Episode 6: Sanare

The void felt incredibly different now. Before it had only felt that something was staring at me while I was here but now I could feel their presence. Not only that but to my right 2 small purple orbs were floating within the darkness.

The two orbs felt similar to my mana, they had life in them. I couldn't quite understand why. Not yet at least, it would have to wait for another day. I walked up to the small orbs of purple light and touched one of them, immediately the image of the shadow bear flashed through my head.

The images reminded me that I needed to check my index.

[Index]

[piranha eel (hatchling)]

[oak owl]

[steel coated wolf]

[shadow bear]

[life consuming parasite]

Now I was sure that I didn't run into the master of those damn seaweed. If it was even stronger that a creature that could best Ben, despite how exhausted he was. There was no reason to want anything to do with it.

Pushing that train of thought aside, I focused my attention on the description of the bear.

[description: A bear born from the shadows and cursed by light. They only dwell in dark places using their keen eyes to hunt in the darkness.]

‘So they can see in the dark, that does explain a lot.’

[weaknesses]

- sources of light

I began to think we should start making torches before exploring in the dark next time. However the thought of trying to feed mana into a torch while also not trying to attract the attention of a behemoth monster looking for prey shut my idea down completely. Too much light in this place would only spell trouble.

After finally dismissing the runes I wanted to find out what the echo would do exactly, the number had gone up and something had clearly changed within my mind. Which meant that I must have grown stronger right? I looked down at my body, which seemed to be an exact replica of the one outside of my mind. Without the injuries of course.

My body did in fact feel slightly stronger than before but only by a miniscule amount. It wouldn't be noticeable at all. However if i filled up the gauge maybe i would feel much more powerful. My thoughts lingered over to another subject as I removed the hunting knife from its sheethe.

The moment my hand touched it, a part of my shadow flew towards the blade and encompassed it. Milliseconds later the usual pain spread through my head. However it was massively weaker than before. It would still prove ineffective in a fight, but if I was to fill up the gauge it would be possible to use weapons strengthened by the echo.

‘This is more useful than I thought.’

I unsheathed the blade to avoid the mental torture and raised my mana output. My mana had increased after the confrontation with the shadow bear, it was a shame there wasn't a numerical number to display its growth. It was hard to keep up with compared to the system.

After confirming there was no massive change to my mana I dismissed the runes. A loud and rough voice could be heard moments later, the familiar voice pulled him out of the void and back into the real world.

***

I attempted to open both of my eyes, Only one opened. The other was not there. My surroundings were not that of a dark and gloomy cave either. I woke up in a large room decorated with multiple beds. Each bed had a desk adjacent to it with medical items littered on each surface.

Before I could study the room further, the face of a beautiful young woman came into view next to me, standing on the side of my missing eye.

“Where am i?” A sense of deja vu struck me as I asked that. The young woman looked towards me with her emerald green eyes and in a soft tone simply said. “You’re someplace safe.” 

I attempted to sit up but my muscles had gone numb from laying down too long. Giving up, I spotted the familiarly large figure laying down on a bed on the other side of the room. It looked as if he was sleeping and there were a noticeable amount of bandages covering his bulky body. 

“Ah right. If you are worried about your friend don't be. His body is abnormally resilient. He will be completely fine. Oh and that other friend of yours that dropped you off left a while ago.”

‘Other friend?’

“I'm afraid I don't know who dropped us off here. What were they like?”

The young woman had a thoughtful look on her face before replying. “She was delicate but looked like a traveler. Her gear seemed incredibly high class and she didn't really talk much.”

So a traveller took us to the nearby town. Guess I owe them.’ 

“Do you know where they went?” The young woman shook her head, her messy brown hair swaying from side to side. “She said she wasn’t going to stay in town long, I assumed she meant she was waiting for you to recover but if you don't know her she likely already left. She did leave me with her name though, it's Hina.”

I memorised the name, hoping to meet with the woman later and thank her for saving me. “Thanks for telling me. Oh right, what's your name?”

“No problem, and my name is eleanor” 

‘No second name again? Maybe they don't have second names here’

I finally gathered the strength to sit upwards but I was immediately forced back down by Eleanor, she was much stronger than she looked.

“You're not allowed to move until you're fully healed! Are you trying to kill yourself?!” I shook my head and nervously stared towards the ceiling. She was right, I was in no condition to move. My wounds had mostly closed but everything hurt.

“You have some internal bleeding. My level of mana can't fix that kind of thing so I have to wait for my superior. Sit still until then.”

Eleanor left the room and the healer attending to Ben's wounds got up and left him be. She slowly limped towards me with a forced smile on her face and beads of sweat dripping down her face. Once she reached me she planted her arms on my chest and began increasing the output of mana through her palms. 

I expected her mana to collide with man and go around it like it had with Ben when I was first taking lessons from him but it didn't. Her mana simply passed through mine, simply ignoring it and flowing into the streams of mana in my body.

Her mana began to shine a bright blue as each of my wounds slowly closed up. The smile that was on her face faded and she began to look really pale, as if she would pass out at any moment.

At that moment I realised that her powers were taking a toll on her body and I took her hand and pushed it away.

“Thank you. I'm fine for now. You should take some rest. You don't look very healthy.”

The woman in front of me looked surprised but also taken aback. She hesitated for a while then straightened herself out, however she didn't leave to go do something else but instead stood there watching me.

“You don't have to worry I'm not going to fall apart if you take my eyes off me.”

She nervously averted her eyes, looking towards each corner of the room frantically.

“I-it's not that actually it's… erm. I want to know what you were fighting that harmed you so much…” She didn't seem like the type that spoke to people a lot, even earlier when Eleanor had left she didn't pay much attention to it.

“Is that right? Well we fought a bunch of stuff on the way here-” I began to explain to her the experience i had gone through in that short time in a lot of detail. It seemed she liked to hear about this kind of thing. She even had some knowledge on the monsters we had stumbled on except for the shadow bear and the creature we had narrowly avoided while hunting in the night.

“After Ben had fought with the shadow bear I thought we were done for but Ben had illuminated a deadly corral monster and I lured the bear over there to kill it, though I had to pay the price.”

I looked down towards my bandages, I hadn't realised at the time but the corrals had been more dangerous than I thought. There hadn't been just one spike but multiple, each one had pierced me and caused  wounds all over my body.

Whoever had saved us had bandaged my wounds, my mana doing most of the work for my internal injuries until I had been dropped off here. Either way I had survived by sheer dumb luck. 

By the time our conversation finished her mana had replenished enough to use her healing. Without the effects of her magic affecting her she had a very gentle face, it matched with her sky blue eyes and her small nose. However, her black hair was long and messy. Most people likely did not find the time to cut their hair or had no supply to take care of it. Including me.

She placed her hand over my eye and I closed my other eye, she was likely about to heal the skin around it which had also been damaged by the spike. I feel the energy flowing into me like last time, except instead of flowing through my mana streams to fix my internal injuries it condensed around and inside my eye socket.

Focusing on just one area was an incredibly hard feat, I had realised that myself when I had attempted to stop my wounds from bleeding. However this woman could do it easily without much effort. Her control over mana was incredible.

My attention was drawn back to my eye, i began to feel nauseated as each and every nerve that had connected to my eye has been healed and returned to its original position. After that each layer of my eye was formed out of nowhere, each of them connecting to the nerves until only the smaller parts of my eye had to be healed.

Before long the retina, the lens and the pupil itself had healed and I could finally feel the light piecing my eyes through the bandages. And after the cornea had finally healed the woman stopped flowing mana into my eye and instead focused on the layer of skin above it. My eyelids still needed healing.

Now that all of her mana was focused on just the eyelids they healed incredibly fast, only taking about a minute to finish. I couldn't believe what had just happened. Not only had I regained my eye but all of my sight too.

Opening my left eye, I slowly unwrapped the bandage on my face and then opened my right eye. I recoiled and closed it after it came into contact with some light but after a few moments I opened it again. 

My vision was blurry on my right side which made me think the healing was unsuccessful but after a while my vision cleared up and I could finally see with my right eye again. I was met with a smile from the woman next to me and I couldn't hold in my emotions.

“Thank you! Thank you so much. Er…. what is your name? I'm sorry I didn't ask earlier.”

She let out a small, somewhat weak laugh. “It's fine. My name is Sofia.”

Episode 6 end.