Day 4: I woke up after the best sleep I ever had. I looked around and I was in my bed. How did I get here? My recollection was still vague. I remember meeting Azu after I self-destructed. My body still hurt a bit but it was manageable. Did that lap pillow seriously work? I hope for all the healers out there that that is not the case. Else their healing arsenal got matched by an eccentric witch just trying something random. I got up and winced. Still some sore bits. I ran some nature magic through my system but oddly enough it didn''t seem to work. I looked at myself and the weird pink energy was oozing out of me. This might be the cause and if that is so there is 0 chance that I can hide it from Gregory. Ugh, maybe this day will also suck. I took my tail out.
You disappointed me! Oh, my tail did something! What? Try again?! Ugh great, my mood is ruined again. Can’t I just go and sleep for the whole day and have things work out? I did some self-diagnostics. 3 lives left. This isn''t good. I burned through 2 lives while blocking that laser in the original timeline and I just lost 2. I thought back on Gregory’s words when we were at Paul and Paula’s place when he said that Nine tail spirit foxes were close to getting extinct. I’m sorry but I just assisted in that. I wonder if there are still any that could take over. Maybe it might not be a good idea for me to die. Not that I''m planning to. But judging by the series of events that might happen. I tried to get up again but my body still hurt too much. I decided to take another nap.
I woke up again. Something isn''t right, where is the daily energy wave? It was 10:53. I looked outside. No shades. I don''t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. They appeared without fail every morning but now they are gone. I changed and went outside. There were people outside but not as many as it would be on a normal day. This is suspicious. My body still aches all over but it is still bearable.
I visited the homes of my buddies but they weren''t home, I tried to connect to them with Teleroad but no answer. I don''t like this at all. No shades no friends. The last thing I knew was that my clone and Gregory wiped out the shades, that was 2 days ago. Maybe something happened when he wiped them out last night. I am trying to piece things together from last night. I tried to go home for dinner but I got blocked from doing so after that I got stuck and self-destructed. I must have been frozen for a good 4 or 5 hours and after that when I woke up, I met Azu.
Was that still inside that space or outside? So, something must have happened at around that time. I tried looking for Azu again but nobody in this town seemed to resemble her. I guess it makes sense if she doesn''t want to be found then I don''t think I can find her. Or maybe that isn''t the issue. I only know this prison is meant to keep her in check, maybe she is only allowed to be visible or to act for a certain amount of time per day, week, or month. If that is the case, why would she waste them on talking to me? I see Donkey and co approaching and slip in stealth. I think I will spend the whole day in stealth.
I looked at the places my buddies were likely to be, and I went back to the cultist place and check to see if they were there. No results. Where are they? And where are the shades? The shades were annoying but they were consistently annoying, their sudden disappearance unsettles me. I peered into the sewers which should be overflowing with shades. Right, nothing here, the corrupted mana is also gone. I wonder if my headaches and annoyances are ever going to go away. I visited Paul and Paula’s house. They didn''t seem to be home. I scanned the whole town. Nowhere. I checked to see if Uraya was home. Yes! Something is working out! She is home. I went to Uraya’s shop.
There were a lot of people buying potions and spices. Most of these people didn''t have the opportunity to go outside the last 2 days so I don''t blame them. I patiently waited till everyone left. I also found some things that I wanted to buy.
I want to buy these things and if possible, I want to talk with you.
“You don’t have to pay for these, certainly not after you have been giving me sapphires every timeline.” Uhh, it still doesn''t feel good to just take it, just accept the money, I’m not hurting for gold
“I am not hurting for gold either, just take it. And I assume you want to talk about the absence of the shades.” Yeah. I pushed the silver coins toward Uraya.
“Unfortunately, I don''t know why they didn''t appear today.” Uraya pushed the coins back to me. I guess you don''t have any idea what they are, have you seen my friends? Either today or yesterday? I push the coins back at Uraya.
“Only Gregory visited me yesterday after dinnertime, he was looking for you and he was asking if I know where you were.” Uraya pushes the coins back to me. Hmm, they seem to have completely disappeared, and so did Paul and Paula.
“Paul and Paula are also gone?” Uraya says shocked while blocking my attempt to push back the coins. Yeah, I couldn''t find them either. I think the shade’s absence and their disappearance might be related. I flicked the coins over her hand.
“I will see what I can do but I don''t think there is much I can do.” Uraya picked up the coins and put them in my hand. “How about instead of paying me with coins, you fetch me some ingredients?” I accepted the coins. Sure, what do you need?
“From the things that are easy to get…” Just give me the full list, since you know that we too repeat the timelines you must also know that we aren’t any pushovers.
“Oh, ok, I need some more sapphires, the blood of an ancient or mythical beast, water from the depths of the earth, mist flowers, and the liver of a flying wolf. There are also some less important items but I have variations of most of them or substitutes, I can get Boshi shells and the sputum of a Boshi gull myself.” How many sapphires do you need?
“How many? Child, how many sapphires do you possess?” I will just leave 20 kg of sapphires here, if you need more just ask away. I took 20 kg of sapphires out of my dimensional pocket and put them on the counter. Uraya looked very surprised. Now about the blood of an ancient or mythical beast, I have that but there is an issue, This weird pink energy here is sticking to me and has invaded my system. It’s almost at a level where I will get mana corrupted.
“What does this mean Agnis! Let me take a look!” Oddly granny Uraya didn''t react to the fact that I insinuated that I am an ancient or mythical beast but to the fact that I was getting close to getting my mana corrupted. She looked through one of her potions, took one, and put a drop on the palm of my hand. It started foaming and it started turning pink and crystals grew out of it. “Oh, this is bad, I need to clear this out of your system as soon as possible!” Uhh, I will be fine, let’s finish the stuff about your potions I’m worried about my buddies.
“Unacceptable!” I have known granny Uraya for a long time but this is the first time I saw something resembling getting angry. She dragged me to the back of the shop. I knew I made a joke before that she might be a witch because of all her potion brewing but this place looked how I would imagine a witch workshop, it even had a big cauldron, it was a bit fancy though. Ah right, since Azu is a witch, her friends are probably witches too, although I don''t know how Paul fits into the mix, I thought witches were only female.
“Sit down, Paul is a human but Paula went against the rules of Witchaven and gave him a potion to extend his life expectancy, that is how she got kicked out from the witch community, now sit still.” This isn''t necessary I will be fine! Uraya, with her back toward me, made a gesture with her fingers for me to be quiet. She left this workshop space into another room, from here I could see that it was a spacious room, some spatial magic might be at play here. I tried to analyze it but I couldn''t see through the walls, I could make up a bit of how it was constructed though. I wonder how strong Uraya is. She might not be Azu strong but she has to be strong if she is Azu’s friend right? Uraya returned with 3 potions and some weird items.
“These circumstances force me to do this the complicated way, without this prison it would have been as simple as a finger snap to get rid of this corruption.” I thought about how Gregory probably would have no problems with getting rid of this almost corruption. A witch of Uraya’s caliber needs to do some complicated stuff. She drew a magic circle and placed the items in the circle. As far as I could tell this magic circle was modified. She used summoning magic and summoned 3 chickens and bound them to the magic circle with gravity magic. What are those chickens for?
"I need to shift the magic that is corrupting your system to something." Ahh. So, it didn''t get rid of the magic it just transferred it. She poured the 3 magic potions over me and urged me to go stand in the middle of the magic circle. I did as Uraya told me. She finished the last part of the magic circle and the magic activated. I felt the foreign energy leave my body.
“It worked.” I looked at the chickens which were corrupted. Uraya snapped her fingers and they disintegrated. Uraya approached me. “If something like this or any problem happens, please come ask me for help.” Her face went from serious to smiling. “Now what were you telling me again? I just couldn''t let this slide how you casually announced that your mana was getting close to getting corrupted.” Uh, right. I bit my left index finger. How much blood do you need?
“Agnis, I need blood from an ancient or mythical beast, half a liter, what you are doing isn’t going to work.” I popped out my ears and tails. Convinced? Uraya took a step back. She seemed fixated on my tails. Uhh, you can touch them if you want. I froze a big cup with frost magic and I used nature magic to force blood to flow out of my finger. After I filled the cup, I sealed it and started to feel a bit weak and lethargic. Uraya was touching and inspecting my tails with great curiosity. I brush them regularly to make sure they are fluffy!
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“Ah uhm sorry, I have never seen a nine-tailed spirit fox up close before, something about those tails is… captivating.” Let''s see I got the water from when we had a wild water ride underground, I also have mist flowers, I don''t have a flying wolf liver though. I will hunt one down. I got up to leave and hunt down some flying wolves.
“Uhh, if you ever need those tails brushed, I can help out.” I smiled. I will remember that. Don''t overwork yourself Granny Uraya! I left Uraya’s shop and headed southeast. We normally don''t encounter many flying wolves but that is because they hunt in packs and stay far away from Boshi town. But occasionally they try to attack the town but the barrier keeps them outside. Although now that I think of it, during the attack 2 years ago they seemed like they tried to escape from something. It was more a case of “Let me in!” Instead of “Growl! We’re coming to devour your kids!”. I left Boshi town and headed toward where I thought the flying wolves reside.
The problem with this request is that I just can’t fight 1 wolf and be done with it, I will probably have to deal with a whole pack. But no, I got lucky, I found a lone wolf and successfully finished the request. I was curious as to why but I had more problematic issues than dealing with some wolf problem. I kind of felt for the wolf, at the moment I feel like a lone wolf too. I miss my buddies. As I walk back into Boshi town the town seems empty. Oh, can these spaces stop doing this!? I looked around but I was wrong, some townspeople were walking further down the road. I then got hit with the realization. What if my buddies were stuck in one? That could explain everything. How do I find them though? I dashed toward Uraya’s shop to deliver the liver. Ted would love that sentence. She didn''t seem to be home, which was fine, I left it in her witch workshop in a frost box to preserve it.
I went back outside and chose a rooftop. I used some illusion layers to hide what I was going to do next. I took out all my tails and focused mana in my Elgards eyes. They turned blue and purple and my pupils turned into an upside-down triangle. I turned off all filters except those related to spatially related stuff. I still felt a bit anemic and my body still hurt but I would regret everything if my buddies ended up dying. I carefully scanned Boshi town. Close to Raishin’s hut the space seemed different. Imagine looking at a sheet that is neatly spread but at some point, you see that there is a little dip in the sheet. And this dip looks similar to a belly button. Like something tore a hole into space and fixed it but not properly. This is what I needed. I headed toward the spatial belly button. I coated my tails in spatial magic and used my tails to rip open this inconsistency It cost quite a lot of mana and there was a lot of resistance. The hole grew and instantly sucked me in.
I landed in a scenery that looked exactly the same but the only difference was that I hear explosions and the like. I inspected Boshi town. It was empty. Gregory, Ted, Raishin, Paul, and Paula were fighting a horde of laser-shooting shades. The shades looked the same as the ones I encountered but there seemed to be one difference. Paul was slicing some apart and the magic they were throwing around seemed to damage the shades. They all looked tired and beat up. I cracked my neck. It is time for revenge. I drew various magic circles on the ground. I didn''t finish them because that would activate them. I drew 20 magic circles on slabs of frost magic I made. When needed I will swap them to my location and activate them. Now I started running various spatial skills and simulations. I was planning to throw around frost magic so I needed to match my mana consumption with the influx.
I reduced my tails to 3 and made frost orbs orbit my tails. I made a frost bow and a 1 km tall frost pillar. Even without my eyes, I had a good view from up here. I pulled the bowstring. I sniped some shades that thought they could ambush my exhausted friends. They looked around but my arrows disappear after hitting energy-based creatures so they probably have no idea I just saved them. I popped out a 4th tail, this one is going to use the mana I get from sniping these shades to prepare some fancy and flashy magic. I aim my arrow at the sky and use [Frostfall]. Uncountable frost arrows rain down on the shades decimating their numbers. My buddies seem to realize that I’m helping out and they seem relieved. The magic was coming along fine. What skill was I preparing? Well [Eternal Winter] of course! And yes, I''ve learned from my mistake that is why I’m preparing this now. I don''t need a setup for this but well it will end up like last time. What I’m setting up is that the energy doesn''t flow into me but feeds follow-up magic. And I will call it [Foxfire: Winter’s end]. I am splitting this magic into 8 parts because I have just begun but it is already stronger than [Vaporize]. I continue raining frost arrows and it seems that all the shades are dealt with. My buddies and the old couple walk over to my location. They tried to tell me something but I was still on my 1 km high pillar. I could go down but I saw more and more shades appearing. I think this space is reacting to my presence, there were a lot of shades here when I arrived but since I came here the space slowly started to increase the rate at which they multiplied.
- I’m glad that you found us- - Me too. -
- Can you get us out of here? - - I hope so, getting out of here doesn''t have a 100% success rate, so I’m trying to burst this space open with a different method. -
- Does it involve nuking this space? - I created frost walls around my allies. -Yup, but it will be a targeted nuke, there should be a weak spot in this space somewhere and if there isn''t I will make one. - It seemed I reached the minimum requirements I started to become a bit dizzy due to my temporary anemia. Some shades got close and I swapped the unfinished magic circles under them and blasted them apart after finishing the circles.
-I need to concentrate, I will speak to you guys when this is over, take a good rest, and enjoy the show. - - Ok. - After this short Teleroad exchange I started to concentrate and circulate nature magic. I took out all my tail and canceled my frost bow. The shades were roof high and clumsily running towards us. They were shooting lasers but just like last time, I had frost mirrors on the pillar which made it hard for them to shoot me at an angle where I had issues dealing with them. I marked a spot in Boshi town which I thought would make a good target to drop my fox fires on. I selected Donkey’s house.
Perfect! [Eternal Winter]. Boshi town changed into a winter wonderland. All the shades disappeared and a huge blue fireball was growing above Boshi town. Seems it is working well. Some mana is still leaking to me but it isn''t an amount where I’m in danger. Right, I have to let it hang there until the next wave of shades arrives or I caused a weakness in the fabric of space. I laced my foxfire with a bit of spatial magic so one of these 8 are destined to mess this place up. [Eternal Winter] was doing some serious work though, a huge amount of shades popped out of existence the moment they entered the winter wonderland. Is my frost magic too strong? The sheer numbers of the shades soon started filling the white-blue streets in pink. They were multiplying faster than they were popping out of existence. Right, eat this! [Foxfire: Winter’s end]. The enormous blue fireball which almost had the same diameter as Boshi town dropped down. A flash of blue light and an intense heatwave. For me, it felt like a warm breeze but this would have vaporized my allies if I didn''t protect them with frost walls. I don''t think Gregory’s [earth wall] can do anything against this, maybe his [Shadow wall] can. I inspected the space. Nothing yet. The winter wonderland was still there like nothing happened. All nice and shade free. One tail disappeared. I started to set some mana aside to make dimensional tethers. I couldn''t make the stupid anchor but at least I can tether us together so that we don''t drift apart from each other. I waited again till the streets were full and blasted it again. I saw a small crack. I moved the target from Donkey’s house to that crack. The shades thought that if they shoot more lasers they would win. Nice try.
-Guys, get ready to get subjected to a rude grab and a subsonic dash- - Get us out of here, please! I don''t care anymore how you do it! - -I will pass this on to Paul and Paula. - The streets were full again and I blasted the crack. It got big enough now so I didn''t wait and threw the remaining fox fires at the crack which caused it to expand. I canceled all my frost magic and prepared spatial magic while I fell to the ground with my back toward my destination. I got my 8 tails out again and grabbed my allies before I hit the ground and used [Accel turn] the moment my feet hit the ground. I shot forward. I continued using [Accel step] while weaving in between the buildings. I shot bolts of spatial magic at the crack and then stretched my tails and formed a ball with me and my allies on the inside. I tethered us together and infused my tails with spatial magic as I collided with the crack. We crashed through the crack. The impact made me lose consciousness for a short moment. This caused my ball out of tails to disappear. Luckily, I tethered us together. We landed on the floor. Back at Raishin’s hut. It was nighttime.
It seems time there flowed slower than here. My body hurt more than it did before. I went to sit on the ground.
Phew, that was something. How long were you guys fighting there? A full day? Maybe more?
Time seems to flow differently n there than here it was just past 1 pm when I got in to save you guys and it is 9 now. I’m so tired!
I see that Raishin fell asleep.
“Raishin worked hard to keep the shades in check, thank you for saving us.” Oh no worries, you guys would have done the same for me. Hey, what about your cult adventures?
They only had potatoes as food so I gave up and left. I swiped their tablets though; they were quite pissed but so was I. I would ask you to show them normally but I’m too tired now. Y
eah, go to sleep! I need some sleep too. Luckily, we’re already at Raishin’s hut. Gregory and Paul carried him into his hut.
How was your day? I explained to him how things went in the cultist village. I made sure to mention what I found in the library as soon as Gregory returned. I then told them about everything that happened but omitted what happened in the closed-off space. Sounds like quite the adventure. After we collected all the tablets we went for a break and then we noticed we couldn''t find you. We looked for you but then got stuck in here and the rest you know.
“That magic you did at the end, it was impressive.”
“Yeah, I’m glad you didn''t use that when you fought me! I don''t think I can cut that.” It is tiring, and that is why I''m going to sleep! I took no chances and teleported home and dove into bed. I felt lightheaded and my body hurt. I wanted to take a bath but I was too exhausted. And like that, I fell asleep.