She could feel her frustration reaching a zenith. No matter what she did, she couldn’t figure out if the wall was actually fake. In fact, she was now fairly certain the wall was real. The last bit of certainty was hidden behind the wall, as the boy didn’t once come back again. The biggest reason this held true was the longer she spent with the connection in place, the more she could feel it. In the beginning, she had to focus to even feel the ball of energy.
With time, she started to feel it subconsciously. Part of this might have to do with the fact that her soul was connected to another being. When she first became soul bound with the sword, she repeatedly checked the connection and watched it. Partly to check on the strength of the contracting and expanding to determine when the spirit inside would wake up. The other was the fact there was another being connected to her, this made her feel extremely uncomfortable with that knowledge.
Like a new toy, when the boy woke up, they started to communicate, the attention she gave the connection decreased as the other party was in front of her. The only way they communicated was not through this outside facade. Because of the visualization, she started to pay attention to both. It was with focus, at this point it became subconscious. Eventually it was possible to probe it without putting in much effort.
Even now, she could feel the small ball of energy. Only there was no feeling from the connection. It was too soon to tell, but if these were his true feelings, it wasn’t what she was expecting. As the last mark near the door had made her incredibly nervous at this new entity. What she received was different from what she had perceived. He was rude and argumentative as if everything he said was obvious, and not understanding something so simple felt condescending.
Only in the past, this spirit only had themselves to communicate with. To an extent, it made some sense. What didn’t make sense was the stability of the personality, he was a bit too sane. With a long exhale she just didn’t know what to do so she tried to clear out her pointless thoughts. As she started to meditate to remove her negative and frustrated emotions. Because there was no progress, she had to be patient, or at least that was the path she was trying to take.
Progression was out of the picture, so she needed to take a different path. There was no point endlessly doing the same thing over and over again. As if expecting different results. If that was the case, she decided it was better to try and heal the injury in her arm. This would take an incredible long time unless she focused solely on this endeavor. Even then it would continue to take a period of time, currently she didn’t have a lot, only it was the only thing she had to focus on to calm herself down.
As time went by, Jessica had felt it was close to a day. With the broken clock, she couldn’t be sure, but she generally had a decent internal clock. During this time, she had been meditating to increase her concentration by removing outside interference. While she had made remarkable progress with her arm, she had dark circles under her eyes. Meditation could calm the mind and help one relax, it could be used like a pseudo energy booster.
In the end, this was simply the rejuvenation nature of mana. At least at her current grade and the foreseeable future, this couldn’t replace sleep. The issue arose when she stopped meditating. The second she lost her focus, her mind started to wonder, and the wall would take root. Slowly, at first, the frustration at this entire expedition would begin to fester. After repetitive attempts, she found herself unable to do anything other than focus on the wall. Even when she tried to distract herself and meditate to do something productive as she grew tired, her concentration would be easily interrupted.
She wanted nothing more than to sleep, and yet all she could think or see was the wall. Even when she closed her eyes. Like jumping into the deep end, this abnormal state added to her misery, as she was dying of thirst. She could feel her dry lips and the start of an itch in her throat as she felt like she was in a desert. She still had water, but at the current rate she wouldn’t be able to control herself once she took a sip. In the end, thoughts of what the boy said as she glanced at the passage to the crossroads were ringing in her ears.
Standing up, she wobbled lightly. As she could feel, her legs had gone numb. Because of this, her face was plaster on the wall as she used it as support as the cold rough stone felt good on her cheeks. With her anger combined with her undying thirst like an undead looking at life, she truly was too afraid to even take the bottle of water out as with one moment of carelessness would lead to an unrecoverable situation. With the anger came an unbearable heat that refused to die like a mid-summer heatwave.
“You’re just a fucking wall. Even if I can’t destroy you, I shouldn’t be stuck in this fucking place… You’re fake. You are fake. Fakkkkkeeee~” as she spoke to herself she started to feel a lull where she could feel a comfortable moment she felt she might be able to sleep. At this point, she was starting to suffer from dehydration, and she could feel a weakness throughout her entire body. This included her head. Mixture of confusion and light-headedness that made it hard to think.
As she repeated the word fake in her head, she started to lose consciousness. As her eyes started to close, she felt herself starting to collapse. Soon she let the darkness engulf her consciousness as she got some much-needed sleep. What she didn’t know was when she collapsed, she didn’t fall to the sides or back, but fell forward through the wall she had been leaning against.
Very quickly, without time to get up, he reached out and seized the moment when the two made contact to release a large burst of mana to catch and gently lay her on the ground. What took no more than two or three seconds caused his already undefined appearance to collapse into fog as it was swallowed by the collapsing body. The second she decelerated to a standstill just before being gently laid on the ground was the moment the last of the fog was swallowed by the body that collapsed on top of it.
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At some unknown time later, she could hear a voice. It was gentle and carefree. It was whispering into her ear, “It is time to get up, sister.”
In the distance, she could feel another presence. She knew exactly who it was just by the aura he gave off, “Is she still not up? Go get some water and dump it on her…”
The gentle voice once again repeated itself, “Sister, you really need to get up, I can’t stop him!”
With a start, she very quickly sat up. Or at least tried. The second she lifted herself off the ground, she was hit with a huge wave of disorientation. She felt like she was going to throw up and yet after a few dry heaves she failed to do anything but couch heavily as she felt a scratchy irritation in her throat.
“Quickly grab the water and drink!” Once she heard the voice, she very quickly responded like a reflex. She missed a few times as she groped the rucksack for the side pocket as she finally opened it and pulled out a container that was lodged in between different soft objects in different pockets. Once she had the container, she could feel her strength waning extremely fast.
With the last bit of her strength she took a large drink, unfortunately she wasn’t quick enough. After getting a large bit of water, she lost most of her strength as the container slipped out of her hands and fell to the ground as a bit of water spilled onto the floor. She couldn’t do anything as the adrenaline had waned, and she felt powerless as she lay staring at the opening with water in it that was very close to spilling on the ground.
The amount of water that spilled was not even enough to moisten the dry brick floor. The water was quickly corralled into the binding material on the floor. It was only at this moment she realized she was on a bricked floor that was unlike anything she had seen before. She had seen a bricked path before, but that was always in cities and places with high levels of society, as the maintenance wasn’t something just anyone could afford. Such a thing shouldn’t be in a laboratory.
As she looked around, she heard a voice in her head, “You finally woke up. I had to scream at you for minutes on end, if you waited too long, it was likely you would have lost any energy you had left.”
She didn’t say anything as she continued to look around. As the itchy sensation in her throat had starting to subside a bit, she could still feel her lips were extremely dry as she felt a stinging as she licked them. Wincing slightly, she had to use mana to pull herself up and drag herself against the wall, as she only grabbed the bottle after she was in a more stable position. Carefully, with her back against the wall, she stabilized her hands as she gently lifted the container from the small neck.
When she placed it back on the ground with its cap back on. She couldn’t help but shake it as she could hear all the water she had left. It wasn’t enough to do much. The bit of water was giving her some of her strength back, but it wasn’t much. It wasn’t until she heard the boy's voice again did she look around but fail to see him.
“While the water you lost was around half, it doesn’t matter. You made it through the wall.” Only now did she look around and see a wall unlike the brick enclosed hall she was currently in. “The wall was made in such a way that all I can tell you is the wall is fake. Unless you believe it yourself, it is impossible to pass through the wall.”
His tone was angry, but it wasn’t directed at her so she just listened silently as she was too tired to argue, “At the moment we need to follow this path, it will take you an hour or so, and you will be brought back to the first area. But I want you to stop halfway and go to the second area, there is something there we need to pick up before we leave. Don’t speak and just listen to what I say for now. You don’t have any other choice if you want to leave this place. There won’t be any traps, just follow it until the third staircase.”
Very quickly the voice that originally manifested from her imagine went quiet as it was getting quieter as the closer to the end it got, the last few words were plainly injected without a voice. She closed her eyes for a minute as she looked at the connection and could feel that the energy was weak. It was only then she realized it wasn’t just her being too tired to imagine a voice to make it easier to understand him. It wasn’t as weak as the first time, but it was clear he needed time to recover his energy. She just wasn’t sure why. Though, she was too tired to think too long as she at the moment didn’t care. Using a bit of strength to wipe her eyes, she could feel a bit of wetness. With this dehydration and her current lack of water, it was a terrible time to experience that dream…
As she leaned against the wall, she moved. In her current condition, the idea of getting out was the only source of energy she had. It didn’t hurt that she also wanted to go to the middle section. He held onto her even when the magic flooring made it impossible for her to get through, because of that, she currently had a highly dried out hand in her bag. Even with mixed feelings, she told herself she was still under the contract and couldn’t leave even if she wanted to.
Since that was the case, she didn’t know how to explain the fact she was now currently soul bound to the finished product. She likely wouldn’t get the failed products, but that was something to worry about later. She used this method to push herself forward as she tried to continually think about different things to distract herself from her current plight.
The pathway she was following was strange, it was made of bricks that were held together by what looked like cement, yet there was no dust in this passage. Let alone the stairs and different twists and turns, she had no idea what this place was. Never had she even heard about such a thing. Part of the danger of a laboratory was that you had to backtrack your steps from end to beginning to get out. This meant you had to be just as careful leaving as you did entering.
With a few breaks, she finally made it to the third stairs. With all the twists and turns, she didn’t think she was even still in the same place. It took her a few hours, and it used the last bit of her energy. She did have the idea that this might be a ploy, but at the same time when she looked at the ball of energy it was inside a series of mysterious symbols. Regardless of how strong the contracting and expanding, the energy couldn’t leave that outline of symbols.
Even when she could feel the mana from the ball of energy, she could feel that if she willed it like the sword, she could stop it from being able to appear outside. In fact, she could feel the mana’s intent. Because of that, she didn’t attempt to stop it, not even when she was dead tired. As the boy appeared he looked at her, his expression wasn’t happy or sad and just looked at her before sitting down next to her, “Sleep I will wake you up, the next part requires your concentration as there will be traps.”
Very quickly her vision went black as if the boy had cast a magic spell.