After the group of adventurers left, I spent several hours thinking about what I had seen.

I still wasn’t sure what the origin of the cube was. However, I was certain that it was related to the ocean of souls.

I sighed.

I was suddenly very interested in trading for the cube itself, but unfortunately, our group didn’t have anything that we could have possibly used to trade for the cube. I wasn’t willing to attack innocent people to steal their stuff, and I had nothing worth trading for the cube. Thus, I could only watch as the cube left with the party of adventurers.

Perhaps there was another way to see the cube in the future, apart from trading for it? Perhaps once I was a little older, I could work on getting a reputation for investigating magic items. If people knew I was trying to make magic items, I would have a pretty good reason to investigate the cube. Since the party of adventurers had mentioned their home city was close to our former home city, I could probably track down the cube if I asked some traveling merchants to keep an eye out for it. And if Felix got some hints about how to create magic items, perhaps we could actually succeed in replicating the healing cube if we worked together. That would net us a huge amount of Achievement if we succeeded, and give me a lot of inspiration on how to use my attunement and improve it for future lives.

I shook my head, chasing off my daydreams. Right now we were nowhere near the level of influence and knowledge we needed to successfully bring magic-item crafting back to this world. I decided to think about it later. At the very least, if the adventurers stumbled across a cube related to the ocean of souls while exploring the surface, it meant that there were some places in the world where I could learn more. This dimension had been seriously weakened when someone tried to manipulate dimensions, and the cube let me know that there were locations in the world where clues about this attempt were left behind. I just needed to find them.

As I quietly thought about the future and made plans, Sallia got herself ready for another trip outside of the cave. Then, the two of us set out to search for more supplies. This time, we stumbled across a strange, shambling creature that looked kind of like a person: however, it had no face or solid body. Instead, its entire body looked more like a distinct patch of… nothingness. It was almost like a clump of distorted air, but something about the light in the area tipped Sallia off that there was something wrong.

It took a little observation for us to realize that the strange creature was drawing light, air, and everything around it into itself, almost like a very miniature black hole. And it was moving towards us. It was also very much alive, since I could see its soul.

It had more lifeforce than the average Orukthyri. Luckily, unlike the Orukthyri, it was alone, and since our group members were healed, I didn’t need to save any alteration essence. I had to spend almost the entirety of my alteration essence killing it, but luckily, extinguish quickly brought it down. I felt lucky that the creature didn’t have any magic resistance: if it had any amount of magic resistance at all, my alteration essence pool wouldn’t have been big enough to kill it, and I wasn’t sure if Sallia could even hurt this thing.

Slaughter: Kill an empty shadow for the first time

Achievement +150

My Achievement increased from 10,168.89 to 10,318.89. More importantly, I got a new skill out of it.

Endless Hunger of the Ocean has devoured an empty shadow for the first time. New Skill created.

Emptiness: On contact with oxygen, the black sun, or organic matter, you may begin to ‘empty’ whatever you come in contact with, stripping the meaning of its existence away from it and turning it into alteration essence. Your alteration Stat is increased by 9 points. (Note: this ability takes some focus to use, so it may be difficult to maintain if you are distracted).

The ‘Charge’ skill I had just acquired was immediately tossed out the window. Since Alteration was my primary combat attribute, I intended to boost it as high as it could possibly go. If I got another Alteration ability, I might even pump myself up another grade.

My alteration stat increased from 143 to 152 after taking the skill, which gave me a little more essence to fling around extinguishes in the future. However, since I hadn’t reached a new grade, the difference wasn’t too big. However, I quickly noticed how useful the ‘devouring’ ability was. I hadn’t noticed the effects of the black sun on my body, since my Perception stat was terrible and the influence of the black sun was quite subtle. However, once I started actively stripping away the ‘meaning’ of the light from the black sun and using it to fuel my own alteration magic, I immediately felt lighter. As if I had been wading through shallow water before, and now I was moving on dry land again. The recovery speed of my alteration essence also increased significantly: before, I needed about a full day to recover all of my alteration essence. Now, I could probably recover in about 10 hours now, as long as I was using the ‘Emptiness’ Skill. Of course, I couldn’t maintain it while asleep, but the new Skill was still a massive boost to my regeneration speed, and would probably let me use around double the amount of alteration essence per day.

Apart from stumbling across the empty shadow, Sallia and I didn’t run into anything else while we gathered food and water. We ended up finding several handfuls of groundnuts and hungry roots for food, which was enough to supplement our supplies. I had been hoping to find more, but right now any extra food we could find would help stretch our supplies a little further.

We had a slightly more lavish dinner than usual, to celebrate our sick group members getting better and to help them get their strength back quickly. Since they were recovering well, we decided to let the sick party members rest for the night, and then set out the next day.

* * *

The next two days of our journey to Silver City were fairly uneventful. After our sick members got better, they were able to move easily again, so we started making good time during our travels. However, considering how easily some of our group members had fallen sick during the journey, Ella made us take more breaks than before. We spent more time each day hiding in caves, taking shelter from the sun. Sallia and I thus searched for more food each night, since it was becoming increasingly obvious that our supplies were getting stretched to the limit. Luckily, thanks to Felix’s parents, we avoided any creatures that Ella thought might hurt us: which, on the surface, was most creatures we ran across.

About halfway through the third day after the illness was cured, Felix’s parents suddenly stopped, before they frowned.

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“Something weird is ahead of us. Stop for a bit.”

We immediately froze.

The two continued frowning, and I saw them start to cast more spells to improve their senses.

“In the distance, I can vaguely see the outline of a giant ravine filled with black mist, but it’s very hard to make out,” said Felix's mother. “I think the black mist itself is alive, if my spells are giving me correct information. The black mist is also moving around. I think it has some sort of stealth or illusion related spell or ability, which is why it’s so hard for me to see it, even after I used two third circle spells and a second circle spell to supplement my senses and detect life in our surroundings. I’m not sure if it has any other abilities, but it makes me nervous.”

I strained my eyes, trying to get a good look, but I couldn’t see whatever was ahead of us at all. I felt a surge of irritation as I thought about how poor my eyesight was this life. Having low Perception was far more frustrating than I had given it credit for being, and I still needed quite a few meals from Sallia’s Ramen bowl before I finally corrected my terrible perception stat.

“Has it seen us?” asked Ella.

“I have no idea,” said Felix’s father. “I do notice a few other creatures walking around near the black mist, and it doesn’t seem to be reacting to them. But most of them end up walking off the edge of the ravine and plummeting to their deaths, so it might be doing something to their mind. Or the creature might not feel a need to respond, since they’re already about to die. I wish I had a few more spells that could give me better information right now…” said Felix’s father, grimacing.

“Even if you had more magic symbols, they might not help,” said Ella. “Our spells usually don’t quite know what to make of creatures from outside the world, since their biology is so alien compared to ours.” Ella sighed. “But that’s not the point right now. Do you see any ways that we might cross over the ravine, or any hints that trying to cross might be dangerous?”

Felix’s father simply shrugged. “Every animal or creature I see near the ravine dies afterwards. I don’t see any bridges across the ravine, or anything we could use to cross over it.”

Ella frowned, before turning towards… me. “Miria. If it comes down to it, do you think you could build a bridge using your general shaping? Or use your fireball spell to clear up the mist and make it disappear? I don’t know if the black mist can be killed or burned away, but it might be worth trying.”

I frowned, looking at the chalky, charcoal-scented dirt and chunks of stone near us, and felt a bit frustrated.

“If I know exactly where the ravine is, I could probably fashion some sort of reasonably sturdy bridge across the ravine. But I don’t know how long the bridge would need to be, and the fact that I can’t see what I’m doing is a big problem. As for fireball...” I tried forming a fireball spell, and then lobbed it at the black mist.

Nothing happened. The mist didn’t seem to get hurt or react in any way, and whatever illusion the black mist was using to block my perception meant I almost immediately lost sight of it. I could still see something in the ground in front of us. However, due to my poor Perception and the nature of the creature in front of us, I had a hard time figuring out what was real and what wasn’t. All I knew for sure was that I could no longer clearly tell where the fireball was a few seconds after launching it.

I turned towards Felix’s father. He was the only one of us that had managed to see anything so far.

“Nothing happened,” reported Felix’s father.

I felt a bit disappointed. Clearly, fireballing the darkness wouldn’t work here.

Ella nodded. “So we don’t have any good offensive spells to kill it, at least. But Miria might be able to build a bridge. Good to know that we have a backup plan, then. How about your deadly drop of water trick?”

I tried examining the body of the creature using my soul-sight, hoping the creature could be killed as easily as the thought worms we had run into during the Orukthyri-culling trip with the scouts. If I could just extinguish the black fog creature, that would save us a lot of time and effort.

For the first time, I got a pretty good idea where the creature was. I could now see a large gray-white soul hiding inside of the ground in front of us. Even though I couldn’t see the creature or the ravine with my normal vision, it was a relief to finally know where the threat lay.

However, the black fog was much different than the thought worms. Every single tendril of mist, every single puff of fog in its body seemed to contain part of its soul. Most creatures had condensed blobs of soul that I could target by visualizing it as a ‘candle’ of life, but this creature seemed more like a cloud instead of a candle. Its life force was simply too dispersed for me to extinguish it with one clean spell: it was an issue in how extinguish targeted creatures.

I had never seen anything like it before. I noted the issue down, so that I could work on fixing it later. But for now, at least, I couldn’t kill the fog with extinguish.

“It won’t work here. The way its life force is spread out means that I can’t hit it with a good extinguish, and trying to wipe out every single droplet of life force in this creature might take weeks,” I said. “And that’s assuming it doesn’t regenerate.”

Ella nodded.

“Very creepy. I don’t think my attunement will be useful here, either,” she said. “All right, let’s see if we can just walk around this thing. I don’t like the idea of getting any closer to it than necessary. but if need be, Miria can try building a bridge across the ravine and then we can try crossing it. But that’s our last resort: I think walking around it or finding another solution is a much better idea.”

Anise nodded. Her parents looked very creeped out by the illusory ravine, and Anise didn’t look much better. I gave her a quick consoling hug, and then nodded.

We started walking in another direction. I occasionally used my soul-sight to check on the location of the ravine, but no matter how far we walked, we never seemed to move away from the ravine. Even if we tried walking directly away from the ravine, we always ran into another patch of ravine sooner or later. I began to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Just how big is this thing?” muttered Sallia, as she looked at another patch of the illusory ravine that lay in front of us.

“Wait…” Ella frowned. “Does this area look familiar to you guys?”

I looked around, before I also started frowning. “It does.”

“Are we traveling in circles?” asked Felix. “Did we… get turned around somehow?”

“I don’t think it’s as simple as that,” I said.

Felix sighed. “I was just hoping that I was wrong.”

Ella grimaced. “I think we’ve been in this spot before, around an hour ago.” She shuddered. “We’re already in range of whatever this thing is doing to us. It’s not as simple as illusions…” She took a few steps closer to the ravine, before shaking her head. “Since we can’t walk away from this thing, we need to figure out what the black fog creature is doing, and how to either cancel it or kill the creature entirely. Otherwise, we’ll starve to death here. We only have a day and a half of food and water. Miria, is there any chance you’ll figure out how to make your spell work before we starve to death?”

“No. It might take weeks of experimentation to revise the ability enough that it works here. We don’t have that kind of time.”

Ella sighed, and sat down. “All right, the easiest solutions won’t work, and we can’t just walk away. It isn’t directly attacking us, but we can’t leave. Hmm…”

Ella sat down, and began to think. I saw the corners of her lips tighten, and the bad feeling in the pit of my stomach grew worse.

Most of the time we had been in the wastes, Ella had presented herself as very confident and relaxed, even in the wastes. It had done wonders for the morale of the group, and it had made it much easier to keep everyone moving and energetic.

But for the first time, even if she was trying to hide it, Ella looked worried.