21

O(I)O(I)

Where Lumina ended up was a Mystaria swamp where the only sound she could hear was the exude of blood in the water. Her eyes were blinded as if she were a newborn waking up for the first time. That blinding was only a minor problem compared to the "white" elephant in the room: her father was with her.

He was awake since they arrived but he acted as if she wasn't there. He was like an owl, rotating his head all around the forest and being impressed with shiny objects, twinkles between the leaves and the tree bark.

Only a few minutes together he already ventured through the forest, Lumina distracted by her own pontification of finding a viable way to return to the castle, but magic couldn't just happen out of nothing. With a realization of how he was getting away and her own failure of not keeping a close eye of him, she chased after him.

But all that running was a waste of effort, the trees were making it hard to see him until he eventually disappeared on her.

O(I)O(I)

Pief and Lenisa's adventure took them to the plight of a swamp, so far their adventure had been venturing out a linear path with no obstacles in their way...until they came face-to-face with a sentient rotten flesh with jagged decayed teeth, many twists in its exposed stomach area, and small dead white eyes. Neither Pief or Lenisa were terrified of it, and who would be, it was a servant of a leshen.

Pief, undeterred by this rotten spawn of wood bark, took off her clerk uniform exposing wooden armor with four vertical slits; two on her breasts and two on the sides. From the slit eddied with dust she pried out a short sword, Lenisa backing away until she was six feet away from her sister.

And then—Pief swerved her feet to the west before weaving around the subordinate in a circle. This was a strategy to both confuse and deter his attention away from Lenisa. When she moved west—south—east—north—she finally leaped over the six and a half foot tall undead and plunged her short sword directly into its neck!

This was barely a scathe on its bark exterior and Pief knew it, raised her hand in the air, a gold whip materializing in her hand before she twirled it around and grappled it around a tree branch ten feet off the ground.

Instead of just hiding on the tree branch she used it for the momentum to spin around the open area and repeatedly dab a little purple goo on the hilt of the short sword.

By the fifteenth spin the undead was growing weaker, slower, and its once menacing guttural sound turned into a hoarse coach. It's life wasn't so wretched as some would think being an undead is, but when Pief finally twirled towards him and planted two feet simultaneously in his neck doing damage its body couldn't adhere to.

His head rolled into the swamp lopping away like a small quadruple animal being pushed down a hill.

Pief, letting go of her rope, landed near the beheaded body of the undead to retrieve her short sword. Her instincts went wild as she pulled her sword out and did a ninety degree turn to prepare to jab the person her instincts informed her was coming.

Who or what was coming came right at her like a small flicker of light magic. She instinctually stabbed her blade where she believed it's shoulder would be, only to have her sword twirling over her head.

She focused her eyes now while Lenisa couldn't dare watch covering them with both her hands. What she saw was overspread with something white and frigid more than the swamp water that covered her and her sisters' feet. The person covered in what she found out was snow even if it didn't make sense there would be any here was the bald newbie with the really plastic clothes, Saitama.

Her eyes descended from his belt buckle before elevating to his small eyes; just to be sure he was who she thought.

"Saitama?"

He smacked his right side of his head to knock a little snow off before answering. "Oh heyyyyy...Pie, right?"

Her eyes twitched in a way only someone who would suppress their anger would. "It's Pief. What are you doing here? There are no low rank jobs that take you this far away from Yakime's kingdom."

Saitama did something with his shoulders no one has ever done in front of Pief before, and it was quickly forgotten.

"I was teleported here by some wizard commanding a horde of goblins."

Pief needed more information about that because she was astute enough to know any time someone commanded an army of goblins, it meant a war of some kind. But she was just a clerk at a guild and was already halfway to the fleece her sister wanted—couldn't turn back now.

Speaking of her, she almost pushed Pief away trying to have a conversation with her coworker.

"You look like you've..." Her eyes fell down before fluttering up looking at his weird garbs but balls of snow. "travelled a long way. You must be a very important adventurer."

"I'm not an "adventurer"," he retorted, crossing his arms while all the snow seemed to fall off his body. "I'm a hero for fun."

Pief and Lenisa had different ways of reacting to him using the word "hero". To Pief it was an insult to every hero that has saved many lives from dragons, demon lords, and something that should-not-be-mentioned, but to Lenisa it was causing her brain to feel like honey from the ways it helped her find the fleece faster.

"You sound like an absolute cavalier! How would you like to help me, Lenisa the Moonlight singer, with a quest of mine?"

Saitama's eyes flitted from the attractive girl with the bubbly personality to the boring girl with the healthy work ethics. From the look on her face he could tell she was still denying him any jobs over picking flowers and defeating slimes, but he was also looking at a girl who seemed to expect she could get what she wanted just from asking.

He decided to do what his heart thought would be the right decision:

"Can I have some alone time with your sister?"

Her teeth were bare; strong, healthy and white. Even though she looked like she was understanding and happy, she couldn't help the veins crackling in her face from being told what to do.

"Let me answer for you, sir," Pief said moving up to Saitama until she was standing in front of him with her arms crossed, too. "Go with us on this quest. I know whatever is in our way won't be able to stop you."

O(I))O(I)

Lumina didn't know what territory she in her confusion travelled to, but it was something out of a gothic storybook. The leaves were all gray, luminous yellow eyes with red sclera's hiding in the tree holes, and unearthly screeching noises all the way up from the sky.

Although it was eerie and scary things came at her in a flurry, she managed to keep her spirits up with some Illumination magic causing a small light to glower in her pinkie finger. Even with the light in her fingers she was trembling in fear every minute, and she already had problems with her anxiety since she was five.

Hope seemed to go from dwindling to being shot in the sky and exploding like fireworks when she saw what she was scouring this gray grisly forest: her father's boot marks visible in the dirt.

She followed them, still keeping her head up in case something tried to attack her while her attention was diverted, and tracked the footprints to a dark grove. With all her fears seeming to dissipate, her problems no longer arising, she called:

"DAD!"

There wasn't even a stir, not from him or any other inhabitant wildlife in this minatory forest. She waited, her light flickering in her fingers, and then she decided to try invoking a real reaction by hurling the light into the grove.

Nothing happened.

Light materialized in her fingers once more-thrown again into the grove.

The light shinned like the purple side of the sun, bright with rays of light going in many directions but all shooting from the same side. When the light vanished she heard the sound of a groan only someone would make when they were rudely interrupted from their nap.

It was a loud sound; she knew if it was her father from his three main animal noises he copies: sheep, cow, and duck.

The sound went...

"SINNNNnnnn!"

That sound was more like the furnace they used to forge weapons than a bipolar man forgetting who he was. Coming into view, bringing her back to the sweat shivering fear of death, was a quadruple, maned, long snotted with razor sharp teeth and glinting trout, was a Tizheruk—and she just grazed its peaceful slumber ticking it off at her.

She wasn't brave but she wasn't running away either; if her father moved north than the only truth she knew was to follow him that way, so she materialized a ball of light and smacked it against her shin. With one unprecedented fall knee first on the ground, a razor sharp projectile launched towards the ravenous monster.

It hardly even blinked when she did it. It just leaned its body on the left side, and with one claw managed to keep itself up before twirling until its ridge was facing the light.

Known fact: monsters have their own magic. While humans try to use it to bedazzle and create things, monsters have corrosive uses for it.

The monster used an instant attrition turning its ridge into a black sheen before absorbing the light when it connected with its ridge. Did it's one spell up its ridge stop her from trying, using what was really the core of light magic to its fullest extent?

"Goddess Mimuna, harbinger of light and resistance, bless me with Light Destructive Motif!"

Somewhere up in the god and goddesses domain there was Mimuna bored with the boisterous gods talking about the labors of their demigod children out of wedlock, getting a little boast in moral hearing one of her epigone's. With only a sliver of her energy, she bestowed enough power for clean sparkling white wing appendages to appear on Lumina's back before she harnesses the energy in those wings to fire a beam of white light.

The Tizheruk responded creating a barrier of black light around its open mouth, and jumped in the way of the beam of white light. The light wasn't hurting the creature, but it couldn't keep the barrier up for much longer. Following instincts over brains, it smacked its tail enshrouded in dark energy against the dirt; the shockwave of it sending it flying.

Lumina quickly held her hand up to the sky in a claw way. It was easier to see the moon and the sun through the gaps of her fingers and in a battle where every decision could be the end of her, she had to be sure she wasn't blinded by light, the source of energy her magic was christened from.

With precision and a quick hand, she materialized a bunch of feathers the size of knives with serrated sides. She quickly tossed them repeatedly at the Tizheruk.

The Tizheruk spewed black fire from the clenches of its teeth turning the feathers into specks of light that faded to black. Lumina knew while it was doing that the best way to kill it would just be to dash up to it and cleave through it with a sharp weapon, but she didn't carry any weapons.

What she needed was help—any help.

Her hope hanging on by a thread was rewarded with the arrival of a blur flying in and going straight for the Tizheruk's throat with his gray glint.

What looked like a glint was really an axe, and one that didn't seem like it could cut much, except whoever wielded it used it to slice through the jugular of the Tizheruk.

Now it was pouring crimson and Lumina had to back away unless she wanted to be crushed by a severed toothy head or a pudgy four legged body.

They came raining down all over the hill, she was safely away from the grove back near a tree, getting to see the valiant person who saved her from the beast.

He was big, he was bulging with muscles, his hair was so glossy and clean it almost looked like he took it from the head of a mermaid, he could raise an axe with only two scissor fingers on the hilt...and he was her father King Yakime.

"D-Dad?"

He heard her small, murmurous voice in the background. He turned his head towards her, a tear dripping down his eyes as if he was given a gift in his hand. What he was looking at though was the greatest gift of his life.

"Lumina."