I’m going to go hunting. …Why? We might still have food left from the tower, but eeventually it will prolbably run out. It’s better if we stock food. …But there’s only demonic beasts outside. Are they even edible? In the village I used to live in, we ate orcs and tainted boars before, there are plenty of edible demonic beasts around here. …Can I come with you? Why? …To see you hunt, obviously. I’m interested in seeing you fight, remember?

In the middle of training, Reed suddenly turned around and said so to Anna. Then, the both of them went out to hunt.

After coming across an orc, Reed hid himself behind a tree and looked over at the orc’s, thinking:

“Attack”

When this thought crossed his head, suddenly four wolves came out together and ran towards the orc, biting its legs off and making him fall down to the ground.

Reed came out of hiding and smashed open he orc’s head, taking out his ether.

Looking over at Anna, who peered curiosly at him, Reed said:

Anna, there’s something I want you to see. …?

After saying so, Reed lifted the ether over his mouth and...

…Wha…?

Ate it in front of Anna, making her speechless. Reed had decided after seeing Anna playing around with the wolves yesterday, that she could be trusted. Reed had an weird sense of trust after spending so much time with wolves.

…Are you crazy? Don’t you know that’s gonna kill you? Let’s find out then.

Anna looked dubious, but seeing that nothing was happening, she eventually sighed out loud:

…You are one weird person. How did you survive? Supposedly, your mana would counteract the infected mana of the demonic beast and you would end up exploding from inside out. Really? I lost count of how many ethers I ate already, but nothing ever happened to me. …Huh. That’s interesting. I should probably study this later…

Mumbling the last part so that Reed couldn’t hear her, Anna kept staring at Reed intensely. Reed looked curiously at Anna, and said:

We should try and figure this out when we go back. For now, let’s keep hunting.

Reed hunted some orcs and tainted boars, and eventually he and Anna returned to the tower.

…Your cooperation with those wolves is impressive. How do you do it? I have no idea. After they started to follow me, eventually I was able to mentally communicate with them, just like this. I am thinking it might have to do with me eating their ether. …It’s possible. I’ve heard that giant ants have a similar ability, so maybe the wolves do too? If so, then you might have assimilated that ability from the ether.

While walking back, Reed and Anna tried to come up with some kind of answer to the mystery.

When they arrived, Anna immediately went to the magic research room, and Reed went into the library, both doing their own things.

Reed picked up the diary from yesterday, flipped the pages to where he left off, sat down and started reading:

Serion planned on reviving Seiria.

Coming up with a plan, he immediately started to put with into action. But first he would need a guinea pig, someone he could use to further his studies.

He had found the perfect candidate in his son. When Reed was still young, Serion started performing experiments on him, hiding it from his village.

He was going to compile the results of his studies in multiple books, and using that knowledge with healing magic, he was going to create the ultimate magic of the healing branch:

A revival magic.

Starting with small cuts and healing those, Serion’s experiments grew more and more as time passed.

After a while, Serion noticed something. His son was incredibly resistant.

Even though he was going easy on the beginning, Reed would feel practically no pain from his first experiments.

He only started screaming after he had gotten extreme. The first time Serion opened up his son’s chest, that’s when his first scream was.

When he started screaming, Serion started to develop a pain-reducing drug and spell. He thought he had enough knowledge to do it.

Succeeding, Serion then made sure that his son would not scream during the experiments by threatening him with death. But after some time it seemed his son decided to not scream of his own accord. Probably the despair had broken him.

Everything was going well, until one day his experiments came to a halt.

His son managed to flee from him, somehow.

Considering he probably went through the forest, Serion thought he probably died to some demonic beast already. If so, Serion would need to come up with a new guinea pig for himself.

Then, he came up with a great idea.

What if he used his own body for the experiments?

So began Serion’s new batch of experiments. Putting himself at risk, Serion did a variety of things to his body, with spell and ritual ready to fire off when needed.

After series and series of experiments, Serion eventually arrived at a multiple miracle formulas, all of which he decided to publish to magic confederation in order to get money, and further his research.

The magic confederation was exhilarated. Someone had managed to further research on a difficult type of magic, healing magic.

Praises upon praises came towards Serion. He got money, he got fame, he had multiple statues built for him across the nation.

He was known as a saint.

Eventually, The king, pressured by the magic confederation, built a research a station for him.

It was a tower. It contained everything Serion needed to further his experiments.

But Serion wasn’t satisfied. There was one thing he couldn’t do to his body, that he needed to do in order to advance his research even more.

He needed to kill someone, and test his theories.

Arriving at this point, Reed once again stopped reading. Night had already arrived, he needed to go sleep to wake up early tomorrow.

Going up the stairs, Reed saw Anna reading a book, apparently not noticing what time it was.

He called out to her:

Anna! It’s already night, we need to sleep for tomorrow morning. …I am going, just a little bit more… …Okay, I get it. I am going, alright?

Getting up from her seat, Anna put the book back into place and went towards Reed.

e put Pu…Let’s go… Is there something wrong? ….,,……

Reed looked down at Anna, noticing her diminutive stature for the first time. He looked back at her eyes that stared at him curiously, and…

Put his hand on her head. She wasn’t wearing her wizard hat today.

…What are you doing? Nothing much. I just felt like doing this. …Stop it, you cape freak. I want to pet you. …What in the world?

Reed then started stroking Anna’s head.

Anna’s maintained her deadpan expression, but her cheeks blushed slightly.

Okay, that’s enough.

Feeling satisfied, Reed took his hand away from her head, and started to go up the stairs.

Anna, followed him, saying:

…Don’t you have any shame? Shame? Why do you ask? …It’s nothing…

Reed and Anna then had something to eat, and went to sleep.