The following day, Merlin still hadn’t given the rings to the girls. He found it a really embarrassing thing to do, and in his previous life, he had never gotten as far with a girl as to have to give her a ring, which made him really nervous. He was pondering about how to give them to the girls, when he heard his mother calling him. The expression in her face told Merlin that there was something going on, and that it was important.

Emelyn: Merlin, we need to talk!

Merlin: Yes, mother! What is it?

Emelyn: Merlin, you remember that about a month ago, I went to see a healer to ask for advice, which is when Lupa and Bastet’s kidnapping took place, don’t you?

Merlin: Hahaha, of course I remember, Mother. The faces of the city lord and the city guards when they saw the mess I had made were priceless! Totally worth it! Hahaha, but what’s the problem with it?

Emelyn: Your tendency to show off is a problem in itself, but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about!

Merlin: What is it, then?

Emelyn: Merlin, I could have cancelled the travel to the Lakium Forest, but you seemed to be really excited about it, so I hadn’t the heart to cancel it, so now that we’ve arrived, we’ll stay here two days and then return to Laklostia.

Merlin: Mother, why? I thought we’d stay here for a week or so!

Emelyn: Merlin… I’m truly sorry about it, but there is no way around it! My reason for consulting with that healer back in Delia City was that I had been feeling a little under the weather the previous days, so I wanted confirmation for something…

Merlin: What is it, mother? If you are sick you should have said so, we’d have stayed in Delia City until you recovered!

Emelyn: Hahaha, don’t worry Merlin, it’s not like that! It turns out that I’m pregnant, so we’ll be going to Laklostia, with your father, but you still have two days to enjoy the Lakium Forest! Just be careful with the magical beasts and monsters, right now we’re in a low danger zone, but it could get dangerous if you stray from the road too much!

Merlin couldn’t help but be moved by his mother’s actions. She could have decided to return to Laklostia as soon as she learnt about the pregnancy, yet she had chosen to wait a whole month in order to fulfill Merlin’s wish of visiting the Lakium Forest. Lupa and Bastet, after hearing about Emelyn’s pregnancy, they looked at her belly then at Merlin and then at their own, they suddenly blushed for no apparent reason and run to play with Adelle.

Merlin was left there, next to Emelyn, flabbergasted. *There is no way that they were thinking about that when they blushed, is there? It’s widely known that beastmen children mature faster on that respect, but they’re 5 years old, it’s impossible that they were thinking about that* thought Merlin *Yep, definitely impossible!*. Merlin then thought back at the events of Delia City and asked his mother about the aftermath, because as soon as the city guards arrested the slave dealer, he went with the three girls to buy sweets and make them forget about the kidnapping, so he had no idea of how the situation had been dealt with afterwards.

Merlin: Mother, back in Delia City, what happened after I was gone with the girls?

Emelyn: I had to clean up your mess, that’s what happened!

Merlin: Sorry, mother!

Emelyn: Hahaha, don’t worry, I’m not mad. In the end, your plan was the best option to make sure Lupa and Bastet were safe during the rescue, but as I said before, you tend to show off too much. The city Lord and the guards had a hard time believing that a 6-year-old boy could deal with two adult men the way you did, some of them even thought that you were a demon in disguise! It’s unusual enough that you have been appointed as an Earl at the age of six! Is it really necessary to be showing off your magic like that? The first time I caught you using magic you asked me to keep it a secret, so I thought you were smart enough to keep a low profile, but now I’m starting to doubt it!

Merlin: I’m really sorry, mother! It won’t happen again!

Emelyn: What’s done is done, I made sure to shut their mouths about the matter, but you must be more careful! Now, about the aftermath… Well, the other men of the organization were arrested and put into crime slavery as the slave dealer, you were lucky that they didn’t go to the basement while you were rescuing the girls, by the way!

Merlin: What about the slaves?

Emelyn: Practically all the slaves had been kidnapped and forced into slavery like Lupa and Bastet. We used the communication stone in the house of the city Lord to contact with the capital and check the slavery records there, but they were unregistered slaves, which meant that they had been illegally enslaved, or they were slaves who had been illegally introduced in the kingdom. Either way, they were released, but as most of them had lost their families in bandit raids before being enslaved, I had the city Lord send them to Laklostia. I think you said you were making it the capital of your territory, which would require the construction of several new buildings and staff for their management, so I thought that with that amount of work, you could use the extra hands!

Merlin: Thank you, mother! I hadn’t thought about that!

Emelyn: I guessed so! Now. Merlin, didn’t you have something to give to the girls?*No matter how powerful, a 6-year-old will always remain a kid. Fufufu*

Merlin: Ah, yes!

Merlin didn’t beat around the bush anymore. He approached the girls, distributed the rings, and he run into the forest out of embarrassment before the girls could even thank him for the rings. What he didn’t realize was that he was running towards one of the zones with monsters and magical beasts, and he ended up in the territory of the horned rabbits. Horned rabbits were among the weakest of monsters in the Lakium Forest, and usually even novice adventurers don’t have much trouble with them, but it was different with Merlin.

Merlin started fighting one of the horned rabbits with magic and he easily killed it with a simple spell, then he tried to fight another one with martial arts, but he got hit several times and ended having to use two fast-acting healing potions to recover. I his overconfidence, he was unprepared, and he quickly found himself surrounded by horned rabbits. Despite being able to deal with them with AOE spells, he was still in a tight spot.

He had trained his body and had confidence on his martial arts in case he used up all his mana, but he had failed to realize a simple fact that his current situation had made more evident than ever: the martial arts he knew had been developed to deal with human opponents, not with monsters. This meant that, aside from magic spells, he had no means to fight monsters, so his overconfident attitude from before was now gone. He thought that he had to find a way to train his skills against monsters, but dismissed those thoughts to concentrate on defending from the attacking horned rabbits.

Merlin looked around to see if there was any viable route of escape, but he didn’t find any. Merlin wondered *Am I gonna die here? My mana is almost depleted, if I don’t find a way out soon…*. Suddenly, Merlin saw the entrance of a cave 7ft above him, he grinned and used his ki strengthening on his legs, then, he jumped up, and with a backflip, Merlin managed to land inside the entrance of the cave.

He looked down, to the horned rabbits, and stuck out his tongue to them. He sat down and prepared himself to wait until they got bored and went away, then he’d go down and go back to the camping site with his mother and the girls. Seconds became minutes, and minutes became hours. After waiting for two and a half hours at the entrance of the cave, Merlin stood up. He had been cross-legged all the time, and his legs were numb, so the tried to use them a little while he made more time… after two and a half hours, the horned rabbits still hadn’t gone away, so he decided to explore the cave and see whether the cave was connected to a different exit.

Merlin hadn’t advanced more than 10yd into the cave, when he found the wall. The cave had turned out to be circular, and after he checked the wall of the cave in all directions, Merlin concluded that there was no other exit aside from the entrance he had used. Seeing that the horned rabbits were still outside the cave, Merlin decided to meditate to recover his mana. He went to the center of the cave and sat down to meditate.

After a while, Merlin realized that his meditation at that moment wasn’t as effective as it usually was, he wondered what the reason could be and it was then that he noticed a faint mana trace coming from the ground. That mana trace wasn’t there the first time he had checked out the cave, so the only logical explanation was that the faint mana trace had appeared after he had started meditating. If the ground beneath him had somehow absorbed part of his mana as he was meditating, that would explain both the sudden apparition of the faint trace of mana and why his meditation hadn’t been as effective as it usually was.

Merlin thought about it for a couple of minutes and then he started meditating again. When his mana reserves were filled at full capacity again, he stood up once more and looked at the ground. A magic circle made of pure condensed mana had appeared on the same spot he had previously been sitting, and it gave off a strange feeling of familiarity that Merlin couldn’t fully understand.

He tried to understand the composition of the magic circle, he thought that if he managed to do so, he’d be able to determine its function and why it was there. Magic circles were like software, they were different in their function, but all had an inherent pattern which allowed them to work on a certain operative system. On Klantea (the OS), the magic circles were always drawn following the same pattern: the element or elements needed for the spell on the center, and the runes which specified the function of the magic circle written forming an eight-pointed star around it. Tier 2 magic circles and onwards added rune lines inside the external border of the magic circle towards its center, the higher the number of additional lines, the higher the tier of the magic circle.

Merlin carefully observed the magic circle in front of him and thought that his mind was playing tricks on him. *That’s impossible! What kind of magic circle is this?!* thought Merlin, dumbfounded by what he was seeing. Following the theory behind the creation of magic circles, on the center of the magic circle should be represented one of the eight elements, but instead of any of those, what Merlin saw on the center of the magic circle in front of him was… the crest of Avalon Kingdom’s Royal family!

There were several things which didn’t make sense to him: a magic circle created with condensed mana (which was supposed to be impossible to create), a magic circle which instead of an element had a crest on its center (which wasn’t supposed to be functional), and finally, the location of the magic circle… why would had it been placed on a cave accessible to pretty much every person who passed by?

Merlin really couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

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