As Roa winced it the blunt pain on his sides, he turned around only to be met by a flurry of fists to his face. Roa weakly threw a punch, only to get his arm twisted and dislocated. An ear-piercing scream filled the air as he collapsed onto the ground.

Towering above Roa was another human male in his mid-30s. The human was tall and frail, resembling a scarecrow. His hair was haggard, but the rest of him was shaved and neat. His golden eyes gleamed of something miserly.

This human was breathing heavily, surprised by how easy it was to heavily injure Roa.

Fate was furious. He leapt out of Roa’s pocket and attacked the stranger.

“The hell is this.”

With a simple swat, the human had sent Fate flying a few meters. When he confirmed the random blur didn’t appear again, he grabbed the sacks Roa was holding and nervously walked towards the village.

Roa was shivering and gasping in pain, barely hanging on to his consciousness.

“Why am I so weak?!”

He faintly laughed, then remembered he had a belt full of potions. Forcing himself to turn tilt his head up, he saw that all but the potion on the far left had broken and spilled from the fall.

“It’s worth a try.”

He groaned, and sat as upright as he could, wincing as his left arm hung limply. Roa uncorked the potion from its glass vial, and began to drink. He sputtered and gagged, but he forced himself to swallow.

“Tastes worse than medicine.”

Clenching his teeth, Roa forcefully relocated his shoulder, enduring the pain without uttering a sound. The potion had cleared up most of the bruises on his face.

Still shivering, Roa got up and wiggled his body to check for any other damages.

After confirming that his body was almost as good as before, he found Fate lying unconscious nearby, and put him in his pocket.

“I still have to finish gathering herbs and food.”

Luckily, the man had only taken the sacks that were filled, leaving the empty ones behind.

Roa arrived back at Darvin’s cot a few hours after the sun had gone down. All the lights in the village were off, save for Darvin’s cot.

He knocked on the door, and Darvin came out grumbling.

“Who’s haughty enough to disturb a ma- oh Roa, what took you so long?”

The look on Roa’s face gave the impression that he had a story to tell, so Darvin let him in to talk.

Sitting, Roa placed the sacks he worked hard to replace on the table before he discussed the encounter.

It didn’t take long for Darvin to put on a more serious look.

“I see, so that’s what happened.”

Darvin had a disappointed look on his face, while his eyes were shooting daggers into the sky.

“The person who injured you is someone I know.”

Sighing, Darvin began to tell his own story.

“You are not the first human to encounter this village. In fact, during my own lifetime, there has been one other human, whose name is Binor. I was the one who found him actually, dressed in a worn-out soldier’s attire. He told me that the humans were fighting a civil war and he had ran away from the battle.

Although he did have some mysteries about him, he was nice to most of the villagers, and we eventually came to accept him. I guess he thought that you being here would ruin his position as the only human in the village.”

“Now that I think about it, how come there are so few humans here?” Roa quipped.

“We have a divine barrier that makes it so only those who would not harm the village would be able to find their way here. If someone had malicious intent, they would subconciously take a detour away from here.”

Darvin got up from the chair that was on the opposite side of the table, and headed out towards the village.

“I’m going to have to have a talk with Binor.”

Before Darvin fully left, he threw a bright red bottle at Roa.

“This should heal you up completely.”

When Darvin had left, Roa clutched the potion he caught and thought.

He thought about how he couldn’t fight back.

He thought about how Fate was easily blown away as he could only lay there broken.

He thought about how useless he was.

He thought about the fear he had of this happening again.

Anger boiled up within Roa, and he let out an anguished cry.

He took the herbs he had retrieved and ripped them into pieces, and began to wring the herbs as hard as he could. He rung, and rung, and rung, until his arms were too sore. But he kept on going, venting out his anger on some plants that couldn’t fight back.

The tears that he didn’t notice dripping down his face had fell into a puddle on the floor made of the red herbs juices.

Sobbing, Roa just kept twisting the herbs, regardless of color, as the puddle slowly expanded. He cried himself to sleep sitting up.

---

Binor woke up late at night to a couple of angry raps on his door. He heard a familiar voice shouting behind the door.

“Open up before I kick it down!”

“Alright, alright, geez.”

Opening the door, Binor saw Darvin, and was immediately all smiles.

“What brings you to my humble abode Darvin?”

“Enough with the act, Binor. I know what you did to our new human friend.”

Binor’s smile faded, but lit up again.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about Darvin.”

“I said drop the act. It was obviously you who hurt the new human. I don’t know what you’re up to, but you better drop whatever it is and stop before we kick you out.”

“You trust him, over me? I thought we were good friends Darvin.”

“We were until you started being all sneaky at night. We’re all watching you Binor, we’re all watching you.”

Darvin stared daggers at Binor before he turned around and swiftly walked away. Binor, who stood at his doorway, didn’t drop his smile.

“We’ll see who gets the last laugh when I’m through with the lot of you.”

When Darvin opened the door to his house, he saw hundreds of shredded herbs lying around a sleeping Roa. Darvin gasped when he saw the puddle of the floor.

Instead of the usual red or blue coloration when the reds were mixed, a light purple had spread across the puddle. He stuck a finger into the puddle, and licked the drops that had stuck on.

“By the gods, this puddle heals both health and mana…”

Darvin quickly scooped as much of the puddle into puddle as he could, and cleaned up the herbs. Not wanting to disturb sleeping Roa that sat on the floor, Darvin pulled out a seat from under the table filled with the purple vials, sat down, and placed his head on the table.

--

When Roa woke up, his whole body was burning from soreness. The potion that Darvin had given him rested on the rightmost part of his belt, as he noticed it was more pure than the two Sil had given him. Darvin heard the groans that came from Roa, and brought him some tea.

“Thanks.”

“Are you well rested?”

“Not really, still sore from yesterday.”

When the small talk between Darvin and Roa was over, Darvin began a more serious conversation.

“So, how did you make a potion that could heal both health and mana?”

“Huh?”

Darvin brought over one of the many plastic vials that held a light purple mixture inside. He swirled the potion in front of Roa with his thumb and index finger on the top of the vial.

“This. This purple potion is a combination of a red and blue potion.”

“And you’re telling me I made it?”

“Well, who else could’ve made this?”

“...You?”

“Funny. I grabbed this mixture from the puddle that was at your feet last night.”

As Roa recalled the previous night’s memories, he could only scrunch his face.

“I don’t remember the puddle being purple.”

“But you did make the puddle right?”

“All I did was squeeze the red and blue herbs dry.”

Darvin quietly took out a red and blue herb from out of thin air, and wrung both dry right in front of Roa. When the juices dripped onto the ground and mixed, the red engulfed the blue, finalizing into a blood red puddle.

“Did you do anything else.”

“I don’t think so?”

“...”

“Whatever. Your task for today is to grab the same types of herbs you retrieved yesterday.”

“Yessir.”

“Which reminds me. You know you only picked the best herbs out there right? How did you know which herbs were the best?”

“I... picked the ones without imperfections?”

“Do you know how hard it is to tell imperfections on herbs? It’s like trying to find a bump on a sanded down table.”

Roa could only shrug. To him, the imperfections were extremely obvious. The herbs at Sil’s place were all uniform, and he tried he base what he picked off those. The red and blue herbs were bent at a 45 degree angle, while the leaves had perfect symmetry.

“You can stop zoning out now. I’m going to get food, are you coming?”

“I guess.”

While walking to the wooden longhouse in the center of the village, Roa observed that the village itself wasn’t very big. There were at most 30 houses in total, but the place itself was lively. The demon villagers were bustling about, occasionally glancing in his direction before going back to what they were doing. What seemed odd to Roa, however, was a purple rippling circle on the side of the wooden longhouse. People were going in and out of the circle, but they were always different people.

Entering the longhouse, Roa was greeted by the smell of roasting meat. Emelia immediately noticed the two, waving at them to come over.

“Hey Roa, good to see you again!”

“Emelia, where’s my greeting?”

“Oh come on you old man, I see you almost everyday. At least Roa is a fresh sight for sore eyes.”

“Yea yea, whatever. What’s for breakfast today?”

“Dragon shish kabob of course. There was so much meat from yesterday that we could eat it breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week and still have leftovers. We already started turning some into jerky.”

Emelia placed a dozen kabobs the size of an arm on Darvin’s plate, while Roa got one.

Darvin looked at Roa’s plate and furrowed his brows.

“Are you trying to starve him?”

Darvin felt something heavy hit him on his left horn. Looking up, he saw Emelia twirling the blunt end of a skewer.

“Does it look like I’m blind? I clearly saw you eating all of this kid’s food yesterday. Seems to me you knew humans didn’t eat as much as we devils do, and used it to your advantage.”

Darvin clicked his tongue and walked away disappointed. Before Roa chased after Darvin, Emelia whispered into his ear.

“I have no idea how he’s able to eat that much food.”

After a very meaty breakfast, Darvin and Roa parted ways. The village had no fences or gates, so Roa had to estimate the direction based off the way he wandered yesterday from the back of Darvin’s house.

Strolling about, Roa ran into the outskirts of a forest. Seeing a cluster of red coloring on the ground deeper in, he walked into the forest. When Roa walked enough so that the plains behind him couldn’t be seen, he felt a tingling sensation jolt through his body. He looked everywhere, but couldn’t determine where that feeling came from.

On cue, Fate rose from Roa’s pocket right as they passed into the forest. Looking at each other, Roa simply shrugged. Walking towards the red patch, Roa discovered that it was not red herbs, but a spot in the forest that was colored red.

What was off about the red spot was that it reflected light to the point where it was easily visible from far away, and that all the trees were cleared away from the location. Not know what it did, or what to do about it, Roa decided to walk back a bit and continue along the outskirts of the forest, once again feeling a tingling sensation. He passed by two more red spots that were similarly spaced out until he saw a clump of red and blue herbs in the horizon toward the village.

Just as he was about to exit the forest, Roa tripped on a large root, face-planting into the dirt. Pushing himself off the ground with the leverage of his arms, the rock he carried in his pocket slipped out.

Since he had fallen from the sky out of the Gresknov dungeon, Roa completely forgot that he had carried the rock the entire time. The rock shook a little bit when it touched the ground. As Roa picked up the rock, he felt that the sharp juts from the rock had smoothened a little bit. When Roa went to reach for the rock, compared to his hand, it was a lot smaller than before. It was originally the size of his palm, and fit his pocket just enough to not be noticeable. Now, the rock was the size of a skipping stone. Gripping the rock with his thumb and index finger, Roa noticed that the rock was weightless even though it had made a thud on the dirt.

Something in his head told him to keep it with him.

It was always something in his head, but Roa knew it wasn’t his intuition. It was as if something was speaking out to him, guiding him along his path. Although he had poor stats, coupled with the ridicule of everyone from his world, the voice inside his head never failed him. The voice was with him even in the other world, just never bothered him as frequently as now.

Looking up from the rock, Roa saw a shadowy figure standing a few trees away mumbling to himself. Putting the rock back into the pocket, which now held a lot of empty space, Roa crept towards the figure. His sneaking was immediately noticed by the figure, who twisted his body.

“You aren’t being very sneaky. Come out!”

The voice sounded very familiar.