rang inside his head and quickly arrested his consciousness.
Eyes rolling back, Roa grumbled, “You… stupid lizard…”
—End of Chapter 10
Friendly fire was not turned off