“It's never a boring day without you, kid.” Skendus complimented, as he helped the other get up.
“Your bravery is… excessive.” Lisa added.
“Thankses you tew,” He blurted, and at this point, it was obvious that the forcefield would not protect him, if it was Tim who behaved like a projectile. “I got ring.”
When Ortana saw him afterwards, she bent over, laughing. She kept him safe so far, so she didn't feel bad about laughing at his current, poor mental state. She was bent over double!
Tim was left to rest afterwards, because he really needed to. It wasn't like he cared about that ring all that much either, because as mentioned before, he had hoped to find dinosaurs below the lava, so he gave the ring to Skendus without thinking about it twice. Half of what he did recently was nonsensical, but he managed to come back alive from his impulsive attempts, so it did not matter if he didn't make any sense.
Anyway, after he crashed out, Skendus eyeballed the ring, and muttered. “Fascinating… to think that this little ring caused so much pain, and suffering. I imagine it couldn't have been fun for that dragon to be stuck in here for three-hundred years, and odds are he was summoned very much against his will as well.”
“Do not feel sympathy for Saranax,” Lisa interrupted him, her mustache twitching in anger. “My ancestors were trapped here as well, but they didn't kill hundreds of miners in response! Saranax was nothing but an evil, old dragon.”
“I'm purely speaking from an observational point of view. Sorry for not introducing myself properly, I'm Skendus, and I’m an illusionist.” He followed along.
Although Lisa was oblivious as to what an illusionist was, she still calmed down, and tried to be cooperative. After all, these people were her best shot at understanding what she was to expect from the top-side of the world. She was hoping to keep it a secret that she was the last survivor of her little tribe, as this was a very sad thing to mention in any, and all occasions. She wanted to live the rest of her life as peacefully as she could, and she had a lot to look forward to as well, because she was only in her twenties, and had a long life to live.
“We'll protect you,” Skendus suddenly said, breaking the deafening silence. “From an observational point of view, you seem like a good-hearted lady, and deserve to live the rest of your life in peace.”
Lisa didn't panic in the response to the other's deep insight, but just nodded along, and she thought. “So illusionists can read minds… That's great, he'll eventually figure out that I used pointy rocks to satisfy myself. How can my life get any more embarrassing than this?”
Skendus did not flinch, but it was obvious that he picked up on that train of thought. He was visibly uncomfortable, but picked the ethical way out of this awkward situation, by not talking about the embarrassing things. He instead started asking questions about the ring, as the ring was more important right now.
“So, you don't know anything about this ring?” He asked.
“No,” She answered, “We always thought, well… my ancestors believed that Saranax was trying to protect its eggs. This is the first time I hear about this ring that you're holding.”
Skendus believed her, because after all, he could read through minds, so it didn't matter what she admitted to. He could check if she was lying, he did check immediately, and matched her words with her thoughts. Lisa was clean, she wasn’t a liar.
Anyway, since she didn't know anything either, everyone was stumped as to what they were supposed to do with the ring. Skendus tried pouring some raw mana on the ring's case, because he wanted to lure the casing with mana in order to get it to open, but he didn’t have any luck. They just had to set the ring aside, and hope that it wouldn't summon another dragon.
Stolen novel; please report.
Skendus put it in his bag afterwards, and tried to forget about the ring for a moment. With their task regarding the Forbidden Caves finished, he hoped that Arvena would wake up soon, so they could get out of here. He was brought up in caves and tunnels himself, so he saw more of them than he would ever wish to see.
“That priest owes us more than a blessing, the exchange looks really unfair to me.” He thought, and he felt cheated. “I have half a mind to bring my entire sect to this universe, and build a church that openly detests the Mana Gods! They can ‘mark’ me all they want after that.”
…
Arvena woke up after three hours. She needed a lot of recovery time, that's for sure, but everyone waited for her willingly, because they understood that she made a great sacrifice just earlier on! The sacrifice she made required the greatest willpower, and her symbolic willpower will not be forgotten anytime soon.
Everyone welcomed her with a warm smile on their face, and after they helped her catch up with some of the more recent events, they were ready to be on the move. They headed towards the exit, and admittedly, they needed a moment to find their way out of these winding, perplexing tunnels, but they made it out eventually.
After everyone crossed the exit, Tim spent a bit more time destroying the barricade that the seven-meter wide entrance of the Forbidden Caves had. He would have to crush a lot of rocks if he wanted to remove the barricade entirely, and he knew he couldn't do that, so he just crushed the largest boulders of the bunch instead, and watched a quarter of the barricade collapse within itself. A couple of rock slides later, he made the Forbidden Caves perfectly accessible. The goblins from Manape had just to put a bit of work in to clean the rest of the mess themselves, they had to, because Timmy already did more than he was asked to do.
Anyway, they made their way to the Church of Gulism afterwards, and they were happy to tell the priest that the Forbidden Caves were less forbidden now. The caves were perfectly safe to enter, as long as a tunnel wouldn't collapse over anyone’s heads, but that was beyond Tim's pay grade. He didn’t care about future collapses.
It was dusk now, so the team was also craving to settle down and rest for a while. Although the priest didn't offer them rooms for the night, he did finally agree to ‘bless’ them, as this was what the team came here for to begin with!
“The Church of Gulism acknowledges your bravery, marked ones. It is under my authority, on behalf of the church, to bless you and your efforts. I bless you, and may your paths lead to greater, pure deeds!” The priest recited.
For a second, it felt worthless to be spoken positively off, because neither of them respected this priest to begin with. They considered him to be really greedy, regardless of how he stated that he cared about his people so dearly.
They couldn't stomach his attitude, but when the altar shone after he said that he blessed them, the team relaxed, as they were now very sure that this church blessed them as well. Considering that they needed just another blessing from the third church in the row, in order to remove the Mark of Death from their souls, they were now pretty excited!
The letter H disappeared from their foreheads as well, so they were ever so grateful. Their little mission here was over.
“There is an Inn across the street,” The priest rushed them, “Go sleep there for the night, and leave tomorrow. I understand that you fought a dragon, you are heroes, but please take any kind of bad luck that you might have caught in those caves, and get it out of my city! My people have suffered enough, and we shall only progress from this point onwards.”
“I surfed on lava,” Tim said randomly, and then made his way out of the church. He still had a bit of a concussion.
The team said their goodbyes to the priest, and then followed after Tim. They really needed to rest now, and furthermore, since the priest wasn't aware of that special ring’s existence, they decided to keep it for themselves, so they avoided the topic all together! They too were greedy this time around.
Lisa was with them, she had waited outside the church, but she did follow them to the Inn. She seemed to like the outside world so far, and regarding her identity, they decided to keep it a secret, because the priest would surely try to exploit both her, and any kind of knowledge that she had. Lisa spent the night with the rest of the group, and she was very happy to be around them, though she discovered that she didn’t like being around her own race of people all that much. Her feelings about this city were mixed, she didn’t know what to think, but for now she was very excited to try the hot meals that Timothy had mentioned.