“Are you all right, boy?”

Noticing that Rasmus' condition had improved and he was now able to stand up, Kael smiled.

“Yeah......yes, I'm fine....just a little tired. My original skill got a little weird and I'm a little lethargic” replied Kael, before handing two vials to Mr. Rasmus ”Here, I think you still need them..... Let me know if there's any left after you use it, I'll go treat Avian.”

Seeing the black-haired guy staggering a bit, the red-haired man wanted to go help him, but still being aware of the pain, he decided to heal himself first.

The benefit of slaying the armored boar seemed to consist mainly of a recovery of physical stamina and a slight healing effect, which could not cover the damage received satisfactorily.

All the members of the group obtained this benefit as soon as the enemy died.

Kael handed the two vials to Rasmus because he did not have time to find out the exact amount needed to treat. He already took the vial that had fallen from the monster in his inventory and took it out as soon as he approached Avian.

“You seem to be conscious.”

“Yes, and it hurts like hell, could you help me rearrange my arm?”

“How do you do that?”

Avian instructed him on how to apply traction to his dislocated arm to accommodate it.

*crack*

*ugh!*

It required a couple of painful attempts, but finally Avian's arm could be rearranged.

By that point he was already biting down on his clothes as a sort of gag to keep from screaming.

The black haired guy's mind was a bit distracted.

“Hey, lil bro, are you feeling okay?” Avian voiced his doubts ”I don't think I'm the best one to say it, but you look a little under the weather.”

“Yeah, yeah, it's just..... it's just a side effect of my origin power, somehow it got activated, I'm not clear on its...... effects, I just know that right now it makes me feel a little tired, but I'm fine...here.”

Kael handed the recovery potion to Avian to later sit on the floor.

The brown-skinned guy couldn't tell if he was thinking or just staring off into nothingness.

“Won't you need to heal too'”

“huh? Me? Uh, yeah, a little, but it's nothing serious, you use it first, if there's any left over, give it to me.”

Avian stared at the vial as if inspecting something and smiled shortly after, he proceeded to use it.

It seemed that the effect of that potion that had fallen from the monster was more potent than the ones they were initially given.

Suffice it to say that half of the vial was enough to fully recover Avian, who stood up and threw the potion to Kael.

Kael looked at it for a few seconds and drank ¼ of the contents, being a little surprised to feel all his pain disappear.

“How's the little fella?”

“He says he's a bit tired because of his origin ability. Physically we both seem to be recovering“ Avian replied as he roughly rubbed Kael's hair with familiarity 'and how about you, gramps?”

“Fortunately, more exhausted than injured, I recovered well.” Rasmus smiled and turned his gaze to Kael “Thank you for the two potion bottles, little friend, I owe you one.”

“No problem, Mr. Rasmus, we owe you a lot too. Without you, we wouldn't have stood a chance against such a monster”

“Don't be modest kid, the three of us together were the ones who defeated it. In fact you were the one who gave her the hit.....the hit that saved my life, the coup de grace...pff” Rasmus tried hard not to laugh, the way the boar died sure was peculiar ”I must say, I didn't expect you to suddenly come along and do something like that, boy, HA! HA! HA!”

He finally let out a little of his laughter, he didn't expect such a powerful enemy to die such an undignified death.

He almost felt sorry for that creature

Almost

Kael blushed and scratched his cheek.

“Eh? so how? coup de grace?”

Upon learning that Avian did not know what had happened, the red-haired man led him to the boar's carcass while supporting the black-haired boy to get up.

“A picture is worth a thousand words” he said as he showed the pitiful scene of the enemy they faced with a spear stuck in his ass.

“What? Uoh...”

“Amazing that someone who looks so harmless would be able to do something like that.”

The brown-skined boy looked at Kael with a hesitant and fearful look, at the same time he stepped back and put his hands behind his rear end

and then smiled.

He was teasing him on purpose

“Puuuff!” Rasmus held back laughter as he watched the Avian's action.

“Hey! Why are you looking at me like that? I did it for the urgency of the moment, I wouldn't have been able to pierce his flesh otherwise. There was no other option, it's not some sort of personal preference or anything, it's just the most obvious way to follow.... yeah...I guess.”

They knew the reasons behind that decision, but somehow hearing Kael deny it so vehemently made him look guiltier, which made them laugh again

“Hey! Stop bothering me! What kind of seniors are you?”

“Wahahaha ha!”

The scene lasted for a while before they got serious again

“That's enough, we can't stay here for long”

“Right, we have to retreat”

“Hey boy, it would be a shame to leave this corpse here do you have enough room to store it?”

“Well...I could try, it would be better if we just carry the most important part. You're interested in the armor aren't you, Mr. Rasmus?”

The red-haired man nodded.

“By the way, no need for formality, you can just call me Rasmus.”

The animal's internal organs were already shattered, so apart from the natural armor it possessed, there was no other point of interest.

Once dead, it seemed to soften. Rasmus managed to roughly extract the armor from the beast with traces of flesh and blood.

Now it was easier with his new axe.

It was a unanimous decision for him to keep it.

In fact, he gave his old axe to Kael.

Now he has an arsenal of 3 weapons including the sword he always uses.

He managed to clean his weapons a bit, but the spear still retains an unpleasant smell, so he does not consider using it unless it is an emergency.

Having finished their business, the trio walked quietly into the “ beginners' spawning area”.

In a way, they are now quite close.

A life and death battle certainly solidifies people's friendship.

You could say they were unlucky to be summoned to the outermost area where there is more contact with monsters.

Right now all three of them look and smell bad.

Leaving aside the torn clothes that look like rags, they had to cover themselves with dirt to disguise the smell of blood that they stained their bodies with.

“Hey! Look!”

Hearing Avian's words, the rest turned their gaze to where he was pointing.

It looked like a person sitting under a tree, however, when they got closer, they saw that it was the corpse of a female student.

Kael for a moment became nervous but when he noticed the other party's uniform, he relaxed, which made him feel guilty for relieving himself of the death of a person.

“Is she a classmate of yours?”

Both guys shook their heads

“I see.”

Rasmus approached the corpse of the girl, she had a huge bite on her neck. However, apart from that big bloody wound, the rest of the body was intact.

She was a short black-haired girl with a slightly chubby face that made her look a bit tender, her facial features were cute, however, such look was contrasted by her immobile and wide-open unbelieving eyes and bleeding neck.

From the blood on her hand, which now lay on the ground, it is not difficult to guess that she was murdered in a furtive and quick way, with no sign of a struggle. Just realizing her situation when it was too late, only managing to lean back against a tree while touching her neck with incredulity.

“I don't think this space is completely natural, it's very likely that the creatures in this jungle only exist with the mission to kill us.”

Hearing Kael's words, the red-haired man couldn't help but put on an angry expression. It angered him that the deities of this world would involve young people in this kind of crazy ordeal.

Although the scene did not leave him in shock or anything like that, Rasmus could not help but feel pity for that dead body.

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He took the corpse and laid it on the ground, before beginning to cover it with earth.

He wanted to give it some kind of funerary burial.

The young duo looked at their partner for a few seconds and followed his actions as they understood his intentions, starting to help bury the body of that teenage girl superficially.

It is when they were close enough and came in contact with her, where Kael and Avian began to really feel the impact of that death, both turning a little pale, but continued with this kind of improvised funerary ritual, which was illogical to perform.

Perhaps the reason for this is the shocking sight of a young girl, who must have had a future ahead of her and people who loved her.

Either because they consider that their circumstances were very similar to hers.

Or because they had people in mind who shared similarities with the young girl.

They all knew there was little point in doing so, more corpses would probably be found in the future. But once they joined Rasmus, they understood a little. It was disturbing and cumbersome to do, but on the other hand it calmed their hearts.

Closing those unbelieving and fearful eyes, turning it into a peaceful expression of sleep, made them feel that it was worth it.

It was an activity that made them better understand and accept the reality they found themselves in, which they were not given enough time to process or analyze their own emotions thoroughly, until that moment.

They were human after all.

As much as it was a funeral rite for the girl, it was also a kind of ritual for them.

Kael noticed a small bulge in the girl's skirt pocket, so he rummaged there out of curiosity with some embarrassment, finding an untouched healing potion.

Once he extracted the object, he did not put it away immediately, but stood still and showed it to the rest of the team while he stared at them, as if to confirm their approval.

They both simply nodded in a simple manner while looking slightly guilty.

While the scene was a bit heavy, the potion was not a personal item of the deceased, and would certainly help them survive in the future.

About the girl's weapon, it was a halberd.

Kael already kept it in his inventory some time ago.

Once the burial was over, the three of them joined their own hands each in front of the girl's "grave". They thought of praying, but thinking of the divinities that summoned them, their perception of God or gods changed. They were not in their original world either, so it made no sense to pray for those divinities they knew.

In the end, they just clapped their palms together a couple of times in a simple way and wished peace to the soul of the young girl.

It was a tentative thing that took a few minutes to do, but it certainly made them feel better.

Kael kept getting notifications that reminded him to rest, rather insistently, but this encounter made him a little more awake, which in turn made him remember something.

“Oh, that's right, guys. I had forgotten” 'he remembered the monster orb, which he had kept ”Inside the corpse of the armored boar I found this, I think it serves to unlock the abilities we talked about earlier”

At the unexpected revelation, the duo was shocked.

“I'm really sorry for mentioning it just now, seriously. I'm...I'm really sorry! After that battle I'm feeling my mind a bit foggy, it's a bit hard to concentrate!”

The red-haired man and the blond man couldn't blame Kael, they had noticed long ago that his state didn't seem to be the best.

Indeed, even without that knowledge, they wouldn't have blamed him, having a lot on one's mind is not uncommon after the last events they experienced.

Instead, they just stood in awe looking at the round object in Kael's hands.

“Me too! Me too! Don't spend it all!” Rasmus rushed up excitedly like a child “ah...Uhum! I mean, uhum! have moderation, boy!”

Curiously, as Rasmus touched the object, it finally paled until it faded away completely after emitting the same faint glow at first contact.

“Begin full integration of the individual into Ausperia's magical system.” Avian read “It seems what you say is true, we should already be able to use the abilities we talked about earlier.”

“Flash Step!”

..............

.............

“FlLAAASH STEEEP!!!”

.............

............

“Maybe it's more complex than shouting out the name of the skill” replied Kael ”try to imagine it.”

Kael was going to ask if it was really necessary to say the name of the skill, but remembering how Rasmus has never said the name of the skill he uses, he already deduced that the tall brown-skinned boy simply has some eighth-grade syndrome.

«Well, I can't judge him, if I had cool awesome magic skills too, I'd like to show them off too. I'm a little bit envious»

“I did it! I did it! Uoh!” Avian had appeared meters in the distance before almost tripping, only to then almost kneel down.

“Waaah! This consumes stamina as well as mana.”

“Hey, you two, try not to expend too much energy, we haven't found shelter yet.”

“ELEEECTROOO BOOOST!”

«Ramus, you too....... »

The red-haired man released a powerful scream that was followed by the presence of electric arcs coursing through his body.

«Damn, that's so cool! » (x2)

The two young guys in the group couldn't help but think the same thing.

Seeing the surprised look on their juniors' faces, Rasmus looked somewhat embarrassed.

“I tried to visualize the skill and summon it mentally, but it wouldn't activate, it's only when I tried the Avian method that I was able to activate it.”

“Avian method?”

«Avian method? »

“Kael!”

Seeing the black-haired boy suddenly fall to his knees, the two remaining members became worried.

“No, it's nothing, it's nothing, it was just a moment I felt dizzy.”

“This is not normal, we must hurry to find some shelter or safe place.”

Seeing the strange state Kael was in, they wasted no more time and hurried.

At this point it could not be considered simple drowsiness, the junior of the team was close to passing out against his will, staggering more and more as he walked.

Tormented by a sense of lethargy and the insistent notifications.

He himself knows that if he were to ask to rest for a while, the rest would likely accept it and carry him.

However, Kael did not want to be a burden.

It wasn't related only to the penalty of making things difficult for the rest, but being unconscious decreases the group's chances of survival. While he trusts these two he met recently, he also can't blindly believe that they wouldn't abandon him in certain particularly desperate scenarios.

A refuge or a large group of people. Kael refuses to go unconscious for who knows how long without first finding one of those two things.

It's just that...

He himself didn't notice that from a certain point on, he looked like a zombie.

“Forgive me , kiddo, it's for your own good.”

“Eh?”

*plaf*

A sound similar to the cartoonish noise of a frying pan hitting someone's head rang out.

It would be funny if it didn't come accompanied with pain.

“Idiot! It wasn't necessary to hit him full on the head with your damn axe!”

“I hit him soft! Softly! Very softly!”

Those were the last words Kael heard before his consciousness faded.

The way his mind was, he couldn't quite recognize the situation, but he still felt indignant in a certain way.

image [https://i.postimg.cc/kG9sVmrL/Separador-de-dialogo-by-Kroboss-for-Possibility-Seed-book.png]

I had a dream...

In which I was in a space immersed in almost complete darkness...

An unprecedented darkness that gave the sensation of being endless.

I was there

Immobile

Just floating adrift as I looked up

How did I recognize the direction in a state of weightlessness? I don't know.

I just felt it

Well

Actually there were several clues

But I could still feel it

That I belonged here “down below”.

Everything was so dark, but...

Even in the distance

You could see a spot of intense brightness.

A white light so intense, but at the same time so sweet and hopeful that it hypnotizes one to try to touch it, to go towards it.

However, there was no one or nothing heading towards it.

There was no one or nothing heading that way

On the contrary

Countless orbs of light were descending, all of different colors, sizes and peculiar shapes.

Desperate at the rate they were denied the chance to return.

Even if they tried to return, they could not.

They were facing their final destiny, exiled, doomed never to witness the light again.

Gradually losing themselves, integrating with the darkness of this place.

Losing their own brightness, individuality.

It was so sad

I could see them

I could hear them

I could understand them

Remorse

Hate

Resentment

Sadness

Despair

Loneliness

Countless waves of remnant emotions boiling chaotically.

All doubting why they were here, despite knowing the heartbreaking answer for themselves.

Each had their own story, stories lost in oblivion.

Why did I know that?

Because thanks to them

Thanks to each and every one of them.

Is that

I was born.

image [https://i.postimg.cc/kG9sVmrL/Separador-de-dialogo-by-Kroboss-for-Possibility-Seed-book.png]

“Uhm?”

Did I fall asleep?

Yes

Well, no, I was put to sleep

I feel like I dreamt something weird

I look with confusion at the space around me.

I feel no drafts, so it must be indoors.

Did the guys find shelter?

“Hello!

“Avian? Rasmus? are they there?”

I started to feel nervous

There was an echo

I immediately recognized the abnormality of this place

It was all dark

I got scared

“Tsk!”

I heard someone click their tongue.

“Hello? anyone there?” Kael asked as I discreetly tried to pull a weapon from my inventory.

But

I can't sense my inventory

«Status! »

I couldn't check my status either

"kekekeke!”

The unknown source of voice suddenly started laughing.

What the hell is going on here?

“Huh?”

I felt how the weight in my hand had suddenly increased.

There lay a sharp dagger.

*steps*

“Who?!”

Eh?

The space in front of me, seemed to clear up

No..... just now I could see through it.

Somehow

As my vision cleared, I caught a glimpse of the entity from before, which was approaching me.

Stopping when I was a few steps away.

Although I could see it, this entity was covered by a robe, which completely hid its features in a mysterious way.

I could not see her eyes, but, looking at her face to face, I felt that she was looking at me mockingly.

I didn't know what to do, I was confused, until the figure began to extend its arms out to the sides, showing itself deliberately unprotected.

It was as if it was saying “attack me”, “try it”, a clear provocation, as if it was playing with me.

This whole situation was strange and felt wrong

However.....

Somehow I felt a certain strange familiarity with that figure.

I knew it gave off a sinister feeling, it definitely did, but at the same time I felt no threat from it.

......

I sighed internally

I don't feel like attacking it. Besides, that thing can probably kill me easily before I do it any harm, I can feel it, that entity in front of me is far beyond me.

I am completely ignorant here, the only thing I know is that, I couldn't do anything to attack or get rid of that entity.

I didn't even know if this was real or just a dream within a dream.

A nightmare.

In a way, thinking about it, it calmed me down.

I decided to just sit down and let go of that dagger, while I continued to stare at it.

I don't think anything bad would happen if I hurt myself in a lucid dream or lucid nightmare, right?

I don't feel like doing what the entity in front of me is asking me to do anyway.

If it's real and I die, it's not like I have a chance against it either, the difference is very clear, it would be a dead end.

*Huff!*

Did she just snort?

He looked disappointed

I couldn't think much about it, as suddenly, I was violently sent flying backwards, as I felt my mind instantly plunge back into darkness.