Leaving all of the grave shadows to guard the pack zombies, I strolled out of the edge of the woods in my tattered pants. If only I had access to a mending spell to fix them.

I realized I definitely had a new spell, maybe two, waiting in the wings, but it was unlikely for one of them to be a repair spell. It only amounted to a spell of convenience in the end. What they actually were, well all the fighting, controlling, leveling and hamming it up in battle for two days straight finally started getting to me as I truly left the battlefield. Relaxing to recover mana didn’t count, since I still had to keep track of things and was actively waiting.

After a hard day of work, I wanted to just kick back and let Ralph tell me some stories. Searching and testing out a new spell shape did not qualify as down time, as fun as it may be. My Class Abilities still hadn’t been tested to their full extent yet either. So many things to do...I’ll do them later. There’s just so much future out there, plenty of time to get it all done. No need to rush if I don’t feel like it.

“*Lazyhead and Sleepybones, always disagree~*” Half singing and half humming to myself, I tottered over to the buildings of the village while stretching my limbs. Making it back relatively quickly, I made it to my stone seats with plenty of time to watch the sun set. Despite having most of the sensory spells active, the surroundings appeared very calm. Primed to the cacophony of the battlefield, or able to detect the slightest of disturbances, who knew which was the better way to start. It didn’t matter, the past was the past, any discrepancy could be made up with effort in the future.

For now, the calmness of the mana fields was enough. Villagers had weak presences in . Slowly turning about, I tried catching sight of them and analyzing the perturbations within them to identify who they were. Except for the easy ones, I didn’t do very well.

In my defense the difficulty of the task was similar to identifying the species of a fish by watching the waves and ripples it made as it swam underneath. While they were familiar to me, what their mana field would look like came down to intuition and guesswork. I already started cheating by the end, trying to gauge the physical dimensions of the mana field; but they were ill-defined, probably in part because they looked so weak.

As for those that were easier to identify, most could probably be guessed rather easily. Ria, Rion, and Tagalong Girl possessed fairly distinctive mana fields. What came out of left field was that there were five exceptional mana fields total. They really threw me for a loop when trying to identify everyone.

Ria’s mana field stood out the most, the part of the mana field relating to her horns cut a crisp edge compared to the generally fuzziness of most people. Her body’s field, while not solid, looked less wiry and possessed a sort of shell that circulated around the outside. Tagalong Girl’s description of the mana being cloud-like wasn’t totally inaccurate—the outside of the field erratically wavered, along with a fuzz along the outside of her mana field and the fact that didn’t have a concept of ‘opaque’ meant it could be mistaken as cloudy. In fact, if I squinted my mind from about a hundred meters away, Ria’s mana field looked just like one.

Alright, I’ll stop ragging on Tagalong Girl’s developing magical sight.

Speaking of, her magical eyes were what allowed me to quickly identify her. The ability she possessed literally resided in her eyeballs; though discerning the details from my seat on the rocks couldn’t be done, they were concentrated enough that I could pick out the mana field of her eyes easily. Tagalong Girl’s special features were not limited to her eyes, compared to the cottony wisps of the normal villagers, while her mana field looked stronger, even more intriguing were the connections of the field.

Looking through the village at her, there were clearly two different sets of links. These two sets linked to each other, but did not hook up to the point where the two unified. Differing in size, it appeared to be like dropping a small spiderweb onto a larger one. Crisscrossing points definitely connected to the self, and in many cases to its mate, but despite being inseparable they could be identified independently.

What in the world is this, Tagalong Girl? I just wanted to have some fun casually trying out my new abilities. Why does my every step take me further into the realm of mystery?

Glazing over her, I was on break. My evening was to be plot-free—Later, later!

I was going to bleed to death from all these hooks stuck in me, wasn’t I?

Moving on to the next beacons among the dimly powered village, I looked for Rion. Tagalong Girl said he had some mana potential, which I had no doubt would show up in . Scanning the village, I found my targets...targets?

Two childish figures with a mana field a degree sturdier than Tagalong Girl’s, but lacking in the strength of the connections could be spotted. Dissociating from my geographical knowledge and what I recalled of their habits, I tried to figure out who the two were only going by what could detect.

Sensing spirits by using mana field definitely did not fall under the lists of things I could do at all. A few minutes of bumbling and ad hoc hypotheses were made to try and discern them from one another. In the end, when I felt ‘confident’ in my guess, I checked against what knowledge I had and opened my eyes to find myself completely wrong. Thinking Rion was Kress(short for Kressel, and not a variant of Chris as I first thought), and misidentifying Ronnie as Rion, I could only shake my head.

In hindsight, I committed their mana fields to memory to provide some additional data points for future identification. Who knew what trends existed, and it wasn’t like remembering things took up space. Rion’s mana field felt more...directional, while Ronnie’s felt misty in the airy and playful sense. Those feelings did match up with the boy they were associated with, in much the same way as jello went with rice...you wouldn’t even think about it until someone mentioned it, and remained skeptical even after confirming it.

After shrugging at the results of that answer, I moved on to the last mana field I could sense. It pulsed—while most of the villagers had mana fields that sloshed around, they still more or less remained the same size. Somewhere along the river, someone had a mana field that instead of shifting about fluidly, actually appeared to grow and shrink. Usually remaining slightly smaller and less connected than those of the other villagers, every few minutes it would grow to be a bit stronger in all respects and sort of leaked outwards, proceeding to shrink to normal size, and then to its smallest dimensions after that.

Without even trying to guess, I then discerned it to be Ralph. No clues to go off of, I ended up accidentally getting wrapped up in stressful work things. I just couldn’t help but start pondering about the nature of .

With the appearance of a pulsing mana field, it became clear that whatever it showed was not mana. At least, it couldn’t be mana on its own, there would be no reason for Ralph to exhibit such a characteristic. OGP may have been an adventurer from Kallahall, but that didn’t provide any clues. The only theories available were either Ralph had some sort of internal magical ability everyone happened to be unaware of, or that the mana field not only wasn’t based on just mana, but other variables that were included could change with great ease.

Descending from someone who was capable of traveling across countries meant the first was not impossible, but it did seem unlikely. The second possibly undermined the entire view of what the mana field actually represented. It still seemed like it would be more likely than the first.

Flopping back over the boulder, I cracked my back and looked to the dimming sky. A cool wind blew through, nothing to disrupt it on the open plains, they became more frequent as of late. Heralding a cold winter ahead, less than a week remained before we needed to depart.

The future couldn’t be seen, and there would likely be many troubles, but I didn’t doubt the choices I made. They fell in line with the person I wanted to be; despite any setbacks that appeared, I wanted to find a way to help Ria and Tagalong Girl. For now, everything else was just a distraction, or means to that end. Having a bit of fun while advancing those goals wasn’t forbidden, which is why I kept spending so much time dealing with the goblins. After cutting loose, handling the more mundane aspects of the journey would be much easier.

Idling about as the sun set, footfalls approached over the grass. Detection spells shut off for a more peaceful rest, they couldn’t be identified from my position. They spoke first, seeing me continue to lay there.

“So I see you’ve come back again Alric.” Who’s that surly voice speaking to me?

“Mmh, good evening Corsair. It’s nice to see you’re doing well.”

“You don’t seem to be having any worries.”

“Is there anything in particular to be worried about?” Still not getting up, my head hung upside down over the side of the stone, watching a few clouds in the distance. Corsair seemed to be beating around the bush, but I wasn’t going to fall into his trap of negativity. It may be unpleasant around him, but that wasn’t enough to put me in an arguing mood.

He would have none of that...cordial conversation.

“Of course there are things to worry about, you’re a mage! You were only lucky that the Paladins from last week rushed back to their designated towns. Staying here is only going to bring everyone trouble.”

“I registered back in Glaucen, remember? What would the church have to gain by bothering me, they’ll have their taxes, bless the village and be on their way. My staying here isn’t causing any of your problems.”

“My problems? You think I’m trying to make this about me? This is about all of us! Coming and going without a care in the world, you act like you’re helping, but none of it requires you to do any work! All you do is wander about, and when you wave your hands, all of a sudden you’re praised for it! You don’t know what working to the bone is like, the only reason you’re doing all of this is because of the attention!”

“Wow, I didn’t know you could read my innermost thoughts. Maybe you’re magic too.” Snidely retorting from my spot, it really irked me when people thought they could read other people’s minds. There were so many signals people gave off, but in the end, predicting their actions is different from knowing what they are thinking. Humans did what they could to understand each other and communicate themselves well, but can you ever know what someone else is thinking?

Thinking that sort of philosophical thing, I still didn’t lay into him. It may be hypocritical to make a personality judgement after my tirade, but not very, as I remained aware that what I thought might not be the case. From his ranting, I could start to see Corsair as someone who needed to work hard to help keep the village afloat from childhood. My appearance didn’t invert his world or anything, but I did quickly garner thanks for the small chores I helped out with.

Hey, even I feel like some of those villagers were too much. From his perspective it must have been worse.

Still, Corsair acted petulantly. I wouldn’t scold him, but I certainly wasn’t going to concede to his complaints. I didn’t know how secret my disappearing act was going to be, but the fewer the better. Don’t think for a second that when I leave it was because you said so Corsair!

“Look at you! You just leave for days and come back like nothing could have happened! Living here like…” Corsair continued crappily communicating his ideas. Without a response, he started to get flustered. Not giving him any feedback, or points to rebut meant he couldn't go on forever. He wasn't particularly long winded in the first place, and eventually my apathy forced him to withdraw.

“*Haa~ kids these days…*”

Wryly smiling as I listened to him walk away, I sat up after he left to stretch. Corsair may grump about a lot, but he would work hard for the village. He still hadn't figured out that sometimes there’s more than meets the eye, but he was young with plenty of time to transform. Maybe he'd be one of the village's linchpins in the future.

As for me, I had taken a long enough breather. Time to have supper and go to bed.