Along a dark and dreary path, a young man steadied his steps. An uphill hike on rough terrain wouldn’t have usually phased him, but at this time, sweat was running down his body in buckets.
On his right shoulder rested a beautiful young fae with red hair. She was currently in a muddled state of mind, babbling incoherent sentences; on his head sat a small and peculiar white-furred creature, yanking at his hair to urge him towards a particular direction.
The two burdens each held responsibility for the young man’s poor condition, but the one who was mostly to blame was someone else.
Roa Fariche scowled with staggered breaths, “I don’t know how, but you do anything like that again and I’m chopping you off.”
“Huh? Do what, savior? Solitaria doesn’t understand?” A coy tone rang in Roa’s head; he could imagine a whimsical lady with pale-blue hair and porcelain skin looking quizzically at the sky, an index finger rubbing her pink lips.
Roa winced, a resigned sigh escaping his mouth, ‘Her mind flits from thought to thought. Is she just a remnant of the Mad Calamity’s spirit, or a ghost that clung to me when I escaped the afterlife?’
It was of no use directing his anger at the lunatic. Regardless of Solitaria knocking him out just because she was excited about seeing the small creature sitting on his head, at the very least, she had allowed them to momentarily escape harm.
The problem was with how she did it.
Taking his body hostage, it was a simple thing to just push everybody out of the wooden stake’s path. Solitaria just had to strain his mana paths with magic that his current red-tier spirit couldn’t handle, however amazing a feat it was. Adding that he had to run away carrying the woodland’s princess, Roa’s body was crying out loudly for relief.
“Just a little bit further to go!” Although that was the case, arriving at a safe location took priority, he had to endure.
Within the dim surroundings and vision-hindering fog, it was difficult to get his bearings. Roa was thankful that on top of his head sat the only working compass in the area.
“Hey! Little runt, I felt a breeze behind my head! You better not have torn out any more of my hair!—Gah! What did I just say!?” It seemed the infant chalk pygmy took offense at Roa’s tone, and pulled harder on his hair than it should have. Roa swiped his free hand to smack the fellow, but missed the timing as it deftly jumped off and away from his head.
“Wah! Savior, look! It went into a cave! Is it the little cutie’s house? Do you think there will be more of them inside!? Ahh! Hurry inside! Hurry inside!!!”
Solitaria didn’t bother to hide her excitement. Roa ignored her the best he could, but her continuous shrieks couldn’t help but make him increasingly livid. Sadly, there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t actually cut his own arm off. That would be a loss he could not bear.
‘How frustrating…” Roa sighed as if a part of his spirit had left his body. “At least until I get a decent accomplishment in magic. I would rather avoid having to rely on that accursed blade again!’
–Jack. The cursed weapon that wouldn’t allow him to use magic—gluttonous and insatiable for mana. Roa called the blade a fitting name.
Why Jack?
There were many tales about men named Jack; one in particular, a fairytale that Morrow once told him, about an idiot who sold his family cow because he wanted to eat more beans—how starved of beans was he? —A fairytale that spun quite a nonsensical web, as Roa recalled.
In this Jack’s case, Roa was glad that he had procured a certain item for it earlier on. He wasn’t sure if it could contain Jack, but at least having it meant he could try.
Inside his shirt pocket, there were the two things he kept secured: one, the stained burlap pouch he had in his possession for as long as he could remember; the other, a storage pouch—the adorned magical pouch that could allow one to store a variety of things within a spatial pocket.
—Spatial pockets were byproducts of research on void magic, specifically on arcane waypoints. Storage pouches came about through a method of containing these spatial pockets within certain objects. There being less than ten storage pouches known to have been distributed spoke a lot about the intricacy and difficulty in manufacturing them.
Thinking about the pouch, Roa recalled a part of his past.
The maker of the storage pouch, Abertein’s Lazy Tinkerer—a genius inventor; most if not all the ideas that were conceived by him were inspired solely by his extraordinary laziness.
Roa clicked his tongue with envy at the sort of genius he could never hope to match, ‘To think that that guy initially referred to them as grocery bags… I’d only managed to get a storage pouch after kissing up to him for so long…‘
Although the names of the genius tinkerer’s inventions weren’t given much thought, with regards to their use and practicality, Roa held great confidence in his old friend’s work. It was quite fortunate that he came across one of them right before the start of this current predicament.
Instead of wielding Jack and having it forever bound to his arm, he could just hide it away inside the storage pouch until it was needed.
“There aren’t any more of him inside the cave,” Roa said, answering Solitaria’s earlier excitement about seeing more chalk pygmies. He continued, donning a mischievous smile, “Don’t worry, though. We’ll be able to see something much more interesting later on.”
Roa halted his steps. In front was a hill comparable to a small mountain, devoid of any plant life. —The bald man’s head, he called it.
Except for the entrance to what seemed like a small cavern, there was nothing else worth noting. He continued into the cave, having no qualms about the earthen maw inviting him into the pitch darkness when he already knew what was inside.
When they entered the cavern, past a certain point, Solitaria gawked, “Gya! Savior, look at this place! The little thing has great taste in decorating!”
It was no longer pitch black. An imposing atmosphere immediately caused Roa to draw heavier breaths. There, scattered all around, were objects blinding and numerous. Solitaria was referring to them.
A lance that glowed with great divinity, a Holy Lance; an ominous spear, oozing with the resentment of dragons; a Demon-Slaying Sword that would fit perfectly in the hands of a chosen hero; the Wing-Clipping Scythe; Hugle’s Bow—Roa could recognize most of them.
Objects that would certainly draw one’s attention and greed. They were all either strung up on the wall with dead vines, or planted firmly erect into the ground.
What lit up the dark cavern with awe-inspiring majesty were weapons of legends, capable of tearing the outside world asunder; each was an artifact capable of holding the influence of an entire kingdom.
“Bah!” Roa scoffed, before laying down the potato sack he carried against a smooth rock. As he stood back up, he continued, “These objects are nothing but for the eyes to see and for the heart to hunger, mere trinkets.”
The treasure-laden path did not manage to arouse his greed, at least, not like it did once before. Roa was much like Solitaria the first time he came here—a kid who had wandered into a confectionery shop for the first time, eager to taste everything being sold. Now, he wouldn’t even pass a glance at the weapons that could cause the outside world to drool rivers.
Roa left Ariene and walked past the shiny stuff, going directly towards a dark corner filled with the thick stench of rust. There, bits and pieces of scrap iron went randomly flying out from a pile of trash, Roa took a swift step to the right and evaded an old dagger that was thrown towards his face.
He raised an eyebrow at the chalk pygmy peering from within the pile of scrap iron. Its beady crimson eyes were squinted and its nostrils flared aggressively. Roa asked, “Hey? Did I do something wrong, what’s up with you all of a sudden?”
There was definitely something weird with its behavior, he thought. From the short time they reunited, he could tell something was off. Roa pondered deeply while a broken hatchet flew past his cheek, then half of a spear flung by the side of his stomach, and then, the edge of a corroded sword pierced the ground in front of him.
The moment an old dagger aimed at his precious manhood, Roa snapped, catching the old dagger with his bare hands and snapping it in two. “Hah! I knew it! Little runt, I knew it! It’s because of Jack isn’t it!? You seem to know me—you remember, don’t you?”
“If that’s the case, then let’s speed things along. If you’re gonna give it, then give it! What’re you making a big deal of?” Roa was unaware but when he said those words, the chalk pygmy grew more incensed.
Different kinds of scrap metal were suddenly flung at him, each maliciously aimed to obstruct his chances of fostering descendants.
“No… Could it be!?” Roa dashed forward while swinging his hips wildly. He picked up the flailing chalk pygmy by the scruff of its neck and rifled through the pile of scraps.
“It isn’t here… It isn’t here! Where’s Jack!?” Roa exclaimed, a chill crawling down his spine. He brought the chalk pygmy up to his eye level and posed a question, “You… Did you give it to someone else?”
The chalk pygmy replied with a grunt and a scoff, rolling its head as if saying, “As if I would do such a thing.”
‘How is that possible?’ Roa exclaimed inwardly. ‘I’m sure that Ariene and I were the first ones to enter the Spirit Domain. Unless… Those two were beside us when the root appeared. Seeing as Ariene is here, they’re most likely to be roaming around as well.’
There were two potential people that could have arrived here before either him or Ariene. There was the son of the aristocrat, Novis Philitte; and then there was the second potato sack, Yuria Illyas. By an extremely off chance, one of them could’ve stumbled upon the bald man’s head and picked up Jack.
Roa breathed an anxious sigh. It surely wasn’t good news that they were here. And if they’d gotten their hands on that particularly rusty blade, it would become a waste of their talents as mages.
“Savior, why do you two play around with those dirty things? Why not pick up one of the shiny ones over here?”
“Huh?” His headache only worsened. Roa turned his head towards where he was beckoned. There, a faint image of a young woman, Solitaria, hovered about the Holy Lance that was jutting from a rock.
Roa blinked twice. He shook his head before blinking a third time to ascertain his sanity.
The faint image turned into a small lizard scurrying atop the hilt of the Holy Lance. Seeing this, Roa took his left hand and turned it front and back. There was something there that hadn’t been there before—a brand that wrapped around his arm, glowing brightly with the cyan hue of mana.
He was certainly a special kind of idiot if he couldn’t put two and two together. Roa asked the pale blue lizard, “Hey, since when have you been able to do this? And what’s this you left on my arm?”
The brand, as well as the reptile, was around the size of Roa’s forearm. Solitaria tilted her scaly head, only blinking innocently at his query and not answering, which no doubt exasperated Roa further.
A seed of rage was budding.
Roa wasn’t too fond of surprises, yet, from the moment of his regression he welcomed one surprise after the other. The one responsible for most of them? —Solitaria’s big shimmering eyes had Roa’s stomach continuously churning with unease.
“Haa…” Roa disregarded his own curiosity and answered Solitaria’s question. ”Don’t bother with those things. They’re all junk. Worthless.”
The ‘legendary’ weapons scattered about were only put there for display. They couldn’t be taken out of the Spirit Domain, rather, if they were taken out, they’d become useless scraps of iron—imitations of the actual things.
They could be used barely once before they broke down, and that was the best case if they retained a broken spirit.
If there was someone who knew best about the insignificance of a broken spirit, then who else but the oh so pitiful One-Armed King?
Roa did his best to ignore the pale blue lizard restlessly scuttling about the cave, and continued what he was doing. Eventually, with a sluggish yawn, the light from his arm faded and Solitaria disappeared.
—End of Chapter 12
