After the ‘battle’ ended with a single attack, Felix’s parents hit the creature with an extra second-circle spell, just to make sure it was dead.
After that, Ella and Anise’s father spent a few minutes working together to harvest the sleep-inducing needles of the plant monster. Ella felt it wasn’t a bad idea to have them laying around, just in case we needed them in the future.
Of course, the needles wouldn’t be too useful against something like the Orukthyri, since they had incredibly resilient bodies and strong vitality. However, there were plenty of less sturdy monsters in the wastes as well, and if we ran into one of those monsters, having some sleeping poison might allow us to get around them without wasting any essence. The reminder that the Orukthyri weren’t at the bottom of the food chain was reassuring to me.
At the back of my mind, I also realized something interesting. If there were lots of weak creatures on the surface in addition to the strong creatures, this might be an unexpectedly good place to harvest Slaughter Achievement. From the islands world, I remembered my two biggest Achievement categories being Slaughter and Influence. Every single enemy had diminishing returns the more of a certain species I killed, so an area with lots of different enemies was the best place to harvest Slaughter Achievement. Not to mention, {Endless Hunger of the Ocean} only got a new skill the first time I killed a new enemy. The surface was a good area for me to hunt for resources I needed, even if it might be harder to gain Influence Achievement out here and death potentially lurked around every patch of pink grass, or burnt patch of soil.
Our group walked for another four hours that day, before we settled down to sleep for the night. Due to the lack of distinct nighttime, it was a bit hard to get to sleep, but I adjusted well enough to the light after tossing and turning for about an hour. I was used to the soft glow of glowmoss in the underground caverns, and while I was still able to eventually get to sleep, the light was surprisingly irritating.
The next morning, I felt a little bleary, but I quickly realized that I wasn’t the only one that had struggled to adapt to the surface light.
Ella and Felix’s parents, since they were previously adventurers, didn’t seem to have slept too poorly. They looked a little sleepier than usual, but they didn’t seem distracted.
Anise and her parents, on the other hand, looked like they wanted to crawl back into bed as they shuffled around the camp like zombies. Anise in particular looked like she was basically still asleep. I chuckled to myself as I stuffed my blankets and my tent into my backpack, and decided to help Anise. I didn’t want her to feel bad for holding up the rest of the group, and since her parents were also struggling, they weren’t in a position to help her.
“How’s my favorite super witch?” I asked gently, as Anise fumbled about and tried to roll up her blankets. I grabbed one corner of her tent and started rolling it up. In the future it would be important for her to learn how to do it on her own, but this wasn’t the time for that.
Anise looked a little bitter for a moment, and then her expression eased up a bit.
“Sorry, Miria. I just… a lot of people died. I can’t…I don’t… I don’t know…” she said, worrying at her lips as she stared into space for a moment. I started to wonder if Anise had spent all of the previous day in shock, much the way I had until I killed the sleeplurk.
I sighed, and then gave Anise a hug. She quickly wrapped her arms around me and buried her head into my shoulder. I pulled Anise a little tighter, and patted her back a few times.
“There there. It’s okay,” I said as she made strange whimpering sounds. I swore for a moment that I could feel my dress soaking up extra liquid. I tried not to think about my own family, but, unbidden, thoughts of them returned as I hugged Anise and watched her cry.
My mother was cautious and clever, and my father was relatively strong. I hadn’t managed to heal Jonathan’s arm at all, but maybe he could swing a sword decently with his left arm? I didn’t think that Ruman or Laura would be much help in defending the others as they moved into the underdark. I thought of strange monsters, surrounding them and eating them… and then shook my head.
They were fine. They would be fine.
I gritted my teeth and repeated that to myself over and over again. After a few minutes, I even believed it. I had no way to find my family or help them right now, so there was no point in worrying about it until we reached Silver City. Once we got there, I would ask around. Surely there would be a few merchants who traveled from place to place. If I asked some of them for help, I didn’t think it would be impossible to meet again. Just as long as they had survived, and managed to reach one of the other cities, there would be a way to meet again.
A few more minutes passed before Anise regained control of her emotions. She sniffled and rubbed at her eyes, and then shivered. “Sorry, Miria. I’ve just… yesterday was a bad day. I know that it must be even worse for you and Sallia, since neither of you can find your families. I don’t have the right to be upset. I still have my parents, but I just…”
“You don’t have to apologize for being sad,” I said. “Me being sad doesn’t take away your right to be sad. A lot of things changed yesterday, and being stressed out, shocked, or afraid is a natural result of that. ‘Someone else has it worse’ isn’t a good response to grief, because there is always someone who has it worse. There are no wrong emotions. Feel what you feel, and use those emotions as fuel to grow and improve in the future.”
Anise sniffled again, and then broke away from my hug. “Why are you so grown up?” she asked, looking me in the eyes. Her eyes were still red, but I saw determination and focus in her gaze in addition to sadness.
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“Hmm?” I asked, baffled.
What was she talking about?
“You’re always so… different from other kids. It’s like you’re an adult sometimes. You’re really nice, like the best adults, and you take me seriously and don’t talk down to me, the same way some adults do. But you act weirdly. You’re way too mature for your age. Sallia and Felix, too. I thought it might be normal, and maybe I was just immature for my age, but a lot of the other kids my age are like me. Why are the three of you different? I can tell that all three of you are also sad, but you didn’t…” Anise sniffled again. “Didn’t start crying or whining or anything. Yesterday, I just couldn’t do anything. Once the city started to fall, I just kept staring at the Orukthyri and the city, and realizing that we had lost. And I just couldn’t move. If you guys hadn’t picked me up and carried me out of the cavern, I don’t think I would have been able to leave. I would have just stood there, feeling stunned, until an Orukthyri ate me. But you three were so good at putting everything behind you and moving forward, even though you and Sallia can’t even find your parents. It’s like… it’s like you appreciate them being there, but you don’t need your parents the way other kids need parents. Or something,” said Anise, sniffling again. “I don’t know. I just don’t understand why I’m so much worse than you guys.”
I wrapped Anise in another hug. “Sweetie, you don’t have to apologize for being sad, or upset. And you especially don’t have to apologize for not behaving optimally during one of the worst days of your life.
Everyone’s personality is different.” I chuckled dryly. “Maybe Sallia, Felix and I just have different personalities because we’re weird. You don’t need to try to compare yourself to others. Growing at a different pace is fine. You want to be a super witch, right? Just keep striving towards that, and I’m sure everything else will fall into place along the way. I’ve always thought that having a big dream in your heart and the willingness to move forward is the best way to grow and improve,” I said, feeling a bizarre urge to giggle as I thought about the absurdity of the situation. Anise was comparing herself to three people who had lived multiple lifetimes already.
Anise sniffled, but nodded. She broke away from my hug again, and the two of us finished packing up Anise’s tent in a strange but comfortable silence. At the same time, I found myself thinking more about the future.
Anise was much more perceptive than I had given her credit for. She hadn’t been able to figure out why the three of us behaved oddly, but she had picked up on how strange the three of us sometimes were. We had been careful to never talk about the Market with Anise, or our previous lives, but we did sometimes refer to the islands while talking about things that had happened ‘in the past,’ even if we never mentioned anything that was too jarringly different from this world.
Did I need to work on hiding this?
I frowned, lost in thought for a moment. I felt… surprisingly resistant to the idea.
Anyone who knew a lot about transmigrators might be able to pick up on the fact that I was a transmigrator, if they had every single fact about my life laid out in front of them. However, frankly, the odds of that happening were quite low. Not to mention, no two humans were exactly the same. Being precocious as a child wasn’t anywhere near as uncommon as most people thought. Every random village in the world probably had a good number of children with strange personalities and odd behavior that went on to become at least a little successful, and I doubted being an odd child would raise many red flags. In fact, trying to appear too ‘normal’ might end up seeming far more suspicious.
After all, I wasn’t very good at subterfuge. I didn’t think I had the skills needed to pull off an elaborate ‘disguise’ every single lifetime. And I didn’t want to do that, either. Even if I wouldn’t go around screaming that I was a transmigrator at the top of my lungs, I wanted to be honest about who I was and how I felt with the people I cared about. In this lifetime and my last one, I had hidden the fact that I was a transmigrator: however, apart from that, not one moment of my time with them had been faked. I wanted to be able to honestly and openly return love given to me by my parents and siblings, so long as they were decent people.
I shook my head. If some people, like Anise, picked up on the fact that I was a bit strange, then so be it. I wasn’t going to go through an elaborate game of deception every life. I would keep some childlike behaviors when I was younger in every new lifetime, to make sure I didn’t completely seem like an adult in the body of a child, but I would otherwise be myself.
I sighed.
“You know, Anise, change is a constant in life, and there’s no such thing as a lifetime free of struggles. There’s no shame in being surprised or sad when things change. Just acknowledge that you’re sad, take some time to adjust, and then move forward again.”
“Really?” She asked, curious. “Like what? I couldn’t imagine much besides the city while we were living in the city. I eventually knew that we might go to the surface, but I didn’t really know what that would look like, and so I had a hard time imagining it. Even now, nothing really feels… real to me. I keep thinking that I’m dreaming. I have a hard time imagining something even more different than this.”
I nodded, thinking over Anise’s words, and then grinned to myself. I had a good idea for something to take Anise’s mind off of things, and also introduce a little bit of how very different things could be in the Multiverse.
“Let me tell you a story. It’s about…” I paused for a moment, trying to make up a name, and then quickly found one. “Morum, the great explorer of the ocean. He lived in a land far from here, where giant fish were the primary source of food. There, they didn’t have very much in the way of mushrooms or agriculture, and so instead, he hunted giant fish, on flying wooden boats. One day, he decided that he yearned to explore the depths of the ocean, and so he created an attunement to let him breathe underwater…” I started telling Anise a (slightly edited) version of my exploration of the depths of the ocean. I wanted to tell Anise a little bit more about myself, since I felt that she was almost as precious to me as Sallia and Felix.
Besides, Anise seemed to love stories, so I figured a story about exploring the depths of the ocean would distract her a little bit as we packed up for the morning. The scenery of the ocean was bizarre enough and unique enough that it held Anise’s attention, bringing her thoughts away from the death and sadness we had been through over the past day.
And as I told Anise stories about the depths of the ocean, I started to feel a little lighter. I realized that I had always felt, just a little bit, like I was lying to Anise when I spoke with her. Being a little more honest about my past, even in a very limited way, made me happy.
It was with slightly lighter hearts that the two of us finished packing up, before we ate a light breakfast with the others.