I walked towards my sister, grabbed her head to dampen the effects that Grum’s tricks had on her mind, grabbed her hand and took her to the door that said entrance.

I learnt that sometimes things only make sense when you look them from a certain perspective, like in this case, where it only makes sense when you’re entering the building.

The room was quite spacious and had some seats and tables here and there, but I paid no attention to them and continued to my first objective, the door of the building.

David had told me that it’s common, if not normal, to lock doors with keys that can vary from physical ones to mana-based passcodes.

In this case Grum, being knowledgeable with mana decided to use a physical lock because he knew that there were multiple ways to force a mana-lock, to change it so that his password becomes unusable or to simply lock the use of mana of a person, but a physical lock couldn’t be changed that easily, although it could still be forced.

He wouldn’t lose the key because it required none, instead, to open the door, you had to touch in certain places of the lock following a specific pattern and after you did it the door would open.

And so, Gabriel followed the password that David had told him and although he had to try three times it worked, and he managed to get the door to open and see his second obstacle; the plant maze.

Gabriel had learned about this maze through David, and it wasn’t an easy one, it was dangerous, and it changed over time, but mini-David was a plant and as one it could communicate with the maze and so the path through the maze was surprisingly easy, they got out in about twenty minutes.

Then they were met with something… uncommon. Barren ground with no plants growing on it and the barrier that David knew well a few meters behind. But he had no idea what this middle section was.

Maybe it was a spell that killed all living beings that got through… But then Grumbonk wouldn’t be able to go out; so, then he thought that there should be somewhere where there are plants growing, but there wasn’t, as mini-David checked through the plant-maze senses.

Then what was it? What was doing this? Of course, it was dangerous or at least it could be, so no one would get in willingly to test it out. Maybe Gabriel could use his doll to scout the area and see what happened?

It seemed like the best plan they had at hand, so they went forth with it and Gabriel controlled his wooden doll for the second time. To call this experience unusual is belittling it, it can’t even be easily described. It is like being a newborn once again, with new senses and you try your best to get used to them, but you barely manage to move your head.

With the help of Arabelle puppet-Gabriel managed to get into the plant-less zone and he… immediately lost connection. Feeling dazed, Gabriel opened his eyes to see that his hard work had been crushed. Quite literally.

The doll seemed to have been stepped crushed from something invisible coming from above, but what was it? No contraption could be seen blocking light, nor was there anywhere it could lie onto, so it had to be some form of spell, Gabriel concluded.

- What do I do… - Gabriel thought out loud, touching his forehead with his hands, trying to make his brain think faster, although he knew it wouldn’t work... – Oh no, no – Gabriel quickly said as he saw his sister walk towards the place his doll had been crushed and grabbed her arm, quickly pulling her out.

Although Gabriel had managed to improve his sister’s situation quite a bit, he only made some parts better, as he wasn’t an expert in brain surgery. Still, he had managed to do a pretty good job, as she wouldn’t blindly listen to Grum anymore, but as a consequence she was quite forgetful, he had realized.

She had probably already forgotten of what got the doll into that situation and wanted to help his brother retrieve the tool. After thinking for a few minutes, he sat on top of some dry leaves and started talking to mini-David to see if he knew anything about this, but as his mind was smaller all he really knew was that they wouldn’t be able to go through there, so they had to find some other form of way.

Taking everything out of his bag and seeing what could be useful, a worm started reaching towards mini-David, which he realized because David had rung the alarm by spreading his pollen and telling Gabriel that he was going to be eaten.

Gabriel flicked the worm away and it escaped by digging a hole. As all living beings had mana Gabriel could sense that the worm was going under the danger zone… without getting damaged at all. Such a simple, dirty solution was what they needed.

But they didn’t have the time to dig, so they had to either find a different solution or an already made path that they could use. Not long after, connecting with the intertwining roots of the trees, David found a nearby rabbit hole.

It wasn’t open to this side of the barrier, but some tunnels made it all the way to this side. Putting everything back in his bag, except of the untouched broken doll, of course, Gabriel took Arabelle by his hand and had her help him dig. It wasn’t that big of a hole, but they themselves weren’t that big either.

Making our way down the rabbit hole and crawling through the different paths we slowly managed to get to the other side of the plant-less field and of the barrier.

But you may be wondering how we could go “through” the barrier belowground. Now this is quite simple; to save mana barriers aren’t perfect spheres, instead they cover all of the easily accessible area and some of the inaccessible area. My sister and I actually managed to crawl up to ten meters under the ground when we were under the barrier and only then could we actually go through.

But there is also another reason why barriers don’t cover the whole ground and that is mana. No barrier can hold enough living things inside of it to hold itself, so it needs to gather some of it from the outside to last.

“But can’t it be fully closed AND gather mana from the outside” is what I also questioned myself when I heard about this. The thing about the mana gathering is that it has to have a connection to the core that creates the barrier, which is usually inside.

You could, in theory, have some holes in the barrier to let the mana get in, but you would only concentrate the problem in certain specific sections of the barrier, so overall it’s much better to protect some of the ground only.

- Finally, free once again – Gabriel said out loud, when he suddenly heard some sound coming from the building. It was probably Grum that realized that they escaped – and why did I have to say that…

Gabriel dusted himself off and ran together with Arabelle to get to a safer spot, behind a tree where a forest started, which was relatively close, but they still had to run a few dozens of meters to get there. Once they reached the shadow of the trees a loud sound came from behind.

- Gabriel! Arabelle! Come back here… - Grum tried to sound nice at first, but Gabriel wasn’t buying any of it – Come on, I’ll make you some delicious foods and we can then laugh over this… - Even though Gabriel wasn’t very experienced in anything, he felt that he couldn’t trust Grumbonk.

Gabriel and Arabelle regained their breaths while Grum was trying to lure them over, but Gabriel knew that he wouldn’t be nice forever and that when he wasn’t nice anymore that they shouldn’t be there.

- Come ON!!! You disturbed me while I was regaining my energy and I’m already quite mad! Now come back here and I won’t punish you for this.

Slowly making their way out of this mess Gabriel and Arabelle moved on fours to look out for anything that could make a noise and prevent touching said things, but they couldn’t have predicted some birds flying up, which caused Grumbonk to instantly lock his eyes on their location, even though he couldn’t see them yet.

- If you don’t come to me, I’ll have to come to YOU!!! You are in trouble and I’ll enjoy every second of your punishment. – Grum predicted and started walking, no, running towards them.

Gabriel didn’t see any way to escape, nothing inside his bag would really help him, so he felt that he and his sister were doomed. There was no way out of this one.