-Chapter 47- Return

Arthur Leywin PoV

"I'm scared, I don't want to die, Arthur." Alea cries out, her voice growing weaker. I couldn't help but tighten my embrace around her trying to not only comfort her but myself while watching her slowly die with nothing I could do to stop it.

Her cries slowly become weaker and weaker, her breathing getting slower with longer gaps between them, her heart beating at a bare minimum. Until eventually... Her breathing stops, and her body goes still with no movement or sign of life. Any mana that was left within her body began to flow out of it and began to ignore her as if she was some object on the ground.

I hold in any emotions trying to seep out and gently place Alea's body down on the ground. I walked to a clear spot on the floor that was big enough and used Earth magic to create a hole deep enough to bury her.

I do the same to all the soldiers in her squadron, burying them in holes big enough to act as temporary graves until the Council finds and moves their bodies to somewhere better. After burying them, I placed their weapons above each of their graves in respect of their hardships in battle.

I walk over to a nearby rock and sit down and calm down to regain control of my own panicked thoughts. It's like what Saya said, the Vritra are beginning their plans for war.

The thought of Saya immediately reminded me of her not responding. I try to send her a few mental messages hoping for some kind of response. But for nothing, no response came back from Saya, "haha, Dammit Saya, of course, you aren't here when I actually need you."

I chuckle out loud at my terrible luck, "I hope my family is doing well," I thought out loud. Thinking of my family comforted me. My silly father's antics, Ellie would probably be at her school right now. Mom probably would be out around town with aunt Tabitha.

I stand up and try to think of a way to get out of this dungeon. I need to warn someone, tell someone what is happening. Climbing out of here wouldn't be a good option with what little mana I had left.

I try to look in my dimension ring for something that could help me in this situation. That's when I found one of the compasses that I had gotten from my runes teacher.

"Looks like this is my last option," I took out the one that was meant for the Widows Crypt dungeon, and using the same technique I used before using my sword I activated the compass.

To my surprise, it didn't light up as it did before, this time it shot out of my hand flying towards a wall. I quickly began to chase after it following the small compass. It had led me to a small separate room in the cavern hidden behind plant growth. There I found the Compass implanting itself in a hole in the wall where it snapped into place.

The wall attached itself to began to rumble, and cracks began to spiderweb across the wall originating from the compass. The cracks continued spreading before the wall shattered utterly.

Behind the wall was a big room with runes covering the walls, floor, and ceiling completely. In the center of the room was a platform identical to the one back when I was in the ruins of the abandoned Djinn city.

Having a good idea of what may happen I walked up and stepped onto the platform. I stood there for a few seconds waiting for something to happen but nothing came. I took out my Djinn sword and tried moving Aether into the platform thinking maybe it needed to be activated.

But when I put Aether into the platform it began to shine. I smiled, thinking I accomplished what I was supposed to do. I look up. But I didn't find myself in the same room I was in before. It was dark and there seemed to be no walls, just the darkness expanding infinitely.

_

It was like I had been consumed by a forever expanding depth of void. I tried to look at my hands but they were gone. My entire body felt numb as I tried to wave around my hands in front of my face for a chance to be sure I hadn't gone blind.

With no feeling in my body and a complete lack of senses, I for a moment thought I had perished once again. My suspicions were proven wrong in a few moments when I began to feel a sharp pain all over my body.

I could only compare the pain to a hundred of those tattoo needles stabbing and piercing into my body. Everywhere on my body, from my neck all the way to my feet it felt like lines were being drawn by fire. Letters and Shapes were burned and imprinted into my skin like I was being branded like cattle.

I couldn't even let out a scream of pain due to the numbing feeling I had felt prior, which was still affecting my head. After what felt like an eternity but were actually a few minutes, the sensation of pain stopped and my senses slowly started to return to me. First, came my sense of hearing, followed by smell, then taste, then touch, and finally sight.

Looking around I was no longer in the dungeon. I was kneeling in a vast expanse of tall grasslands. In my hands were blades of grass torn from the field I was kneeling on. I took a moment to observe my surroundings and found that I was still in the forests of the Beast Glades. Not too far from the Widows Crypt dungeon and the Hells Jaw Dungeon Alea was in.

From my knowledge as an adventurer, I identified I was around the midpoint between the two. Quite away from the nearest teleportation gate.

I looked down and let out a sigh. The sun was going to be setting soon from the looks of it. I best get moving-

When I looked down to begin getting up from the field I was kneeling on I spotted a long marking on my arm. I quickly moved my arm to take a better look and saw long lines of Runes imprinted on my arm, they resembled veins or... Mana channels? Their coloring was a dark purple.

I quickly checked my other arm to find there were imprinted veins there as well. To confirm my suspicions I checked my entire body and found all the runes were connected to one another like their own nervous system.

This is what the Djinn contraption did. It had imprinted its own system of runes all over my body. But for what purpose?

Calling back to all the information Saya had told me I only had one theory. These were for transferring Aether throughout my body. Testing it out I tried to pull in Aether from the atmosphere.

I began to feel a warm energy flow into my body as if I had Aether channels. It felt empowering. A much stronger feeling from absorbing mana. It was certainly interesting how I didn't need to be meditating to absorb the aether as I did with mana. I tried moving around while absorbing it.

While it did slow down to a halt I learned that even while moving I could absorb aether if I had trained with it. If I get good enough with this maybe I could replicate it with mana. But I guess for now it's restricted to just the aether thanks to the help of the runes.

I began to question where the aether would be going? I don't believe it could be stored within my mana core. To test this theory I released my focus from absorbing the aether. When I stopped focussing on absorbing the aether it didn't have a place to collect so It had simply dispersed. Some of it stayed in my body but a majority of it simply flowed out of me back into the atmosphere around me.

'I wonder what I could do with this...' To satiate my curiosity I began absorbing aether into my body. Next, I began flowing it through my body like I would as if I were augmenting my body with mana.

I felt the aether embracing my limbs, my muscles, and everything else in my arm felt stronger. It was a significant buff compared to my mana augmenting as a low silver core mage.

To test it out I got ready and stretched. Using my memory as a guide I figured out where the nearest teleportation gate was and began sprinting in that direction. Using Aether to augment my body produced much better results rather than if I had run using Mana.

Throughout the entire time running, I trained my skill in absorbing aether while moving. In the early parts of my run, I had to slow down a bit in order to recoup my aether. But closer to the end of my run I was able to reach the end without running out of mana.

I was still using more aether faster than absorbing even for small tasks. But it was definitely a start. I chose to name this technique of absorbing aether while moving, I chose the name Aether Siphon."

Using aether augmentation I had reached the teleportation gate before it had gotten too dark. While it was still night time thankfully I made it before I began to lose sight due to the darkness.

I walked up to the teleportation gate to get stopped by the guards. "What is a child doing in the beast glades? Especially this late at night." One of them snaps out in a harsh tone.

Ignoring his tone and just wanting to get this situation over with so I could return to my family I responded calmly. "My name is Arthur Leywin, my class came here for a field trip to the Widows Crypt dungeon," I explained to them in a formal fashion.

Both of the guard's faces turned to one of great shock the second they heard my name. "Wait- you said your name was Arthur Leywin correct?" The other guard barely managed to get out.

"Yeah, is there a problem?" I look at both of them in confusion.

"Well..." The first guard begins to explain, "Back when your class returned from the dungeon the teacher had pulled us aside to tell us to be on the lookout in case an Arthur Leywin came to the teleportation gate, that you had gotten into an accident."

"Ok? What of it?" I asked, confused about why they had this reaction. Was it because they were under the impression I had died?

The first guard continued his explanation. "Well, we got that message from your teacher four days ago..."