A groggy mist clouded my mind. A slow, almost rhythmic wave of pain flowed through my body. An aching dull mixed with sharp, pointed discomfort.

I felt like a drifting raft, lost amidst a stormy ocean.

Crashing tides and pouring rain. It felt as if even the forces of nature were against my very existence. Slowly but surely, they whittled away. Each and every action, from the infinitesimally large waves that crashed against the sides, to the tiny fleck of rain that fell on its hull, everything came together, accumulating like a rolling snowball, before it finally broke.

That tiny, nameless raft, sank deep down beneath the murky waters.

****

I woke up.

A familiar ceiling greeted my eyes. Circular and domed shaped, intermixed was the somewhat comforting scent of paper.

“… The library?” I unconsciously muttered, only to wince in pain. My throat was sore, and even talking hurt.

A dark shadow in the corner of my vision moved. Like a malevolent specter, it quickly approached, and hovered over my head.

Rosy red-tinted cheeks, and a youthful complexion. The familiar face was somewhat buried beneath a layer of dark, dreary shadows. Mereli looked down at me from above with creased eyebrows and a quivering lip.

“—Karm? Brother Karm? Awake yet?” Her shivering voice floated to my ears, but I unconsciously frowned.

Something was wrong with my vision. Her words did not match the movement of her lips. It was a discomforting feeling. So much so, that it took me a long time to realize that Mereli was currently calling out to me.

I blinked in surprise, before I tried to sit up.

Almost immediately, a feeling of intense vertigo washed over my mind, before a severe ache crippled my body. I reflexively screamed out in pain, before I limply fell back down.

Mereli’s frantic appearance flashed through my glazed eyes.

She fumbled in place for a few seconds, before she awkwardly leaned forward, and placed her hand on my forehead. From her expression mired in confusion and panic, I could tell that she had no clue what she was doing.

“Tempa—temperature is okay?” She mumbled something underneath her breath, but the ringing in my ears drowned out her words.

Still, the clear anxiety was visible. Her raw emotions, all her worries and fears, they were all reflected within her swirling irises and sweat stained palms.

“What happened?” I asked, despite the pain in my throat.

“Uh, um, Mereli found Brother Karm like this.” She explained. “Brother Karm was in the middle of the grass. You— you were sleeping, but your body was red and looked painful, and um, um, Mereli also heard a scary noise… Brother Karm, did the monsters in the forest come out?”

A loud noise?

I vaguely recalled hearing something similar, the moment before I passed out.

What exactly was that noise? Could it be my fireball?

“Brother Karm?” Mereli’s voice, inlayed with worry, once again reached my ears. The ringing had subsided to the point where I could now clearly hear each and every individual inflection in her words.

Despite that, her words went in one ear, and out the other.

Squinting through the pain, I once again tried getting up. There was a very heavy feeling weighing down my body. It was almost as if I was covered in an infinite layer of sinking quick sand. No matter how hard I tried pushing myself forward, my body simply refused to budge.

It also didn’t help the fact that Mereli was desperately holding me down. Her small hands pressed down on my shoulders, while a somewhat desperate, somewhat scared expression appeared on her face.

“No! Don’t move! It’s, it’s no good to move.” She stuttered through gritted teeth. “Brother Karm, listen to Mereli, alright? Listen to Mereli, please? Brother Karm is hurt a lot, so, so, don’t move, okay?”

My groggy mind finally gained some bit of clarity, upon hearing her desperate words.

I’m hurt?

For the first time, I realized just how badly my current situation was.

I knew I was hurt. I could feel it in every cell of my body. I felt it. I certainly could feel it, but that pain… while it did hurt, it was a numb sort of hurt. It was akin to sound being filtered through noise canceling headphones. Only when I took those headphones off, did I finally realize just how loud that sound was actually playing.

I was injured. In fact, I was severely injured.

I glanced down at the rest of my body, and I couldn’t help but take in a quiet gasp of air.

I was wrapped from head to toe in bandages. Actually, bandages were kind of an overstatement. In truth, they were no more than torn strips of uneven fabric. Judging from their design, they were once a part of the bed sheets that scattered the library.

I noticed that the bandages were sloppily applied. Some parts were thicker than others, while other parts barely had a single layer of fabric to them. In addition, the knots that held them together, some were loose, while others were so tight that they were painful.

What’s more, every single one of those bandages were dyed in red. This was particularly true for the bandages on my right hand. It was drowned in a bright crimson shade of red. If I was remembering things right, then that hand was the same hand that I used when I created the fire ball.

Noticing all this red, I would be an idiot to not realize the fact that I was bleeding.

Still, I couldn’t help but voice out, “Am I bleeding?”

Mereli nodded her head. “Brother was like this when Mereli found you. You, you were really scary, and there was b-blood and cracks all over. It was, it was really scary, but Mereli did her best, I did my best, so, so…”

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Her voice grew weaker and weaker as she continued. By the end of it all, her words were unintelligible, while all her lips could do was quiver endlessly. Looking up at her face, I could see the hot tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

“I see…” I silently turned away, and looked up at the ceiling.

Without a doubt, my injuries were definitely more severe than last time. Previously, while I could not move my body, at most, I had only suffered from fatigue and some muscle cramps.

 This time around though, they were real. These injuries were the kind that sprouted red, like a damaged geyser. These were the injuries that looked ugly, discolored, and scary, especially for a child like Mereli.

She, that girl… she probably had to drag me back here like last time. Again, she took care of me, but this time, it was different. I wasn’t conscious. I wasn’t there to talk to her as she dragged my limp body all the way through the castle. I wasn’t there to comfort her, I wasn’t there to tell her that these injuries were nothing, that the blood was not a big deal. I was there, my body was there, but I wasn’t.

I wonder, just how exactly had she done it?

For the first time, I noticed that not every part of my body hurt. For one, I did not feel any pain on my upper back.

I looked back up at Mereli.

I noticed her hands. Red, so very red. They were covered in dried specks of blood, blood that probably wasn’t her own. Also, there were fresh bruises on her knees. Badly bruised, and discolored in dirty shades of pink and black. Tiny flecks of dust and pebble coated her knees, while scratches galore finished off the ugly decoration.

Seeing all this, I couldn’t help but sigh.

I made a big mistake this time… I’m an idiot, a giant idiot…

“Mereli… I’m sorry…” I began, but the power in my voice died out. The words that I wanted to say grew jumbled and chaotic before they could even leave my throat.

In response, she shook her head, and smiled a strained smile.  “Mereli will take care of Brother Karm. Mereli definitely will. Mereli, Mereli won’t let Brother Karm disappear.”

“… Is that so? Then, I’m glad.”

Mereli furiously nodded her head, while forcibly wiping away the tears that had spilled onto her cheeks. “Mereli promises, and Mereli isn’t allowed to break promises, so, so don’t worry. Mereli will, Mereli definitely will.”

“Thank you, Mereli... I’d like to say don’t worry about me, but it looks like you’re going to have to take care of me again for a few more days.” I weakly smiled, before I closed my eyes and drifted back into the lulling embrace of unconsciousness.

****

I spent nearly a week in bed.

My injuries were slow to heal, but at the very least, they were healing. In fact, I considered myself somewhat lucky. Most of my injuries comprised of superficial scratches and light bruises. It only looked painful and scary. It wasn’t actually scary, but it was indeed a bit painful.

Truthfully, the week in bed was mainly due to my fatigue and muscle ache. It had taken five days for me to regain my mobility, and another two days before the muscle ache stopped.

Right now, I was once again standing in an empty courtyard. This was the same place as last week’s. My brow was locked in a frown, while I crossed my arms and stared at the black forest with a troubled gaze.

“I definitely shot it off towards the forest, but the forest, the trees, everything looks completely undamaged.” I mumbled absentmindedly to myself.

The trees were just as black as they usually were. Even the surrounding area, from the ground nearby, to the buildings in the vicinity, they were all practically untouched.

If that explosion really was from my fireball, then there should at least be a hint, or some form of evidence… but if so, then why was it like this?

The supposed blast should have happened fairly close by, but there was nothing. No burnt marks, no damaged trees, no snapped twigs, absolutely nothing. The only place left to check was deeper into the forest, but that was currently impossible for me.

Heck, even standing here like this was enough to send shivers down my spine. I wasn’t ready just yet to venture out into that little piece of the unknown.

I sighed, shook my head, and turned around.

The peculiarity with the fire ball left me perplexed, but it wasn’t my primary concern. Most of my worries were focused on my damaged body. Yes, damaged. Not injured or hurt, but rather damaged.   

My bedridden period of rest did help heal my injuries, but there was a very fine line between damages and injuries. When I first inspected my body, I noticed a peculiarity; there was a giant crack on my right arm. It ran down from the web of my thumb, all the way down to my elbow.

I first noticed this crack five days ago, when I first removed the bandages. In the beginning, I mistook it for a simple injury, and thought that it would recover along with the rest of my wounds. Unfortunately, over a week has gone by. Most of my normal injuries are already healed, but this crack… this crack hasn’t changed. I’m thankful that it hadn’t grown any worse, but the fact that it hasn’t shrunk or healed, left me a bit disconcerted.

Was using magic supposed to be this… this damaging? Maybe I had done something wrong? Was there a problem with my process? Or maybe this was the natural limit to a homunculus?

A body that could not even handle the smallest instance of magic. It was certainly a race with a well-deserved reputation.

In the end, using magic to damage myself to such an extent… I don’t know whether it was worth or not.  Outside of this crack on my arm, which refused to heal, just remembering that expression on Mereli’s face put me in a bad mood.

“I’m the older one here, so why? Why is it that she’s the one worrying about me like this?”

I glared drearily at my arm. The crack was unsightly. It divided my hand into two pieces, and a certain feeling of dissonance now existed whenever I moved this particular hand.

There were other problems as well. The damage to my arm wasn’t just aesthetic.

Over the past couple of days, I noticed that there were times of numbness. This feeling of numbness only existed on my right arm, and it came sporadically throughout the day. At any given moment, everything from my right elbow down to my hand would go completely limp.

My arm would fall uselessly to my side, where it could neither move nor feel anything. Sometimes, it would stay limp for upwards to ten seconds, while other times, this feeling would only last for barely a fraction of a second.

It made life inconvenient. Even though I still had control over it for the majority of the day, having your arm go limp at the most random of times was very inconvenient. But outside of that inconvenience, the thing that got to me the most was the feeling of dissonance. It was a similar feeling to when I used magic, but at the same time, it was starkly different.

My soul was mismatched, placed into the wrong body. At least, that’s what it felt like.

I sighed.

Using magic was dangerous, and could lead to permanent damage. At least this was the case for me.

I sighed again.

I was planning on relying on magic to explore the forest, but now it looks like I’ll have to refocus all my attention on finding the armory. We were dangerously close to running out of food. Rather, our living conditions were already pretty bad as is, but without food, without even the bare minimum that we subsided on, things were going to get a lot worse.

I sighed once more. I really can’t help but sigh.

 Well, it wasn’t like everything was bad. There were ups in this otherwise downward spiral.

For one, there was Mereli. She really wasn’t a genius for no reason. After I described what had happened to me, and what I had attempted to do, Mereli replicated my actions. Suffice to say, she was more than just successful.

In short, she was now able to use magic. Albeit her usage had several limitations, both in its “casting time”, and power output, it was still a whole lot better than my terrible attempt. At the very least, she didn’t permanently cripple herself, unlike a certain weak bodied homunculus.

When I asked her how she had done it, she simply stated, “The way Brother Karm did it was different from how the people in the castle did it. Mereli wasn’t able to do what they did, but I can do what you did.”

In truth, her process was simple.

She simply imagined. She pictured the image directly in her mind, similar to what I had done before. It was a simple method, simple enough that even a child could do it. In fact, maybe it was because she was a simple child, that she could perfectly utilize such a simple method.

Without a doubt, she was a lot more talented than me, especially when it came to magic. There wasn’t really a point in competing with this type of abnormal genius. While her abilities weren’t strong enough to protect herself just yet, in the end, there might really come a day where she’ll be protecting me from danger.

“…”

Thinking about such a possibility, I couldn’t help but feel a trembling pit in my stomach. I furiously shook my head.

There was no way I was going to let that happen.

I needed to get strong.

I needed to. I had to. I could feel it again, that desire. The desire to take her away from this place. The desire to protect her. The desire to keep her smiling.

In order to get stronger, in order to fulfill those desperate desires, I needed to find the armory.