This is my most favorite feeling in the world! Flying high up in the sky without a care in the world. The world seem so wide when you are soaring with the clouds. The sea of trees of the Elven Kingdom beneath me and from the distance I can see vast plains of the Kingdom of Krishna and some of the villages near its borders. Being up here makes me want to see more of the world. To see all of its wonders. Up here makes me feel, so free.
If my parents could see me up here, I am sure they would nag me to death. Becca don't fly too high you might fall and die. Becca why don't you put down your book and practice with your magic skills more? Becca why can't you be more like your older sister Margarette?
Well, Mom and Dad, maybe I just don't want to work my body to the ground just to meet your ridiculous expectation and earn even a little bit of your attention. What good did it do Sister Marga? She did reach the top, she became a General in a young age of 30, only for her life to be cut short by Kaizer?
Seriously. They only care about me because they don't have a choice but to support me so I can bring honor to our family, being a High Noble and all. But I don't care one bit about honor.
I just want to be free.
"Mistress?" A voice pull me out of my musing. I glanced at the girl flying with me. Weylin, a talented scout. Her most amazing feat is sneaking inside an army camp and kill the enemy leader without getting detected. Sadly, her skills were wasted by pairing up with that brute Durga.
"What is it sweetie? Are you worried if the little Elf would be able to track us? You don't have to worry your pretty head. I made sure no one would be able to follow us." I answered. I made sure they wouldn't be able to track us by sight, smell, or Aura sense. We are also flying high up in the sky, with clouds as our cover if ever the Elf have eyes so sharp that she can see this far away from the ground.
"No Mistress. I am sure we wouldn't be followed. Our escape is flawless that even I wouldn't be able to track us if I try." She answered.
It should be. It is an escape plan I made after observing the capabilities of The One and his companions. "Oh. For someone recognized as one of the best scouts of the Organization. I am flattered. If that is not the cause of your worry, then would you tell me what troubles you?"
"Are really going back to the hideout without The One? Wouldn't we be punished for not accomplishing our mission?" She told me with her usual emotionless façade. But I know underneath it she is agitated. This is her first failed mission after all.
"No need to worry darling. The blame will be laid at the feet of our leader. We are nothing but underlings on that mission after all. We could even chalk this up as a success since The One will come to use on his own volition if he wants to save their friend. Sure, we may still get reprimanded. Most of our companions died after all. But they will not punish a High Noble harshly. Maybe just get scolded, just like the Stuck-up Queen." The thought of saying that in the face of Mariam made me chuckle. I glanced back at Weylin, it looks like she is still not alleviate her worries. So I gave her a little more reassurance. "If you're worried about the parents of your idiot master punishing you for their son's death, then don't worry. I will testify that you are not at fault and if you become mine, I will shield you if they ever get any stupid ideas of taking you out."
I can sense confusion inside the mind of the girl. "Why do you want me? I failed. A tool that can't do its purpose is useless." Poor girl. Raised from birth to become the perfect weapon.
"Don't be absurd. You were not utilized properly. A knife shouldn't be used to hammer nails and a hammer cannot be used to cut. Come with me. I will show you your true potential. Serve under me, I will give you a new purpose in life." I offered.
She hesitates so I gave her time to think. After a few minutes, she spoke once more. "I accept. I Weylin Cormine will serve you for as long as you wish. My life is yours." She bowed her head.
"I am glad you accepted my offer. Happy to have you on board, dear." Hmmm… Finally. An excellent pawn. With her, maybe my dream will not be as impossible as I think.
Now. All I need is a plan.
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As I open my eyes, I was assaulted by an intense headache. I tried to stand and survey the situation, but when I used my hand to prop me up, I was shocked to see it bended in an unnatural angle. As reality sinks in, my mind begins to accept that my arm is broken. In a moment of stupidity, I touched my broken arm and an ungodly scream escaped my mouth. "Gahhhh!" My body jolted in pain and I instinctually grab hold of my arm which only solicited more pain! "Ouch! Motherfucker!" Why brain? Why you torture me so?
A familiar voice can be heard walking towards me. "Calm down Cloud. You have injuries all over." He put his hands on my shoulder to keep me still. "I already healed your serious wounds but I am running low on Ki after healing the others, You must heal your remaining wounds on your own. This will be good practice. Meditate."
This shit head monk! Still thinking of training even when I am in pain.
I look around as I try to calm myself. The destruction in front of me is really surprising. Broken trees, dirt and stones strewn everywhere, my senses telling me that the barrier set around the camp have a big hole, and in the middle of it was a huge crater.
I remember now! We were interrogating the light saber wielding scumbag when he suddenly exploded before he could reveal the location of their base.
"Damn. After all the troubles we went through to capture one of these bastards and he go blowing himself up." I stated.
The people around me are looking down, literally with Philip who is still unconscious. From the damage on his armor and Alora who is bandaging him, he must've took the explosion in the back to defend the elf. Ortho was looking like he took a dirt bath as he is covered with dirt all over and his hair and beard looks disheveled as hell. I also noticed that his bracer is broken. Even Kurt didn't get through unscathed. His robes were torn and is also sporting various cuts and bruises all over his body.
"Shush. The Gods always leaves a path to success. For the time being we need to focus on resting so that our bodies can recover." He straightened by broken bone and then put a splint so that it would stay in position. He then walked towards a fallen tree and sat near the unconscious Philip. His shoulder is slumped and his eyes looks tired. To be honest, this is the first time I saw the monk so exhausted. Kurt then glanced towards me. "Go, meditate and practice on healing your injuries. But don't push it too much. If you feel lightheaded, then take a break. I wish not to see you almost die like you did on your first try on healing. Once Philip wakes up, we could plan our next move."
But before I could close my eyes and meditate, he added, "Thank you. You saved us."
"No need to thank me. Besides, I did nothing especial. I know you also sensed it and was about to warn us of the danger. I was just a bit faster to scream." I wave my hand and shook my head. I am kind of embarrassed having the monk thank me.
"That is why we had to thank ye lad. If you were even a single second late on yer warning, none of us would be standing here. We literally saved by the skin of our necks from that explosion." Said Ortho who took off his broken bracer with a sad smile on his face. He then started to walk towards the camp. No doubt to dig up his things that he buried earlier before the fight, so as it would not get scattered and get damaged like when we first fought the members of the "Organization". I remember that he looks like he was sad that Mark was captured, but he downright heartbroken after he saw his works were all around the camp, with most of them damaged or broken.
"Well, if you say so. I still think I didn't do anything special though." I answered with a tired tone. Honestly, I feel exhausted. I then try to find a comfortable position where my broken arm would hurt less.
"Don't sell yourself short. Acute sense and a sharp mind to figure out that the man is about to explode is nothing to scoff at. Now go and meditate." Said Kurt who then close his eyes to meditate.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I follow suit and close my eyes to lose myself in meditation. I see most of the parts of my body is colored yellow with my broken arm in red. Which means I am injured all over, even my internal organs retained some damage no doubt from getting rag dolled after getting hit by the explosion's shockwave. I focused what is left of my Ki to circulate around my body. I focused my energy on healing my broken arm first since it is the most damaged and is also affecting my movement. The healing is going slowly since I don't have a lot of energy left after I used all my Ki and boosted my Aura to run as fast as I could.
I don't know how long I was meditating but when I felt my Ki is falling dangerously low, I stopped. I found a tree to lean against and fell asleep from exhaustion. When I opened my eyes, what greeted me is a vast ocean of stars. I look around and saw that the trees around me is nowhere to be found. In its place is nothing but empty plains as far as the eye can see.
I see. I am in the Void once more. To be honest, I didn't expect to find myself here. I tried to come here before with no result. But now I find myself here once more even without meaning to. Is it because I am drained of energy? Or is it because I was gravely injured?
Whatever it is I don't care. I am tired and I just want to sleep.
Unfortunately, hard as I try to sleep, I can't seem to find any. So instead of lazing around, I pushed myself up so that I could sit and meditate, and then I instinctively winced at the thought of putting pressure on my broken arm. I closed my eyes, anticipating to feel the intense pain from my broken arm. But after a few seconds, it didn't come.
What? I know I broke my arm. Why is it not hurting? I find the courage and open my eyes to take a look on my supposed injury only to be surprised to see that there is nothing wrong with it. I clenched my fist hard and stretched my muscle to see test my arm but I feel no pain. I pushed myself up and meditated to Visualize in order to see the status of my body. Everything is green which means I am 100% healed. How curious.
Either I am here physically and I got better by just being here in the Void, or I am here mentally and my physical body is still injured when I come back. Oh well. No point in worrying about it. I will find out what is what later when I return to the material plane.
I closed my eyes to meditate. Feeling my life-energy surge from my core and start to circulate around my body. I can feel that I still haven't recovered much of my Ki but I don't let it bother me as I feel the warmth of my Aura surround me and let myself get lost in Meditation.
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I don't know how much time have passed but when I opened my eyes once more, I find myself back in the material plane with my back leaning against a tree and it is already dark. I look around to find the others and saw them sitting around the camp fire. I leaned against the tree in order to get on my feet when I felt a jolt of pain from my arm.
Shit. So I am still injured. I guess that answers my question earlier. Although it seems much better than it was before I fell asleep earlier. It is now yellow-green instead of yellow. My other injuries seem to have recovered as well. From almost yellow and orange in every part, to just yellow-green and light green now. Maybe Kurt healed me when I was asleep or something.
I pushed myself up with my uninjured left hand and then proceeded to walk towards the camp.
"Hey. Look who's finally awake. Damn lad. Ye are one deep sleeper. Even Philip woke up earlier than ye." Ortho greeted me and handed a bowl of food.
"It's all thanks to Kurt and Alora. They both nursed me back to health in no time." Philip bowed his head to Kurt and then smiled at Alora.
"I helped too! I applied my healing pads on your back. It helped you recover from your injury a lot faster." Ortho grumpily stated.
"Yeah, I guess I need to thank you too." Philip laughed before becoming serious once more.
The whole camp became a lot serious alongside Philip. It was so quiet that I can hear the insects in the forest.
"We failed." Philip finally broke the silence. "The only chance to find Mark and we blew it."
"To be fair, he blew himself up." I replied.
"This is no time to be joking! Our captive who is supposed to point us to where they are holding Mark is gone and now we have no more lead to follow. I knew we shouldn't have let those two girls go away." Philip hit the fallen tree with his fist so hard that it was split into two.
"Calm down, Philip. If we fought them instead of letting them leave, some of us would've died. You felt that woman's strength. She is at least on the level of the one who captured Mark and we are not in shape to fight and take her captive without one or two of us dying. Even if we are able to get Mark back, he would not be happy to know that one or two of us died in order to save him." Kurt tried to reason with Philip.
"So what? Are we just going to sit here and do nothing?" I can feel his frustration from his voice.
After his outburst, everything went quiet once more. Damn it. I can't eat like this. Everyone is just so tense that if I make a noise, I might attract the ire of Philip who is now busy crushing the tree he is sitting on with his grip.
After a few long minutes of silence, Ortho suddenly jumped in excitement. "I got it!" he said before running towards his bulk of damaged items.
Seeing Ortho frantically throw items left and right as he tries to find something Philip asked with concern in the tone of his voice. "What has gotten into you?" He asked the dwarf.
"Just a second. I think I put it here somewhere." Ortho continued to sift through his belongings. After a few minutes he then exclaimed. "Found it!"
Ortho raised an Orb above his head like it was a trophy or something. Everyone looks at him with confusion as we don't know what it is.
"So, you found an orb. Could you tell us how it would help finding Mark?" Philip asked.
"Ye don't recognize this Philip? I just show ye this wondrous invention a few days ago." Said Ortho as he holds the Orb forward for us to see closer.
"You show us lots of your inventions. How am I to remember all of them?" Philip was clearly annoyed that his question was answered with another question.
"This is the problem with ye people. Ye don't pay attention to anything but inventions that can be used in battle." With a flourish he raised the orb above his head once more. "This is the Tracking Orb!" He declared.
"Oh?" Philip perked up when he heard tracking.
Now I remember. It was the orb that can track the mana signature of a person who imprints their mana on both the Orb and a collar. But, there is a problem. "You said it wasn't finished yet?" I asked.
Ortho then began to shift his weight as he sheepishly answered. "Well. I kinda lied." He then continued. "I kinda need some money for my next venture so I said it wasn't completed yet. I was hoping you or Mark would lend me money so that I can "Complete" this project so that I could use the gold in order to fund my next big invention." He reasoned out.
"So you intend to swindle us, your party for your next project? Why don't you just borrow from us? I would gladly lend you some gold." Philip was clearly annoyed at the attempt of the dwarf to get money from them.
"That is not the point here Philip." Ortho tries to deflect the question before continuing. "The most important thing is that we have this orb."
"But you need to imprint your mana on both the orb and the collar for it to work right? Also didn't you put this orb in the collection of the items you deemed damaged from the fight?" I asked the dwarf.
"Well yeah. It is because the Orb was supposed to point towards the collar. But when I followed the Orb, I still couldn't find the collar. It just keep pointing in a certain direction. Since I don't want to go too far from camp, I just assumed that the collar was destroyed so the orb was stuck pointing in this direction." Ortho explained. "But now, I think different. What if Mark left his mana imprint on the orb and collar before he got kidnapped?"
"Well. If someone can call your bullshit, it would be Mark." Said Philip who is now taking a closer look at the Orb.
"Mark was fighting near the tents before he got subdued right? Me items were scattered around the camp alongside the Orb. Normally he would've fought far from the camp in order to not damage our belongings, but he didn't this time. He must've thought that since they were outnumbered and would probably get overpowered, he planned on using the Orb and Collar to imprint his or Cloud's mana so that we could find them once they were captured." Ortho explained his theory. "Yes. He most certainly do that. He might be absentminded at time but he have a brilliant mind."
"That is possible. When we were fighting against her lackeys, their leader was impressed of Mark Anthony's skill and wanted to capture both of us. He must've planned it when he heard her. The only question is when did he find the chance to imprint his mana on the Orb and Collar?" I asked the dwarf.
" When we were fighting their leader, all of their attention were focused on the fight. Leaving Mark with the chance to grab and use the items he need." Philip stated.
"So, were just going to follow this Orb that might or might not point us to the right direction?" Alora asked the party.
"Well yeah. Right now, this is our best bet on finding him. Also, I believe Mark. He would leave a trail for us to follow." Philip stated with determination.
Alora and I looked at the party who's now filled with hope and confidence that they will find their companion. She then sighed and smiled before standing up from her seat. "Well. It looks like we have the location now. I will leave you guys to plan for our next step. I will scout the perimeter in case there are enemies lying about" She then grabbed her bow and quiver before sauntering off, disappearing in the trees.
I just hope Mark really did leave his imprint on the Orb and carried the collar with him. Otherwise our efforts would be in vain. I also wish the place they were keeping him is outside this forest. I am sick of seeing trees all around me.
***Author's Note***
The Tracking Orb was introduced in Chapter 18.
Its significance to the story was also hinted whenever Ortho was sifting through his damaged items and feels like there is something important that he forgot so he sifted through his items multiple times.
Andreanasparky's answered That they will use Tracking Bug was realy close. But instead of a bug. They used an Orb.
Nikest answered dwarven item that can be used to track someone. It is technically correct.
Hmmm... Well done! This deserves a double chapter. But not tomorrow, I got work to do but will still release a chapter per day.
I am leaning on Friday or Saturday.
Oh well. I will post it when I post it!