Silently stepping away from the wall, it didn’t take very much to understand the progression of this story. Jessica couldn’t conclude how the situation occurred, however by this time she could paint a vivid picture of events. It wasn’t like she didn’t want to look at more, the emotions that tormented her when she first entered seemed to have an entire story of their own. She would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious and tempted to read every single mark. Only the soft, fuzzy ball of energy was speaking, and it was being translated by something in between the two of them.
Surprise was something she should have probably felt but couldn’t muster even the slightest bit as the surprises being shown to her today, this simply wasn’t something that caused any real suspense. Instead, she cared more about the fact that something in the soul bound spell allowed the two to communicate. This also meant once the boy in the sword woke up, she could ask him for a way out. More than anything else, this was the most important aspect. Though, there was one other thing that was raising a bit of conflict.
The first message was hopeful and the second was filled with determination. These two marks were not terribly far apart. In fact, the sheer number of the marks was so densely populated, it could be said that they were a bit far apart. But she kept going back to the mark next to the door. If each wall had marks from top to bottom. Not all the marks were the same size. The closer they got to the wall, the bigger the marks became. The emotions radiating off those walls were more unstable and extremely vivid.
Densely populated marks went from hundreds to thousands next to the stage, all the way until they were probably only a few hundred. But there was part of the wall segmented into pieces that only had a single mark. It wasn’t like she couldn’t feel more under it, but the mark was so large and deep that the rest were buried. If she had to make a guess, it was probably not just one or two marks that were completely gone after the outburst that made the mark.
So the question was, to look or not to look. She couldn’t bring herself to peer into every mark. That would be an invasion of privacy that she wasn’t willing to commit such a transgression. She was sure there was likely a way to remove the soul bound spell linking the two. It wouldn’t be easy, things dealing with the soul rarely were. For the foreseeable future, they would likely be together. So this type of transgression was something she wasn’t willing, she still needed him to help her get out of here. The mana she felt and the fact that the switch stopping the traps to this very room showed he had been moving about the laboratory.
Now the question was, how much did she know about the person she was going to be asking to help her. This being would be traveling with her and yet that same being left a mark on an indestructible wall that was filled with anger, loneliness, hatred, depression, determination, with probably many other emotions. In the end, these emotions were eaten alive by the madness that was flowing out so clearly that even when the rest of the emotions were now taking effort to feel. This mark still released intense emotions that even with the small ball of energy accepting or suppressing the majority of it, she could still see her hair stand on end and goosebumps up and down her arms.
As she moved closer, she couldn’t help but notice how clean the mark was. No matter how she looked at it, this was a fluid stroke without hesitation or stopping. Emotions were things everyone felt, it wasn’t special. But to allow others to feel your emotions was not a simple thing. Mana could make it easier, only that didn’t mean it was that easy. If it was so easy, it was likely the end, as they had lost control of their mana because of an emotional breaking experience in which it was questionable if they could survive.
Having just experienced it herself, she was very keen on how difficult it was to deal with that situation alone. As cautious as she was, she didn’t get within five steps of the mark. She didn’t have enough experience, but the end of the mark almost gave her the impression that after making it, the being in question moved and blasted opened the locked doors. No matter how she thought of it, she needed to know. Partly for her curiosity and partly to know the person she would be working with soon in the future. Moving closer, she felt a reaction without even touching the wall. She was still two steps away when she started to hear whispering.
It was too quiet to make out, instead when she focused on the small ball of energy she could feel the soft inhaling and exhaling. As it originally was gently expanding and contracting it was now speeding up as if filled with excitement or panic, the energy also grew unstable. She only hesitated slightly before focusing back on the mark. Unable to make out the whispers, she took the final step and touched the mark without injecting mana. To be honest, she was too scared to truly inspect the mark. Exploring from a far was different from doing it in person. Luckily for her, the mark was filled with so much emotion, it seemed the being reacted to it without her stimulating the mark with mana.
“This will mark day 365,000. My thoughts are becoming more chaotic. If I want to not lose my last bit of sanity, I will have to get out soon. I have tried nearly everything I could to leave this room. I have long since given up on any salvation. With each attempt to open the door, I can feel my soul in the sword about to fracture. At first, the pain was hard to deal with. It appears something is locking the door from the outside, whatever it is, it’s very strong. After feeling it for so long I can’t deny a very small part of my soul that thrives on the pain, I can still feel something. So strong that if I destroy it, I will probably die. Often I lose myself in my daydreams. An idea has come to mind, but I am unsure how to do it. I have been sleeping less often lately, staying in my imagination more. Regardless of how long it takes, I will get out. The thought of what I will do to the one that put me in this situation. What is the point of a second life if I can’t live it. At first, I wasn’t sure what I would do other than end them, now I want it to be slow. Since I can’t live it, then this isn't another life. HAHAHAHAHA, yes, that sounds nice. I didn’t think I was deserving of such punishment, but maybe this is hell they talk about. Though it matters not, what I am going to do once I leave will be true hell, I thought it through. If this is or even if it isn’t hell it can kiss my ass. Hehehahaha, get it, I thought it through? I am getting out. A thousand years of planning, and it is still shit. Not even death is going to stop me. But I don’t want a plan, I just want to inflict pain on the responsible party. This will be my last entry, I have nothing more to say to myself or this empty world of a room. Ready or not here I come, hopefully it's a god if so I get to torture a god to death, doesn’t that sound fun?”
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“I will get out, anyone or thing in my way will be destroyed.”
She could feel a chill run down her spine as the voice that was speaking to her originally sounded emotionless. In fact, it didn’t sound like a person but a being injecting words into her head. The voice seemed to be her mind comprehending the phenomenon she was experiencing. Maybe she was still doing that, only the voice was no longer emotionless. Instead, she was experiencing more than one voice speaking at once. There was a voice speaking so softly that it was heard to make out as it was filled with helplessness, frustration, and exhaustion. The second voice was louder and spoke with anger, hatred, calm happiness. The worst was the last voice she could make out was whispering, however it was like someone was whispering into her ear and was the clearest and spoke in a tone filled with madness, glee, excitement.
The three voices would interchange, making it hard to tell the exact emotion. Otherwise, it was almost like the person in question was experiencing three different emotional states that would change in a single sentence. Only once she moved further away from the mark did the ball of energy slowly start to calm back down. With this, the voices finally stopped echoing in her head. Ignoring the ball of energy that she needed to focus on, her hand was normal otherwise. To feel and make itself known, she only needed to focus, after that it allowed the two to feel like they were having a one-sided conversation. Standing near the marks caused her attention to be drawn over without needing to put in much effort.
Only once everything returned to normal did she sit down and enter a meditative state. She felt extremely uncomfortable. It wasn’t just the words spoken, even the information inside, drew her attention. Once she was able to stabilize her mind and remove the remnants of the voices from her head, was she able to look over the bits she remembered without having that tingling down her back that was brought by the voices she had imagined. It appeared that this soul bound connection had some dangers. The soft ball of energy hadn’t done anything since it calmed down, because of the method used to insert the voices into her head she was unable to defend against them psychologically.
More importantly was that there was an issue with the information. It wasn’t very important in the end. This issue gave her more information than she could have expected, the being in the sword was likely not from their world. They had precisely stated the days, but it was wrong. It wasn’t very important, only it made her think about a rumor. They had four hundred days in a year. Each day was twenty hours and the seasons changed utterly like clockwork. Cogs in a machine, there was no deviation.
Spoken in passive, but this was contributed to the Will of the World. It is said they keep everything in check and doesn’t allow the world to break this balance. There were many things attributed to the Will of the World. Quietly bringing her hand to her neck, she couldn’t feel it, even still she knew the collar was on her neck. She hadn’t thought of this before. This also meant that John was still alive. The question was to what extent. It likely wasn’t in either of their calculations that something like this would happen.
A long while later, she felt a stirring in her arm. It was a very strange feeling, but there was a large amount of mana that started to gather from outside into her left hand. Soon her hand seemed to be lit ablaze. There was no heat or fire, so she didn’t panic, only the fog that was being generated from her hand did startle her moderately. Soon her hand stopped drawing in mana before the fog condensed into a solid state. This wasn’t a transparent fog that could be barely seen through defined features, instead what stood in front of her was an actual person that had been created through fog.
Even more astonishingly, he was looking himself over. It was strange seeing a kid dance around inspecting himself in this dark environment. The clothes that had been drawn from what she could only guess was mana were different from anything she had seen before. There wasn’t any design, but it was a light shirt with remarkable craftsmanship that seemed similar to what nobles had but simply too casual. The same could be said of the pants.
Once he was done inspecting himself, he looked over at her before bringing his hand to rub his chin as he also gave her a once over without saying anything. She wasn’t exactly sure of what to do, so she simply and quietly waited for the boy to speak. Without needing to wait long, soon he stopped in front of her with a three-foot distance between them and opened his mouth. A bit different from expected, she once again felt that strange feeling as if someone was using mana to speak in their surroundings. But she couldn’t understand a word of it.
Very quickly, the now stable ball of energy in her arm started to react as words were once again being injected into her head, “What is your name?”
She paused slightly as she was still uncomfortable with this way of communication but, it was still communication, “Jessica.”
After hearing what she said, he seemed a bit confused before, once again feeling a reaction from her arm again. Once this activity stopped, the boy nodded his head before tilting it slightly, “No last name?”
Very quickly the boy noticed the dark expression on her face before he seemed to be annoyed. Luckily for Jessica, she didn’t seem to notice this as the boy quickly turned around before moving towards the door. Before she could recover, she heard the unique way his words were spoken once more, “Can you cry later? I want to see the outside world. Come, come, let’s get out of here.”
She wanted to be upset, but like a magic chant when she heard get out of here, she couldn’t help recovering slightly. The taboo subject that had been brought up was quickly washed away as she couldn’t help but ask, she needed to get used to this delayed response, “I told you my name. What is your name?”
The boy had just hopped over the remains of the door before he turned to look at her without much of an expression, “I don’t have a name.”