Chương 37: Surprises

Ch 37: Surprises The night was no more, and Navar's sun had already climbed high, not that far from its zenith. Still, Sahirah and I had not left our beds, our breakfast brought to us by the inn's staff, a service that thankfully had been included in the five-hundred-credit daily rate. Well, not that bad of a price considering how much space and nice furniture our room had.

I was absentmindedly watching the light coming from the window reflect from the fancy chandelier as I stroked Sahirah's hair when I heard a question.

"Why were you so afraid yesterday, human?" It took me less than a second to understand what she meant. We had both cheated the awkwardness a bit by reading each other's feelings through the bug in the translation spell, and before we had even done anything that required removing clothes, she had noticed my fear just as I had noticed hers. I had no reason to lie or evade the question.

"I know it's something silly, so please don't judge me." I turned around, finding those orbs of green and amber fixed on me. I took a deep breath.

"I couldn't stop myself from thinking you might have teeth somewhere other than your mouth." She didn't react immediately, but then she burst out laughing, to the point she covered her own face with a pillow to force the laughter to stop. When she managed to regain composure, she threw the pillow at me.

"What kind of creature would need teeth in there?"

"Well, if you think my fear was stupid, why don't you share the reason why you were so afraid, Miss Toothless Lips." I had no idea how that would translate to her, but given the way she rolled her eyes, I was sure my meaning came across just fine.

"A girl had serious reasons to fear the shape of your body," she said. She raised her upper body from bed, crossing her arms as her long black hair fell over her bare skin.

"The Grey ladies that work at the nursery..." she said.

"They love to gossip about the males of other species." She offered an explanation before I even asked.

"The Zufi have spikes. The Granar have sharp scales." She stared into my eyes for a moment, and then she averted her gaze.

"And one of the old Grey ladies tried to scare me by saying that human males were rumored to have two... you know what." I was the one having fun now.

"Two?" I said between bursts of laughter.

"I wish." Our morning continued with one silly conversation after another, the first time we used the translation spell so casually. In the end, it was only after we had showered and gotten dressed that Sahirah brought up a serious subject. She walked toward the window, and as she observed the street below she said, "We should push to third stage right now."

She spoke with such conviction that it didn't even feel like the third stage was something that would bind us together permanently, the kind of thing that couldn't be undone.

"I mean," I said, "we didn't even bring the Fire Moon book with us. And besides, are you sure? We still have so much to discuss. I basically know nothing about your planet, your culture, or your family." She walked away from the window, stopping right in front of me where our eyes met at close range. She pointed at her forehead.

"The head says do it." She pointed at her chest.

"The heart says do it." She pressed her head against my chest again and concluded, "And our unfortunate situation is calling for it. So why should we wait?" I wrapped my arms around her.

"But without the book–""I know it by heart, so don't worry about the book. My people had the same technique before mana disappeared from our world." Well, that explained why she knew everything about the previous stages. And if we didn't need the book... that meant the only thing keeping us from advancing to the third stage right now was me. Was I really ready to spend the rest of my life with her? A brief moment of doubt flashed inside me, but it was short-lived. She was right.

If my head said yes, my heart said yes, and the whole situation was calling for it, then there was no reason to delay it any longer. Even if we were to set all our feelings aside, if that gate leading to Earth were to open in less than two years, and if she also found a way to connect Navar to her planet at some point, we would still be quite far ahead of our own people in terms of power if we pushed as much as we could now. In other words, a lifelong advantage for both of us...

I suddenly forced myself to sit cross-legged on the carpet, and smiled at her as she towered over me.

"So... when do we begin?" She stared at me for a moment, as if she expected more than the casual phrase I offered her, but then she simply sighed and sat in front of me.

"A girl would be mad if she couldn't hear the echoes of your heart in her head." She smiled.

"At least you're not taking important things lightly this time."

"Of course not. I'm always the adult in the room, and I never take anything lightly." Instead of replying, she suddenly grabbed both my hands, and finally decided to guide the inexperienced me into the third stage.

"Can you tell me what you remember of the first and second stages, Mr. Adult in the Room." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"The first stage improved our bodies by sharing our mana flows, the second improved our mana through resonance." I smirked.

"What about the third?" Elitha had actually told me the third stage was capable of improving the soul and completed a full cycle, but I had no idea about the practical side. Sahirah's playful expression gave way to a solemn expression.

"We repeat a small portion of what we've already done, and we close the cycle by sharing a piece of our soul." A faint numbness took hold of my arm, and suddenly I felt a fair amount of Sahirah's violent raw mana entering my body.

"I'm sorry," she said, "but we can't risk things going wrong. This is the most important step of a millennia-old ritual, and I won't let you draw your runes on your wrist this time. You'll have to bear with my mana." This would have been a disaster if I were the same person who arrived at Navar with as little mana as I used to have. But now, even though she still had nearly ten times more mana than I did, the total difference wasn't as brutal as before, and I was able to endure the discomfort. A deep breath.

I readjusted my posture. And then I managed a smile.

"I suppose you want some of my mana as well." When she nodded, I managed to isolate what to me was a large lump of mana, which I gently sent inside her body through my right hand. She seemed satisfied with the amount I sent her, and let go of my hands before any of that mana could return to our bodies. A portion of her white stayed with me, just like a portion of my pale blue stayed with her.

"Close your eyes and use resonance to find your own mana inside me." I was slightly confused, having no idea where all this was going. But I trusted her. So I repeated the second stage without flinching, finding that song that belonged to us, that melody that was engraved somewhere deep inside me. This was when I noticed something different. Through a faint sense that was not exactly sight, I became aware of a faint blue cloud ahead of me.

When I focused on it, I found it surrounded by a hardly noticeable sea of white, so faint I would lose sight of it at the smallest lapse of concentration.

"I see my mana," I said, "but yours hardly registers in my perception." It didn't help that no part of our bodies was touching, and she felt way more distant than she actually was through this mysterious sense.

"For now," she replied, "but a single touch and the mana shall return to its master, carrying a fragment of ourselves with it." A fragment of ourselves? Did she mean my mana would return to me with a fragment of Sahirah's soul attached to it? If so, our last chance to change our minds and give up was now.

"Fingertips?" I suggested, not even considering giving up.

"No." For the briefest of moments, I thought she might reconsider. But then her soft lips touched mine. My eyes widened, catching a glimpse of her closed eyes as she kissed me before a warm sensation consumed everything around me as my own mana returned to me. It was the strangest feeling I could think of as a memory that was not mine played like a movie. I saw Sahirah and several other people, both males and females, holding hands around a giant dark pit carved into flat stone.

There was a crowd watching, and everyone had sharp teeth like hers. And the similarities didn't stop there. They had the same dark hair color, and even the same pale skin tone. Before I could inspect it too much, the people around the dark pit started to jump in.

"For all Nadiri that ever lived," said a bulky male at the start of the line before releasing the hand of the group and jumping into the pit. Sahirah watched the fall until he disappeared, his fate unknown.

"For our glorious future in another world," said a female before jumping. The pattern held, and Sahirah watched as her friends jumped one after the other, disappearing into the spatial fissure below. The circle of twenty people was quickly reduced to just one, not a single soul hesitating before jumping for what likely would have been their deaths. Sahirah was the last, and she was the one who broke the pattern. Instead of uttering some brave declaration, she froze at the pit's edge.

An elder parted from the crowd, his silver hair so long it touched the ground behind him.

"You are not special just because of who donated the material to make you," said the elder, taking one step forward.

"If you don't jump, we are going to throw you in, princess." The crowd laughed at the ironic way the elder uttered the word princess. Sahirah stared at the pit once more, fear and desire to live both growing intense inside her. Still, she didn't want to give them the satisfaction of throwing her.

"For the fallen Kingdom of Leodore," she uttered. And then she whispered, "and for myself." She jumped. Her adrenaline spiked as she fell toward darkness. It encompassed her. But before I could truly get terrified, I woke up on the inn's warm floor, Sahirah asleep beside me. I could tell from her expression that she was experiencing one of my own memories, not a good one, judging by the look on her face. Still, the girl I was permanently bound with was a princess...

Yet apparently, the others didn't seem to see her as one. Could it be that her family still saw themselves as royalty but the rest of her people didn't? That was undoubtedly something I would have to ask her later... Thankfully, her eyes snapped open right away, and she quickly noticed me sitting lazily beside her. She drew her neck towards her chest, her palms propelling her core upward until she too was resting on her folded legs.

"You've never told me you think you got caught in the Riftstorm because you changed your daily commute just to avoid running into a woman who stood you up on a date!"

"And you didn't tell me you're the princess of a fallen kingdom!" Silence took over the room. But then we both laughed at our own past, realizing those weren't memories we would have shared willingly, at least in this moment, and that we still had a lot to learn about each other. And besides, it would be insane to spent the first hour of the rest of our lives together angry at each other, wouldn't it? Desperate to change the subject, I stood up, offering her a helping hand, which she gladly took.

"The third stage doesn't feel that impressi–" I cut myself off when I realized the world itself looked different to my eyes. Somehow, I could see mana everywhere now. In the environment, within myself, and Sahirah was a brilliant beacon, something impossible to miss. And besides, my mind somehow was weightless. I could navigate through my memories vividly. Calculus. Algebra. Geometry. Every concept that had been clouded because I never bothered memorizing them was now available in my memory.

Things I had learned in school. Book contents. Information I once read online. All that information was now clear in my mind, ready to be used as currency to be traded with the archmage. Even those obscure math formulas were there, recovered from somewhere deep in my subconscious. Yeah. Elitha had been right all along, and the improved cognition was the real deal. And on top of all of that, the world itself seemed to be moving at a slower pace.

I quickly walked toward the window, and the Greys on the street seemed to be walking at a sluggish pace. No. It was my mind that was moving faster. I could probably instant cast twenty runes without assistance now, perhaps even more. Maybe I could even keep a spell running all the time, or circulate my mana more efficiently with all the spare brainpower I had available. Sahirah walked over beside me, both of us watching the street.

"A girl is afraid to think of the kind of spell you are going to create now, human."

"Well, and I'm afraid to measure how much mana you gained from this." We kept observing the street, understanding the changes in ourselves through what we saw in the world outside. Barely a minute in, and my mind was already considering how I could use all this newly unlocked knowledge to get Elitha's help. As challenging as the problem was, accepting this forced adoption was not an option.

And even though we had escaped the problem for one night, we couldn't return to the school unless we had a solid plan to deal with Zorik and the Krosak family.

"Do you think that if we mention that we're bound, the Krosak might give up the adoption?" Sahirah gave it some thought before replying.

"Either they take you along, or they might get angry that I won't be able to follow the plans they had for me." Plans they had for her? It made sense though. The Krosak family and Principal Dickhead likely had some plans for Sahirah, perhaps to pair her with someone from the family or some servant, and cultivate her into someone very powerful they could use for their own benefit in the future.

Or maybe it was something else I wasn't aware of, after all, I was still missing a lot about this world given how many classes I had skipped. I was about to suggest we pay the Mayor a second visit to get some info, when suddenly a noise interrupted my train of thought. Knock! Knock! Knock!

"Do they offer lunch as room service?" I asked, confused. Sahirah frowned and shook her head. My curiosity was piqued. I walked toward the door, but before I even considered opening it, someone unlocked it from outside.

"What the hell?" I said, noticing five black-armored figures outside. The only part of them I could see was their blue eyes, visible through the eye slit of the helmet. They were quite likely Grey soldiers. And based on the ridiculous number of runes engraved on the helmet like the main module of some kind of fighting machine, they were most likely strong. One of them spoke.

"Get out of the way, human," he said.

"We came here to retrieve a high-value asset of the Krosak family, and we don't want to cause unnecessary damage."