CHAPTER 82: THE EXPEDITION BEGINS

A decrepit old room filled with beakers and other scientific tools shimmered with light from a lone candle that was slowly reaching its end. Its wax had slowly melted—dripping from the wooden candlestick before sizzling out. Instantly, the room became dark.

Cassia glanced up at the dead flame and sighed. She walked over to the table and replaced the candle with a new one, then lit it with her fingers before walking back to her usual workstation.

“That’s the fifth one…” She frowned then glanced at the brown-haired young man sitting on the floor peacefully.

It had been a week since he began his pilgrimage to the Pillars of Heaven. Even now, nothing has changed. His astral projection was still roaming the Beyond endlessly, seeking out the will that it had enacted to travel there in the first place.

Still, the situation concerned her.

“This is too abnormal…”

In most cases, an aspiring magi would either find their way to the pillars and establish a connection with the Records of Enigma, or turn into a hollow human without a soul. And this journey usually only takes 3-5 days to accomplish, though, it was a fairly difficult thing to quantify since the Beyond could have adverse effects on one’s perception of time. A person who spends three days in the outside world, would feel as if a month had passed during their journey to the pillars or even worse. The effect was fairly random and hard to predict.

And yet, they have now reached the 7th day since he began, and nothing had changed. She wondered how much time had passed for him… A month? Maybe two or three? Or could it have been even worse?

She was extremely worried. The mortal races were not designed to handle long periods of time within the Beyond. Physically or spiritually, the worst that could happen was getting devoured or attacked by a rogue spirit or daemon. But mentally… That was another discussion entirely.

The effects the Beyond has on the mind were not something that well studied, even amongst some of the more famous schools of thought in Luvinica. Even so, Cassia did know a few things from first hand experience during her own pilgrimage.

First, extreme loneliness would start to kick in. Then, disassociation with themselves begins to fester. Finally, the seeds of madness bloom, causing irreparable damage to one’s psyche. Even with memory erasure, the effects would linger…

What’s worse, there was no way to quantify how long each stage took. Some magi with little mental resistance would show symptoms after only three days of exposure within the Beyond. Others would take much longer. However, the effects applied to everyone regardless, no matter how much of a genius or how well talented they were…

She sighed deeply as her face contorted into a frown. “I warned the idiot! I knew something would go wrong! He should have given it more time…”

Although the Beyond’s mental strain wasn’t a fully understood phenomenon, there was a leading theory that had been proposed by a famous archmage she couldn’t for the life of her remember the name of… Essentially, it had to do with the Astral Anima that propagated all of the Beyond. Because Astral Anima was the combined willpower of all beings living in the world, that meant that the emotions of said beings also flowed through that anima.

The more one interacts with that Astral Anima directly, the more interference in one’s own emotions occurs… The corruption of everyone’s combined emotions mixing and coagulating inside a person’s soul was prone to cause psychological damage if prolonged exposure occurred…

She sighed and stood up. This was nothing more than a theory, but the effects themselves were real… She couldn’t sit around and wait any longer—Soren’s situation had clearly gone wrong somehow.

“I have to ask the mistress…”

Just as she was about to walk toward the door, a knocking sound appeared that startled her. She sped up her steps and opened it, revealing the handsome blonde magi who was her senior. Myrin was grinning annoyingly just like he always does.

“Ugh, what do you want! I am busy!”

Myrin opened his mouth to answer, but then his eyes trailed to where Soren was sitting with his eyes closed in a meditating position.

“Wow, what a familiar scene… I feel like I’ve seen this somewhere before…”

Cassia rolled her eyes. “Are you here to waste my time, or do you have something to say?”

“How rude…” He cleared his throat. “I am here to tell you that I’ll be leaving soon… Well, not just me. Tina and Nicholas, along with the mistress too.”

Cassia’s eyes narrowed. “...Why?”

Myrin sighed and walked past her, entering the room unannounced. Sitting in a nearby chair, he glanced at Cassia and asked a simple question:

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“Have you heard about the expedition to the Avalon Ruins?”

Hearing this, her eyes widened. “Oh, so this is what it's about… I’ve been too busy dealing with my own studies and the negotiations with a new alchemy guild…”

Myrin nodded. “Yes, the mission me, Tina and Tyrel had undergone was seen as a success by the Aelloran government. They will allow us to join them on the expedition later this month… Actually, it's going to happen around the same time as the Greenfather Festival… Kinda ironic if you ask me,” he chuckled.

Cassia glanced down for a few moments before asking:

“Who will be heading the library then? Candice I am guessing?”

“Yes, and Soren as well.. If he comes back from his… trip alive, that is.” He glanced at where he was meditating and frowned. “Has he been like this for a while or has he just started?”

Cassia sighed, “To be honest with you, he started his pilgrimage seven days ago.”

Myrin stood up from his chair in shock. “S-seven days?! By the blossoms…!” He glanced back at Cassia as his face contorted. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?!”

“Two reasons,” she answered. “One, he had still not turned hollow after all this time, so he must be still surviving… somehow. Secondly, I wanted to trust him… I know it sounds foolish, but… A part of me wanted to wait a bit longer before taking any drastic measures… I mean, it's Soren after all!”

Myrin frowned even more. “I get what you are saying… Even I have grown to accept how ridiculous he is… Unlocking his Soul Realm in one try, when most take it step by step, passing through one layer at a time. Then he even managed to proficiently learn how to control his newly unlocked Soul Realm’s inherent ability on the fly, without much trouble. Oh, he even managed to somehow figure out how to manipulate the shape of his Soul Realm in distinct ways when I didn’t even teach him how to…”

Myrin glanced down at his fingers which were continuing to count Soren’s stupendous feats.

“Then, he urged me to help him conduct a Soul Search, which he somehow managed to complete in only two days… I mean, is this even normal? He’s accomplished all of these things that most aspiring magi would take years of practice and preparation for in only a month.”

“To be fair,” she said in an even tone. “Didn’t you also have a speedy start?”

“Yes, but I am still not as fast as Soren,” he chuckled. “He’s a monster… I wouldn’t be surprised if we find out in a week that he figured out a way to accomplish casting magecraft without a spellfocus, or something else equally as ridiculous…”

Cassia giggled, “You sure do have a lot of compliments for someone you had a scuffle with… If you care about him that much, why haven’t you made up with him yet?”

Hearing this, Myrin couldn’t help but sigh. He leaned back against the chair and covered his face with his cone hat. “Don’t get me wrong… I still think of him as a friend… Well, sort of like a little brother? But then again, he’s kinda close in age to me so that doesn’t make sense either…

“But at the same time, he kinda rubs me the wrong way sometimes… That last conversation really soured my mood.”

“Not everyone is as devoted as you, Myrin.” She said sharply. “Soren has only been in this world for a month so far. Even if he thinks highly of us and is grateful for everything we’ve done for him, he also knows not to allow such debts to grow into indentured servitude.

“Soren knows that we need something from him, as much as he needs from us. You can’t expect him to view our relationship as anything but superficial… Well, at least for now. That’s also why the mistress is adamant on letting him decide his future. Yes, it may also have to do with the machinations of fate, but she surely knows that giving him space to come up with a decision first will be much better than shoving guilt in his face.”

Hearing her words, Myrin couldn’t help but grimace. “Yes, but it still doesn’t make sense to me. Not once did we ever treat him unfairly… I’d say we’ve even been showering him with more care than anyone else, and yet he still mistrusts us? I truly cannot comprehend this mindset at all… Though, to be fair, he did warn me about his nature before I invited him to the guild house… Maybe it's on me to think he could change so easily…”

Cassia sighed. “This is exactly your problem, Myrin. You can only see things from your own lens. I don’t fully know what Soren’s background is—he hasn’t disclosed anything about his past to me, yet. But I can tell it must have been fairly similar to yours.”

He tilted his head, “Similar to mine?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “Except, I do believe there is one main difference. Although you suffered mostly due to being unwanted, Soren seems to have suffered from being too wanted…”

The words hit him swiftly, like the maddening spirit gales that occasionally pass through the Feylith Forest.

“That kinda hurts, you know… The whole ‘unwanted’ stuff…” He smiled wryly. “But now that I think about it, your theory does make a bit of sense… I guess Soren thinks we are trying to take advantage of him? That we’re simply trying to buy his trust?”

She nodded. “Indeed. And how could he not? We have treated him well—too well in fact. Even I would have been suspicious of that… Well, only for a while… I love the mistress too much now to ever be suspicious of her…”

Myrin sighed and stood up, giving one last glance at his two junior disciples. “You know, you always surprise me by how mature you can be sometimes… Totally not cute at all.”

Before Cassia could even curse him, Myrin spoke again:

“I’ll be heading to the mistress to inform her about what Soren is dealing with… I don’t think he’s lost—not when his abilities allow him to map his surroundings. And if the magitech device was the one that malfunctioned, then we will need to use divination to try and locate him… Somehow.

“It's good that he’s even alive for this long… I hope the mental effects of the Beyond haven’t impacted him too heavily yet.”

Cassia glared at her companion. “No need. Just let the mistress inform me and I'll perform the divination myself. You and the others will be busy preparing for the expedition, won’t you?”

Myrin nodded. “Yeah, that will work!” He chuckled. “Oh and by the way, since you’re planning on staying, look out for Tyrel’s return, won’t you? I am fairly certain he’ll show up around the time when the Greenfather Festival starts to kick in… I wonder what he’s been up to?...”