Catching up with Scarlett
"Uh… Hi, is Scarlett here?" Ron asked the man who stepped up. He seemed to remember the man from somewhere but couldn't quite place it.
"What business do you have with Miss Scarlett?" The man asked Ron, it seems like she was here.
"I'm a good friend of hers, just tell her Ron is here to see her" Ron told the man, it was exhausting to communicate this way.
"She's currently deep in training and doesn't want to be disturbed" The man shut off any means of talking to Scarlett.
"Fine, I'll just rest here" Ron decided to just wait and rest while Scarlett was training, he knew how intense she was about training it would do no good disturbing her. The man just nodded and left Ron to rest on the ground, keeping a close eye on him from a distance.
Ron just sat down and was going to sleep, however he had just woken up so even though he was in pain he couldn't fall asleep. ('Can I do something while sitting still?') Ron thought about it for a second before the answer came. The meditative state. Ron still didn't know if that whole scene was a dream or real.
Ron steadied his breathing and closed his eyes, slowly focusing his concentration. He wanted to see if he could enter the same space again. He felt the similar feeling of diving deeper and deeper into the ocean that he had felt before. Slowly he opened his eyes to see the white void from before, this time with the stars already there.
Ron didn't feel the pulling sensation he felt before but he could faintly hear the thumping sound. Was the flame gone? Walking around for a bit Ron encountered the single lit star that was still lit. ('What does this mean?') Ron had no idea what it meant to have a star lit here. Walking a bit more around Ron followed the thumping sounds and soon encountered the flame.
The flame was dimmed down a lot and wasn't generating any pressure, even touching it didn't do anything. ('Is it timing based somehow?') Ron thought it might be because he had just entered the space, did it need time to recharge?
Ron walked in a straight line from the flame to see if there was an end to this place. Surprisingly after walking quite a while he saw the flame in the distance again. ('So this place is a loop') Ron concluded after his test.
After that Ron started counting the amount of stars there were in this place, it was difficult and needed a few tries but after a while a consistent 100 stars were counted. 99 unlit stars with 1 lit star.
After spending all this time in the white void Ron felt a headache incoming, there was no need to force it to stay so he just dove back up a little to relieve the headache and look around himself back where he was sitting.
It seems like not much time had passed seeing the sun still up, Ron looked around and didn't see Scarlett anywhere so he just continued to rest. Ron slipped into the meditative state to clear his headache and restore his injuries.
Scarlett exited the waterfall once more, this time more bruised that the last time. It seems like she really pushed this training session hard, but judging from the frown on her face she still didn't break through. ('I guess the waterfall just won't work, I wonder when Ron will come back') She thought as she dried herself and looked around to see many people training.
It was getting pretty crowded around here so she wanted to move quickly. A man suddenly approached her, she didn't know his name nor did she care. "What is it?" Scarlett said a little snippy about her failed breakthrough.
"W-Well an injured man came earlier today, he said he was a friend of yours" The man was a little afraid, he had witnessed Scarlett jumping into a waterfall for training something he didn't dare to replicate.
"An injured man? Did he say his name?" Scarlett asked. She had checked the piece of paper earlier and saw that Ron's condition was bad but had stabilized. It wasn't as bad as yesterday when the paper was almost burned up.
"He said his name was Ron," The man said. Did that man really know Miss Scarlett? The man was still a little unsure.
"So he's finally back, why didn't you tell me earlier?" Scarlett was glad Ron was back but a little annoyed at the delayed message it would've saved a lot of time.
"M-Miss Scarlett told us to not interfere in her training" The man felt a little aggrieved she explicitly told them to not disturb her.
"Oh right, I did. Where is he at?" Scarlett remembered her own words and deflated a little. She was taking out her annoyances on him and she knew it was unfair. The man nodded and walked away to which Scarlett followed.
After walking a bit Scarlett saw Ron meditating in the open field bandaged around his waist and hands with more cuts all over his body scabbed over. He looked like he just returned from a battlefield but the tranquility on his face made it seem effortless. She smiled a little seeing it, he had grown far in a short amount of time.
Ron opened his eyes when he heard footsteps approaching and saw Scarlett coming, she didn't change much but it was nice to see her again. "You look like shit" She said after coming a little closer.
"I feel like shit too" Ron bantered with her a bit before they got some private time with the man leaving.
"So what's up with all these people?" Ron asked Scarlett it was still a mystery to Ron as to why they were all here.
"They're all townsfolk who wanted to become stronger, so they stalked me and begged me for training after word spread that we took care of the goblin horde" Scarlett explained about the man who stalked her was the same man who stopped Ron. They all wanted to become stronger to fend for themselves and their town and not rely on Scarlett in the future.
Scarlett obliged and taught them a few of Ron's training exercises, she also incentivised them to spar with different wooden weapons to get a feeling where they're talented for and focus on the talent. Word spread quickly which is why there were so many men here.
"I see, well that's good that they're taking self defense a lot more seriously now" Ron stated. If they could defend themselves better it was fine.
"Enough about me, how was it in the dungeon?" Scarlett was curious about the dungeon. Also how he got those injuries.
"Painful but beneficial" Ron joked and told Scarlett from beginning to the end with some comments sprinkled in here and there. Eventually Ron told Scarlett about the fight with the caster and the big kobold.
"Magic? Does that even exist?" Scarlett asked a little skeptically, magic from where she was from didn't exist.
"It exists and hurts plenty," Ron said, showing Scarlett the burn wounds. Seeing the burn wounds healing nicely Ron was relieved he didn't know if they would heal with the medicine.
"After a grueling battle I used all the medicine I had left and fell unconscious" Ron explained the lack of bandages on the minor cut wounds.
"When I woke up I was suddenly in a white void" Ron then explained about the white void and his use of the meditative state along with the flame and stars.
"Well I'll be damned, you actually entered the kindling stage" Scarlett said after hearing Ron's story.
"Kindling stage?" Ron asked for an explanation as he had been wondering about that flame and those stars for a while now.
"The kindling stage is as it sounds, the flame is your kindle and you need to light all the stars in your sea of consciousness. That is the name for the white void. Lighting all 100 is the first step in martial arts" Scarlett explained about the kindling stage.
"Your body should've gone through a transformation with the forming of the first star" Scarlett also explained why his body felt off for a while now. It was like switching to a more powerful car it would take some getting used to.
"I see, so after I woke up again I could exit the dungeon however the mural was bugging me" Ron moved on to explain about the mural and the puzzle that was in there.
"You know I probably would've missed that whole puzzle and if I did notice I probably would've broken the wall or blown it up" Scarlett noted the exact way the kobold caster wanted to open up the wall, it was brutish and fit Scarlett.
"So after solving the puzzle there was a pedestal with a potion and a story" Ron told Scarlett about the potion and the story of the man and the bull.
"Sounds like you also got a body forging potion, man those dungeons are something nice" Scarlett noted a little peeved she couldn't enter it. "Have you drunk it already?"
"Not yet I wanted to get healed up first before taking it" Ron told Scarlett.
"Good plan, those things can be very violent and painful when drinking" Scarlett warned Ron about more pain coming his way.
"Great, well after the puzzle I exited the dungeon and got graded" Ron told Scarlett the reward he had gotten which was a B+ grade and the magic whip.
"Well don't just say it, show me!" Scarlett was eager to see a magic weapon. The reason weapons weren't really used in her world was because they would often break.
Ron took out the whip which looked like a normal leather whip with a leather popper on it but noticing closely one could see red lines interwoven in the whip. Ron stood up and readied the whip into a swing. *crack* *tss* The whip had a slight red hue as it traveled through the air and hit the ground. A small burn mark was left on the ground and a burning smell was also there.
"I wouldn't like to be hit with that thing," Scarlett noted. She was resistant to blows not to being burned. In the time they talked they ate and it started getting dark quickly.
"I've been wondering how long I was in the dungeon," Ron asked Scarlett. It messed up his time table a little bit.
"A bit over 24 hours," Scarlett said. Most of the time it was Ron being unconscious.
"I see, so where should we move to? To the forest in the west or the unknown south where the goblins came from?" Ron asked where he and Scarlett should move onto next. The forest was partially known with markers but the south was completely unknown except for the fact the goblins came from there.
"The forest seems like a fun place, who knows maybe we'll even find a dungeon that will let me have some fun" Scarlett voted for the forest, she originally came from the south and didn't find it attractive to go there again.
Ron looked at Scarlett a little skeptically, he didn't know if she just avoided it because there could be more goblins there or because the forest was more attractive to her. He didn't press her on it.
"Fine, we'll move out to the forest tomorrow. For now I just want to rest more and upgrade my talent tomorrow" Ron didn't forget about the reason he entered the dungeon in the first place.
Scarlett just nodded and didn't comment anymore, she knew deep down she was hiding from the goblins. She didn't want to encounter them anymore. Thinking about the goblins made her skin crawl, sometimes she even had nightmares from those creatures.
She didn't tell Ron this but no doubt the guy was sharp enough to eventually notice that she was avoiding them. She didn't plan on hiding forever, she wanted to break through her bottleneck then rampage against the goblins for what they did to her. ('I just have to break through') these were Scarlett's thoughts before going to sleep.