Sidestory: The chaotic devil and the mercenary (2)

When Acedia opened her eyes, she found herself on a landscape of white sand.

Her purple eyes stared into the sky, spotting nothing but emptiness.

Black emptiness.

"What.." She jerked up and looked around. "..is this?"

Waking up, she found herself located in a place she had never seen or heard before. A peerless white landscape with a black sky.

Raising her head and looking at the sky once again, she spotted giant flying pigs sailing through the air.

"What the.."

A place that she never heard of before and flying pigs.

"Am I dreaming?" Acedia pinched herself on the cheek, trying to see if she was dreaming.

However, instead of dreaming, she felt the pain.

"Guess not."

Slowly, she stood up, infusing mana into her eyes to look around.

"I didn't expect this to be a desert..." she muttered to herself as she looked around.

The landscape of infinite white sand reminded her of the tales about the eastern continent.

She was especially curious about the Shinto kingdom, as she had heard that the legendary clan of 'kitsune's' lived there.

Everywhere in the eastern continent, there was supposed to be sand, similar to this place.

However...

She rested her head on her hand as she slowly looked around. "I don't think that there was any mention of the sand being white..."

After making herself familiar with her current location, Acedia decided to explore the strange p,ace and maybe even find an exit.

'I did tell Seraphir to call for help when I don't arrive until dinner.'

As Acedia had no intention of letting herself get caught doing something so dangerous and possibly get scolded for it, she hoped that she would find an exit soon.

Although she found that place to be interesting, it wasn't worth getting scolded for.

She shuddered at the thought of the disappointed expressions of her parents. Although they weren't strict nor scary, the thought of making them sad or disappointed scared her.

Walking across the infinite landscape, she watched as different monsters living in their own terrain.

Using mana infusion, she watched threatening looking ones and non-threatening looking ones interact with one other, fighting or even just having a conversation.

However, after all that time, there was no exit in sight.

She sighed as despair slowly overcame her. "How do I get out of this?"

It really wasn't a good idea to try using that orb, but her curiosity just got the better of her.

She slapped her own cheek lightly, dooming herself for her idiocy.

"I think there was a human saying for this." Acedia mused, recalling a line from a book she had read. "Curiosity killed the cat."

A faint smile formed on her face as she recalled the second part of that quote. "But satisfaction brought it meaning."

Clap!

Clapping her hands together, a new fire enlightened in her eyes.

"That's right! Even though my curiosity harmed it, the gained knowledge was worth it!"

With a loud voice, Acedia tried to cheer up, motivating herself.

Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one who heard her motivational speech.

Slowly but surely, sounds of footsteps approached from all sides, circling her.

As she turned around, she quickly realized what had happened.

"My loud voice attracted the monsters." Her eyes widened while her smile froze. "I can't believe I'm such an idiot!"

Only a few seconds after she clapped her hands, she was surrounded by weird-looking monsters, ranging from tall skinny men with armor to giant white golems.

Although she could feel the blood inside her body slowly freezing, she tried her best to not panic.

After all, no matter what they were, she was still a tier 6 mage, who had mastered the Hellwater arts.

A few monsters wouldn't manage to hurt her, right?

...right?

However, she miscalculated.

It wasn't only a 'few' monsters.

There were a dozen of them completely surrounding her.

"Oh god." Her heart began pounding faster, as she used the surrounding mana to roughly guess the amount of monsters in the group.

'Around a hundred and twenty...'

Although she had a bit of combat experience through sparring, she was never been confronted with a real-life combat situation before.

And besides that, she never even heard about strange creatures like that before!

"I just have to survive." However, Acedia didn't want to give up. If she couldn't find a way to beat them all, she just had to create a way for her to escape.

As the monsters finished watching their prey and analyzing its potential weaknesses, they all started to sprint toward Acedia, simultaneously.

Seeing that, Acedia immediately began to cast a spell, preparing to use a high-level area of effect spell.

"Hellwater: Tsunami!"

Finishing casting, Acedia thrusted both of her arms into the sand, as a large, blue magic circle appeared on the ground.

Immediately, a wave of dark blue water appeared in front of her nose, rushing towards the monsters.

By contact with the water, smoke began to emit, burning through the flesh and bones of the monsters, clearing a whole group of monsters in front of her.

She wanted to use that newly created path to dash through it and escape, but it quickly closed itself as the monsters began to reform.

'They are smarter than they look like...'

Not wanting to let their prey escape, more and more monsters rushed towards her, overwhelming her.

While Acedia could move around and dodge most attacks by using 'blink', she could only use low tier spells like the basic 'water bullets' to retaliate, as the monsters didn't even give her a chance to cast a stronger spell.

Although Acedia managed to dodge most of those attacks, a few of them still hit her, as there were simply just too many.

The bruises and minor cuts gradually began to get more common, and slowly but surely, began to stack up, increasing the pain.

"Tsk." Acedia muttered, as she could feel her body slowly getting more sluggish, the pain slowing her down.

"RAAHAHHHH!" another wave of monsters screamed as they rushed towards her.

Blinking, Acedia dodged most of the attacks.

SLASH!

However, she just couldn't keep up with the sheer amount of monsters, as one of the monsters surprised her with a slash from behind, cutting open her back.

She grit her teeth as tears began to well up, trying to ignore the pain.

'Ughh...i..it's a..alright:'

Acedia tried to reassure herself.

However, her thoughts didn't match up with her actions, as her sluggish body slowly started staggering, barely even being able to stand.

Although it wasn't a life threatening wound, Acedia wasn't used to such an amount of pain.

'It burns!'

Panting, Acedia closed an eye as tears began to well up.

Her heart started beating faster as she looked around the horde, seeing nothing but an endless amount of monsters.

"I will not die in this place!" Determined, she tried to cast another spell.

The mana particles around her began to gather and another dark blue magic circle materialized in front of her palms.

"Hellwater: B-Urgh."

She couldn't finish the spell, as her body gave up, falling to one knee.

'Why now?!'

Desperately, she grit her teeth and formed a fist, forcing herself to stand up,

But she couldn't.

Her trembling knees just didn't want to follow her will.

Watching as the group of monsters slowly advanced, a wave of fear began to wash over her, as she watched the monsters advancing.

For the first time in her life, she regretted a decision she made and her idiocy.

She shouldn't have been so curious and careless.

Bowing her head down to the ground and protecting her neck with both her hands, she started sobbing while gritting her teeth.

At that moment.

The prodigy of the leviathans, Acedia, was just a scared little kid.

"I don't want to die..." she whispered to no one but herself, almost like she tried to make a wish.

"Alright." A deep, male voice rang out as she suddenly heard footsteps appearing in front of her.

She slowly raised her head, spotting the back of a boy with a black coat.

In one of his arms, he wielded a normal iron sword, protectively standing in front of her, as if he was some kind of fairy-tale hero, protecting his princess.

The boy ducked, as he began to position his sword in some kind of sheathing position, even though he didn't even possess a scabbard.

"Sever."

The space surrounding him and her began to distort, cracking, and his sword started to emit a faint purple glow.

Slice!

The boy slashed with his sword sideways in the air, hitting no-one.

For a split moment, Acedia was confused, wondering what his plan was.

Crack.

But instead of having to wait for an answer, it got immediately showcased to her.

The distorted space began to crack, revealing a tear in the space where he had slashed with the sword.

Instantly, the tear began to pull itself together, returning to its normal state, as the body of every surrounding monster got halved, falling apart.

Only a few seconds after that, the sword of the boy began to reveal a few cracks, before it also split into a dozen of pieces.

The boy looked at the remaining hilt as he grumbled. "Another one gone."

He then turned his head to Acedia, only to find her laying unconscious with a smile on her face.

Blankly staring at the girl for a while, he came to a conclusion.

"It seems like she is exhausted."