There was no daylight yet when I roused myself out of meditation. After doing so, I looked down at my hands and observed the mana essence to still see no change. After putting it away in a string bag I then got out of bed while grabbing my sword.

Since there was still time until Ilise and I set out, I decided to get some swordsmanship practice in and headed out. To my surprise while I walked out the main room, Luttin was still manning the counter and gave me a good morning as I walked out.

The first thing I did was to look for an area to practice. After walking around the area outside the inn I unfortunately couldn’t find an open area so I started to walk around to pass the time. While I began walking with no direction in mind, I started to think about the areas I saw in the memories. Once that came to mind, I was already walking towards the gate I saw on the way to the guild.

When I was walking through the town square there were only a few people who were starting to set up their stands which made it easy to navigate through. After I was out of the town square, it didn’t take long until I found the area I was looking for.

There stood an archway to the right of me and past through it, there was an obvious change in environment. The walkways were very muddy and the walls to buildings were plastered with dirt. When I walked through the archway, the sun began breaking through over the horizon, brightening up the place more.

I began walking down the dirty pathway and passed by a couple of people who wore tattered clothing with one giving me a weird look and the other was avoiding all eye contact. Brushing it off as a normal thing, I continued to walk on to confirm the one thing my body is yearning for.

It took a bit of walking until I started seeing familiar buildings. Once I understood the area I was in, I kept my eyes to the left until I finally saw it ahead. There, standing between two buildings, an empty, lone plot of land.

When I stopped after reaching the spot, I looked around the desolated area in front of me. There between the two run down buildings was an empty field of unkempt grass that looked like it would easily break if you grabbed it. I looked closer and noticed that the long grass was covering over some burnt remnants. I felt a pain in my chest as I was reminded of the few memories I had in the building that used to fill the gap here. After I took in the scene in front of me I then stood there for several minutes with a hand holding my chest.

My hand fell from my chest as I turned towards the way I came. My chest still felt heavy as I was walking away from the empty plot.

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I was walking through town square and while I navigated my way through, I noticed it was a lot more lively. There were people now cooking foods and others calling out to check out their wares causing small crowds to form at the stalls.

Once I made my way through and back to the inn, I went inside. I then made my way towards the door Ilise was in front of last night and I knocked. I waited in several minutes of silence until I decided to turn and walk back out of the inn. When I was back outside, I started walking towards the guild.

It didn’t take long until the guild was in vision and I saw our carriage pulling out from the side before it was parked in front of the building. When I approached the carriage, I saw Ilise sitting up front and when she saw me, she called out to me.

“Hey Crim! I was wondering where you went, thought you might be getting food at the guild so I came here.” She says while jumping out of the coach seat. “Turns out you weren’t so I just started getting the carriage out so we can leave right away.”. She then looked to me with a smile “Anyways, I’m all ready to go. Unfortunately we don’t have time to eat something at the guild now so we can make it to the area with some daylight still.”.

I nod to her before walking towards the back of the carriage and entering inside. Once inside, I found the carriage was a lot more empty now that the supplies which were being transported have now been taken out. After observing my surroundings, I made my way to the back while placing my sword to the side before I sat down and rested my back against the divider between the inside and coach.

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A few minutes after I heard Ilise climb back into the coach was when the carriage started moving. The streets were not as crowded when we came into town so it made it easy to exit with no hold ups. I got lost in thought thinking about the things I wanted to learn about Marawa while we were leaving town but was okay with leaving since I knew I’d come back.

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It’s been a few hours since we left town which was spent in silence. Finally the silence was broken by Ilise from the other side of the cloth “Are you excited?” she asked.

“For what?” I was confused.

“I thought you were someone that liked fighting since you trained all the time.” She explained.

“I train because I need to fight and I fight because that’s all I know.” I started thinking about when I first woke up in the forest.

“Is that so.” She pauses for a moment before saying more “You know, I always wonder what adventurers fight for.”. “Maybe it’s because my parents were adventurers.” She then mentioned.

I then curiously asked “Do you ask other adventurers in the guild?”.

“Yeah, I normally ask them while I was working at the counter.” Ilise answered. “Oh and the reason I didn’t ask you is because the little bit of time I’ve worked at the counter, I haven’t ran into such an unorthodox person trying to join the guild.” She quickly added on.

I was confused on what she meant about me but was more interested in what other adventurers fight for. “What were some of the things that they told you?” I then asked.

“Hmm… well the one I hear the most often is ‘I want to become known and famous!’ or ‘I want to become rich!’.” She started answering. “Most of the time the ones that say that don’t live too long because they try taking dangerous quests.”. After a pause she then mentions “My parents both did it for the excitement of fighting but after my mother passed away my father said he found his actual reasoning for fighting. He then said that he wished he realised it earlier.” Ilise then went quiet. I wasn’t bothered by ending the conversation there and just watched out the back of the carriage, thinking about the upcoming fight.

Several more hours passed before I heard Ilise speak up “Hey could you grab out some food for me? It’s in the closest box to the front.”. Once I heard her, I turned to my right to see a medium sized box and I began moving over to it and opening it.

I looked inside the box to see bread and dried meat. I then took out a couple pieces of dried meat and bread before closing it back up. Afterwards I handed a piece of bread and dried meat to Ilise through the cloth. Through the cloth, I saw that I couldn’t see the sun anywhere and made the guess it was probably noon. I retracted my hand after I felt her grab the food and heard her give her thanks. After the noises of food being eaten, the carriage once again fell back into silence.

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The sun was now in my vision through the back of the carriage and I began to feel the carriage go offroad. I then heard Ilise call out to me shortly after “Oh Crim! There it is! We’re coming up to the forest!”. When I heard her words, I poked my head through the cloth to see what she saw.

Upon poking my head through, I saw large trees expanding over both sides in the distance. The trees were definitely not as big as the one in Gyuzuu but were still larger than the average trees I’ve seen. As we got closer, I noticed that at the base of the trees there were clusters of small red mushrooms scattered around. It wasn’t limited to just the trees but also in small patches around the ground but the ones on the ground had blue spots on them. I then saw Ilise doing something with the ropes connected to the horses and the carriage began to slow down.

“We should go around on foot from here, this is the area of destination that the monster has been sighted.” Ilise told me. When I heard her words, I pulled my head back and before leaving the carriage, I grabbed my blade.

I was placing my sword upon my back as I heard Ilise jump off the carriage as well. When I walked up to her, I saw her petting the horses,”Don’t worry guys, We’ll be right back.” she said while petting them. Once she was done petting the horses, she turned to me “Okay, I’m ready to go.”. Before I began walking towards the forest Ilise then mentions “Oh and a couple things before we go, one I’m only here to observe and two, it was spotted outside the forest so lets start there before checking the inside.”.

After nodding to her words, I then took the lead and began walking. While walking I just started to notice the grass was a lot more of a lush green than normal with white flowers and mushrooms growing anywhere and everywhere in the area.

We walked along the forest line for a while as the sun was now fully set. Ilise eventually called out from behind me “Let’s head back and set up camp and check the other side tomorrow morning.”. When I heard her words, I turned around and began walking back towards the carriage since I also felt the same way about this side.

When we made it back to the carriage which was in the same spot, we began setting up camp. Ilise then handed me some dried meat and bread after the campsite was set up and we had a fire going. While eating the food, I watched the fire dance along the wood and started thinking about the things to come tomorrow.

A short while after both of us finished eating, Ilise then got up “I’m going to head off now, don’t go finding it without me because I’m your observer and want to see it all happen.” she said while walking towards her tent. When she was in her tent, I got up and moved a little bit away from the fire before I started practicing with my sword, preparing for the upcoming fight.

Some odd amount of time passed while I was practicing my swordsmanship when I felt as if something passed through me. When it does, I quickly scan around the area while being alert. I didn’t notice it at first but found it weird that the grass all around us was now purple or it always was. I was becoming confused as I looked around, I then noticed that there were glowing blue mushrooms and black flowers scattered everywhere. My eyes then found its way towards the forest and noticed that there were glowing blue mushrooms on them as well as small groups of red foliage scattered along all the trees that weren't there before.

As I got closer to the trees, all the red foliage on the trees suddenly opened up one by one and revealed an eyeball that started scouring around the area. Taken back at the scene in front of me, I come to a halt. It wasn’t long before one of the eyeballs noticed me and locked it’s sight on me. Once I was spotted, all of the other eyes peered at me and began staring me down. Suddenly all the blue mushrooms started coming out of the trees and ground.

While they were doing so I began hearing hundreds of voices in my head “Weeee seEE YOUUUUUU.”. They kept on repeating it over and over as they got closer to me.