Departure

A/N:

Here's today's first chapter! It's a bit longer than the previous lengths of my chapters, so it took me some time to finish.

Wattpad was down back then too so I had to use some technology magic to get the chapter onto my phone to publish it.

Anyways, that's enough ranting. Happy reading :D

"…Hm, if it isn't the prodigious genius."

The first thing I was greeted with when I opened the door was a haughty child's voice. It belonged to a blond elvish boy that radiated an aura of nobility. Not in the sense that he was a noble person, but that he was rich. Behind him were other elvish children who looked at me with expressions of curiosity.

I nodded in greeting and sat down opposite to him next to a girl.

"…ASSar Abellius, right?"

I blankly stared. I wasn't mad that he botched my name, but rather, I actually recognized this guy. He had visited the palace once… if I remembered his name correctly, it was…

"Fayri th' Ivysaur." (Fairy the Ivysaur)

"!"

Ivysaur's face turned bright pink as his ears twitched profusely in anger while the other elvish children behind desperately tried to cover their snickering.

"…Was that not your name?"

Seeing my honesty, he backed down a little and retorted.

"Feyrith. Feyrith Ivsaar."

I smiled.

"Asher. Asher Aureus."

He looked at me with slight irritation, but I could tell it wasn't hate. It was probably just his personality.

"You can call him Feyfey, like we all do."

The elvish girl next to me smirked maliciously as she spoke.

"D-don't tell him that!"

At that moment, the carriage door opened.

A familiar boy revealed himself, his auburn hair and bright azure eyes seemingly glowing ever so slightly in the sunlight. He was Arthur Leywin… right? Man, I'm bad with names…

Feyfey's earlier irritation disappeared instantly as he returned to his pompous comport.

"Well, well, look who it is! If it isn't, the human brat! Did the royal family finally kick you out of the Kingdom?"

Aiyaiyai…

This is not going to end nicely for him, I can tell.

"Uh… I'm sorry but do I know you?"

"Pft."

A couple elves covered their mouths quickly, but Ivysaur heard it, and now he was practically fuming.

"I'm the noble you mercilessly attacked while defying the customs of the duel!"

He bolted up angrily, pointing an accusing finger at the boy.

"Ah! You're the bug I sent tumbling!"

Arthur said that surprisingly loudly.

"Y-you dare…!?"

With that, Ivysaur's face returned to its previous state of something between anger and embarrassment. At the same time, the elvish children snickered, and I buried my face in my hands, my shoulders shaking.

"Aha, sorry, sorry! I didn't mean to say that. I never did learn your name, though."

Arthur spoke with a chuckle while extending his hand.

Face still red, Ivysaur did his best to preserve as much of the little dignity he had left by rejecting Arthur's handshake and declared in a pompous tone.

"My name is Feyrith Ivsaar III, descendent of the noble Ivsaar family! You may have won while we were both children, but were we to duel again, I would win easily."

Feeling a bit mischievous, I piped in.

"Apparently, you can just call him Feyfey."

"Hey!"

Face turning an even darker shade of red, Feyfey turned his head away and fell back onto his seat.

Seeing his reaction, other elvish children began doing some kind of weird interpretive dance to try our best to stop ourselves from bursting out laughing.

"Sirs, madams, we are departing."

The carriage driver called out.

Hearing his voice, I returned from the precipice of exploding with laughter and recalled the plan for our journey.

We were to take a teleportation gate that connected to an edge of the Kingdom of Sapin. From there, we would take a two day journey by carriage to the next teleportation gate, which connected to the floating city of Xyrus.

I wasn't sure why the teleportation gate didn't connect immediately with the city, but I just decided to blame it on my lack of knowledge about the gates.

Note to self, ask Sophus about it later.

As our carriage went into the teleportation gate, we were greeted sensation of being in the middle of a fast-forwarding film. It appeared everyone was used to the feeling, but for me, I got completely blasted. Now, I was incredibly motion sick, earning a couple snickers.

It looked like I wasn't the only one as Arthur was clutching his head as well with a nauseous expression.

Hoping to feel better, I turned my gaze out the window. However, the sight that greeted me caused my eyes to widen.

Unlike the repetitive scenery of the Elshire Forest, which was just trees, trees, and more trees, the border of the Kingdom of Sapin was a vast plain that seemed to go on forever with mountains far off in the background. And along with the few trees were scattered here and there, the whole scene looked like a painting done by one of those renaissance guys.

Off in the distance, I could even see random animals and low ranked mana beasts grazing the field.

I wasn't entirely sure why I was reacting so severely to some nature. Perhaps it was because the landscape seemed more like that of a fantasy world that you would read about in a novel: a grand prairie with a mountain range in the back and a clear sky and clouds.

As I was watching the animals, I noticed some moving figures. When I concentrated some mana in my eyes to try and get a better look, the moving figures revealed themselves to be some people dressed in light armor.

"…Adventurers."

I turned over to the source of the voice. It was Arthur who spoke with a slight smile.

Ah, also, it wasn't just me who was intrigued by the foreign realm; the rest of the elves in the carriage were also looking out of the windows, trying to get a glimpse of the new scenery.

"Those are adventurers."

"…Adventurers."

I repeated the word quietly as I continued to watch them.

It appeared like they were looking for something, but they soon slipped out of view, causing me to focus on other things.

**

Although the scenery was new, the novelty wore off quickly. In about 10 minutes, we were bored of the flat landscape that was just as repetitive as the trees in the Elshire Forest. Because of this, the carriage was silent.

Plus, though these children came from noble and affluent families, they probably weren't used to interacting in such a setting. In other words, as we were now, they were as socially inept as I was.

Anyways, we were just sitting quietly doing our own things.

I personally was busy getting used to managing the ruptures in my channels and veins' coalescing regions or acupoints, as I've come to call them.

For the record, I was now a light stage red core mage. I broke through last night just in case I needed it for the tournament though I wasn't expecting it.

In any case, I called them acupoints because of how similar these regions were to, well, acupoints. For one, there were 360 of them (361 if we consider my mana core), and second, they functioned in a similar way. Through artificially interacting with them, these clusters of channels and veins could be used to help control the flow of mana throughout my body.

This was done by either rupturing them, which inhibited the flow through that acupoint, or repairing it, which allowed for the flow. Basically, it was like an on and off switch.

For example, in the past, Virion and Alea ruptured them completely, but that was only possible because, at the time, my channels were so underdeveloped that they couldn't defend these locations. Anyways, getting back on topic, by rupturing my acupoints, my body was able to discharge all of the mana that I had. By doing so, my core didn't explode, and I didn't die since if that glowing ball blew up, I'd have a bunch of core shrapnel buried in my heart. (If that happened, I'd probably need my own arc reactor)

As for reparation, the acupoints healed on their own over time, but the process could be accelerated by keeping mana in the rupture region.

All in all, by continuously rupturing and healing my acupoints, I could open and close the flow of mana like a dam and fine tune the amount of mana that flows through my body. By doing this, I'll be able to use the most amount of mana possible while making sure I don't damage my body or core.

As you can probably tell by now, my mana pool is absolutely massive, and I suck mana towards me like a vacuum whenever I meditate. Hence, it's vital that I have the highest level of control over mana. Well, unless I wanted to blow myself up for some reason. But why would I ever want that?

In any case, I was forbidden from using conjuring until I was at least 7, so I have to use my augmenter abilities for this tournament.

I glanced at a ring. It was too big for my child's fingers, so it was hung loosely around my neck like a necklace. In it contained a sword that I received from Virion and Alea as a birthday gift. From what they told me, it was made out of refined Ardentium, forged by the dwarves in the Great Volcanic Basin of Rahevinhei—

"Kyu!"

Interrupting my thoughts, a cute sound filled the air space.

"…"

A brief pause followed.

"…What was that?"

An elf eventually asked.

The rest of us in the carriage then began looking around, searching for the cause of the noise.

Then, our eyes landed on a certain boy.

The certain boy, Arthur Leywin, seemed to be amid a scuffle with a strange black mass.

"Hold still!"

"Kyu! Kyu!"

They appeared to be conversing; however, though they were speaking in hushed whispers, in the dead silence of the carriage, their voices seemed to be hooked up to an amp.

"…Arthur?"

"H-huh? Yes?"

Arthur jolted slightly and responded, still doing his best to wrestle the black… thing?

However, the black mass seemed to take this as a chance, and with a victorious "KYU!" the black creature shot up and out of Arthur's arms and onto the floor while Arthur did his best to catch it.

"…"

A silence ensued while everyone blankly stared at the black creature that was looking around the carriage with a shy but curious expression.

"…Kyaaa! What is this thing!? It's so cute!"

With that, the whole carriage erupted, trying to get a closer look at the adorable mysterious little thing that had popped out of nowhere.

"Ahhh! How can something be so adorable!?"

"Omigod, it's cuter than my dad's bond's babies!"

"Why is it making my heart go doki doki??"

"Ugh, it's just bless af."

…How do they know 21st century slang?

Anyways, rather than shying away, it seemed the little black thing was soaking up the praise as it puffed out its chest, earning another round of squeals.

"What's its name?"

I looked over to Arthur.

"Uh, Sylvie."

He spoke distractedly as he kept his eyes on the black creature with a somewhat knotted brow.

"Eh, Sylvie? Even its name is cute!"

The elves soaked it up and continued to pamper Sylvie.

"Do you want some cookies?"

"Kyu!"

"Kyaaa!"

Meanwhile, I turned back to look at what I now recognized as a lizard of some kind.

I smiled.

"…That's a nice name. Sylvie, Spirit of the Wood, Forest."

In the past, I had a kind of obsession with names and their meanings. I was delivered to the orphanage with nothing but a card that had my name on it. So, trying to find who my parents were, I scoured and found all sorts of different names and their meanings, desperately trying to find correlations.

At the end of it all, I was left with nothing except a lot of useless information.

Suddenly, I felt a gaze on me.

"…?"

I turned over to see Arthur staring at me with a strange expression.

"…Is there something on my face?"

"…Uh? Ah, no, it's not that. It's just… uhm, nevermind."

Arthur looked away with a strange expression. A face that was somewhere between reminiscent and reticent. However, soon Arthur furrowed his brows.

"What do you mean on your face, I can't even see it."

"Heh."

I smirked.

Indeed, most of my face was obscured as my hood covered most of the upper half, revealing just the lower half.

That meant that Arthur saw my smirk, which caused him to glare.

"…Pft."

"…Kek."

But in the end, we broke out in laughter.

It was strange. Though we hadn't met or talked before at all, we talked like friends who had known each other since a long time ago.

…Kind of like with those guys.

Images of certain people flashed in my head, causing my smile to turn into a sad one.

These days I've been thinking more and more about my past life. As much as I was content with my death, I couldn't help but miss them as time went on.

Is this what they call age, I wonder.

As I was thinking like an old man, I suddenly felt a dull impact hit my chest.

Though it usually wouldn't have affected my balance, my mind was elsewhere, causing me to stumble back a bit and fall onto the carriage bench.

"Oough."

I made an odd sound at the impact, and I looked down, trying to figure out what hit me.

It was Sylvie who looked at me with an expression that was asking for help.

…Did I misread it? I thought it was enjoying the attention.

"Ah, I'm sorry, but Sylvie's a bit shy."

Arthur laughed awkwardly as he moved to grab Sylvie. However, the little black lizard hid itself in my cloak.

"Huh?"

Currently, it was hiding behind in one of my robes with its head poking out.

It was then, I finally got a good look at it.

"…Woah."

It was adorable.

I gently touched its head, causing the tiny thing to "kyu." The reaction earned a lot of jealous glares from the other elves.

"Hey—"

—BAM

But before the elf could finish what they were saying, a large impact struck the carriage.

A/N:

Oh my, what's happening now?

A forced cliche plot device to finally write some action scenes? Of course not. I would never stoop so low.

Anyways, next chapter will feature a cliche random attack with zero reasons for it so I can finally write some action scenes.

See ya.

Rua