Novels2Search
The Memoirs of a Public Enemy
Chapter 7: The Mana Siphon

Chapter 7: The Mana Siphon

After calming down a bit, we finally got a chance to go over our loot. We got some clothes covered in a weird ash-like substance. They were definitely going to be better off with a good washing. Amelia also stole a simple short sword for herself.

We also got a small box of select textiles and accessories. I could only make haphazard guesses to the why the group was carrying around such random items.

To our good fortune, there were big goggles and some sewing supplies inside the accessory box. They would definitely help conceal our identities on the sneaking mission.

We fashioned the outfits together with some trouble, and while they were certainly crude, they did conceal our bodies completely.

The outfits consisted of long-sleeved, turtle-necked shirts and baggy pants with many pockets. My shirt had a polka dot pattern, and Amelia’s was checkered with red and brown. The beards were tucked partially into the shirts. The sleeve with my missing arm was filled with more of that tree-beard stuff to make sure I wouldn’t stand out too much.

As planned, we had big bags fashioned together from sewing a bunch of the rags we stole into single pieces. We filled the bags with herbs and some animals Amelia hunted to act like we’ll be there to sell our catches.

We tied stolen leather shoes on our knees with some leather straps. Our legs were in turn hidden inside the colorful knitted fabric within a secret compartment we sewed on the bottom of the bags. That way, even if someone were to dig the bag empty, they wouldn’t see our legs. To conceal the rest of our faces, we had the goggles and big leather hats with some sort of straps to their sides.

All in all! We looked fashionably awful! But…this was about the best shot we had for now, so no point in nit-picking!

Night soon fell, so we decided to get some rest before the big day tomorrow. I rested a small distance away from Amelia in order to make sure I’d hear if she started speaking to herself again.

No such thing occurred however, and it turned out to become a quiet and slightly chilly night. The dwarven outfit was a lot less filthy than the wolf pelt, so I opted to use it to keep warm instead. I couldn’t help but wonder if the hair that got burnt at the back of Amelia’s head had recovered at all.

Maybe I could check it out later. For now, I decided to just rest my mind. I tried to figure out some sort of happy place to think about… but my life hadn’t been a whole lot of fun so far…

While I did enjoy my time in this world despite all the horrors I had encountered so far, thinking about all the things that have happened here simply got my adrenaline pumping, so it was out of question in terms of a happy, relaxing place.

Upon really thinking on it. I realized I…don’t have a happy place to go to. My happiest memories from the past have twisted into unpleasant ones due to how people’s attitudes towards me changed when they realized I was a burden.

I really…really needed to make sure I remained useful to Amelia. I couldn’t let myself go back to being unnecessary baggage again.

I wondered if I could figure out magic better, maybe I’d become more beneficial to have around. It was kind of disappointing, to be honest. A vast majority of the witch sigils I remembered from my past life didn’t actually end up doing anything. But A COUPLE of them did. It felt a bit weird. Why did only a couple of them work?

Was it just a coincidence? Or was there something I didn’t truly understand about them?

Admittedly, while the sigils of stuff like fire and water were straightforward to figure out. There were also sigils with considerably more vague meanings, like ‘Solid’. What would a solid spell even do? Maybe it was to be some kind of body strengthening thing?

Honestly, now that I thought about it… The sigils were weird to begin with. Why did the symbols all have single word meanings in the first place? The words were completely random too! I wouldn’t have been surprised if the words were like ‘Darkness’ or ‘Curse’ or ‘The Moon’ or something. Those would have at least been thematically appropriate, but all the sigils’ meanings I remembered in addition to the three elements were ‘Solid’, ‘Sky’, ‘Earth’, ‘Heart’, ‘Faint’, ‘Clear’, and ‘Reflection’

As you can probably figure from here too, they were completely random words, and no… ‘Sky’ and ‘Earth’ didn’t actually correspond to something like wind or earth element magic.

They did nothing.

None of these words did. I remembered a few other sigils too, but I couldn’t remember their meanings if they ever even had any. Something about…my memories from the past were a bit weirdly fuzzy.

I remembered about the witches, I remembered some of my life experiences, I remembered my misery. But… I couldn’t…remember what I looked like…or what my name was, somehow. Thinking back on it, I wasn’t sure anymore if I remembered my name at the moment Amelia asked for it either…

Somehow Yverna had become so natural to hear even though it wasn’t my name originally.

“Mmmgh…” Amelia began stirring. To my surprise, the dawn was already breaking. Did I really spend that long thinking about magic? It felt as if time just flew by.

“Morning.” I spoke softly and adjusted myself a bit. The air had grown warmer already, so I no longer needed to cover myself up so well.

“Morning… Did I…do the thing again?” A faint twinge of concern was more than clear in Amelia’s voice.

“Nope! You were totally quiet all night.” I tried to give her my best reassuring smile.

“Good. Maybe it was just something trying to possess me in my sleep then?” She pondered a bit groggily.

“Let’s hope it gave up, huh!” I nodded, and soon we had some breakfast.

After the breakfast, it was time. TIME FOR INFILTRATION! I was honestly pretty nervous about it all. In my opinion, our outfits were rather convincing, but there was always the fear of stuff like…what if the dwarves had some kind of a secret greeting… Or some cultural quirk we didn’t know about?

Sadly, for me, there wasn’t really any realistic way of finding answers to my questions outside of testing things out, marching into the hornets’ nest was the only option…again.

“Guuhhhh….” Amelia groaned as she ‘walked’ with me. Walking on our knees was insanely hard after the first few minutes of doing so.

“Mmmmghh… We probably look like penguins waddling around like this…” I joined Amelia’s groaning chorus.

“P-penguins…?” The knight replied.

“O-oh, right. Uh… It’s a bird that lives up north. They swim instead of flying.” I explained. “They have a silly waddling gait. I’ll draw you one sometime.”

“H-how exotic… I wish I could see them… In fact, I wish I could be doing anything but whatever this is…”

I honestly didn’t even know if this world had penguins. I kinda blurted it out without thinking, and soon we started getting closer to the castle town gates already, giving us no chance to discuss the odd birds further.

The gigantic stalagmite castle was also surrounded by a rather large city. The urban area was on the ground, and it was built around the biggest stalagmite in a circular shape. There were tall stone walls all around the place to protect it…from…something? I couldn’t figure out what the stone barriers were for, considering there were no monsters here to begin with.

To my relief, the guards didn’t seem to inspect the dwarves walking in and out for passports or any paperwork of the like.

“You there! What’s in the bags?” A surprisingly tired voice asked us somewhat quietly, as one of the guards walked up close to us, pointing at Amelia’s bag.

“Game… and some herbs.” Amelia spoke in a low, grouchy voice. It…was not a good male voice at all, but for whatever reason, the guard didn’t seem to pay any attention to it.

The guard took a moment to browse through the contents of both of our bags. Luckily, he didn’t seem too concerned over our slightly staggering movement, simply yawning and letting us go.

I’m sure if I had a heart, it would have been beating like crazy at the moment. I couldn’t believe it! We got in!! And so easily too!! Amelia seemed to share my excitement…until we got to see what awaited us there.

My general idea of what a dwarven kingdom would look like had something along the lines of blacksmiths around every corner, immaculate architecture all over the place, bars and pubs and loud laughter echoing on every street.

“W-what the…hell…?” Amelia whispered at me shakily.

The sight expanding before us was haunting. The dwarven citizens were slowly walking up and down the streets in wave-like masses. Their clothes were stained with a gray ash. It looked like the same kind of strange soot our stolen outfits were originally covered in, too. Clothes aside, the people themselves were the most sinister sight. Be it men or women, or old or young, they all looked incredibly tired to the point of looking almost withered. Their skins were pale and unhealthy, most dwarves’ hair was turning gray at the tips in the most unnatural manner…and the silence. The silence was the most foreboding of all.

Nothing but the footsteps of the gray masses made noise. Not a single person was talking.

The stillness was suddenly broken when a carriage ran through the street. It carelessly rode over one of the meandering dwarves, and a dry cough was all the poor man could muster out as the carriage continued onward.

Not a single dwarf even turned their head to look at his twitching body now laying on the street, heaving weakly.

I quickly pulled Amelia to a narrow alley and began whispering to her quickly.

“W-what is this? Why are they like this?”

“I… I cannot tell. Are they perhaps under a spell of some kind?” She questioned hastily.

“As inexperienced as I am, I can still sort of feel if things have mana to them… There is barely any on these people! I’d imagine I’d see at least something if they were cursed!” I hissed in response. My voice was panicked, too.

Now, that I was actually looking at the dwarves… Didn’t they have way too little mana? There was…almost nothing. I know I’ve commented on Amelia’s lack of mana a few times…so I’ll use it to put things into perspective here. I don’t think I saw a single dwarf with even half of what Amelia had.

Several of them were almost completely devoid of those glimmering sparkles of magic. Like… Even inanimate objects had more than multiple dwarves here…and the ones with the least mana seemed to also be the ones with the least brain-function remaining.

“In fact… I think they have…an unusually low amount of mana to them…”

My words got a curious gesture out of Amelia, but before I managed to elaborate, someone was screaming on the streets.

A dwarven woman, or perhaps a girl? It was difficult to tell. The dwarven females were honestly so doll-like, it was very hard to decipher their age at all, so for the sake of clarity, let’s just call her a lady.

The little lady was being dragged along by the guards, as she was trying to run away from a long queue leading to a massive hourglass-shaped structure.

“What the hell is that…?” I gasped under my breath.

“What do you mean? The strange hourglass?” Amelia questioned, squinting her eyes in an attempt to see it better from the distance we were from it.

Obviously, she’d be unable to understand my expression. I don’t know what kind of face I must have been making, since even Amelia seemed to grow steadily more worried the longer she looked at me.

image [https://i.imgur.com/e0MOsGo.png]

“W-what is it!? Yverna!? What do you see?!”

“It’s…one of those…THINGS again…” I managed to utter shakily as my skin began to crawl.

The men dragged the poor screaming lady to the hourglass, only to force her to touch a metal plate on the front of it.

Instantly, the hair of the dwarf began to gray out, her skin began to lose color…and soon enough…she was meandering into the masses brainlessly just like the rest of her kind.

“No…” I shook my head, for I knew what this was all about. “Not again…” I gasped and turned to Amelia. She was looking back at me with eyes full of concern.

“What?! What is it? Yverna! Speak to me!” She continued begging me on. Of course… Amelia wasn’t able to see it because she couldn’t see mana.

Or the lack of it.

Deep underneath the strange glimmering sand the glass kept within laid a pitch-black spot. An immense darkness so murky, not a single sparkle of mana could escape its surface.

“It’s one of those stones…!!” Cold sweat slid over my skin.

The memory of the eerie hand print painted on that flat, smooth stone flashed through my mind. I couldn’t see it, but I was certain there was one embedded at the base of the hourglass because to this moment I could not forget that horrid feeling of being near one.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“I… I…when I was…back in the kingdom…” I began stuttering at Amelia. “I was offered a choice by the judge before getting exiled…”

“…” Amelia listened in dead silence.

“Touch a strange stone…or get exiled to the swamps.” I continued. “But the stone they brought in…was immensely sinister in all senses of the word…” I gripped onto my clothes tightly, as if trying to grasp for some semblance of safety. “Do you remember how I told you about my magic theory? About how everything needs mana to exist?”

“I do, yes.” Amelia nodded seriously.

“I can see mana. It manifests in these little sparkles around everything, but these stones…they eat it.”

“Eat the mana?!” Amelia gasped.

“That’s the best way I can really put it. I haven’t seen a single thing outside of these weird pieces of rock that are devoid of magic! Not to mention how they seem to drain the energy of everything around them to boot!” I went on.

“What in the world…?!” Amelia turned to look at the hourglass, wide-eyed.

“The people…they’re not cursed! They’re barely conscious because of being drained of almost all of their mana!” I began finally noticing the gray ash piles all over the streets. Upon closer inspection, they had some soot-coated clothes mixed in the grey mass. “That’s…”

“NO….” Amelia finally understood as well.

“We are…coated in the ashen remains of fully mana-drained dwarves…” I managed to finally cough out.

“Ghuuu…” Amelia began gagging.

Just like how the wooden pieces I used to cast spells with always turned to gray ash after being drained of their mana… I suppose the same applied to the denizens of this underground kingdom.

“W-why?” Amelia asked shakily. “It’s their own people…why would they do this!?”

Before I managed to even weigh in with my speculations, a clattering on the main street caught our attention. It was the distinct sound of armored footsteps. I had grown used to it from listening to Amelia walk around before she lost her plating to the dark swarm within the dungeon.

I assumed it’d just be dwarven guards or something, but the reality of the sight left me completely stunned.

Towering over the dwarves was what looked like a glimmering illusion. A human male, clad in gold, followed by two guards with similar armor, their white capes waving as they proceeded.

And the most horrifying thing of all…

… Were that perfectly gilded hair…coupled with emerald green eyes on the man walking front and center.

I was clearly not alone with this realization. Amelia’s eyes were filled with shock and confusion, and she seemed like she wasn’t sure if she was seeing things right. I honestly couldn’t blame her for it, either.

The man wore armor somewhat reminiscent of that found in pictures of ancient Greek. He was clad in gilt metal from head to toe, giving him a somewhat heavenly feel with how much he shone through the gray mass everywhere.

He was accompanied by two other guards wearing similar armor with helmets that concealed their identities completely. Small wing-shaped decorations made of white feathers adorned the sides of their helmets, making them stand out as they followed their supposed leader.

Most intimidating of all, were their broadswords. Each knight had one in a sheath, but from the amount of magical power leaking through, it was more than obvious they were not your average weapons. I didn’t know what kind of magic they were imbued with, but simply the sheer amount of mana the group was glowing with was enough evidence that this wasn’t an every-day knight squadron.

“The donations seem to be coming along perfectly well.” The golden-haired man spoke in a slightly flippant tone as he walked.

“Yes! Sir Godwyn! It is as you say. The siphon is functional, and the donations are running as always.” One of the heavily armored men behind him spoke.

“Good work! Shall we go celebrate with a cup of the finest dwarven wine?” The golden-haired man chuckled.

As he walked along, a dwarf from among the gray masses suddenly grasped onto his leg and began speaking in a scream.

“PLEASE!! PLEASE STOP THIS!! The princess! How are we supposed to help her like this?! Nothing has changed! Please!! Our people will be drained to death if this goes on!! My wife…! My wife hasn’t opened her eyes in weeks!!” The dwarven man pleaded to Godwyn, the gold-plated man. The human responded with a sneering smile.

“Ah! Well! Aren’t you passionate to helping the greater cause? Of course, a peasant such as yourself would have no understanding of our vast knowledge. Fear not, for you will be most helpful to this nation by keeping your foolish mouth shut…and by keeping your foul grubby hands away from my shoes.“ Godwyn kicked the dwarf hard enough to draw blood to the point of it being noticeable even from where Amelia and I were observing from.

The little man was left crying on the ground, only to begin screaming as the guards of his own kin grabbed him by the arms and began dragging him to the hourglass. He was rapidly silenced by the so called ‘siphon’.

“Monsters…” Amelia grunted under her breath.

“You can say that again… What’s with golden haired beauties being scum in this place…!?” I repeated Amelia’s sentiment.

Amelia’s fist was shaking. It was more than clear she wanted to rush in to help, but we both knew it wasn’t a good idea.

“I know how you feel…” I pat her on the back. “But we can’t go rushing in without thinking. How about we tail those golden creeps and eavesdrop on them a bit?”

With those words, Amelia calmed down a bit and nodded at me. “Agreed. I’m sorry…it just…frustrates me so much to be this powerless...”

“I know… I wish I could help too, but maybe we can figure out some other way to approach this situation with additional information. You know, knowledge is power!” I cheered the paladin on.

“Right. Let’s do this.” And with that, we departed.

Constantly at a good distance away, Amelia and I followed the out-of-place humans into a restaurant of some sort. Luckily for us, it was one of those places where you pay after eating, so no questions were asked as we pointed to a table close to the golden group.

“And what will the gentlemen be having today?” A somewhat tired looking dwarven man came to us as we were browsing our menus.

“We haven’t had much for a good while… Mind if we think on it a bit longer?” I grumbled with my awful dwarf-voice. Luckily, the mana-drained waiter was too tired to question our words, so he simply smiled faintly and walked off.

It took the group a while to begin speaking, but with some alcohol acting as lubricant, their tongues became less reserved. To my surprise, they began to speak in a language I couldn’t understand, but Amelia’s eyes focused, and she suddenly began translating it for me.

“Help my wife! She’s sleeping!” One of the knights began. Booming laughter loud enough to startle a bunch of the other guests erupted. Amelia was gritting her teeth as she repeated their words,

“What did you expect of these dust-sniffing fools.” Godwyn spoke.

“Hear hear! A toast to the Order! Our supply of choralium is essentially guaranteed now.” The other guard lifted his glass.

“Not to mention getting two birds with one stone… To think it would be this convenient to feed the siphon. The rebirth of our Goddess is soon at hand…” Godwyn spoke under his breath.

“I suppose we should cheer for more blessings incoming too, huh?” The guards sung in unison.

“TO OUR NATION OF GOLD! CHEERS!” The men cheered on. From then on, they simply began eating.

Amelia and I exchanged some nervous glances, hoping to hear some more, when suddenly, a voice spoke next to us.

“Ahem… Excuse me sirs. I must ask you to leave…! The odor from your…bags is bothering some of the patrons of our fine establishment…” The dwarven waiter stood before us with a couple of armored guards.

Needless to say, there wasn’t much room for arguments. We walked out to the streets without too much of a hassle as to not alert any more guards to our presence.

“I have a terrible feeling about this.” Amelia spoke as we walked along the less crowded alleys.

“What was that language? How’d you know of it?” I asked my companion while we hid in the dwarven masses.

“It’s Highlander. It’s a human language specifically designated for those of higher standing. A select few nobles speak it as their native tongue, but it’s otherwise not too commonly used. As a part of the royal guard schooling, I had to study it.” She explained.

“Ahhh… So, I’m guessing their purpose of speaking it…”

“Was to hide how ill their intent towards these people is…” Amelia finished my sentence. “How vile…”

“What was that all about the princess…and…what is choralium…?” I held my head. “There are too many unanswered questions…”

“Not to mention the ‘Goddess’ Godwyn mentioned…and a nation of gold? Is that about Rachasia? Or something else? The golden demon in my memories was an outsider too, just like this Godwyn. Is the nation of gold their place of origin?” Amelia was deep in contemplation as well.

“Mmmmh… Should we try to do some recon work?” I blurted out without thinking.

I had to stop myself for a moment. What was I doing…? I was rushing straight into danger… While it was possible, we could figure out important things by exploring the city, surely just following the original plan was safer. We could find some passports in here somewhere for sure, and with how mentally absent people were, it definitely wouldn’t be a stretch to say we could easily manipulate the people to forge us official papers.

We had been through enough life-or-death situations already, and adding more to the stack didn’t seem like a great idea. Getting lucky a couple times is one thing, but we would definitely end up regretting it, if we bet our lives on good fortune too many times.

“Amelia. Before we begin. Let’s talk.” I was speaking in a rather serious tone, but as soon as I saw Amelia’s face…

“What is it?”

“Aghhh…” I slapped my hand on my face. Amelia’s eyes were shining. It was as if the other one read SHINING and the other one JUSTICE. She was ABSOLUTELY invested in helping these people out. “I suppose… It’s kind of pointless of me to ask if you’re really down to risking your life again…for the sake of these people we don’t know at all.”

Amelia seemed to be taken aback by my words a bit, and she seemed to realize what I was talking about.

“Oh…! R-right…” She sighed heavily. “I…I understand… I suppose we shouldn’t…” Her expression darkened. Going against such a massive conspiracy happening in a place completely hostile and unknown to us was definitely a terrible idea, but…

“Do… You want to help them?” I exhaled as Amelia’s eyes turned from dark to sparkles again. She looked at me hopefully and gently grasped my hands.

“Would you…please allow me to?” She asked in an adorably hopeful tone.

“Ughhhh…” I murmured and rolled my eyes. “You don’t look cute at all, asking that with a damn forest beard…” I slapped her shoulder and then straightened my back a bit. “Fine… What’s a fantasy adventure without throwing yourself into danger completely pointlessly…” I let out an exasperated noise.

“Fantasy…?” Amelia repeated.

“Never mind… Let’s just do what we can, okay? But no overexerting allowed!” My declaration wasn’t particularly stern, but Amelia was the type to respect it anyway.

“Thank you!” My paladin of justice smiled happily. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling uncertain about the decision to help these people out…

We hid in an alley to reorganize our thoughts again. There were numerous mysteries in the air and sadly, there seemed to be no convenient answers randomly floating around.

“So…what do we have?” I asked Amelia, sitting down on the pavement. We both crossed our arms in deep contemplation.

“We know there is a princess… The golden monsters are after something called ‘choralium’… a mineral, perhaps? It would make sense considering our location.” The knight stared up at the blue faux sky.

My curiosity got piqued by her comment. “What makes you think it’s a mineral?”

“Don’t minerals usually have names ending in ‘ium’. Palladium, titanium, adamantium, and so forth.” The paladin explained. I honestly didn’t even know that. It would make sense, though… Maybe there was some kind of valuable mineral here that the so called ‘golden kingdom’ was after. Also…is adamantium even a real metal? It sounded pretty fantasy-like.

“I see…” I sat around for a moment, looking around the street. “I wonder if we could go check out a bar or something? They’re usually good for gossip, right? Alcohol seemed to loosen the lips of Godwyn and his group, too.”

Amelia lifted her head up quickly. “Not a bad idea!”

“Shall we then?”

Sadly, as if to mock my dwarf fantasies, the bar was basically dead. Only a few people were around, and a deafening silence seemed to absorb even our footsteps into its socially awkward stillness.

There was one red haired and bearded man totally wasted, the barkeep squeaking the same glass while staring at a wall, and last but not least, a man slowly blowing bubbles in a jar of pickles. He was so green from the pickle juice, it was about impossible to determine the original color of his beard.

After wandering around awkwardly, we finally decided to bet on the wasted man. People in places like this should have high enough alcohol tolerance to be able to speak to us at least moderately comprehensively, I figured.

“Ay… The guards are being assholes again” Amelia grumbled in her awful fake male voice.

“Hrrrmmmph... Nothing surpishing…” The drunken dwarf laughed. He seemed still conscious enough to have a conversation! Lucky!

“We’ve been hunting and living in the woods for a while… what’s going on?” I spoke in my equally awful male voice. I felt a pang of guilt for judging Amelia on hers, for mine was just as bad, if not worse.

“Bwahhaha… Lucky bastards… Better get outta the city fast ‘fore the guards getchu…”

“Why are the guards behaving like that?” Amelia questioned.

“I dunno…something about…the princess and whatnot…” To our annoyance, the drunk began acting coy all of a sudden.

With a sigh and a groan, I spoke up. “Think we could loosen your lips with some mead…?”

“Now yer speakin’ my language!” He piped up, swinging his empty mug around.

You might be wondering how we were able to pay for the drinks, but seemingly rabbits were an acceptable currency to the barkeep. He simply opened his cash register and stuffed the dead animals inside… It was…a strange sight to say the least.

With the power of alcohol, the facial muscles of the dwarf seemed to loosen up enough to start speaking.

“It all shtharted when shhhe princhessss went and got hershelf cursed…” The drunkard started.

With how incoherently he spoke, I feel it’s easier to understand if I translate his words a bit.

It seems like a year or so ago, the beloved princess of the dwarven kingdom of Subtherma was struck by a curse. Supposedly the princess was always a bit of an adventurous type and some monster had caught her off guard on one of her journeys.

While she was found before the monsters could do anything to her, she has been fully immobile as if her entire body were made of stone since.

Some time ago, the human men appeared with claims of a cure for the princess. Nobody really seems to know who they are, and yet, they were welcomed with open arms by the king, who loved his daughter like nothing else in the world.

The drunkard depicted the king with less than flattering terminology.

“Ssshat stupid stone-faced piece of shait….” This was the title the king was described with.

Ever since the human men had come in, a law was placed in the kingdom, decreeing that nobody must exit or enter without a royal permit. The citizens were forced to be mana siphoned to supposedly provide mana for an anti-curse in order to dispel the hex on the princess.

“Anti-curse my ass… They’re just draining people’s mana for no reason…” I swore under my breath… and then it clicked. I rapidly stood up in realization, causing my beer to fall over. “AH! SORRY!” I screamed in a rather non-manly voice, and both the barkeep and the drunk man gave me quite a stare.

“OHTHANKYOUTHISWILLBEALL!” Amelia blurted out rapidly and dragged me out of the bar. We rushed through the streets. “What is it?! What did you figure out?” She hissed at me as we walked while some guards were pointing at us.

“Hey! You!” One of them shouted, and with that, we booked it.

Luckily for us, the guards at the gates were too tired to realize we were being chased, so as soon as we made it out of the city, we stood up and fled at full force. Luckily for us, we managed to escape with ease by disappearing into the misty tall grass of the vast open fields.

The sky was slowly growing dark. Both of us were panting as we finally reached the forest.

“THE PAPER!! The paper on curse theory!!!” I basically screamed at Amelia.

“W-what about it?” She shook her head in confusion.

“The golden people are claiming they’re using the siphon for an anti-curse, but the paper we found on the dead dwarf was saying curses don’t last forever unless the victim is fed constant mana!!” I gasped. “THE TREE IS INFESTED WITH SNAKES!! THE GOLDEN MONSTERS ARE REPEATEDLY CURSING THE PRINCESS!!” I shouted with such vigor I feared it would leave my throat sore. “THEY HAVE TO!!”

“What?! Then why are they collecting the mana?!” Amelia stepped back in shock.

“It’s that accursed stone!! Something about it…for some reason, the golden-haired people feed mana to those weird stones by absorbing it from people! I think it has something to do with…the resurrection of their Goddess or whatever!!” I went on in a frenzy.

“Wait…didn’t the paper say…something about an advisor being ‘one of them’?” Amelia’s eyes widened.

“THAT HAS TO BE IT!!!” I slapped my thigh with my hand. “THE ADVISOR IS THE ONE WHO IS CURSING THE PRINCESS! The anti-curse is just a façade to manipulate the masses into getting their magical energy siphoned!!”

I fell onto my butt on the mossy forest floor, panting from all the running and shouting. Amelia seemed at a loss for words, and I couldn’t blame her. The situation in the kingdom was absolutely horrifying.

The poor dwarves were being forced to march mindlessly in the corpses of their own people without even realizing it. They were being drained of their mana against their will while being manipulated into believing they were doing a good deed for their beloved kingdom.

It was like a waking nightmare. Why does everything in this world make it seem like a bad dream?! How sadistic and evil were these gilt monsters?! Why did it seem like everywhere they went, only death and misery followed suite?

“Since when has humanity been capable of such evil…?! I was always taught to be just…and only do what is right… What is this madness?!” Amelia was shaking with fury.

“I’m sorry to make things worse… but those knights and Godwyn. They were no joke. I don’t know what is up with them, but they’re all overflowing with mana all the way to their weaponry.”

“Enchanted gear too!?” Amelia’s exasperation was clear enough.

“Do you know of it?”

“I have… It’s a luxury only nobles of the highest caliber can afford. I don’t know the actual details of the process, but it involves embedding mana-conductive metal into the equipment.”

“I-is that what you called…mana circuits?” I questioned.

“Indeed. Mana circuits allow the users to cast spells the weapon is embedded with little to no effort. It also works on defensive tools like armor.” She went on. “We’re essentially up against an army’s worth of enemies with just those three… Not to mention the hostility of the dwarves…the mad king…the advisor…!”

“Things really seem stacked against us…”

The shadows cast by the forest seemed darker than usual. Their stillness felt oppressive and stifling to the point where I had to get up. With a bit of wobbling, I began walking to the clearing where our camp was. The faint light of the night illuminated the spot in blue.

It gave even the safety of our camp an immediately melancholic atmosphere…

With the severity of our current situation, it felt almost poetic…

In a most foreboding manner.