When Ariel had already thought he was dead, his consciousness suddenly returned. Opening up his eyes, the first thing he saw were two beautiful girls, with teary eyes, looking back at him and a boy with dishevelled hair standing a bit further, with the same concern on his face, as the girls.

As he tried to move right after waking up, Ariel grunted when he felt the pain coming from his right arm. However he didn’t have time to inspect his body’s injuries, since the girls quickly started speaking when they noticed that he woke up. “Ariel, are you okay? There was so much blood on you and your pulse was extremely weak, we thought you were about to die. The only hope we had was that Brendon’s magic, could help somehow.” The first one to express her worries was the blue haired girl, Sarah, but she soon was followed up by Erna, who Ariel saved before.

“You said that you will hold him in place, but you ended up coming so far and were already half dead. Instead of you alone, both of us should have worked together, like we could have won much easier, since somehow you managed to kill it even alone.” Even tough she was reprimanding him and his actions, the worry in her trembling voice couldn’t be hidden from his eyes.

In the mean time, Brendon seemed to only have let out a breath of relief and didn’t say anything else, he was just glad that his best friend didn’t end up dead in this meaningless, small world.

Ariel felt warmth inside his body form seeing the care that his friends showed, and although his face didn’t change much, his eyes grew softer as he spoke for the first time. “I’m okay. Also, even I can’t plan everything perfect in such dire circumstances where my head was in a mess. That’s why you should just be glad no one died and everything ended fine.”

Everyone visibly relaxed at his words and also felt slightly more carefree remembering that none of them met with an unfortunate demise in this dangerous event. However all of them also felt beyond angry for there being such a fearsome creature here, and were planning on settling it with the teacher after they return to the Academy grounds.

Seeing that everyone was more at ease now, Ariel once more tried to move, but he again felt large pain coming from his right arm. Turning to look, he saw ferocious teeth marks, left on his upper arm, only then did he remember the last small struggle of the chimera.

Soon however he noticed something strange with this scenario and looked down at his chest while using his left hand to feel around it. Slowly he became more and more shocked since he clearly remembered that there was an extremely heavy injury left there by the chimera’s claw, now however it was completely healed, as if it never existed.

His friends noticed his confusion and Erna decided to ask about it. “What’s wrong? Is something not right with your chest?” She was quite confused at his actions and couldn’t understand what he was doing. Ariel’s face on the other hand, became increasingly more amusing as he responded. “I had a mortal injury on my chest, but it is completely gone now and I can’t understand how that happened.”

Hearing his words, the three people besides him made surprised looks on their faces. After standing like that for a while, Sarah was the one who voiced their doubts. “I think you wouldn’t hallucinate even in such a dire situation. However, what could have healed your injury?” All four of them couldn’t think up of anything possible as they started wracking their brain.

Going into deep though, Ariel tried recalling the whole event. Then he suddenly remembered the two strange things that happened as he was loosing his consciousness, the strange feeling in his upper chest, as well as the small Mana source that he saw in front of him.

Leading up his had to where he felt the cool sensation he gripped the strange, rose like broach that was gifted to him by the girls. He lowered his head to look at it and was shocked to see that it was no longer ice blue in colour like before, but completely grey, as if it turned to stone.

His friends, after noticing his shock, also followed his gaze and gaped when they saw his accessory. The girls of course, were the ones who bought it, so they should know, but even Brendon has seen Ariel wear it all the time so he was familiar with it.

For it to become like this was undoubtedly bizarre, but also made them connect the dots. Erna was the first one to ask, while still curiously looking at the broach. “It was quite strange from the beginning, could it be that it had some kind of healing magic in it from the very start?”

Ariel heard her theory and after some thinking spoke. “When I was going blank, I definitely felt something coming from it so it is quite possible. Though, I’m still sorry that the gift of you two, ended up this state.” Although Ariel was happy that it saved him, he was a bit sad that the gift that the girls spent so much time picking went to waste and thought that they would be very disappointed because of this.

However the girls weren’t angry like he though and actually both smiled as Sarah’s spoke. “It is fine. If it really saved your life, doesn’t it mean that we saved it? That’s more than worthy of spending out money and time.” From the bright faces it seemed that they were just happy he didn’t die, and looked like they really didn’t care that their gift got ruined.

Seeing that there was a sweet atmosphere starting to develop around them, Brendon coughed and spoke for the first time after he woke up. “If it truly healed him, why didn’t it heal his right arm? Isn’t it strange?” Brendon raised a valid point, that quickly caught every ones attention, but Erna easily brushed it off with another theory.

“I think it is obviously because the chimera’s fangs were still in his arm when we arrived, so even if someone was here and tried healing him it wouldn’t work if they didn’t remove the object in his body first. This is an unchangeable rule of healing.” Her words were quite logical and like that they stopped paying attention to it. However due to Brendon’s reminder Sarah came closer to check on his wound and to also bandage it.

With the biggest mystery out of the way, they could now talk about other things while Sarah’s was taking care of his injury so Ariel spoke about what was bugging him for a while. “Erna, how did you manage to find both of them out of all other people in this forest? He was quite interested since it was a bit too much of a coincidence to happen.

Erna let out a bright chuckle as she replied. “They have already been together when I ran into them, right after leaving you, but I have to admit that it was still quite lucky finding them even if they weren’t separated. After that we quickly rushed back to find you. However when we saw that you were gone, we could only follow the path of destruction left by the chimera. Soon we ended up finding you laying here.” Hearing her words, Ariel felt quite frustrated knowing that there was reliable help so close back then, but soon he just sighed and let it go, knowing that he couldn’t change the past.

Just as they finished talking, Sarah let out a surprised yelp from the side. Tuning their head, the rest of them looked at her as if asking what was wrong. Sarah quickly pointed at Ariel’s hand, which unexpectedly had a light blue magic circle, etched on it.

The expressions of the three instantly changed as they recognised what it was, and Brendon soon spoke. “You made a contract? With what creature did you make it?” Ariel only shook his head side from side as he responded. “I didn’t, this is news to me too. Unless some kind of magical beast did it while I was still asleep.” He said while recalling the weak Mana source he had seen before fainting.

Hearing this, his friends once more became shocked and Erna started urging him. “Try summoning it to see what it is.” Ariel again shook his head and explained. “I am completely drained and need quite some time to recover before I’ll have enough Mana to summon it, but I think it is not something very powerful.”

At his words the three could only resign and accept the fact they had to wait before they could satisfy their curiousity. However Ariel soon asked his own question while looking at them. “Did any of you manage to get something?” His friends looked at each other and the only one who spoke up was Brendon.

“Right now it is only me who contracted an ancient water tortoise, besides me neither of these two have anything.” Brendon sounded proud about his achievement, but he had the right to be like that, his new familiar was a rare beast with really high improvement possibility and also human like intelligence. What’s more, it fitted his fighting style quite well, being a water beast specializing in defence and support.

His sister though felt quite jealous and quickly urged them while ignoring her brother’s boasting. “Anyway, let’s forget his magical beast for now and get somewhere safer. We need to get some good rest and go look for our own creatures, since there isn’t much time left, tomorrow we will be returning.” The group quickly nodded at her words, Ariel with his bandaged arm got up and with the support of his friends began heading towards the twin’s base which was currently the closest to them.

However, as they were just about to leave the surrounding area, they noticed an eerie cave that exuded coldness from inside of it, making it obvious that it was something abnormal. The four of them instantly stopped that their interest started to increase as the strange air coming from the cave crept over them.

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If you want to read further, visit https://verathragna.wordpress.com/ I will always have an extra chapter there