The girl opens her eyes and is quickly greeted by the darkness surrounding her. The red haired girl thinks this must be another mysterious dream of hers, but she quickly finds out that is not the case as she moves her limbs, only for them to stop midway and bump into a dead end. It's not like there is something wrong with her body, again; it's simply because of the enclosed environment trapping her inside. And again, it’s not like something Deborah can’t deal with.

With a straight punch, Deborah breaks whatever blocking her way to the world outside, and from the crack, a ray of sunlight shines down. When she manages to escape her enclosement, Deborah finds herself trapped in another thing that is far beyond what she expected.

“What in the world…?”

A neverending sea extending to the end of the horizon, sunlight so bright as if the sun is a few kilometers away, the warm flowing wind carrying along the saltiness of the sea, the cries of flying seagulls, the wet sand filling the seashore leading to the greenest forest Deborah ever seen. Deborah feels lost, this is no longer the cold and quiet Melas castle she knows ever since her awakening. A stranger in a strange land. This revelation both scares her and excites her. It has always been her wish to get out of Melas’s castle walls and explore the world, what Deborah didn’t expect is for her wish to be granted in this kind of way.

After the feeling of awe escapes her mind, Deborah reminds herself of the reality in front of her. She is currently on a foreign land, with zero clues on how or why she is here. The last memory she remembers is still hazy, but Deborah has a feeling it wasn't a very pleasant memory.

Anyway...for the time being.

Deborah salvages what's left of her transporting box, carried by a small boat that somehow successfully transported her to this foreign land without any sailor. Inside the box lies an envelope, carefully sealed by magic and can only be open by solving the magic pattern used to make the seal. Failure means the destruction of the content inside, but only for strangers who somehow got their hand on this envelope in the first place. For a mage like Deborah, something on this level can be considered child play. To present a challenge like this isn't any different than throwing an insult.

Did you afraid I’ll lose my mind again after I wake up, Nilrem?

Letting the deeper meanings run past her head, Deborah proceeds to solve the encrypted envelope with no difficulty and opens it to examine the content inside. The envelope is carrying four items: two letters, with one addressed to Deborah herself, while the other doesn't have any names attached, the other two are a map of Suntos continent with descriptions written in demon’s language, and a golden ring with magical runes engraved in its interior.

What’s the meaning of all these?

Deborah has the feeling all the answers she seek lie behind the letter with her name on it. With no hesitation, Deborah takes the letter out and gives it a read.

Dear Deborah, if you can read this letter then that means there are still some hope left for you.

The first sentence alone is enough to irritate Deborah.. It doesn't take a genius to know who wrote this letter.

I do not know how long it would take for you to wake up from your current slumber. It won't be very climatic if I’m already returned to the earth by the time you finished sleeping in. I wrote this letter with the assumption that you’ll wake up after a week or a month counting from the moment this letter was made. You may feel at lost and wonder why I sent you to the Suntos continent, but I believe you already knows the answer yourself.

I will keep it short: You need to seek guidance from the chief of Aherin tribe. I already marked their location on the map that comes together with this letter, though I do not know if they would still be around by the time you read this, as all Beastmaster tribes are nomadic by nature. If you managed to track them down, present the other letter to their chief. The rest depends on the chief’s answer. When you are done, you can use the boat you’re standing on to return to Melas, though that choice is up to you, and you alone.

Deborah gives a glance at the map on her other hand. It’s a hand-drawn map of Suntos continent, though it’s not something very out of the ordinary, considering she once saw maps like this back in Melas castle’s general store. There are several markings on the map, they pin point special locations for Deborah to take note off. The first mark is at the North-West part of the Suntos continent, the place Deborah’s boat landed. The Aherin tribe resides in the Great Steppe, just beneath the Elowen forest in the south, downward from Deborah's current position.

“From one forest to another…”

Deborah mutters as her eyes gaze upon the forest past the sand filled seashore. It would probably take a few days to even get to the steppe, according to her mental calculation. Of course, it would be easier just to use the boat she’s standing on and sail back to Melas, skipping all the fuss and troubles awaiting her in this strange land. But doing that would just be a waste of time, Deborah thought.

There are still some words left in Nilrem’s letter.

The journey will be long and tedious. In case you start to get lonely, I give you the Ring of Thought Transference. It comes in a pair, the other one I already gave to your familiar. If you want to have a talk with him, just put it on your finger and think about what to say, though that still depends on whether you actually have the courage to do it, and the same for him.

I have already explained everything that you needed to know. The rest now lie on your hands, Deborah Draconis.

Deborah glances at the golden ring on her hand. A ring that enables telepathy, allowing her to mentally talk to the her familiar, who she accidentally summoned to this world. But just like what Nilrem described in her letter, it depends on Deborah herself to put that ring to good use.

And the girl’s response is to put that ring inside the pocket of her long black skirt, along with the map and the letter for the chief, while Deborah burns Nilrem’s letter via a quick burst of fire from her hand. When she is done, Deborah jumps off the boat, and let her feet feels the cold of the sea water as they flood her simple black shoes.

“This is going to be a pain in the ass…”

Deborah can’t help but cuss as she imagines the upcoming adventure waiting ahead of her.

Before she starts her journey, Deborah still needs to secure her ticket home. With the support of her strength, Deborah drags the boat off the sea and moves it deeper into the shore, just by the entrance to the forest. When she found a secure enough position, Deborah starts making a barrier to mask away the presence of the boat by camouflaging it as a huge rock from outside. After she is done with the preparation, Deborah gives a final gaze at the sea, to the continent she’ll leave behind her back, before proceeding to enter Elowen forest.

The journey to the hinterland is mostly uneventful, but to Deborah, it’s an experience she never had before ever since her awakening. The trees she walks by are brimming with life, with a sea of green leaves making up a thick shield to block the sun away, but rays of sunlight still managed to shine the road with flowers and fungi growing on the side. The Elowen forest isn’t as quiet as the Darkwood back in Melas, with singing birds filling Deborah’s journey with joy as she ventures deeper and deeper. It almost feels like Deborah has entered a wonderland devoid of all the worries and tragedies from the outside world. But Deborah knows that was just wishful thinking. She can’t escape her past and neither her future, she was sent here to make it at least bearable for her to move on forward. That is certain.

As Deborah continues her journey, she hears the sound of…something in a nearby bush. As Deborah rises her alert, the source of sound reveals itself as a moose-like creature, with moose-like feature like a gentle face, if not a bit stupid, and a pair of antler, the only difference is this moose is as big as a giant bear, nearly two meters tall. Sure, the bush it was hiding prior is rather big, but still, Deborah does not expect to suddenly face something like this in the middle of the road.

So there are monsters like this in the Suntos continent as well…

The monster moose and Deborah exchange gazes. Deborah clenches her fists, preparing for a battle should the moose goes hostile. But to her disappointment, the giant moose simply turns its head and walks away to munch on the nearest bush of grass, completely ignoring the novice traveler. It’s not like Deborah herself expects a bloody fight out of bloodlust, it’s just rare for her to encounter a monster that doesn’t want to have a piece of her.

So there’s still some things out there that don’t want to kill me on sight. Reassuring…

Deborah puts on more guard as she continues her journey. The little event earlier was there to remind her there are still a lot of things beyond the walls of Melas that she does not know about, and not all of them would be as benign as the giant moose earlier. This isn’t the world she knows from words written in the library’s books, this is the real world of Airumel that she can see and feel and experience. The more she travels, the more the world’s mysteries will be unraveled, and Deborah won’t let herself be caught off guard when that happens.

The rest of today’s journey remains uneventful, aside from the sceneries and the occasional encounters with native creatures. By the time night falls, Deborah has already made a camp inside a small cave she found.

-That should do it…

A glittering bonfire, burning away the woods she gathered from nearby. Not like Deborah herself needs the light and the warmth, but the warmth of fire for some reason always make her feel at ease.

That’s…not a good thing when I thought about it.

Deborah reminds herself how her fire was the thing that caused the numerous death in the aftermath of the siege of Melas. Those memories when she went berserk are starting to return to her the more time passes. For the time being, she remembers the fight against the heroes of the Alliance, how her friends came to her aid, how she failed them by selfishly relying on her own power and was consumed by it, causing untold deaths and destruction for a brief moment of foolishness. Deborah still struggles to remember how that mess got solved, or how she fell into a coma that leads to the current exile to Suntos. These gaps in her memory probably caused by her awakening today. Maybe in time they will return, eventually…

I hope so…

Deborah finds herself laying her head and the rest of her body on the cold and stiff ground of the cave, with no blanket or a pillow to make her rest a bit more comfortable. Aside from the letters, there aren’t any survival tools that came along with the boat. Deborah only has her own hands as the tools she can use for her survival. Not like Deborah expected this whole journey to be a picnic in the park, but the lack of proper tools doesn’t help her already low opinion on her legal guardian Nilrem.

Well…it can’t be helped…

Deborah stops her mental complain. If this is her punishment for all the destruction she caused, then it is certainly not cruel enough. Deborah stares at the burning fire, before her eyes start dimming and finally closed as Deborah falls into sleep.

…

Deborah washes her face by the bank of a river. The water is shallow, barely reaching her knees, then again Deborah is a girl taller than most girls. The water looks clean enough to drink, so Deborah satisfies her thirst with the river water.

Another uneventful morning, with nothing of note ever since her departure from that small cave. It starts to feel strange for Deborah when things around her don't actively want to kill her, unlike the nature beyond the walls of Melas, which Deborah experienced without a need to go outside of the walls thanks to the Darkwood forest confined within Melas’s boundaries. Maybe it’s a kind of homesick, Deborah thought.

Either way, monster attack is currently the least of her problems, there is another that requires her full attention: provisions for traveling. Although the lack of water or food won’t kill her outright, Deborah can still experience thirst and hunger. Deborah can temporary satisfies her thirst with the river water, but her stomach is another matter.

For once, I regret being picky in what to eat…

Deborah’s favorite food is steak. Of course, it’s not like a perfectly well done serving of steak would grow in the root of trees for her to find. Would be good if Deborah can conjure a piece of steak out of thin air with her magic, but if people can create food with magic alone there won’t be any suffering in the world.

After deciding she will search for whatever available on the road, Deborah starts to cross the river in order to resume her second day on her journey. According to the map, it would only takes another day of traveling from this river onwards to reach the Great Steppe. Normally, it costs three or four days for travelers to reach this destination through the hinterland, but since Deborah traveled alone, combined with her own incredible constitution, the traveling time has been cut in half.

-This looks edible.

As Deborah continues walking to her destination, she finds a tree by the road, with colorful berries growing on its branches. Tempted by the sight of food, Deborah picks several berries off the tree and eats them all...only to quickly spits them out of her mouth.

-Too bitter!

The last thing Deborah expects in colorful berries is for them to taste like mud. Then again, food in Melas castle always taste like mud. While Deborah certainly can eat all the berries if her stomach demands it, but it would be too much torture for her tongue, so Deborah passes the idea and continues searching for something else to eat.

But the more time passes, the more futile her search becomes. Deborah has no way to know which plants are edible and which are not. At a time like this, Deborah wishes she read more books about survival skills rather than history books and novels. It’s almost noon, Deborah can already feel the toll her hunger put on her.

I really have to hunt something, haven’t I?

No work, no eat, Deborah understands it that much, despite being pampered with free meals back when she was still a student of Melas. Deborah have read books about the adventurers of old, and how they sustained themselves on their travel by hunting animals like rabbits. Deborah already knows she has no luck with animals, but if she can’t fill her stomach by chewing grass, the only option she has left is to hunt something down and kill it, and hope for it to turn out edible afterward.

Deborah takes a detour and walks deeper inside the forest, at locations she thinks most likely for animals to gather. Of course, no animals show up just as how Deborah expected them to be. Deborah is aware her presence alone is enough to ward animals away from her, the aura that comes with being a live dragon, it reminds animals and monsters that who is their superior, only the most foolish or powerful animals and monsters can resist a dragon’s presence and don’t flee away like vermin. That is, however, not a useful ability to possess when Deborah wants animals to appear for her to hunt them.

“Sometimes I have to remind myself I’m still a mage, really…”

When her fists fail to solve her problems, Deborah decided to use her gift with magic to answer her troubles instead. She finds an ideal location to hide, chants a spell and draws a circle with her soul energy to erect a barrier, one with the ability to hide her presence and keeps her dragon aura in check. And when the barrier is complete, Deborah enters the circle with a purple light dome above it, sits down and waits.

Time passes as Deborah’s patience grows thin while her stomach continues its rebellion. It’s already past high noon, and still no signs of animals crossing the path. Deborah sighs as she tries to contain her growling stomach.

Maybe I should just rush to the Aherin tribe and hope they can spare me some food…

The problem is how can Deborah endure her hunger until she meet them. It’s not like she’ll die without food or water, but lacking them would make her travel a lot slower as she tries to fight the feeling of hunger and thirst. Maybe it’s about time she learns how to pray if she wants her prey to appear.

But it turns out prayers aren’t needed after all. There’s a rumbling sound in the bushes, and from there, a pair of grey rabbits come out for a stroll. Seems like the barrier worked, as they don’t run away despite Deborah being nearby. But her barrier only helps to hide her presence, if the rabbits get closer, they will find out a predator is waiting for her chance, and run away before Deborah can give chase.

I guess it’s time to work up my magic again.

Magic alone is all Deborah needs when there aren’t any other tools available. Deborah rises her hand and chants a spell. She doesn’t want something destructive, it would only make her food a lot harder to cook and eat afterward. For now, her best choice is a capturing spell. It only takes a blink of an eye for Deborah to complete her spell without making any loud sound. Above the pair of rabbits, a small spatial cage made from soul energy appears out of thin air and falls down toward the animals. One rabbit is quick enough to dodge the cage, but the other isn’t so lucky. The small cage traps the rabbit inside, when it tries to escape, the cage pushes it away without harming it. The same applies to outside interference, as the other rabbit helplessly tries to free its friend in vain, only to run away as the predator reveals herself from her hiding place.

“Finally…”

Deborah approaches the cage she conjured. As she reaches her hand toward the cage, the cage automatically opens its upper part and allows Deborah to grab the rabbit inside.

“I’m so sorry.”

Says Deborah as she places her thumb at the rabbit’s chest. The rabbit struggles to escape her grip, but soon it quickly finds its attempt to escape her grasp is futile. Her thumb is already in position, when enough strength is applied, it would generate a force as strong as a hammer, enough to crush the rabbit’s chest, instantly killing it without giving it time to feel pain. That is presuming Deborah still wants to actually do the deed.

“No, no! Don’t give me that look! You’re only making it harder to me!”

The grey rabbit stops struggling, instead, it stares at Deborah with its puppy eyes, trying to appeal to its predator for a chance to live. Deborah has her chance to quickly finish her job, but now, her blunder allowed the rabbit a chance to attack her softer side.

“It won’t work. I have killed men before, what makes you think I can’t kill a rabbit like you?”

Says Deborah. It is true, Deborah have killed many men before she arrived here. Tough as nail, brave and honorable soldiers, fighting for a good cause, but Deborah killed them all for invading her home. Comparing to that, killing a rabbit for food is childplay, especially an innocent rabbit who have led a peaceful life in the forest, together with its family and friends waiting back home, but fate is cruel, it allowed a blood thirsty dragon to make her way to this forest, for a chance encounter during its stroll that leads to its impending death.

“…I will do it! I will!”

But, right at that moment, before Deborah’s thumb crushes the rabbit’s chest, a flash of memory appears inside her head.

The face of her familiar, Akuma, who’s standing in the middle of a field of snow. There is a trail of blood flowing out of his mouth, yet his eyes are so peaceful as he looks into Deborah’s own eyes. A smile appears on his lips. And then, the young man falls to the ground, with Deborah’s right arm sliding through the hole she made on his chest. As Deborah stares at the bloodied right arm protected by her dragon scale, the flash of memory ends right there, returning to the same clean arm that is getting a hold on the innocent rabbit.

A sweat drops from Deborah’s cheek. The vision is so vivid as if it was real. Or maybe it was, only until now that Deborah remembers it, about what she did that day.

Deborah closes her eyes and bites her lips. Her grip loosen, and the rabbit takes that very brief chance to escape her grasp and rushes back to the forest. But Deborah doesn’t give chase after her dinner, she only stands there and stares at her clean arms. There aren’t any smell of blood, yet somehow Deborah can still smell the scent lingering on her arms, something even water can’t washes away. In other word, guilt.

Deborah puts her right arm on her chest. She feels nothing except the stillness of her inner body. Blood may flows inside her chest, but her heart is no longer beating, or rather, she gave it to someone else since it was the only way to save that person. The sudden revelation makes Deborah forget her hunger, filling it with guilt and doubt instead, with a mix of fear.

Am I going to let my hands bloodied again?

Deborah leaves the area and continues on her journey. There is no point to begin another hunt.

…

Night falls. There isn’t any cave around this time, so Deborah made camp near a small cliff. She rests her back to a tree and silently sits there to watch the burning camp fire. Still no luck in finding food, and Deborah has already tried her luck with all the edible plants she found. At this point she may as well be reborn as a herbivore.

Deborah’s stomach growls again. She basically abandoned her quest for food, and relies on her chance to find the Aherin tribe instead. By tomorrow, she’ll arrive at the Great Steppe if the map is to be trusted. When she finally reach the steppe, it won’t take very long to find the nomadic tribe. That is to say if Deborah can make it through the night with an empty stomach.

In an attempt to entertain herself through the boring night, Deborah takes out the golden ring that came with the envelope. The Ring of Thought Transference, Nilrem called it. Sometimes even Deborah forgets Nilrem is an Archsage, she always thought Nilrem is a witch, not the magical kind, but in the bad meaning people gave the witches in folklore. Old hags who eat children and make demonic rituals. Then again, Nilrem is a witch living in the demon continent. Eating children and making demonic rituals seem normal in the demon’s land.

“Still…he has the same one, hasn’t he?”

The way Nilrem wrote in her letter indicates that her familiar is still alive, despite the thing she did to him that only until now does she remember. If she puts this ring into her finger, she will be able to communicate with him despite their distance. But assuming she wants to talk with her familiar, what would she talk about? Ask how well is his health? How’s the weather there? Apologize for putting a hole in his chest, assuming he even remember that?

“…”

Deborah stares at the ring before she closes her eyes, all while gripping the ring with her hand. She’s scared of talking to him. What would he even say to her if she does try and talk to him. Will he blame her for causing his near death experience? Or thanking her for saving him? She’s more afraid of the latter than the former. It would be fine to blame her, she deserves it, but she understands her well familiar enough to know he’ll scold her for her foolishness first, then try to reassure the situation by thanking her. And she can’t accept it, not after everything she did.

“Damn it…”

Deborah mumbles. She is here for a reason, not repeating that reason is another reason of hers. One day, she’ll have to confront him eventually, but until then, she needs to focus on her current task to reach the Aherin tribe, everything else is irrelevant.

With her resolve hardened, Deborah decides to put the ring back to her pocket and prepares to sleep. But at that very moment, her hunger strikes. Deborah feels her arms weaken from her growling stomach. And in a moment of carelessness, the golden ring slips away from Deborah’s hand and rolls itself to edge of the cliff, before falling down to the darkness underneath.

“No no no no no no!”

Deborah hurriedly takes off and runs after the ring. With no hesitation, Deborah jumps off the cliff without any regard to the height. Lucky for her, the bottom is only about three meters deep, Deborah has no difficulty landing on the ground. The clinking sound of the rolling golden ring stops, it means it is somewhere in this dark bottom of the cliff. Deborah thinks this is a pain, but at the very least, the ring isn’t lost to the dark. Even though her eyes can still see in the dark, Deborah finds it more familiar to have a fire by her side to light the way. With a ball of fire hovering on her hand, Deborah starts her search for the golden ring entrusted to her, her remaining link to the world she left behind.

It doesn’t take long to find a shiny ring with the help of fire in the dark. It is sitting there waiting for Deborah to pick it up, which she did and quickly put it into her pocket for safekeeping.

That’s one thing done…

The other is to climb back to the cliff above, which isn’t that hard for Deborah.

But Deborah suddenly finds herself a company, in the form of a wild boar charging at her with full speed.

“Ahhh!”

Its sudden appearance doesn’t give Deborah any window of time to dodge or retaliate, and she finds her stomach being pierced by its tusks. The sheer size of its tusks is roughly the same as a broadsword, that alone speaks volume about the black furred boar’s own size.

Having Deborah’s stomach pierced and makes her vomit blood don’t seem to be enough for the wild monster boar, it runs away on all four and rams Deborah’s back into the bottom of the cliff. The more it rams her to the stone walls, the more the tusks sink deeper into her stomach, until it fully pierces through her hardened flesh and sticks the edge out through her back, leaving blood flowing out of her mouth like a river. But it does not stop, the wild monster boar has no intention to stop when there is still some life in Deborah’s breath.

And the boar’s failure to kill Deborah will become its own undoing, like many who tried the same before it.

“WILL YOU KNOCK IT OFF!?”

Fueled by pain and anger, Deborah throws a punch at the boar’s head with all her strength. The punch instantly crushes the boar’s skull, killing it without giving it the time to feel its impending doom. The monster boar falls down, its corpse lays there twitching before rigor mortis eventually kicks in. With a swift hand chop, Deborah breaks the boar’s tusks and escapes from the fallen boar’s grip of her. When she manages to stand up, Deborah pulls out the remaining tusk stuck inside her abdomen and throws it away. Blood flows out of her wound like a fountain, but eventually, Deborah’s body heals itself like everytime she is injured, with a fire mending the pierced hole back to normal, revealing the Dark Seal marking her as Anul’s chosen on where her bellybutton should be.

“I guess dinner is taken care of.”

While she is angry about the sudden attack, the boar’s appearance and death has ended her search for food to fill her stomach. She doesn’t like killing it, but it was rightful self-defend, there isn’t anything else she can do about it. Leaving the corpse here to rot would be wasteful, she can make better use of it as food to sustain herself.

“There we go…”

With the support of her strength, Deborah carries the boar on her back. It will be a pain to bring something this big along with her on the road to climb back, but it’s not something Deborah can’t handle. Physical problems are easy to solve, social problems however are a pain to deal with, and ever since her familiar’s summoning, they only start to stack up more and more. But leaving that aside, the only desire Deborah wants right now is to have her fill with this boar.

But on the road back to the cliff, Deborah encounters another set of problem. Two monster boars, with the same black fur and huge tusks. The only problem is…

...they are piglets. Small and ignorant of the cruel reality in front of them. They oink at Deborah, as if asking why their mother is lying on her back motionlessly like a dead corpse. Deborah takes a quick look around and finds a small cave enough to be the nest for a family of boars. Only then does she understand everything.

It was trying to protect its territory…

Deborah’s presence in the bottom of the cliff threatened the mother boar, which prompted it to assault her in surprise before she can bring harm to its children. It’s simple enough, but Deborah realized it too late, even though the circumstance doesn’t allow her to have an understanding. But if Deborah didn’t let her anger control her, then maybe…

“...”

Deborah stays silent and brings the mother boar’s corpse along with her, leaving the piglets behind in the bottom of the cliff. Following the animal trail likely used by the boars, Deborah makes it to her camp site. She puts the boar down, and proceeds to skin the boar. She have read some instructions on preparing wild animals for cooking before, so while she isn’t confident of her skill, at the very least she knows the basic of what to do. When the meat is prepared, she roasts it by the camp fire, and waits until the meat is well done…

...all while tears are flowing down from her eyes. Consider that she just killed a mother of two, drags her away and makes her the killer’s food, while the children are left to fend for themselves and subjected to the mercy of nature. That thought alone makes Deborah scared of herself. She looks at her hands, dirtied from all the preparations made for the cooking, with the smell of the boar’s blood still lingers in her fingers. Deborah understands this is how her hands truly look like, bloodied from the dreams and hopes she broke from those whom she killed, and she killed a lot, and will do it a lot more in the future as it is something inevitable. That is her destiny, that is her nature, and she can’t escape it, even when she is exiled to the middle of nowhere.

And the only thing Deborah knows is to accept it, and keep moving forward, even with the blood trail she leaves behind in her wake. Because the young dragon doesn’t know anything better.

The meat becomes charred when Deborah still falls deep in thought. By the time Deborah realizes it, the boar meat is already past the well done stage. Deborah prefer her meat well done, but this piece of meat has already past the edible state.

But nonetheless, Deborah takes a bite and chews the meat off. It doesn’t matter how bad it is, Deborah still has to eat them all. Because this is her responsibilty, and because she doesn’t want to see another life wasted because of her. To give the boar’s death a meaning, she will eat all of it, to make the boar becomes her strength and stamina, to fuel Deborah for the upcoming tomorrow. That is the least she can do to make a meaning out of this charade.

The long night ended, and dawn arrives. When she is awake from her sleep, the first thing she does is to reach the bottom of the cliff once again. The boar’s nest is still there, with the piglets still healthy for the time being. Deborah has no malicious intention with the piglets, but she feels some sort of responsibility for the thing she caused to their mother.

And so, Deborah chants a spell. Soul energy gathers, and together with the ancient words coming out of her mouth, Deborah conjures a barrier blocking the entrance to the piglets’ nest. It will allow the piglets to come and go without any reservation, but it will block the path of any other predators intending to feast on the flesh of the young boars. Deborah can’t stay to make sure they survive, the only thing she can do right now is to offer them some protection, and leave the rest for the law of nature, the survival of the fittest.

"It's all up to you guys now..."

Deborah turns her back to the boar’s nest, and continues on her journey to reach the Great Steppe, where the Aherin tribe awaits.