Cursed Explorer of the Arcana

When the lights of a distant settlement catch my eye, I decide to cut my flames and approach on foot. Solaire is already peeking over the horizon, and I have many good reasons for taking the less convenient method.

First, walking does not devour my mana, second, it doesn't scream dangerous, and third, I doubt the ring will display Mage when anybody checks my level.

This country is basically at war with everyone and no one, so best leave my stupidity for another day.

I catch myself before turning into a pancake on the cold, hard ground in the patch of woods, and start jogging. Finding the right path isn't even a task because even now, there are plenty of carriages racing down the paved path as well as refugees arriving.

These people were the fastest to respond and quickest to flee. They are also, without a doubt, the shrewdest and likely most powerful who called Mythralis home. I can't lower my guard.

In a couple of minutes, I close the distance and join the swelling waves of people trying to find shelter. Words of anger and despair fill the air. People lamenting the loss of their lives and loved ones, looking for missing relatives, begging for a sliver of certainty…

Modest walls and a handful of overwhelmed guardsmen stand their way, trying to keep a modicum of order to protect their town from falling into chaos. It's a modest settlement, and nowhere near large enough to house all these people.

I'm not gonna check each and every carriage around to see if Valka's holed up in any of them. That's just not her style, and that I'd be willing to bet substantial money on.

"It's only forward…" I sigh and throw myself into the crowd.

Being relatively small has its ups and downs. I can squeeze through between people more easily, but when they start pushing… I really don't like that. Still, no murdering today, besides the lives I've already taken…

And all of this would be so much easier with Valka by my side. It's a struggle, but I do make it in the end.

"Stop, you can't pass without papers. Stop pushing!"

I aim for the closest guard and stand right in his face.

"I'm looking for someone." I yell to make sure he can hear me.

"Don't care!" A reaction not unexpected.

But I'm nothing if not persistent. "A girl, tall, white hair, metal bird, pretty strong." I say my thing anyway.

"Show your papers or step aside!" The man repeats himself before furrowing his brows. "And you're the second person who arrived here and asked about her today."

"Huh? Who?" I fight the urge to grab him and start shaking until he spills everything.

[Warrior lvl 221]

Although that wouldn't likely end well.

"She said she was her mother. Now, out of the way!" He yells and forcefully removes me from his sight.

Mother? Valka's? That's simply impossible. Her parents are long dead, and even if that wasn't the case, what the hell would they be doing here of all places? This is bad… she didn't manage to shake off everyone.

"Here!" I pull one of the scrolls from my bag – Voltarian paper, seal, signature, and everything – and shove it into the man's face. "I won't stay long."

Before he can mutter even a single word, I slip past him and fade into the crowd on the other side. Chances are, Val passed through here recently, although I doubt she stayed for too long, if at all.

In the following minutes, I talk to more people than throughout my entire life. Anyone who looks even remotely competent or local, or perhaps both, I run up to and ask. Most shoo me away, others ignore the irritating little elf, and none of them prove useful whatsoever.

Magic can solve problems reliably and almost always. Even now, I could probably start killing until someone finally tells me what I want to hear to be fair… Still, talking gets me absolutely nowhere.

Is it because nobody saw her? Well, if she did manage to stay hidden in the cart, then I guess… Where would a ride like that stop? Yeah, this could work.

Since I'm completely done with people for the day, relying on my genius and common sense, I follow the widest road. No carriage would fit the sidestreets, and they had to move on somewhere.

It might be pointless. This entire chase, everything I'm doing might very well be absolutely worthless… But Val passed here, and someone followed.

And the Fist recently just proved how little they can do in the face of monumental pressure.

"I'm alone in this." I mutter. "Not the first time…"

Being alone in the wilderness and alone in a settlement are completely different, however. This time, the danger is so different in nature that I don't even know where to expect it from. The humans, elves, dwarves, and gnomes scouring the streets in hopes of finding a straw to cling onto is incalculable.

This is a side effect of war no books or classrooms will ever teach.

Following the main road, I arrive at a modest market square and notice right away the smoldering remains of a collapsed building. People stand around, many trembling, fearful that the destruction might've already reached all the way here, but in my mind, something else stirs.

I hurry over, using even earth magic to move the crowd, fearing for the worst. But it turns out to be a simple storage house that collapsed in an accident. Not a single dead and only an elderly merchant was slightly injured in the subsequent fire.

An accident, or so the crowd mutters.

"Arson?"

"It must be the refugees. They can't stay."

"How will we survive this?"

A divide among the population and those seeking shelter was already growing. Voices of discontent are the loudest when the crowd echoes the same sentiment. Nevertheless, what these families do or will have to endure in the coming days is none of my concern.

Instead, I step closer to the site of the accident because beyond the debris and behind the walls of crates, I discover a carriage hiding in the warehouse.

Despite a few warnings uttered my way, I climb through the debris to take a closer look. The flames did solid work at erasing most of the clues as to why part of the building could've collapsed, but there's still much left intact. Such as the cart itself…

Climbing into the back, I find myself just as clueless. An old and dried splatter of blood means nothing, and the scrapes on the wooden boards could've been almost anything. Detective Elyssia is not hot on the track. What I do find, though, are weapons, chests filled with Hadron, arrows, and chemicals.

Not your average merchant stock, that's for sure.

"She climbed into a smuggler's wagon. Bad luck…" I conclude, this explains why she stayed put for so long and why she might've snuck into the town. "Was she found?"

That might explain the damage.

Following this idea, I climb out, but not before bagging some of the magical crystals for… research purposes. The smell of ash and decaying wood leaves my nose helpless – not like it's anything impressive to begin with – and leaves things to my experience.

I know the environment, can guess the circumstances, and the players, and have, most importantly, ample experience in combat. Recreating the scene in my head is a little messy, but I can sort of see it.

"Val lunged out of the wagon and landed a hit. Those crates shattered and… here." I walk up to a support pillar still standing and trace a faint mark in the wood. "This indentation… she missed, and the line below must be a slash. Retaliation." Kicking the clutter out of the way, I do find some dried blood on the floor.

Despite my findings, I'm somewhat relieved. If it were a shadow, even as mediocre as the one we've met in Mythralis, I doubt she could've fought back much.

"It's most likely her blood." I don't need any scientific methods to check. Valka usually breaks bones and gets injured in the process. It's just the natural order of things. "No signs of fighting on the street, nor any witnesses. And no corpses or excessive amounts of blood either…"

Nobody died here.

Since much of the damage is restricted to one side of the building, it's easy to guess which way they could've moved. A little investigation soon proves my intuition when more gashes on the wall and heavy footsteps in the dirt reveal themselves.

"This might take a while." I sigh, already a little bored. But it's all worth it. "And if it's another crime lord we're dealing with…"

Oh, it will be such a glorious blood bath.

And so minutes turn into… more minutes. Oftentimes I lose the trace and only find it once again by accident. It's clear by the pathing that Val had no idea where she was going and the ones on her tail weren't exactly keen on causing much damage or fighting her at all.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

My magic and Skills prove absolutely useless in this situation and it's mostly my gut feeling I'm following. The idea of what I'd do in Valka's place…

To my surprise this hunt leads me to a decent neighborhood instead of the slums of the city wall where she could have escaped. All I see are modest but elegant houses, well-maintained streets, a communal square with a well, and, of course, the usual sight of miserable refugees everywhere.

And all tracks cease to exist in the middle of the small square.

"Did they give up?" I consider the most plausible of options.

They had to have arrived before even the first batch of people fleeing the capital, and in the middle of the night at that, so not many witnesses. The ground is paved, and Valka's regeneration made following any blood marks basically impossible.

But she couldn't have just disappeared into thin air.

"Maybe guards were stationed around here, or one of the homes…" I lean against the well, considering the options. "I mean, as long as she lost her pursuers, I'm happy."

"Careful, young lady, don't fall into it!" A passing woman chides me instead of minding her own business.

Who in their right mind would even fall into a… A hole that can make them disappear.

I whip around and stare down into the darkness. "Excuse me! How old is this well?" I ask the very same woman since she seems so chatty.

"As old as Warthor itself. Some say the town was founded around-" Before she can finish her overextended reply, I throw myself down into the abyss.

There ought to be water down there, and even if I don't find anything, I can climb out easily.

To prepare myself, I send a flimsy bolt of fire below, to light the hole in case there isn't any water. At the same time, I surround myself with mana-saturated air because I don't wanna get my hair wet. And the same goes for all the stuff in my bag.

"Pretty deep." I even have the time to speak before something finally gleams at the bottom. Although this one doesn't seem to be completely natural. "It isn't uncommon for settlements to be built on old ruins, but isn't this a little too deep?"

Instead of a quick splash, though, I first hear an echoing whoosh and feel the world expand around me. I don't go through the hassle of getting wet and swimming to the surface nonsense, and instead use the water in my surroundings to gently carry me to the surface.

When I'm finally standing on the surface, it all begins to make sense. "An underground reservoir, Mom told tales about these before. And the nasty lizard creature she was hired to slay…"

I quickly skim through the details of the map I memorized a year ago, just to see if I accidentally stumbled across another spirit's prison. Although even at a glance, that does not seem to be the case.

These structures are more crude and I'd even dare say stupid. It's difficult to even call these pillars and pits buildings without insulting every architect who ever lived. Neither ancient nor some nasty goblin nest, so… I'm clueless, really.

"Since I'm already here, I might as well look around." I create a source of light and start walking. "There's no way Val could've climbed back out of the well."

Simply stepping on the water does feel awesome, and finding a pair of relatively fresh corpses on the shore only makes the moment more fulfilling. One is some sort of chubby, small-eyed monkey, while the other looks like the child of a frog and a piranha.

One had clearly been snacked upon, much of its torso and legs are missing. But I think the cause of death might've been the large indentation in the skull

The other one is a bit more worrying. One clean slash across the neck, rags of meat between its teeth, and absolutely no sign of resisting… This one isn't Valka's handiwork.

"Either I'm a genius tracker or luck is oddly on my side today." I voice my concern because it is freaking me out. "I mean, I do know how Valka is thinking and how fights usually play out, but still…"

I check out the semicircular pond I've landed in and the crude, haphazard pillars littering the hall, once more, before setting out through the only corridor. Hopefully, people above will simply think I committed suicide or something.

The path is simplistic, straight, and ruthlessly damaged by nature and time. This place might be even older than the underground city I've previously explored. No signs of magical traps, or anything more devilish and hard to detect… Just a simple path running underground in complete darkness.

Dust covers almost everything, except for the areas recently touched by… I don't know, someone stumbling through here completely blind.

My light also reveals a few more corpses, all tiny critters scouring the dark. The majority of them have succumbed to a precise slash wound, which is understandable, considering Val can just walk through them unbothered…

After a while, the path leads me to a dilapidated junction. It isn't just debris that has been recently cleared that littered the ground, but also stacked crates and an abandoned campfire.

"Okay, now I'm getting confused, what the hell is this place?" I mutter and decide to look around. "At first it's a normal, small town, then there are smugglers, then I find ancient ruins underground, and now here's a fresh campsite?"

Conclusion? It's not a normal, small town.

"And these crates… Some smelly herbs, weird yucky green powder, and even more Hadron. A hideout, maybe?" I think I'm starting to enjoy this. Like treasure hunting in the backyard, except this time, beasts might try to eat me, and I could very well die at any minute. "Treasure hunting premium." I snicker and move on.

Nothing interesting to steal here besides the crystals, and my bag is already almost overflowing with them. Since another one of the passages is thoroughly collapsed, I only have tunnel A and tunnel B to choose from.

Since I might run into people, I make some preparations in the form of drawing inscriptions on a nearby wall and gluing them onto my skin. Silence, Darkness, and Impact, just in case.

No light, slope, airflow, flora, dust, or humidity to judge which way Valka could've taken. Even the funky arrows carved into the walls are meaningless because she must've passed here completely blind.

"Oh, I know!" An idea pops into my head, and I start running down the right path.

Since it's evident these parts aren't exactly neglected, I reduce my flame to the tiniest ember to avoid detection. It's barely enough to see where I'm stepping, surrounded by endless darkness and silence, interspersed only by irregular noises of water traveling downwards or the walls slowly giving in.

It's giving me the creeps and my heart is racing without a pause… but I'm loving it.

The light is also just barely enough to discover another tiny creature, akin to a very long mole gutted on the ground. Only after stepping into it, sadly, but this is exactly what I've been looking for.

For how long I trek through the dark, it's hard to tell. This environment is exactly how I'd imagine falling into the Abyss and finding myself in a timeless, wordless reality.

The sound of chatter does break my immersion, but I shan't complain… Getting somewhere is better than wandering in the darkness forever. Upon discovering the slightest sign of light, I meld into the shadows and go completely invisible.

"It's locked, and properly! She went the other way, there's no other explanation." A female voice said with a tinge of frustration. "We can't lose them again."

"I know, Goose, the little fuckers somehow killed Spider, not to mention the spirit has also disappeared." A man replied. "Without that thing, the Academy has to stay a little longer. Not to mention the north."

This is not Valka, and definitely not her mother… And the only option on my mind is at the top of the list of worst-case scenarios.

"Nobody has anticipated the old reliques to gather so many treasures in a single year. The masters knew any movement would carry huge risks." The woman's steps echoed between the ancient walls. "It's not our fault."

"They won't care, so we must return with at least a Blessed one." The man said. "But my Skills alone can't find her after this many dead ends. She's slippery."

"You're just incompetent, Gekko. Now lead the way before we lose her for good!" She speaks, and the shadows painted on the wall begin to shift. They're moving fast, considering I'm not the only one on a time crunch to find Valka… But if things don't change rapidly, then they'll accomplish their objective much faster than they can imagine.

Not the right path, Eli, so fucking not the right path!

I begin to creep away, stepping as carefully and with as much haste as it is possible through an invisible mini obstacle course. Needless to say, it's doomed. Stealth has never been my strong suit, and I can't see my cover holding in direct light, so this basically leaves me with a single choice…

Before the deadly pair can turn the corner, I step out into the middle of the tunnel, widen my stance, and grip the air tightly. Even Focal Mana Trance is called into action as I get hold of as much stone as I can move and pull.

Pull down the entire ceiling, every piece of stone I can get my hands on. More stone, more weight, more mana… The deeper I can bury these two, the longer I'll have to escape and do what I must.

The strain on my body from moving this much mass is immense. I'm basically boiling with mana and commanding it all through simple gestures. And still, that is nothing compared to the fire burning in my mind.

Despite that, I eat through all the mana necessary, and then some.

When I'm finally satisfied with the grand, unmarked grave, my legs almost give in on me. I'm tired, really damn tired… This has been one of the longest nights of my life. But it's not yet time to rest, and I somehow doubt this will hold the shadows indefinitely.

Call it a hunch.

So running it is once again. Faster than before, brighter than before, and most importantly, using fire to suffocate anyone left behind. Explosions rock the tunnels in my wake, and flames lick the walls… and I just run.

My progress is rapid, and I find myself back at the junction in the blink of an eye. This time, I don't consider for long which way to go, and even light the crates on fire in hopes of some poisonous fumes.

Martha did educate us about some wacky rules of war, that are mostly suggestions. I think this one was around the top of the list of the very bad, big no-no things, but… who's gonna tattle on me, huh?

My rapid advance meets an unexpected obstacle. It's a door. A completely normal wooden door, maybe a year or two old, and in great condition. Bar the shattered lock and handle.

"I wonder which way she could've gone…" I shake my head and carefully peek through the crack.

Another warehouse… not that surprising.

The place is fairly large, well lit, and maintained, and without a single Valka in sight. About seven or eight people occupy the place, mostly tending to their work and hauling cargo. No security force around or anyone even remotely threatening at first glance.

Emboldened a little, I creep out and move from one pile of crates to the other. Swift and silent like a mouse, I make my way across the warehouse without any unwanted attention. I'm technically trespassing, so this here is not the audience I want to interrogate.

The loading gate is wide open, however, the area is constantly busy without a moment's respite for me to slip away. So I make my own distraction by dipping my finger into my shadow and sketching it onto the ground.

All that's left is to sneak around and wait.

"Jajajajajajajaja…" Right on cue, the inscription begins to chatter in the most irritating way I was able to come up with.

It draws the necessary attention without a hiccup, and I comfortably leave the premises without causing too much headache to anyone. Step outside, however, does not help my search whatsoever.

"A pier, here?" I mutter, staring at the slim ships currently in the process of being loaded.

The wide Nahles River flows towards the north and right into the… Whatever Lake with Mythrails on its shores. I didn't bother to learn every name around the continent. Regardless, this tiny town sitting on the river is where I find myself now, without any leads… again.

"Excuse me, have you seen a white-haired girl around?" I ask the first person I come across. A sailor, busy doing absolutely nothing.

"Her?" He points a little to the left near the water.

And indeed, the girl's hair is white, her stature is like a powerful man's, and she's just crouching there, trying to wash herself with the water. After everything I went through, I find it a little hard to believe my eyes, however, upon getting close enough and finding a shiny little thing hooting and splashing in the shallows…

"Val?" I mutter in disbelief.

When her azure blue eyes meet mine and shine like they always do under Solaire's gaze, my heart finally finds rest.

"Hey, Eli, can you help out a little?" She points and her unsightly attire. Mud, blood, and other yucky things I have no desire to discover. "Oh, and do you have any money on you for the ferry?"

"Don't you have any far more important questions, you idiot?" I shake my head and make the river swallow her. "Fuck, I was scared…" I mutter when she can't hear me.