The colors of the forest zipped by in streams of vibrancy that excited Red and his new senses. His dull mind from before couldn’t have possibly appreciated what beauty the world truly held.

“Slum rat,” a voice yelped, “Hurry and imbue mana already, they’re catching up to us!”

Red looked back to see among the group of humans tied to him, the archer Welsen yelling in fear. Though Red disliked the archer for his snarky comments about the people of the slums, he couldn’t deny the archer’s words now. The Badlanders were nearly upon them.

Behind them, men and women from the Lorn Badlands chased after them, their faces adorned with a glowing white tattoo, radiating a collective bloodlust.

Red shifted the bundle of five humans tied to him as he tried to gain speed. Nonetheless, he couldn’t separate far enough from their pursuers.

“How do I imbue mana?” Red asked the three Hunters still conscious on his back. They were speechless. They had clearly seen the young brawler imbuing mana earlier in the cave. Was he playing games?

“Watch out!” Rose shouted from within the bundle.

Red realized with a jolt that he was hurtling straight towards a tree. He frantically dug his heels into the ground, trying to change direction, but it was too late. With a heavy thud, he collided with the trunk, his shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. As he groaned in pain, a sudden movement caught his eye. From one of the branches above, a gnome with a bright red cap lost its balance and plummeted downward, landing squarely on the bundle of humans strapped to Red's back.

With his red cap askew, the gnome spat, “You horrible, rancid, no-good, messy-haired human! You hit me out of my hiding place!”

“Polopp,” Red sighed in relief as he started to run again, “You’ve arrived just in time. Quick, give me a potion to help me imbue mana.”

The gnome, Polopp, squeaked seeing the Badlanders faces so close to them. He dug into the bundle on his own back and began to frantically toss potions at them. “Red,” he squeaked, his voice high-pitched from fear, “Imbue mana or we’re dead!”

“I can’t!”

“We saw you imbuing mana earlier, Mister Rombell,” Rose said, panicked.

“If you allow Lady Verdinant to be captured by these savages, I will report you to the House Verdinant!” threatened Dawrite, Rose’s old servant.

"Why did I come to this forsaken place?" Welsen moaned. He had hoped to impress the beautiful Rose Verdinant, perhaps bed her, and secure connections for his family's merchant business with the Verdinant Transportation Company. Now, as the Badlanders closed in, it seemed he had made a grave error that he might not live long enough to regret.

The archer called out to Polopp, “Honorable gnome! Cure the poison you’ve afflicted us with. We still have a chance in a fight against them as long as the Battle Lord remains asleep.”

The gnome shot him a look of chagrin and replied, “The poison I created is new. The cure would take time to make.” Welsen let out a groan as if he were a floorboard on a ship.

“Sir gnome,” Rose shouted, grabbing the gnome’s attention, “Please, wake up our cleric!”

Polopp spotted a man in white religious attire, which was now stained from travel and frequent battling, among the bundle of humans. He crawled along the Hunter’s bodies like a spider climbing across a wall.

“That’s my nose,” Welsen snapped, feeling tiny gnome fingers dig in his nostrils to use as a handhold.

A potion was soon splashed on the cleric’s face, its mixture jolting him awake instantly. He awoke snorting and drooling.

"Hawl, teach Mister Rombell how to imbue mana!" Rose spoke urgently to the cleric, knowing that he was the most knowledgeable of magic and had also studied how physical fighters utilized mana. If anyone could teach Red, it was him.

The cleric, Hawl, took a moment to gather himself as he found himself wrapped tightly in a bundle like a log, but he was a Base Rank 10 Hunter and could adapt quickly. He fixed his gaze on the sweating young man who was carrying them all and prompted, "Are you Mister Rombell?"

Red turned to give him a brief nod.

“Alright,” Hawl began to advise. “Search for the center of energy within your body. It should feel like a wad of swirling energy, for some it feels like liquid—”

“Found it,” Red interrupted.

Hawl raised an eyebrow in disbelief seeing how Red quickly located the center of energy within his body. "That was rather fast," he remarked. "But let's continue. Now, strip away some of that energy and allow it to spread throughout your body."

Red began to glow with a bluish hue.

“You already know how imbue mana,” Welsen spat with impatience, seeing Red’s quick learning instead as evidence of him knowing already.

Red scratched his head sheepishly and admitted, "I do and I don't." Confusion spread among the human bundle at his back. His entities and dimwitted self had been able to use mana before, but for some reason, he couldn't now. It seemed their natural way of being had advantages his current form did not.

“Never mind that,” Hawl hiccupped, looking up the nostrils of a Badlander who was about to grab at their human bundle, the part of the bundle he was in. “Quick, Mister Rombell. Use the mana surrounding you and wrap it around your leg muscles, then use it to boost—”

Hawl’s voice caught in his throat as Red suddenly transformed into a speeding blur, streaking through the forest like an arrow shot from a bow, tossing up leaves in his wake. The Badlanders stood rooted to the spot, dumbfounded, as the young man they had been chasing vanished into the distance, leaving them in his dust.

Red kicked up a wall of dirt as he slid to a stop. “Thanks, Mister Hawl,” Red said sincerely, “If it weren’t for you, we would’ve been caught.” Rose and the others' hair stood diagonally from the force of Red’s speed, their expressions stuck.

“Where’s Polopp?” Red asked, worried.

The gnome emerged from the bundle of humans, his head popping up between two bodies. It seemed he had gotten stuck while trying to reposition himself for throwing more potions. His red cone cap had also been lost in their escape.

Red untied the human bundle and laid each of Rose’s team out separately. He then asked the gnome, “Polopp, can you cure them of the paralysis?”

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“I’ll try,” Polopp said with a shrug. “But I already used quite a bit of my stock creating those healing potions.”

Lying on the ground, Welsen grumbled with reproach, “You mean those poisoned healing potions you tricked us in drinking?”

“You don’t have to heal that one,” Red offered to which Polopp nodded without hesitation.

“Wait a moment…” Welsen sputtered with regret but was then thoroughly ignored.

An hour later, with the help of Polopp's antidote, Rose's team had finally been freed of the effects of the paralysis poison, but their health had not been restored. Polopp's claim about his diminished stock of herbs turned out to be true; he had used up most of his supply on the healing potions then the rest on the antidote. Rose and her team were still struggling to move and had to drag their feet, but they were grateful to be able to move again. Polopp and Red needed convincing to cure Welsen, but in the end, they did.

Opalstein had also woken up, though he was more broken than the rest and needed assistance to walk. He too had used most of his herb supply and was unable to create anything useful for healing.

They soon all gathered in a circle when Rose addressed her team, "We'll go to the nearby town of Hoak to recuperate and resupply. We've survived against the odds, and though our quest isn't over, I'm proud of us. Let's head back to the carriage. When we come back here to Vitelwood, it will be with fury. The necromancer won't elude us for long."

As they prepared to depart, Rose revealed an exquisitely crafted badge bearing an inscribed “V”, which transformed into a compass of sorts. Its dial had only a single point bearing the label "carriage" in elegant script. The badge had been tailor-made for Rose, ensuring that she never lost track of her sage symbol carriage.

They began to follow her toward the carriage, all but one. Red hadn’t moved.

“Mister Rombell?” Rose prompted, seeing him stay behind.

“I don’t need a carriage,” Red denied, shaking his head. “I’ll walk. You’ve seen how fast I can move. I bet I’m faster than your vehicle.” He then laughed.

But his laugh sounded hollow to Rose and she argued, “Mister Rombell, simply come with us. When we arrive at Hoak, I’ll lend you one of my family’s wagons in town to travel back to Soalde in.”

“Let us go, Mister Rombell,” Polopp urged, not liking the idea of walking all the way to Soalde. All his reasons for remaining with them were to study Red, so he couldn’t leave the young man behind.

Red’s eyes flickered quickly to Welsen and Dawrite who looked back at him with contempt. Red shook his head again and said, “I won’t go. I have no affection for Mister Welsen or Mister Dawrite. We cannot exist together.”

“What did you say, slum rat?” Welsen charged, his bow appearing in his hand.

Dawrite frowned, “How dare you embarrass me in front of Lady Verdinant. I’ll have your head.” His two-handed sword was soon in his hands, sticking up tall and brushing against branches above their heads.

"Silence," Rose fumed. The two men turned to see the veins on her forehead bulging, evidence of her mounting fury. Rose couldn’t help but think that if only these two had remained silent earlier, she might have convinced Red to join their cause and defeat the Battle Lord sooner, potentially avoiding the subsequent events that followed. Instead, they appeared less appealing than even someone from the Badlands, a place where cannibals roam.

She looked to Red and pled, “Please, Mister Rombell. You don’t know me and perhaps you hate me for my surname. But at least give me a chance to reconcile any past grievances.” Fumbling in her pocket, she pulled out Red’s Hunter badge. “We are one and the same. We were meant to help people.”

A memory surfaced in Red’s mind of a village he and Dwindle had helped, saving one of their children from witches. He could still hear the mother’s grateful cries when they returned her son to her. It was one of Red’s most fond memories both as a dullard and as someone with a renewed mind.

Red sighed and smirked, “I can see how you got to your position.”

Rose flushed, thinking he thought she was merely politicking, “I meant every word I said.”

Red nodded, walked up to her, patted her shoulder and replied with a small smile, “I know. That’s what I meant.” He gestured forward with a hand, “Lead the way.”

Rose smiled back at him and began to walk, her team close behind with Red and Polopp bringing up the rear.

As the sun began to set, the group arrived at the outskirts of Vitelwood and approached a grand carriage, its exterior shimmering with a crackling magical barrier that deterred any who would seek to hamper or damage it. The barrier fell at their approach, and the carriage doors opened to reveal several men and women dressed in black and white servant's garb. They then rushed to line up in two rows, creating a pathway between them that led to the carriage.

“Welcome back, Hunters!” the group of servants said in unison.

Red halted abruptly, causing Rose to prompt him, "Mister Rombell?"

"Oh," Red murmured, quickly rejoining the group. The men and women lining up were dressed similarly to Euness, the guild receptionist from the slum branch of the Hunter’s Guild, but with mostly black attire and sparse white accents that differentiated them from Euness.

“Why so many servants?” Polopp asked warily, feeling put off by the ostentatious display.

"What are you on about gnome?" Welsen rolled his eyes. "Who else would prepare the food and clean the carriage?"

Like most symbol sage carriages, Rose's was grandiose, with a size that rivaled that of a house, boasting two stories. The exterior was made of a rare red wood, the roof tiled in charcoal black. The wheels were adorned with a black alloy that shimmered in the fading sunlight. Its intricate design spoke of its high value.

As they stepped inside the carriage, they were greeted by luxurious rooms fit for a palace. A sage symbol power chandelier hung from the ceiling of the main room, expensive carpets covered the floors, and plush furniture exuded comfort. A sizable fireplace took up half of one wall, but the fire within gave no heat.

“I’m famished,” Welsen complained, clapping his hands. A few servants promptly responded to his command and led him away.

“We will draw up a bath for you, Mister Jerbryne,” a servant said to Welsen, bowing. “And we’ll have the cook make you your favorite teres steak.”

The other hunters on Rose's team were served in a similar manner, each being guided by servants to separate rooms of the carriage.

“Honorable sir?” a servant said, approaching Red, who stepped back, alarmed.

“…What is it?” Red asked, warily.

“Lady Verdinant has asked us to care for your needs,” the servant responded and bowed.

Polopp rolled his eyes and grumbled, “Humans and their incessant need for coddling and comfort.” Sap gnomes, such as him, abhorred the way humans lived their lives in spite of nature. As a gnome who revered the natural world, he avoided human cities, finding them ridiculous and awkward. The sharp angles and rigid lines of a city's construction felt constricting and stifling to Polopp and most gnomes.

Rose noticed Red's hesitation and walked over. “Just go with them, Mister Rombell,” she implored. “They will only help you rest and clean you. I’m sure we have clothes for you as well.” She gave him a meaningful look, causing him to think about how bare his body was.

Red had always been used to walking around in just his shorts without feeling any shame. However, with his newfound perspective, he suddenly felt self-conscious and exposed. Despite his discomfort about being handled by strangers, he let out a deep sigh and reluctantly allowed himself to be led to another room of the spacious carriage by the servants.

As Rose watched Red and the servants make their way down the hallway, an idea suddenly occurred to her. She pulled one of the servants aside and whispered something in her ear, causing the girl to giggle before skipping off to join the others in tending to Red.

Polopp noticed this and was not amused. “Please don’t rile up that boy,” he warned Rose. “He is more than just what he seems.”

Rose shrugged and replied nonchalantly, "Don't worry, it's all in good fun. And sir gnome, you should let the servants tend to you too. They're highly skilled at their work." With that, she strolled away to her room in the carriage, which was noticeably larger than the others.

A servant then tried to lead Polopp away but backed off as the gnome threatened, “If you touch me, I’ll feed you a potion that will make your head sprout mushrooms.”

Before long, one of the doors burst open as Red flew out of a room, wrapped in a blue glow, wearing only his shorts, the leather wraps for his hands and feet missing. Water dripped from his body as he swiveled his head around to locate the carriage's exit.

“Mister Rombell…!” came shouts from the room he just left.

“We’re not finished yet, Mister Rombell!”

Red gritted his teeth. The servants had been poking and prodding him with their tools, and one of them had even done something to his rear end. He had had enough. He was going to leave despite the carriage already being in motion.

As Red approached the door, he caught sight of a chaotic battle unfolding outside the carriage's window. In the distance, near the edge of the Vitelwood, he saw a figure he recognized, surrounded by a group of people dressed in gray. The figure was enveloped in a dark aura, seemingly protecting the gray-dressed individuals from a band of hostile attackers. These attackers were adorned with white face tattoos that glowed menacingly.

“Is that the necromancer?” Red asked, puzzled.