[LitF] 27. Tears Under the Sky (Patreon)

Previous Chapter - Table of Contents - Next Chapter

[A/N: Here goes the first chapter of the Lost in the Future Arc! (Yes, the same name as the novel.)]

Unlike the short portal leading into the core's room, the dungeon's entrance was an endless corridor. Arthur waited for Graham and Tamara to disappear in the distance before he stepped into it with Sophie by his side.

He had had mere 19 points of agility when he first walked that path. This time, he had twenty times as many. He didn't walk quickly but also didn't purposefully hold back like Sophie, who was ten times as fast as him.

Arthur felt her internal struggles with his life domain, and they were a mirror of his own. Both people's muscles grew tenser by the second. Each step took them closer to whatever awaited them outside. Yet, rather than become more stressed, they were relaxing psychologically.

He couldn't quite read minds with his comprehension of life, but he could read emotions. Sophie's brain was bathing in substances that relaxed her as his did to him.

Neither of them could stand that place anymore. The weight of isolation had grown too heavy on them. In fact, so much so that only now did Arthur realize his rush to leave the dungeon came from anxiety and desperation. He wanted out—needed out—and fast. Living underground, seeing the same few people every day, not having the freedom to do anything other than level up... It had taken a huge toll on them all.

Seconds turned into minutes. Sophie clenched his arm stronger as they progressed. At some point, it started hurting, and he had to strengthen his body with life magic.

He kept his floating weapons around him, ready for any emergency.

None happened.

They kept walking until, suddenly, the corridor disappeared, and they found themselves outside.

「Achievement: Temporal Displacement

Tier: D

Reward: +12 stat points

You returned to your homeworld after 100 years away!

To remain still is to lose momentum. To stagnate it to die. You know better than to treat time as an ally; either you run against it, or it'll consume you and everything you love. Monsters are endless, but the opportunities to grow strong to rid the world of them are limited. You found and pursued new opportunities elsewhere, and now you return to a world slightly different from what you left behind. You don't mind; you're willing to follow the winds of your grand fate wherever they take you.」

「Achievement: Cultural Gap

Tier: B

Reward: +48 stat points

You returned to your homeworld after 500 years away!

You left your home and people, everything you knew and loved. There were greater goals to pursue, greater things to achieve, and greater power to attain. Your world couldn't give you the ability to rid the world of monsters; therefore, you sought it elsewhere. Now, you return and find both you and your world changed beyond recognition. You have drifted apart and now wonder: are you even a part of it anymore? Whatever the answer, you know with certainty that while the gap between you and your people's culture might have widened, the distance between you and your grand fate has only narrowed, and that's all that matters.」

「Achievement: Lost in the Future

Tier: S

Reward: +192 stat points

You returned to your homeworld after 1,000 years away!

You have lived a long life filled with adventure and wonder, pain and terror, nirvana and regret. You saw all there was to see out there, did all there was to do, and lived all there was to live. Nations rise and fall over a thousand years, and so did you. The returner standing on your feet today isn't the same one who stepped away from this world. Likewise, the world has long moved away from what it once was. Change is constant, adaptation is required, and progress is the price of survival and improvement. You find yourself lost in the future of your distant memories, but it is all worth it, for you have found yourself closer to your grander fate.」

Arthur absentmindedly added the extra stat points to wisdom...

| Wisdom +252 → 8,366

| Remaining distributable points: 0

...and wasn't stopped by Fate's rules of stat point allocation. Awakeners were limited to improving a stat by up to ten percent of all points in that stat's category every minute. He should've been limited by 124 points, but apparently, those who had ascended didn't have to worry about that.

Only a tiny part of his mind paid attention to that; most of it was lost in awe.

There was no damp room waiting for them. Instead, Arthur and Sophie found themselves in an endless grassland. There were no walls, trees, or mountains anywhere around. Not even big rocks or geographic accidents. Only grassy plains lazily stretching into the horizon.

It was early morning. Few white clouds could be seen in the light blue sky. The rising golden sun shone over the world, blanketing it in light and warmth. The dew in the grass wet his clothes, and for the first time in ten years, he felt natural moisture in the air.

Arthur breathed in profoundly and did nothing to stop the tears in his eyes from streaming down his cheeks.

He felt way too many things all at once, many of them powerful. There was relief for leaving the dungeon, joy for returning, sadness for what was lost, fear of the unknown, anxiety over his duties, and hope that Sophie would remain beside him. The emotions could be bottled up, but he felt it would be more harmful than shaming himself with a public display of weakness.

Despite his mind stats, he was shocked and disoriented for a split moment. Despite Sophie's strength and agility, her legs momentarily trembled in weakness and imbalance. That went to show the enormity of the occasion.

Arthur's life and death domains made it even more momentous for him. He could feel the world like never before. For the first time, he felt life and death naturally happening in the plants and insects within his domain, and in a way that felt like an extended part of himself.

He basked in the glory of nature.

With his body stats, only extreme coldness or heat could bring him discomfort. The dungeon was somewhat cold, and monsters could try to burn or freeze him. But here and now, the subtle sensations of the early morning's coldness and the rising sun's warmth were more impactful than any magic.

The thermal sensation was nothing in the face of Sophie's touch, but it was special in its own way. It had been too long. He had forgotten what it felt like.

Fate, he had missed all that.

Sophie eventually rested her head on his shoulder, and he placed his head on hers. There was no need to say or do anything. They silently marveled at being alive and part of something grander than themselves.

Maybe they were lost in the future, like the achievement had said, but they truly felt like they had returned home.

It soothed his heart. Arthur still felt sad and anxious, but the piled-up stress from the past ten years left his shoulders like a stream.

Even his anger at his father's schemes and lies slowly dissipated. Arthur and his people only had each other for support now. Any negative feelings about the past would do them no good.

They should focus on the present and future.

* - * - *

The sun was high in the skies when he finally asked Sophie gently, "How are you feeling?"

Sophie sighed. "I'm fine," she said weakly. As fine as she could be, at least. "You?"

"Better than I thought," he replied. "What about the sun?" Her skin was already blistering. She was weak to it because of her half-vampire nature.

"I can deal with it," she shrugged.

"Can I heal you?" Her high vitality would take care of it, but he could make it painless, too.

She smiled. "You don't need to ask, Archie." Then, she added suggestively, "Ever."

Healers could only touch a patient with their express consent, except during combat, directly after, or in an emergency where the patient and anyone responsible for them couldn't be contacted in time to make a decision. Biomancy was simply too dangerous. It was also... potentially improper. A biomancer could feel the target's entire body, after all. Sophie showed great trust in him by lifting that requirement.

The innuendo of her "ever" also wasn't lost on him. She had meant what she said inside about perpetuating the species.

And, in fact, he might just need to take her on that offer sooner rather than later.

Tamara and his father insisted Arthur and Sophie should meet other people before tying themselves to anyone, and he had enough wisdom to agree with them. But only he could feel the weight of being the last of his line. He had to produce heirs.

Arthur's duty came first; his happiness was second. That had defined his life until now, and he saw no reason to change it.

Well, there was one reason: Sophie. He would have to be upfront with her about it. This was a severe and heavy duty that both had to carry together. He wouldn't use her like some sort of baby-birthing artifact, not when he might also be condemning her to life-long unhappiness if the young spark of their passion didn't translate into a healthy love as they aged.

Those were considerations for the future, though.

At the very least, Arthur had to spend a few months establishing himself before proposing. He had to have something to offer her other than his feelings.

Not that he was too worried about his professional future. He certainly could find a kingdom willing to take in a level 100 awakener. By the time he proposed, he should have a good home to share with her and good prospects for the future.

Should that fail—some kings demanded stringent soul vows that he might be unwilling to take—he was sure that the storage safe that Graham was supposed to give Arthur after they left the dungeon would have some money. He should be able to live as a hedge wizard, at least. Such mages weren't very reputable, and some places didn't welcome them, but it should be enough to survive. Arthur didn't want to subject Sophie to such a life—if she even accepted his proposal under such circumstances—but it might be the best he could do in the short term.

Fate, he hoped she would agree to marry him. The warmth of her smile, touch, and feelings... He wanted to feel it for the rest of his life.

Arthur smiled back and would keep healing her from now on. He prehended her body in case Tamara tried to prehend it, too, but used his authority to heal her instead of regular magic. It felt like an excellent way of assessing his life understanding and practicing his domain's authority.

Not to mention Arthur should preserve his mana. There was way too little mana around, much less than it should be. Then again, he hadn't been able to feel environmental mana very well the last time he was in this world.

So, he asked, "Graham, is the environmental mana supposed to be this low?"

Arthur looked around. Graham and Tamara, the latter in full battle regalia, stood diagonally from Arthur, their backs to him, facing outward. They were watching for threats.

The prince found only empty air where the dungeon entrance should be. Right after he came outside, he felt both the grass behind him and the few patches of glowing mold that could be found in the dungeon's corridor. It had been positively weird because the corridor felt like going in a direction he had no name for, like a fourth dimension. Then, that direction disappeared; the dungeon had closed the entrance.

His knight's voice was strained as he replied, "I never visited a place with so little mana before, sir."

Hierarchically, Arthur was now directly above the knight. He would be called "sir" instead of "milord" or something similar.

The prince shook his head, sighed, and asked his knight, "And I take it you can't open the way back into the dungeon?"

The man shook his head and confirmed the prince's suspicions. "It's gone, sir. The core blocked me from going back in before you came out and destroyed the passage right after. I'm a knight, not a mage, and my space magic is lacking."

Arthur sighed again, saying, "Then our first action once we set out will be delivering ourselves to the League."

"What? Why?" Sophie asked.

"The Golden King became a fallen awakener," he declared with certainty, "and in a much worse way than I expected."

He then explained everything to her.

Dungeon cores couldn't close all entrances they had to a world. Doing so was suicide. They were parasites and required a planet's mana to survive. Weak cores might survive a while without it, but a level 95 one? It would die before the entrance fully closed.

So, regardless of whether they stood in the same place where they had entered that dungeon or had come out of a different gate, that dungeon had had two entrances. However, dungeons couldn't produce more than one opening by themselves. Instead, they required assistance from natives—rich ones, too; creating new entrances wasn't easy or cheap.

Maybe some random idiot had created a new opening, but it was much more likely that the king had done it multiple times.

The logic was straightforward. Dungeon cores couldn't think long-term. They were greedy. They would not even pretend to agree to a deal that would incur a loss, much less agree to a soul vow. The stronger they were, the worse it became, and getting a soul vow from them would be prohibitively expensive.

At the very least, the king had to have delivered a way for the core to produce the level 95 dragons for the many months Arthur had killed them. It wouldn't be cheap, mana-wise. Arthur had previously suspected a massive shipment of mana crystals to be part of the payment, but extra entrances explained it better. As expensive as the latter were, they would still be cheaper and less conspicuous than the former.

The low environmental mana levels compared to the past also pointed at his father. Arthur felt less than a thousandth of the mana compared to inside the dungeon. It spoke of the entrances being there for a very long time. It wasn't easy to deprive even a tiny area of mana, much less a vast region, as should be the case if the levels weren't rising even after the entrance was gone. Mana from the surroundings should be filling it, but he couldn't feel it even now, eight hours after the drain was closed, meaning the mana-deprived area was enormous.

Multiple extra entrances were a terrible, terrible sin. Arthur had been forcing the core to use a lot of mana while he killed dragons, but he wasn't doing it anymore, while the supply lines remained. Even if he was optimistic and believed the soul vow had prevented the core from using that extra mana to grow stronger while he was inside—which only meant the price would have been even more astronomical—no payment was enough to keep it from using mana for much longer.

How long would it take for the level 95 dungeon to overflow? And what horrors would it spit on the world before a sufficiently strong army or he could get there?

The Golden King's betrayal against the Fated Races was much worse than Arthur imagined.

The explanation had Sophie's eyes widen and her face pale despite the sun's efforts to redden her skin.

Tamara had it worse; she was trembling in anger. She had already realized what he had explained, but saying it aloud made it worse. She had been played for a fool by the king, the child she had nurtured and served for a long time.

Only Graham seemed almost apathetic to it. It was just another weight to carry on top of every other already on him.

Arthur felt a sense of loss with a mix of shame. He had always seen his father as a hero, but that image was now dead and buried once and for all. Only a twisted shadow remained in its place.

"I benefited too much from the king's betrayal," he continued explaining why they had to head to the League. "I'm also his son, and you three were last known to be his servants. I'll be surprised if there's no bounty on our head."

He did not doubt the world knew about the Golden King's sins. If he didn't deliver himself to the League of his own free will, it would be seen as an attempt to escape and an admission of guilt. He would be hunted down and likely killed before he had the chance to explain himself.

Arthur was strong, but his mana was still limited. Even if it turned out that he had the power to fight the world by himself, he didn't want to do it. He hadn't betrayed the Fated Races. More importantly, neither had Sophie. He wouldn't accept a life where she was always on the run because of his father's mistakes.

The alternative, separating from her for her own good, hurt more than whatever questioning techniques the League might use on him.

That wasn't to say he would accept injustice on himself, either. Graham and Tamara had taught him different ways of making the culprit reveal things they would rather not. Pain was an undesirable but valuable tool. Yet, should they cross too many lines in the interrogation or in whatever punishment they decided to deliver on him, he would go down while fighting to ensure his family's safety.

Family.

Arthur looked at Sophie again and suppressed a sigh.

"That's the gist of it," he concluded and changed the subject, "I'll keep healing us until we find a place with more mana."

The three understood what that meant. After someone awakened, they no longer needed to consume anything to fuel their bodily functions. Instead, pure environmental mana entered an awakener's body separately from the mana absorbed to fuel magic. It was almost like a secondary absorption stat. That mana was automatically converted into calories to fuel the body.

It created an issue if someone was in a mana-starved place like this one. Unlike an unawakened body, an awakener's didn't consume itself if its energy intake was lacking. Instead, their bodies automatically converted their elemental mana, which was supposed to be used for magic, into calories. Unfortunately, the body was built to convert pure mana and wasn't good at dealing with the elements. It produced toxic waste that damaged the body.

The vitality stat didn't heal that unless it detected a constant flow of mana for a few minutes, which was actually a blessing. Stats required calories to function; the higher the stat and the more it was used, the more calories it demanded. If the vitality stat tried to do anything about it while in a mana-starved area, it would create an endless feedback loop: the body would need more calories to pay for the healing, forcing it to convert more elemental mana, which caused more damage for vitality to heal, thus further increasing the need for calories. Even a mage's elemental mana would eventually dry out, and the awakener would instantly die for having no source of calories to keep its heart beating.

Fortunately, that didn't happen. Instead, the body slowly piled up damage. Due to awakener physiology, the toxic waste went more to the brain than any other body part. It eventually led to what was called mana madness.

It wasn't all bad news, of course. There were advantages to such physiology. Awakeners could eat food in such environments to compensate for the mana deficit or slow the process down. A weak awakener would take an entire month to go mad without sustenance, likely longer than the unawakened body could survive by consuming itself. Awakeners also didn't need water to survive, while the unawakened couldn't go a few days without it.

Unfortunately, the more stats one had, the greater their need for calories, and the faster the damage piled up. After some point, the calories required to sustain the awakener's body became so many that it was impossible to acquire by eating food.

Arthur was such a case. He had over twenty-five thousand stat points. He would go insane in less than five days, and spending his every waking moment eating would only slow that for a couple of days.

Fortunately, the waste damage could also be healed. It was a unique injury that required a healer even stronger than Tamara or who specialized in it, but it was well within Arthur's ability.

Arthur had just told everyone he could do it, giving them more insight into his power. Tamara and Graham disapproved of it, but it was better than stuffing himself with food.

What he didn't tell them was that he was uniquely suited to deal with the consequences of mana starvation. He had his life domain. He didn't need mana to heal that damage.

The prince still needed elemental mana to be converted into calories and fuel his body, though. He had considerable reserves but was also a mage without Fate skills. His passive life spells were draining more life mana than he could recover in such an environment. He was simultaneously less and more vulnerable to the situation than the other three people.

Still, he wasn't overly worried. He could deactivate most of his life spells with no issue if needed. Moreover, the dungeon had drained the region of mana, but no matter how big the area was, its borders shouldn't be more than another few days of walking distance. Then everyone's vitality would kick in to deal with their damage, and his mana reserves would recover faster. If they got to such a place quickly enough, no one would notice he wasn't using his life mana to heal them.

"We'll camp here until tomorrow," Arthur decided. "We all earned a day of rest after ten years of duty. We also should balance ourselves before facing whatever is in store for us." He paused. "Tamara, bring out some seats. It's time for us all to read my father's missives."

* - * - *

Sophie and Arthur sat side-by-side in a long armchair resembling a two-seat padded bench. It faced two standard armchairs occupied by Graham and Tamara.

Graham had distributed a Royal Decree to each of them and delivered the storage safe to Arthur. None of that came as a surprise. What surprised them was that Tamara delivered two letters to Arthur, one for Graham, and one for Sophie. Only the maid herself had no letter to read.

Arthur's letters came from his mother and Charlotte. Graham's also came from Charlotte. And Sophie's came from her father.

The grand knight was startled by the unexpected delivery of something written by his deceased loved one. He ignored the Royal Decree as he stared at his hand-written name in the envelope with something akin to worship. It took him a while to finally open it.

Sophie did the opposite. She immediately ripped her father's letter's envelope and lost herself reading the contents.

The prince went for the Royal Decree first, as did Tamara—not that she had a choice, as she only had it to read. He removed a short scroll from the fancy metal tube and read it.

"Son,

I ask for your forgiveness but offer no explanations. I did what I did because I believed it was for the best. I shall never regret it.

You shall never learn the truth of my actions, for it involves prophecy. Don't seek information about it, lest it becomes your undoing.

I have created an order of people to await your return and serve you. They are the Golden Dawn, a merchant group on the surface. Its headquarters is at Salvirya, in the Ashan Kingdom.

I don't know if they will still be about after however long you stay in the dungeon or whether they will remain loyal, but you might want to seek them for more reasons than support. They will likely have news of what happened to your mother, sister, and whichever descendants they may have.

My last command to you is to destroy the dungeon you were in if you're strong enough for that. If not, report everything that happened to the League of Fated Races. That dungeon cannot be allowed to keep existing. It's too dangerous.

Anything else you do is up to you. I trust your judgment and believe in you.

Live well, my son. Be happy. It's the least you deserve after all the years I stole from you.

- Charles Naerith-Tracey Boria V"

Arthur found the Royal Decree uncomfortably shallow. His father didn't admit to all his wrongdoings or explain anything. It almost sounded like he hoped for Arthur to just forget about everything and live as if nothing had happened.

The prophecy explained that, of course. The less the king said, the less Arthur could infer, thus decreasing how much it could influence his decisions. But Arthur didn't have to like to be kept ignorant.

At least a shred of decency remained in the man if he had asked Arthur to destroy the damn dungeon or report everything to the League.

Arthur wished he could've read this letter back in the core room, when he could've destroyed the core, but Graham had been instructed to only deliver it after they left the dungeon. He would have to find another entrance to the damn thing and could only hope he arrived before disaster struck.

The Decree's shallowness made him feel a little hollow, but he hadn't been expecting anything from someone who had betrayed the Fated Races, so it wasn't so bad.

The queen's letter was next.

"Dear Arthur,

Your father mentioned you're going on another secret training and forbade me from sending you a letter. Again. After I already lost your childhood.

The gall of kings!

But nothing that a few pointed words couldn't solve.

I wish I could be there to see your departure, but your sister is growing, and travel doesn't become pregnant women. A scholar also found evidence of portals being detrimental to the baby's growth. You know how these things are; a few years from now, another scholar will find evidence otherwise. Alas, until the world's most brilliant minds can reach a consensus, I would rather err on caution.

While you're away, listen well to your maid. I know you're an adult now, but only experience can teach some things.

Speaking of adulthood, your father refuses to discuss your future with me, but I demand grandchildren!

This is not to say you should sire a bastard on this trip. But if it happened, know that your mother would protect you, your beloved, and your children. I shall not get into details by letter, but know I was not your grandfather's first choice to become his son's wife. Nevertheless, your father and I couldn't be happier, and I'm not a half-bad queen if I say so myself. Ask anyone if you doubt me!

If you have to choose a color for a forbidden meeting in the moonlight, pick royal blue. It suits you. And do not, under any circumstances, look for a healer beforehand! You have elven blood, and I insist you are to honor nature! Let it run whichever course it pleases!

I'm finding great joy in this writing experience. You can't complain about my choice of subjects and must read to the end last it be disrespectful. I shall engage more in this endeavor in the future. Expect many letters during this training of yours.

And write back! I command you as your mother and queen!

I wish I could write more, but your maid insists she must return to your side posthaste.

Have fun, dear!

With all the love in the world,

- Mom"

Arthur didn't quite cry as he read the letter, but his eyes moistened. So, his mother had also been kept in the dark about the dungeon. He could only imagine how much she hurt when she learned the truth.

He carefully folded that letter, stored it in the envelope, and decided to demand a spatial storage ring of his own later. It might be unbecoming of him, but he would rather scandalize polite society than part from the last memento of his mother, at least for a while. His robe's pockets could be stolen from—unlikely, but possible—and he wouldn't risk losing the letter, no matter how scandalous the ring would be.

Actually, now that he thought of it, was it that scandalous?

Customs dictated he was still considered a prince, but of nowhere. It would earn him many looks of derision. Carrying stuff around like a servant on top of that would be a mere drop into the ocean unless society had grown considerably more conservative.

Well, he guessed he would find out when he came to it.

Only Charlotte's letter remained.

"Arthur,

Sit down because I'm about to throw some harsh truths your way.

On the day you were born, all seers in the world received the same prophecy. I couldn't find any copies of it, your father did too good a job burning it all up, but I discovered that it spoke of a great calamity that will either be willingly started or prevented by a child born that day.

Your father is about to send you away from everything you know and everyone you love because of it.

I have set things up so that my husband William will be the knight to go with you, together with your head maid and a fourth person I couldn't uncover. I'm being watched, but your maid is a weakness in the plan that I can exploit.

I used forbidden magic to see her deliver this letter to you and another to William as soon as you enter the dungeon. I'll tell him to take you away if you choose, and I trust him to do as I asked. Talk to him at any time, and he'll free you.

You deserve to live your life however you want.

Fuck tyrants—with all due respect to your esteemed father.

Also, if you want to stay, know that I made sure your training will be the best possible. Don't you dare pick the easier path. Commoners these days have a new saying: go big or go home. You can leave either before you make a choice or after becoming the greatest mage to ever live; I'll accept no half-measures from you!

I know, I know; I'm a hypocrite. But what can I say? Being a tyrant is kind of fun.

- Charlotte"

The freshness of Charlotte's letter put a smile on Arthur's face.

Obviously, Tamara had resisted whichever forbidden magic Charlotte had used but still delivered the letter when it was harmless. The maid had been under the king's command when Charlotte tried to manipulate her, so Arthur didn't resent her for keeping the letter from him.

She could've delivered it after she officially came under his wing but probably feared what the mention of the prophecy might do to his fragile psyche. She had asked him to wait until they left to uncover some truths, and he had accepted the request.

The letter's timing at least made him understand his father a little better. The king had likely been under a lot of pressure and still had decided to save his son at a significant cost.

It still didn't justify placing the world at risk of having to deal with the outbreak of a level 95 dungeon, though.

Arthur didn't care much for the possibility of willingly starting a great calamity. He would never do it, and some seers wouldn't make him doubt himself. As for preventing it, he would do it when the time came, so there was no reason to grow anxious over it.

Unlike Arthur, Graham was furious that Tamara had kept Charlotte's letter from him. Yet, the prince had to side with Tamara on this. Charlotte had used forbidden magic, probably some blood curse or special item, against the maid. It was already a blessing that she gave the man the letter at all.

The grand knight could also understand it and said nothing, but he gritted his teeth and didn't move for a while.

Tamara read her Royal Decree silently, did and said nothing, then put it away.

Meanwhile, Sophie was sobbing. She hadn't finished reading yet. Arthur touched her shoulder opposite from him in a kind of half-hug. She leaned on him and kept reading.

He looked at the now cloudy skies to wait for her to finish.

Thinking about the prophecy made him wonder if he should ask Tamara and Graham about it. Charlotte hadn't cared much about it, but Arthur wasn't sure he should be as careless. Although what he had learned wasn't enough to make him anxious, there was a limit to his willpower.

In fact, he even used his willpower to prevent his mind from trying to guess what that calamity could be. Already he had considered the dungeon he had just left, and it might make him too desperate to destroy it. Desperation usually led to lethal mistakes.

Even if it was related to the dungeon, he would get to it when he got to it. Not sooner, not later. Prophecy would come to pass no matter what, or it would just prove to be false.

Arthur would do as his father had said for now. There was a reason for consensus against knowing about divinations on oneself. He hadn't grown so arrogant as to think himself better than the entire world.

What unnerved him the most was that no one could order him not to grow arrogant anymore.

Arthur had been below other people for a very long time. Even in the last year in the dungeon, he believed the king was waiting for him. Now, suddenly, he was his own man.

That brought certain expectations and decisions. His mother had been very unladylike in her letter, likely due to pregnancy hormones, but what she had said was correct in a roundabout way. Shen had to worry about his family's continuation, which would come right after he dealt with the League.

The needless reminder added weight to his decision not to delay his proposal.

Speaking of the League, he looked at the wood-textured metal cube resting on the bench's arm. He was curious about the storage safe's contents but decided not to open it yet. There were ways of assessing when it had been last opened, and Arthur would use it as evidence of his ignorance of the king's betrayal, especially if the man had left more information inside.

Arthur also wasn't sure he wanted more of his father's money, which he expected to find inside. He had already guessed the man had paid more than a king's ransom so the prince could ascend. Donating the leftover resources to the League to invest in protecting the Fated Races seemed like the perfect destination for it. A compensation of sorts.

And, well, although he didn't want to consider the political implications, it would look good on him. Considering he expected to be thoroughly questioned, any goodwill he could gain with the gesture would be welcomed.

Sophie was crying even harder when she finished reading her letter. She clenched Arthur's robe with her hands and hid her face on his chest, saying between sobs, "Dad... knew. He knew and said... said... said it was the best for me. He said he was sorry... for being... a lousy... father." She took a while to recover from that reveal. "He said you're a good boy... If we fall in love... He'll bless us wherever... he is."

Arthur comforted her in the following hours.

She calmed down at sundown and slept in his arms not long after.

The encroaching darkness meant making arrangements for the night. The prince decided to take turns watching for danger with Tamara and Graham. They wanted him to sleep the whole night, but he insisted. They also needed to center themselves after everything.

They understood it, too. Both ended up sleeping with light clothes on a thin mattress on the ground. Like him, they would rather not be forced into a room anytime soon.

The direct sight to the starry sky felt like freedom.

Arthur took the first watch. He spent it mostly watching the moons and stars travel the skies while thinking about the future and uncovering the secrets of all the life he felt in his domain.

The grass and insects were refreshing after only feeling four people and countless monsters for so long. Their small ecosystem was like nothing he could find in the dungeon. The emotional and psychological freedom of leaving the dungeon made him feel like his mind worked better. The 252 extra points he had added to wisdom gave him a push.

Everything together triggered a bout of inspiration about the meaning and workings of life and death.

| Life: +1% → 45%

| +100 free stat points → 100 total

| Death: +1% → 25%

| +100 free stat points → 200 total

The push exhausted the last bit of potential his enlightenment on the life element during his ascension could give him. The next improvement would take a while, but he felt it was more than worth it. After all, on top of 45% understanding, he had 75% life affinity. Multiplied by his maximum of six intent strings, it gave him exactly what he needed to exert authority on two different living beings simultaneously.

Regular magic had intent strings, but his domain didn't need those. Everything was already connected to him. What changed was how many things he could simultaneously affect with his authority. To him, intellectually, each target was affected with a metaphysical "chain" instead of a string, as in the chain of command. And each chain of command let him "dominate" the target using his elemental knowledge, which was effectively magic without mana.

Such chains had no form or length; it was only a way of organizing things in his head. He also wasn't dominating anything as much as using his understanding and authority to affect things in his domain, but that categorization made sense to him. The words he chose perfectly fit the whole authority/domain theme.

With the extra life chain, he could keep one constantly dominating Sophie's body to heal her while the other rotated between the other three people to heal the damage caused by the mana-starvation toxins.

After waking Tamara up and allowing her to scout the surroundings when it was Graham's turn to keep watch, he put his floating weapons down and gently caressed Sophie's head until he fell asleep on the bench.

* - * - *

Arthur woke up to find Sophie's head lying on his leg. She was wearing a new black cloak with its hood up, and its enchantments produced an artificial shadow that covered her face and body. Nothing too dark, something on the levels of a tree shade.

Although she was lying down, she wasn't sleeping. Instead, she was looking at the skies and smiled at him when he looked down.

"Good morning," she said with a smile.

"Morning," he replied. "New style?" He lightly grabbed and waved the cloak.

Her smile became a strained. "Dad gave it to me the last time we saw each other. It's enchanted to protect me from the sun. We're mana-starved, but I made you waste mana to heal me yesterday."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "Haven't we talked about it already, miss? You're not responsible for my decisions."

She rolled her eyes. "And haven't we talked about talking to me like I'm a child?"

"I'll stop talking like you're a child when you stop treating me like one," he countered. "I healed you because I wanted to. And don't worry, I have plenty of mana."

Sophie rolled her eyes again and pursed her lips but said nothing. He chuckled and pressed her nose with his finger, then looked at Tamara, who stood a few yards in front of him, awaiting his permission to speak. Graham was walking the perimeter.

"Yes?" Arthur said.

"I found a road, master," Tamara informed.

He nodded. That was good news. "Any monsters or other dangers?"

"No, master."

"Anything noteworthy?"

"Yes, master. I don't recognize the material the road is made of." She took a square black plate ten inches wide from her spatial storage and offered it to him. "I also saw some strange technological innovations. Their new carriages are too fast and look weird. I saw only unawakened manning them."

Arthur accepted the plate. It looked like crushed gravel bound together by a specific mix, which made it look grayish-black. His domain found only minute traces of metal in the binder and in a few rocks, mostly iron and nickel. The binder substance might resist an unawakened's punch but was brittle to the pressure he produced with his 374 points of strength. The gravel was beyond his power to crush, though.

"Looks like we know where to go now," he said with a smile. He threw most of the crushed plate away but kept a one-inch-wide still-intact piece and a few loose gravel pebbles in one hand. He would learn their names with Wise Inspection on the way to the road. He patted Sophie's shoulder with his free hand. "Let's go."

"Already?" she complained, pretending to be lazy, but he could feel the worry in her tense muscles. She wasn't anticipating the meeting with the League. "Can't we stay like this just a little more?"

Arthur could say a whole host of things to change her mind, but he picked the least polite one. It was payback time.

"Cities have inns," he said as if he were discussing the weather. "Inns have rooms. I heard some are enchanted for privacy. Don't you want to sleep without listening to Graham's snore—"

Almost as soon as he had started talking, she used all her agility to stand up, her back straight like a soldier. "Fate awaits for no one, my prince!" she interrupted him with a tomato-red face when it became evident he would keep babbling. "Let us depart at once! I insist!"

Embarrassed or not, she cared more about the possibility of being alone with him than how much admitting to it shamed her.

Arthur apologized to Graham and Tamara in his heart for what they had to witness, but servants who stayed with their lords had to learn to ignore some displays. Likewise, he had been trained to ignore their presence under most circumstances. Sophie had been taught so by Tamara. The only way for a noble to have absolute privacy was not to have a servant, which was unthinkable.

Despite knowing all that, Arthur's face was even redder than Sophie's.

He played it cool by chuckling as he stood up. "Well, then. Let us see these strange carriages and discover what great wonders the Fated Races produced in a thousand years."

Tamara stored the chairs and then led the way. Arthur and Sophie followed with interlaced fingers. Graham guarded their back.

They all felt both worried and excited about what the future had in store for them.

Previous Chapter - Table of Contents - Next Chapter