“Aaaaaaaah”

I sighed again as I was waiting in the living room of the lodgings with Jane and Oliver. We heard footsteps coming from outside, so we got up, ready to welcome our new companions.

The door opened and three people entered, the first was Ron, the second was a blond boy, with a trained physique and a confident demeanor. He looked around and then said:

“David?!”

He then walked to me and put his arm around my shoulder.

“Man, I was hoping you would be here. Hahahaha later we got to go drink something together, I have so much I want to talk you about.”

I was about to reply, but then I saw the third person.

She was a beautiful girl wearing a dress and thigh-high stockings both white with golden adornments, she also seemed healthy and well-nourished, she was probably a noble. She had pale skin and white long hair so I guessed she was an albino.

What stroke me the most was her face though, I was sure I had already seen her face before. Last night I saw Kaguya's face for an instant before she turned it around and it resembled her face a lot. No, now that I thought about it Kaguya never had a well-defined face, while last night, her face was unusually defined. There was only one explanation: last night I saw this girl upon that rock and in my half-asleep state I thought she was created by my mind.

When our eyes crossed each other, we looked each other for a few instants and, while she averted her face, I thought:

'HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK, OH SHIT, OH FUCK. I WANT TO BURY MYSELF, I WANT TO JUMP OUT OF THE WINDOW AND RUN AWAY, I'M DONE FOR, IT'S THE END. FUCK.'

I couldn't think of anything other than that at the moment.

“Man? David? Are you there?”

I continued to stare at the girl with my mouth open and empty eyes.

Mark looked at my face, looked at the girl, then smiled mischievously and said:

“Right, I should introduce my new friend to you. She's Erian, I met her while I was helping some folks back in Eshanor, she's known as the Saintess and she's very nice. Hey Eri, this is David, the childhood friend I told you about, go know each other.”

He then pushed me forward, right in front of Erian.

'What the hell are you doing, you stupid bastard!?'

We were standing awkwardly in front of each other, she was still keeping her eyes averted and I was desperately trying to figure out what to do.

'Okay, last night we looked at each other just for an instant and she was crying, maybe she didn't recognize me. Let's try acting as nothing happened.'

I forced myself to smile and said:

“Nice to meet you, I'm David, one of the heroes of Hoss. Even If we never met before, I heard great things about you. I heard you are extremely talented in holy magic, is that true?”

She blinked her eyes twice and then brought her eyes back on me.

“Ehm, nice to meet you for the first time too. Well, I'm good in all the holy magic but I'm specialised in healing, it's only in that field that I'm really talented. By the way, I heard great things about you even if I never met you before too. I heard the leader of Hoss's hero party was very talented in dark magic and also a promising strategist, it's you right?”

'All right, it seems she didn't recognize me.'

We started chatting and in the meanwhile I decided to use my blessing on her, just to have an ace in the sleeve in case she remembered.

What I saw was a silver-colored canary singing a lonely tune inside a big golden birdcage. I was seeing nothing but the cage, but then I tried to look around and my view zoomed out.

Now I could see all around the birdcage and what I saw surprised me.

The cage seemed suspended in the middle of an empty space and was surrounded by what I could only describe as chaos. It seemed like a frenetic magma of colours, twisting and buzzing. In the middle of that, I could see maws opening and closing. It was all around the cage, even behind me, but I couldn't tell how far it was, it was like looking at space and guessing how far the stars were without knowing how big they were. One of those maws was under the cage, moving towards it with its maw wide open. Like all the rest, I couldn't tell how far it was, but it was trying to get close to the cage.

I returned in me. As Erian was talking about some disease thing killing people in the capital, I donned my best “oh-yes-I'm-listening" face and thought about what I just saw.

I tried to grasp something I could use from that scene, but with scarce results.

This one wasn't simple like Lae's one, this one seemed much more complicated. But now I could at least tell that our saintess wasn't exactly all right.

It made sense since yesterday I saw her cry, maybe she was feeling trapped, but it was impossible to tell the reason why, for now.

I started to listen to Erian and heard her talk a bit about her charity in the capital of the empire, it seemed she was very into it.

Then, suddenly, Mark stopped talking with Oliver and Jane and uttered:

“I've got an idea!”

'Oh no, it always ends badly when he says this.'

“David, let's have a spar!”

I sighed.

I stopped my conversation with Erian and responded to Mark.

“Why?”

“Because it seems funny, I also want to see how strong you are. By the way, what's your blessing? Mine is to see the death of those around me five seconds ahead of time, I don't know if it works on me too though.”

'What?! That alone is amazing, if you could see yours too it would be fucking overpowered.'

“I can see a picture representing one's worst fear.”

'Oh my, I said it wrong again, I meant “I can see you fucker's whole minds represented in a scene.” I guess I took this bad habit from you, miss Alua.'

“Oh, that doesn't seem too useful.”

'Wait until I get charm magic, you stupid bastard.'

“It isn't as useful as yours but it can work pretty well with illusions.”

“So you use illusions uh. Okay, enough chatting, let's go sparring.”

And just like that, Mark dragged everyone to the training room.

I was standing in front of him, with a wooden sword in my right and a medium shield in my left, I couldn't use offensive magic and now I could use simple illusions even without a wand so I decided to use a bigger shield.

Mark had the exact same equipment, he too was a magic swordsman but he used holy martial arts and light magic. The buff of holy martial arts wasn't too strong but it came along with some automatic healing, making it ideal for prolonged battles. It also had the peculiarity to numb one's mind over time though, if taken too far it could lead the user to forget who they were, turning him into a selfless killing robot until they were knocked out. In the worst cases, people never recovered from the overuse of holy martial arts or magic and lost their selves.

The church justified this as the human mind being too weak to bear the attribute of the goddess, but to me, the holy attribute didn't seem too different from the demonic attribute.

Light magic on the other hand had plenty of different uses, just like dark magic. The light and dark attributes were the actualizations of the concepts of Everything and Nothing, they were very abstract concepts so those attributes had a very broad range of uses.

Every concept that derived from one of the original twos could be used to create spells or techniques. There was a catch though, those derivative concepts had to be paired with one derived from the opposite existential attribute. Some examples could be presence and absence or life and death. The other catch was that those derivative spells were less efficient than normal. It was a bit like using hybrid attributes in a very inefficient way.

Veteran adventurers mostly used them only as components for hybrid attributes; that was also my goal, light and dark were the attributes that could create the most hybrid attributes.

Also, differently from the holy and demonic attributes, that erased each other, the light and dark attributes strengthened the spells of the opposite attribute when near each other. I studied the light attribute myself, to raise my affinity with dark. I still didn't learn any spell though.

I couldn't tell how Mark would have used the light attribute, but the same was true for him.I raised my sword, ready to begin. Mark did the same.

Everyone was watching us, I didn't want to lose my face in front of everyone.

I launched myself forward, taking the initiative.

I got close to him and instead of using my sword, I bashed him with my shield. He blocked the hit with his shield but since he expected me to use the sword, he lost his balance.

I unleashed a curtain of illusory black smoke around us to confuse him even more, then used the Dark Vision enhancement technique on my eyes. This technique allowed my eyes to see clearly whatever was deprived of light, making me see in the dark.

I grinned, ready to finish our little spar right away, and slashed my wooden sword at Mark.

But he, instead of trying to block or dodge blindly, let himself fall to the ground. My slash passed right above his head, missing him.

“Damn.”

I was preparing to strike again but then I heard him chant.

“Light.”

Suddenly, I became blind. I hurriedly backed away and cancelled the dark vision.

I saw Mark, on his feet again, standing on guard outside the cloud of black smoke. A smile of challenge appeared on his face. He theatrically pointed his sword at me and said:

“Not bad, you almost got me there. You know, I think you might be the perfect rival for me.”

“Maybe you mean that YOU could be the perfect rival for ME.”

“Hahahaha, well, let me tell you, you fit perfectly as a rival character.”

“You bastard, now we'll see who's the protagonist.”

He was clearly joking but, for some reason, I was feeling very pissed off.

I resumed my assault and started using everything I could. I wanted to end the fight quickly since Mark's holy enhancement technique and my fire technique would put me more and more at a disadvantage as time passed but Mark kept his distance thanks to his good footwork and blocked everything with his shield infused with earth mana.

Soon my ki started to run out and I became tired. Mark then started to fight back and I had to block his strikes with my shield. I wasn't as good as him with shields and was continuing to lose ground, I needed to do something to turn the situation around.

I used the fire enhancement technique on my legs and took some distance from Mark. Continuing to fight him straightforwardly wasn't going to pay off, so I decided to take a risk.

I launched my sword against him, let go of the shield, and while he was keeping his shield in front of his eyes, I launched myself forward.

After he blocked the sword he lowered the shield and saw me approaching. He raised his sword, but he wasn't fast enough. I punched him in the face with an enhanced punch, trying to knock him off, but when my hand hit his face, it felt like I was punching a stone.

I looked at him and saw him grinning with my punch still touching his half-turned face. I realised he must have used the defensive earth enhancement technique to at least not get knocked out.

'If only I had I could have used my demonic technique I would have shown to this bastard who was the main character.'

That was the last thing I thought before Mark kicked me away, making me fall, and put his sword to my throat, winning the fight.

--Erian's point of view--

After Mark won the match, he and David both sat to the ground to rest themselves. Their match had been quite fierce for a spar so I decided to check if they needed any healing.

“Do any of you need healing?”

Mark raised his hand right away.

“I do, it seems my childhood friend can pack some punch, all right.”

I got closer and launched a healing spell on his mouth.

“Yo Eri, did you see our first exchange? Man, that was sick, no one at my same level ever came this close to beating me.”

He seemed elated, I think I had never seen him so excited before.

“Of course, everyone you sparred against was just bratty young nobles, of course you always won.”

Actually, he never fought against the strongest young nobles, but I didn't want to discourage him too much.

“Aw come on, it's not like they are weak just because they are nobles. By the way, you are a bratty noble too. I mean, you're the daughter of two heroes.”

“I'm not bratty. And most important, I'm not a noble.”

“You aren't uh.”

“Yes, I disowned my title, you know that. Only because the church nominated me saintess it doesn't mean that I am a noble.”

“Then why do you keep calling your maid every morning, even if you don't have one anymore?”

“I- it is just a habit.”

“And why did you keep whining all the time while we were walking?”

“It's..... it's.....”

“And why can't you eat preserved food without seeming disgusted?”

“...........Next time you can forget about my healing.”

“Hahaha as if that could happen........”

I sighed.

Mark really liked to tease me. Sometimes it could be irritating but most of the times it felt surprisingly pleasant, no one ever treated me that familiarly before.

“Now you should go check up on David, he might hurt somewhere too hehehe.”

I looked at David. He was clenching his teeth and was keeping his eyes closed.

Fearing that he might have been in pain I hurried to him.

I still was a little nervous about talking to him, yesterday he mistook me for someone else and ended up telling me some very private things. When it happened, I didn't know what to do, so I ended up staying silent, hoping he would go away soon.

In the end, it seemed he didn't recognize me today, but the next time he'll meet that person he'll understand that it wasn't her; there aren't many people with hair like ours so I guess I will have to face some awkward moments at that time.

I felt a bit guilty about having heard such private details but I was also very interested in what he said. He seemed someone very sensitive towards the others, especially to the weak, and also someone that was very strong-willed and determined to change the world, I was happy I got the chance to know better someone like him. He also seemed very interested in how I stopped that terrible disease from spreading in the capital's slums. It seemed he also liked to help the most unfortunate.

Mark was a very good person, but with time I understood that he didn't think too much about what he did and he also wasn't good at understanding people's suffering. Sometimes I got the feeling he cared more about the action itself than about the people he helped. Whereas David, from what Mark told me, was someone that could understand others, it was easier to help them if you could do that.

A part of me couldn't help but wish I met him much earlier, before things turned out for the worst.

Suddenly I felt fear gripping my chest.

I cast away that feeling with my determination, I already chose my path after all.

I focused on the man in front of me.

When I got closer to him my heart was racing a little.

“Are you fine David?”

He opened his eyes, suddenly changing his expression into a cool one. He probably tried to hide his pain so I wouldn't be worried.

“I'm fine.”

“Let me check you, just in case.”

I used a wound detection spell and noticed that his abdomen, his left wrist, and his right ankle were bruised.

“Here let me heal you.”

I neared my hand to his abdomen, to heal him, but he grasped my hand and moved it away.

“I said I'm fine.”

He was keeping his head down to hide his expression but I could see that his face was warped into a grim wince.

'It must be really painful.”

“You don't have to worry, I am a professional healer, something like this is nothing, you can feel free to rely on my help whenever you want.”

He suddenly tried to get up but he lost his balance, he probably twisted his ankle when he fell at the end and didn't notice it.

I caught him before he fell and helped him sit again.

His face had become pale, his ankle must have hurt a lot.

I started healing him by the ankle. The healing attribute other than the light attribute was composed for one-third by the holy attribute, so having healing magic applied also helped to calm one's mind. Just like the holy attribute you always had to pay attention not to go too far though. His expression started turning soft as he let me do.

“Here, let me take care of you.”

I cured all his wounds with care, I wanted to make a good impression.

After I finished applying the healing, he blinked twice and looked at me with his eyes wide open, he probably was confused, receiving healing magic always felt a bit strange the first time.

His expression suddenly returned cold, he got up and hurried out of the room, without saying a word.

He probably was a nice person but his behaviour was a bit strange, was he no good with girls?

Alua, Hoss's heroes' guardian came forward.

“Okay, I guess the presentation is over. Your rooms are above the room where you previously met, use them whenever you want. I hope you will have a nice stay here in Hoss.”

I guessed our welcome party was over. I was feeling I bit tired so I wouldn't have minded getting to my room right away.