I woke up in a small shelter made out of earth magic. Paula was sleeping next to me. I wanted to get up but my body didn’t want to cooperate. I was still exhausted. Attempting to get up exhausted me more and I fell asleep again. I woke up again and Paula was still sleeping next to me. She isn’t dead, right? I checked on her but she was alive, just weakened. I managed to drag myself outside. It was a sunny day. The weather didn’t reflect how I was feeling. I saw Paul working the earth with some materials he had found.
He noticed me. He ran at me as I was about to collapse to the floor. “You need to rest. It seems losing your hats is a big deal. I’m surprised you’re even conscious. Paula hasn’t woken up since that day…”
“That day?” I looked at what looked like a small field. I saw some small sprouts.
“You have been out for 2 weeks…” I saw another hut and Paul’s beard which was normally cleanly shaven showed no signs of having had a shave for a while.
“So, it wasn’t a bad dream… I’m sorry. This was all my fault.”
“Let me bring you back to your hut. None of this is your fault. You’re too hard on yourself” I grabbed his sleeve.
“It is my fault! I got arrogant thinking I could fight a god! I’m strong? Ha! What a joke! I flew too close to the sun, got burnt and here I am, crawling on the floor.”
“Ayaru! Calm down this is no..”
“Don’t call me that! Everything that made me Ayaru Mistflower is gone! And I deserved it! I should have stayed in my lane, taken up an uninteresting research, and gotten it approved. Gathered funds, found a research partner who was interested in my work and is a sweetie. Bond with him and leave a legacy behind for my kids and grandkids. That’s all I had to do!”
“Please calm down…”
“But No! I had to be the smart one! I had to research mana runes and mana circles knowing that the council frowned upon progression! After countless warnings from Remi and other professors, even from Paula, I continued studying this cursed subject! And what did I get? Exactly what I asked for! Scorn and rejection! And then I pretended to be a victim while I had called this upon myself! But I didn’t stop there! No! I had to continue challenging the council which led to me having to hunt down another Misha and fighting an army led by a god.” I paused to catch my breath.
Paul had seemed to given up on calming me down.
“And after that, I thought it was a brilliant idea to antagonize not 1 but 2 Sarian gods! How arrogant! I should have cut my losses and either apologized or flee. But noo! Ayaru Mistflower knows it all! She had to get you 2 into trouble to the point where we get stripped down to nothing and have to spend an eternity here! So yes, this IS MY FAULT!”
“Ugh, Aya, do you need to be so loud? How is a Misha supposed to sleep?” Paula appeared in the doorway of the shoddy earth hut.
“Paula!” Paul ran over and helped her walk over here. She was still weak.
“What is all this ruckus?”
“Ayaru is convinced that this all is her fault”
“I told you to not call me that!”
“What has gotten into you Aya? How are we supposed to call you then?”
“I…I don’t know. I just don’t feel like myself anymore…”
“You’re taking this hard, eh?” Paula gave me a hug. Tears started to flow.
“I’m so sorry! I ruined your lives because I got conceited. I… I’m so sorry.” I cried until my tears dried out. Even though Paula was weakened she stayed with me.
“I’m sorry, I’m such a mess. Thank you, Paula,” Paula gave me a weak smile. We looked at how Paul was working on a small field he had made with the help of his earth magic. His magic is weak even as a human and it seems this was the best he could do right now.
“I guess this is our home for now.” I nodded.
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I used water magic to catch rain and make a lake so we had fresh water. I used wind magic to blow things from outside the barrier into the barrier. It seems that things can pass through the barrier to get inside. We had tried to leave the barrier but it wouldn’t let us. I had blown a boar into the barrier with wind magic and it tried to escape but also got blocked. Things can get in but not out. A reflection of that bitch’s nasty personality.
We had created a small farm. Our animals were unusual because we just used the whole barrier as a cage and the animals were not the kind of animals that were normally held on a farm.
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“Have you come up with what we should call you? You keep telling us to not call you Aya or Ayaru.”
“I don’t know…”
“It has already been a month, we can't just say ‘You’, ‘Blue chick’ or ‘Blue bitch’ we need a name.”
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“Only you call me ‘Blue bitch’…”
“Then stop being so blue and come up with a name.”
“I will, I just need more time.” Paula hugged me.
“Let it go, let bygones be bygones. Let’s focus on making life here as comfortable as possible. “
“That’s easy for you to say, it’s not your fault that we are here…” Paula slapped my face.
“Get over it! We have forgiven you; you are the only one who hasn’t forgiven yourself.”
“Is that so…” Paula nodded.
“I miss my hat…” Silence fell.
“Go catch a boar. We will try to find out if we can somehow lift this barrier tomorrow."
Somehow that made me excited. Maybe there is a chance. That bitch was stupid after all. Maybe this barrier just looks strong. I was too depressed to attempt to lift it. I slapped my cheeks and decided to cheer up and put my all into hunting the boar down.
Which was easier said than done because my magic was quite shit in this state. It was good enough but it was as if this boar had smelled my weakness and instead of running it was fighting back. I still had my [Azure Aura] so I was super tough but that was useless if I couldn’t catch this boar for our dinner. I got tackled and ran over multiple times. I took this personal. This boar has something against me! I deserved it but I’m more interested in filling my belly at this point. Self-pity won't fill my stomach. This oinker was more nimble than I gave it credit for. I finally defeated it with [Azure Flower]. I was extremely low on mana and stamina. I sat down to rest. Is this how humans live? This is brutal. This boar would have killed me if I didn’t have [Azure Aura]. I wanted to hug my hat and thank it but I couldn't...
I dragged the boar toward the small farm we had built. This boar was extremely heavy.
“Someone! Help! This boar is too heavy for me!” Paul came running 5 minutes later and handled the rest. How can he walk so fast while carrying this boar? I arrived at the farm. Paul had reached the farm a long time ago. Paula was already cooking it.
“I’m exhausted.”
“The boar will be done in 30 minutes!”
“We can finally have a proper meal!” Paul seemed happy that his hard work on the farm had paid off. We had vegetables and some fruits and boar meat.
We haven’t had a meal as good as this in a long time. A lot of things came from my bag which I had altered with spatiotemporal magic. I had spare wands and staves for Paula stored, some food that we had finished in the last month, and other useful things. We went to sleep early because we didn’t know how hard it would be to attempt to break through the barrier.
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The morning came early and we were ready. We found a spot in the shade and accessed the runic structure of the barrier.
“Oh… this is going to take a while.” I could see that this barrier was extremely complicated. I instantly noticed something though.
“This barrier has 7 points that need to be lifted first. We can’t directly influence this barrier unless we take care of that first.”
“Do you know where they are?”
“I don’t sorry…”
Paul got up. “I guess it’s time to explore.”
I looked at the enormous space around us. “Ugh, this is going to take forever.”
There was a whole lot of nothing here on the plateau so I thought that it would be easy. I was wrong. This barrier seems to stretch a bit beyond where it normally would be. We found a cave. There was a large pink root in this cave and it seemed to have various light-based seals on it.
I ran out of the cave and sent a [Fireball] into the sky to notify Paul and Paula that I had found one. It took them 30 minutes to arrive.
“I found one! It has a lot of light seals on it.”
“Ooh, can you dispel them?”
“I will try!” We entered the cave and I attempted to dispel a seal when a large magic circle appeared on the ground.
“Uh oh. This is bad. Right?” Paul drew his sword.
“This is a summoning circle! Be alert!” Paula got ready for battle.
We braced ourselves for whatever would appear from the magic circle. I had tried to jam it but my magical capacity was greatly reduced so I failed. This might hinder me in attempting to dispel those seals. A large strange creature appeared. It didn’t look like anything I recognized.
“What is that?”
“I have no idea!”
It let out a loud shriek. It flapped its 4 wings and tried to blow us away. Paul stuck his sword into the ground and grabbed Paula who got blown away. I wasn’t as lucky as Paula and I got sent into a wall and hit my head.
“Ouch!” I miss the protection my hat gives to my head.
It rushed at Paul and Paula. Paul pushed Paula to the side, evaded, and cut at its legs. His sword shattered.
“Shit!” He used earth magic to trip the 2-legged 4-winged creature. It looked like a big ugly chicken but it also had a lizard tail.
“Hey, Paula do you think that thing tastes good?” Paula looked at me, then at the strange creature.
“Absolutely not!” Paula and I started firing magic at it.
“Why is this thing so tough?!”
“Do humans always have this problem?”
We looked at how Paul was struggling to keep the creature in check with his earth magic. It seems that this is normal for humans. None of my skills did meaningful damage. I couldn’t use [Tsunami] or [Meteor] for obvious reasons. I’m not sure if I would even be able to use them because they require a decent amount of mana. We exhausted our mana and stamina and this creature still seemed like it could continue fighting.
“I think… we need to retreat.” We were all exhausted so we decided that this was a good idea. I don’t want to die to an ugly creature like this. I made a sloppy water clone but it was enough to distract the creature and we could safely escape.
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We sat around a small wooden table Paul had made. We had serious faces.
“Let’s be blunt here. We suck.” Paul and Paula nodded.
“It might have gone different if Paul had his sword…”
“it was an old model. I should have walked with a higher quality sword…”
“You didn’t know that we would come back to find Vong getting attacked by that bitch. We just went to visit the town over… I’m glad you even thought of bringing a sword for that.”
“So, what do we do? How do humans get stronger? Surely not by research or getting older right?”
Paul scratched his cheek. “Most of it comes from getting older and more experienced yeah… Training is a good help but experience trumps all.”
“No way, so we're stuck here until we polish our skills and get more experience?” Paula sunk into her chair.
“Unfortunately, that was just one monster, there are 6 more points that need their seals lifted. If they possess creatures as strong or even stronger, we have a big problem.” Paul reclined.
For the first time in a month, it sunk in how serious our situation was.
“So, we really are stuck…” I sighed. “I have a question. If we are really stuck here for a long time… how is that going to work for you Paul?”
Paula became pale. “Oh no I didn’t think of this!”
“By how much did that potion stretch his lifespan?”
“I don’t know! I don’t even know if it worked!”
“It’s ok Paula, it worked. I can feel it.” Paula calmed down but I knew that he just said that to calm her down. Unfortunately, we can’t know for sure until some time has passed and by that time it would be too late.
I hope that we can find a solution before too much time passes. Losing Paul would be painful and it would devastate Paula.