Arthur's Point of View
After a month of traveling, we finally reached Bazaar. The heat was still unbearable, but the hustle and bustle of the city gave us a mental reprieve. While Rudeus lost himself among the food stalls and trinkets with an almost childlike enthusiasm, I headed toward the artisans' quarter.
"Aisha will kill me if I don't bring her something, and Norn will feel left out," I muttered to myself as I chose some delicate, elegant hand-blown glass pieces.
After a short break to resupply, we resumed our march toward the Flat Mountain. Seeing the peaks where the griffins nest, I couldn't help but scan the sky with nostalgia.
"Looking for your old friend?" Roxy asked. She was riding beside me, shielding herself from the sun with her hat.
"I wonder if that griffin is still around. It would be funny if it recognized us after all this time, right Fenril?" I replied, looking at Fenril, who kept pace and let out a barking sound in agreement.
Suddenly, the transport gave a violent jolt. The giant armadillo came to a dead stop, digging its feet into the sand and letting out a groan of pure terror.
"Come on, you walking boulder, move!" Gisu shouted, tugging at the reins in despair.
"Seems the scent of griffins has him terrified," Elinalise observed from the roof of the carriage. "At this rate, we'll be walking to Ranoa, and Zenith won't last that long out here."
"Not if I have anything to say about it," Gisu intervened with a mischievous smirk. He pulled out a chunk of griffin meat we had hunted earlier and shoved it under the beast's snout. "Here, this'll give you the guts you're lacking."
The armadillo devoured the meat, and suddenly, its eyes turned bloodshot. It let out a wild snort and began to charge forward with such force it nearly overturned the carriage.
"Whoa! Easy there, champ! You're gonna kill us all!" Paul laughed, hanging on for dear life.
Three days later, a monumental sandstorm blocked our path. The sky turned orange and the wind roared like a monster. Rudeus stepped forward, extending his hands calmly.
"Everyone cover up, this will be quick," he said firmly.
With a circular motion, he generated a counter-current of air so powerful that the storm split before us like a tunnel.
"Show-off..." I teased when the path was cleared.
"I heard that, Arthur!" Rudeus shouted with a smug grin as he brushed the dust off himself.
We had a few encounters with lesser monsters, but nothing this group couldn't handle. However, the real trouble arrived at night.
While we were camping, a Succubus infiltrated the perimeter, releasing her magic aphrodisiac. The air became sweet and heavy. The effect was immediate and unexpected: Paul, Rudeus, and Gisu were left with vacant stares. Before I could react, Paul lunged toward Lilia, who tried to push him away in confusion.
Talhand, who was unaffected, noticed quickly and, before things could escalate, detoxified the three of them nearby.
I, however, was in a critical situation. I felt a searing heat racing through my body and my judgment clouded completely. My eyes instinctively drifted toward Roxy, who was right beside me. The succubus's scent enhanced every detail of her: her proximity, the softness of her voice, even the way the moonlight bathed her face. My heart hammered with deafening force, and I felt an irrepressible urge to close the distance between us.
"Arthur... what's wrong? You're very red..." Roxy asked, stepping toward me with concern, unaware that her closeness was the last thing my willpower needed.
I clenched my teeth so hard I tasted the metallic tang of blood in my mouth. I used that pain to anchor myself to reality. Fortunately, my mental training and mana flow were more stable than Paul's or Rudeus's. Before my instincts took full control, I channeled my own magic.
"Detoxification!"I shouted internally.
A cold shockwave surged through my system, sweeping away the succubus's sweet mist in an instant. I breathed deeply, regaining my composure just as Talhand finished dealing with the others.
"For the gods' sake, behave yourselves!" Talhand roared, swatting the back of Gisu's head, who was still trying to hug one of the carriage wheels.
Paul pulled away from Lilia, shaking his head in a mix of confusion and deep shame. Rudeus, meanwhile, covered his face with his hands, muttering something about "the honor of a married man" while trying to hide a rather obvious nosebleed.
"Are you okay, Arthur?" Roxy insisted, looking at me with curiosity. I realized I was gripping her shoulders just inches away from her.
"Yes... it was just a strong dizzy spell. This desert air is treacherous," I lied, stepping back a couple of paces with a clumsiness she surely noticed.
"That wasn't a dizzy spell; it was a high-level succubus," Elinalise stated, climbing down from the carriage roof with her sword in hand, though it was too late; the creature had vanished into the darkness after Talhand's magical display. She looked at Paul and Rudeus with a mocking smile. "My, the men of the Greyrat family are... quite easy to persuade, aren't they?"
"Shut up, Elinalise!" Paul grunted, red as a tomato as he tried to apologize to Lilia in whispers.
The rest of the night passed in stone-cold silence, broken only by the armadillo's snoring and Elinalise's occasional giggles. I sat by Fenril, stroking his silver fur to calm my nerves.
"Good job holding out, kid," Talhand whispered as he passed me to go to sleep. "Not many young men have that kind of discipline."
I didn't know what to say. I wondered why he hadn't been affected.
The next morning, the horizon finally changed. The endless dunes gave way to ancient, jagged rock formations. Gisu, already recovered from the previous night's "trance," pointed to a structure protruding in the distance.
"Look, ruins!" he said excitedly.
Before entering, Rudeus took extreme precautions. He blindfolded almost everyone to keep the location's secret. Only Elinalise, who already knew the place, Shera—who still carried the trauma of her past—and I, who had practically followed them the whole time, kept our vision clear.
We tried to get the carriage through the portal, but it was impossible; the structure wasn't wide enough. We had to leave it behind with regret, though at least the giant armadillo managed to cross. That meant Zenith would have to walk the rest of the way. We trusted she would endure the week of travel remaining.
Upon crossing the portal and guiding the blindfolded ones out of the ruins, the change was brutal. Everyone froze: the scorching heat of the Begaritt continent was gone, replaced instantly by a frozen, silent forest.
"Don't speak of this to anyone, no matter how strange it seems," Rudeus warned with a stern tone. Everyone nodded, still processing the shift in landscape.
The scenery was unforgiving. The forest was buried under snow so deep it reached our waists. To move forward, Rudeus used his magic to melt the snow and open a path, while the others stayed alert, repelling monsters that lurked among the frozen trees.
Zenith walked without apparent trouble beside Lilia, showing surprising physical endurance. For my part, I took charge of using fire magic to keep the armadillo warm, as it was shaking violently from the temperature change. Roxy helped me guard the flanks as we advanced.
Fenril, on the other hand, seemed in his element. The cold didn't bother him; on the contrary, he looked more at home than in the desert. He had also begun to master his distortion ability, staying visible most of the time by his own will. His growth had stabilized: his back now reached my waist. Considering I was already 1.70m tall—remembering I'm just two months away from turning 15—Fenril had become an imposing beast.
"Seems someone enjoys the snow," Roxy commented, watching with a smile as Fenril trotted lightly over the white mantle, sinking and jumping with energy we hadn't seen in the desert.
"He is a wolf of the north, after all," I replied, smiling back as I watched him. The cold seemed to have restored his spirits.
When night fell, the cold became biting. We camped under the shelter of gigantic pines that barely blocked the wind. This time, it was my turn for guard duty with Elinalise. We sat a bit away from the main fire to keep our eyes adjusted to the forest darkness. The silence was only broken by the cracking of frozen branches and the soft snoring of the armadillo, who had finally stopped shaking thanks to my heat magic.
"Hey, what do you think of Roxy?" she asked suddenly, breaking the silence with that playful voice.
She caught me off guard. I glanced at her; Elinalise was smiling at me while her eyes glinted with mischief.
"What do you mean?" I tried to sound indifferent, though I felt my cheeks warming despite the weather.
Elinalise watched me with a lopsided grin, clearly enjoying my discomfort.
"What do I mean?" she repeated, leaning toward me. "Come on, Arthur, don't play dumb with me. I'm not talking about her as a mage or anything like that... I'm talking about Roxy, as a woman."
I stiffened, gripping the hilt of **Roxaria** against my lap. I knew evasive answers didn't work with Elinalise, but admitting it out loud felt like crossing a point of no return.
"She is... very important to me," I managed to say, staring into the dark forest. "She looked after me while I was unconscious and she gave me this sword. It's not as simple as you're suggesting."
"Oh, of course it's simple," she laughed softly, giving me a playful nudge. "What I saw the night of the succubus... that wasn't just 'friendship.' You held yourself back from doing anything to her."
"You restrained yourself," Elinalise continued, lowering her voice to a confident, teasing tone. "Any other man, even Paul or little Rudeus, would have been completely swept away. But you... you fought nature itself so as not to disrespect her. That, Arthur, isn't just friendship. It's devotion."
I remained quiet, feeling the forest's cold contrast with the heat rising up my neck. Her words hit the mark, but I wasn't ready to hear them out loud.
"She deserves someone who values her like that," she added, her gaze softening for a moment. "She's been lonely for a long time, even if she doesn't say it. She thinks that because of her appearance or her origin, she'll always be an outsider. I noticed that ever since we went to save her—and you saved her—she looks at you differently than the rest."
"Don't talk nonsense, Elinalise," I whispered, trying to avert my eyes toward the dying embers in the center of the camp. "I'm barely fourteen. To her, I'm still... well, someone much younger."
"Fourteen?" she snorted, letting out a short laugh. "Look in the mirror, boy. You have the build of a veteran knight, you're 1.70m tall, and you wield a sword that scares S-Class monsters. Besides, for a Migurd, the age gap is a pretty flexible concept. Don't let numbers stop you."
I stayed silent, unable to counter her arguments.
Elinalise noticed she had left me buried in thought and, with a satisfied gesture, settled back into her spot, sheathing the dagger she had been cleaning.
"Well, I won't bother you anymore," Elinalise said with one last lopsided smile, turning her gaze back to the darkness of the forest. "Just think about it, boy."
After that somewhat awkward conversation, the rest of the night passed without incident. However, Elinalise's words stayed burned into my mind.
The following days passed in a blur of snow and fatigue, until we finally reached Sharia. As soon as we crossed the city gates, the atmosphere changed. Rudeus, who until recently had kept his composure, began to walk at a frantic pace, his face pale and his expression one of absolute tension.
I watched him from the side, keeping pace effortlessly. In that moment, I remembered the conversation we had weeks ago in the middle of the desert, when he asked me with almost desperate urgency to stay and protect the house if anything happened to him.
"I hope everything remains as it was in the original and that Hitogami hasn't interfered," I thought bitterly. Although, seeing how much my mere presence has changed the course of events... perhaps I was being too optimistic..
The others didn't understand why he had picked up the pace so abruptly. Paul and Roxy shared a look of confusion, trying to keep up with the young mage.
"Hey, Rudeus, what's up? You look pale as a ghost!" Gisu shouted, trying to catch his breath.
Rudeus didn't even bother to answer. In that instant, as if a spring had snapped inside him, he took off running at full speed toward the mansion, leaving the group and the carriage behind.
"Rudeus!" Paul shouted, but it was useless.
To be continued...