Chapter 15: 15 – Regarding the Returning King’s Magic

“Alright, blade! Show me what you can do!”

Roa’s previous weapon—the cursed blade, Jack—was a glutton for mana. So much so that with the pitiful mana pool he possessed, and with his previously broken spirit, he could not utilize any magic. 

However, Jack wasn't actually a cursed weapon, it was only Roa calling it so. In fact, if he possessed even the slightest bit more talent, or if he had the chance to develop his spirit to accomodate a larger mana pool before it was broken, then he would have praised Jack as a blessed weapon instead! 

Now, with Jack seemingly in the arms of another, Roa chose to move forward with a different partner. 

While the goat monster, Gruff, uttered the last of its dying throes, he released the hilt of his blade and took a few staggered steps back. He watched as wisps of ethereal blue escaped the unmoving body—taking on the familiar shape of its vessel, Gruff’s body. 

The emergence of the fairy’s spirit. 

The brief moment where the spirit coalesced outside the body before rejoining the flow of the world’s mana—Roa had never seen it this clearly before.

General knowledge stated that one’s spirit was the connection between the body and the world’s flow of mana—in truth, the concepts surrounding the spirit were still largely vague. 

The spirit, or soul as some parts of the Waylurne Continent would call it, was a subject of research wherein, if all existing knowledge about the subject matter was compiled into a very thick book, only the first few pages would have had anything worthwhile written on them.

Roa marveled at the sight of Gruff’s spirit. “This is what a spirit looks like…? How am I seeing this? Is this a side effect of my experience with death?” 

What countless researchers would give to see what he was witnessing. The spirit was exceedingly beautiful, in contrast to the lifeless husk of the goat-faced monster fairy from which it emerged.

Motes of blue light shimmered as the spirit started to flicker, like the flame of a candle being blown gently by the wind, expressing its desire to return to the great flow of mana. However, it struggled. A small strand of the spirit still seemed tied down to Gruff’s body, making it unable to abscond.

“I see… So this is similar to how Jack would consume a spirit?” Roa figured what was happening at a glance. The blade embedded within Gruff’s stomach acted as an anchor, preventing the complete separation of the body and spirit. After coming into contact with fairy blood, it had begun its initial tempering, and was holding onto the spirit to use as its final reagent.

Fwip! A long and winding slurp entered Roa’s ears. 

It didn’t sound exactly how he recalled, rather, none of the sounds Jack had ever made sounded similar. The next minute, the fairy’s spirit funneled towards a single spot—a tiny mouth, just the size of Roa’s palm, smaller even.

“Burp!” A small, pale blue lizard huffed a breath of satisfaction. The spirit had not gone into the blade, rather, into the stomach of a lizard who’d somehow found its way onto Gruff's shoulder.

"Haa…?” Roa's eyes twitched with furious disbelief. “I really, really hate surprises…” he groaned. The blade's initial tempering was a delicate process! He didn’t expect for there to be any interruptions. 

”Jabbering lizard—what've you done this time!? That spirit was supposed to be for Jack number two!" Roa took a small pebble and slung it angrily; the pebble found its mark and hit Solitaria square on the top of her forehead.

“Ahk! Why?! Savior, how could you! I was just hungry!” The small lizard winced. She frowned and prepared to show an aggrieved expression, however, a mischievous idea popped into her head. She opened her mouth again and leapt towards the blade lodged in Gruff’s stomach.

“Hmm… Jack who?” she said with an insidious grin. “Savior, you know you haven’t spoken to me much, haven’t you? Promises must be kept, tsk tsk!”

Fwip! The next moment came as a surprise to Roa, more so than when Gruff’s spirit was eaten. The weapon, Jack’s potential replacement, was gone, suctioned into the abyss known as Solitaria’s stomach. 

“S-S-S-Solitaria… J-J-Jack!?!” Roa stammered, purple colored his face.

“No Jack!” Solitaria laughed haughtily. 

Thoughts immediately raced through Roa’s head, ‘She ate the blade… The lizard ate the… Is it a pocket? Is there a pocket in her stomach…? If so, then surely she should be able to take it out again?’

“Solitaria… Give me the blade!” Roa shouted with a stern voice, not intent on pandering to Solitaria’s playful mood.

“Hmph. No more bl–” A harsh glare prevented the smug lizard from continuing. Roa’s temper evidently reached a tipping point. She huffed two puffs of air out her nostrils, reluctantly conceding.

“Huh?” Roa felt an object fitting itself on his right hand. Looking down, he saw white fog congealing to form the shape of an elongated weapon. A sigh of relief finally escaped his mouth. 

“Did it work? —A clear blade with a misty edge, so this is what you look like. You are quite… beautiful.” Roa expressed his admiration at the formed weapon, however, a certain unrelated lizard’s bashful chuckle came back as a reply.

“Hehe, thank you, savior, but flattery will not excuse you from breaking your promise!” Solitaria huffed.

Roa’s eyes twitched. How should he handle this? Rubbing the space in between his eyebrows to calm his growing frustration, it was during this time that he noticed the reflection of two beady eyes covertly peeking from nearby.

“Solitaria, you see…” He turned his gaze towards the smug-looking lizard as he stood, and sank his hand into a bush, “I've been too busy lately—how about I give you something to play with instead?”

—What is this!? Put me back! Are you trying to feed me to a lizard!?

Silent screams seemed to pour out of the chalk pygmy’s facial expressions as Roa forced it out of hiding. The small creature’s confusion quickly alternated between Roa’s evil grin and an evidently, overly enthusiastic pale blue lizard’s glimmering attention.

Roa thought, ‘Alright, since the little runt will keep Solitaria busy, I’ll need to navigate on my own. Gruff’s out of the way, so I guess it’ll be manageable.’

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With the distraction out of the way, he strapped his new blade to his waist and began to walk towards his next destination.

“Urgh, that Gruff… Why couldn’t he just go down quietly.” Roa complained as he staggered through the dead forest, a result of enduring the earlier beating. Although, after just a couple of steps, strangely enough, he had recovered enough to resume walking normally. 

Roa’s injuries weren’t heavy, but they were by no means light. If inflicted on any common person, that person would need to lie in bed for the next couple of days to recuperate. This showed a mysterious resilience within Roa’s body. —The hardiness of an alley dog, as he liked to call it or… as he would like to leave the matter.

…Arriving at a certain clearing, a few wooden spears were planted on the bare ground here and there—it was a familiar scene, where he and Ariene had first fought Gruff.

Roa observed each of the wooden spears that were still intact. With no exception, all of them were inclined, facing the direction from which they’d been volleyed.

‘If I only need to head towards the center, then… That seems to be the way to go.’

The path towards the center couldn’t be seen through the surrounding white fog. Not only was one’s vision obscured, one’s sense of direction was also unknowingly being deprived. Of course, there was also the option of leaving a mark on each and every tree to mark his position, but doing that would take too much of Roa’s time. It was tedious and inefficient, and would prove to become even more confusing than before. 

It was an option for those who thought of themselves smart, but were actually easily taken advantage of. 

‘That damned Gruff had quite the fun leading me in circles back then! Good riddance!’ 

Gruff would often rewrite or mess with the marks he had left on trees. Roa experienced first hand being led in circles for days. He spat spitefully on the ground in honor of the death of the goat-faced fairy.

"Anyway, I’m certain I’m getting close…" Using the wooden spears to determine his bearing, farther out, there were still a lot of them—ones jabbed into the ground, into trees, scattered as debris—as he got closer to the center, their number had suddenly increased.

“Hmm…” Roa rubbed his chin while in thought. As he pressed on, the inclination of the wooden spears gradually became steeper and steeper until he finally came to a few that were planted near perpendicular to the ground, almost like arrows pointing towards the direction he had to go.

Roa turned a puzzled gaze upwards, ‘Big Blind Gruff should have heard me coming from a distance away, is he planning something? He couldn’t be sleeping, could he? —No way.’ 

A derelict structure welcomed Roa when he arrived at the core of the area. Visible through the thinned fog was a half-crumbled stone tower, with an upper layer seemingly held together by an overgrowth of odd colored vegetation, a shade the opposite of the usual green or yellow—a purplish red. 

It was at the top of this tower that Roa would reach what he needed to find, and also where the oldest of the three troublesome chalk pygmy fairies had chosen to take up its abode.

The keeper of the garden; the vigilant overseer that listens to the breath of the dying land atop its perch… It was impossible that the keeper wasn’t aware of Roa’s presence—rather, it was unsettling how there hadn’t been any wooden spears aiming at his head since earlier…

Roa neared the structure and took note of the size of a large hole that was presumably where the tower doors were onced hinged, an opening thrice his height and a width more than twice the span of his arms. 

 ‘Hmm…’ A thought appeared in Roa’s head, ‘I remember that bastard being much bigger than this? It doesn’t look like he’ll be much trouble if he’s only this small.'

Fear might’ve played a trick on Roa before. The first instance of the Spirit Domain was an extremely traumatic experience for him in his younger years. Even Gruff seemed like a much deadlier threat than the actual idiot he faced earlier.

That wasn’t to say that he wasn't expecting much from Gruff’s older brother. Big Blind Gruff had the same features as the monster goat, but was overall much sinister and sadistic. 

A full scruffy beard; thicker mane; larger frame; a pair of gray, soulless eyes–Big Gruff was blind, but with the two extra sets of bushy ears under its horns, it would’ve been possible for it to hear Roa discreetly breaking wind more than a thousand meters away. 

Therein, however, held a problem—not with the matter of Roa breaking wind, but with the monster goat’s freakish hearing. While Roa took to the spiraling stairs and ascended the tower, he became unnerved. ‘Big Gruff is eerily quiet. Why is he so quiet?’

It wouldn’t have surprised Roa if spears shot in from the windows he passed going up, or if he suddenly saw Big Gruff hanging onto roots pervading the ceiling from the top floor and smiling creepily at him.

Roa pondered, ‘The last time I was here, I only managed to scurry past Big Gruff’s ears while other people were distracting him… Has someone else been eaten by the domain and is keeping him busy?’ 

“—Ariene, Novis, Yuria… me?” Roa dubiously raised three fingers and counted. “Did one of the professors jump in to help? No. I doubt those selfish bastards would even entertain the thought... Novreau, maybe…?”

Roa threw out more random guesses but none were accurate enough to prepare him for what he would see at the top of the tower. 

One step past a stone arch, and he welcomed the sight of this particular Spirit Domain’s end goal, and along with it… the figure of the keeper—a massive, white furred beast with threatening curled black horns.

Big Gruff was finally present. —The source of many of Roa’s nightmares, some of which had troubled him even years after. Roa felt the pit of his stomach churning, a natural involuntary reaction to seeing the beast. However, it wasn’t that he still held fear towards it. 

Big Gruff no longer looked anything dangerous. It lay prone on the ground, in a pool of its own glittering blood, with all signs of life absent. 

Big Gruff was incapacitated, which saved Roa the trouble of dealing with it, yet, he couldn’t let himself breathe a sigh of relief.

‘I really—really, hate surprises!’ Roa cursed, rubbing his neck in frustration.

Sat leisurely on top of the great Big Gruff’s snout was a man, an intimidating figure with long, haggard hair; small cuts apparent on his face; drably dressed, with his left side under a dirty cloak. Clasped within his right hand was Roa’s former partner: the ghastly white blade, Jack.

 —End of Chapter 15