‘I could have sworn I was running in the opposite direction. What the fuck is going on here?’ Vice thought as beads of sweat began to drip from his forehead. His eyes opened wide in alarm as he noticed that Paul and the others were being strung around into a cocoon by multiple Jorogumos, who for some reason had not noticed Vice yet. They twirled their webs around expertly and used their legs to weave them around effortlessly. Each one of the Jorogumos looked almost identical, with the only truly unique one to Vice having been the widow maker due to the dress it had worn and the fact that she looked like the woman he’d met before.

‘If I throw my flames at them I might injure my colleagues as well. Shit, what do I even do here?’ he thought with furrowed eyebrows. ‘I can’t run away since it just brings me back to here, but if I fight I might just die…’

As the different scenarios played in his head, Vice was swayed to fight and protect the others by a single memory. He remembered when he’d first met Paul and Anne at the orphanage. Unlike the other kids, they had been extremely nice to him from the first day and hadn’t asked about his appearance which differed vastly to their own. He even remembered getting into multiple brawls with the other kids only to be helped out by Paul, who always protected him no matter what.

‘I can’t believe I left Paul behind earlier. What have I become?’ he thought as he slapped himself in the face. The purple flames in his hands didn’t affect him because they were of his own mana.

Vice’s insides started to feel drained as he let more mana flow into his hands again, creating large fireballs in both hands again. Sweat was profusely dripping from his forehead, and he knew he couldn’t cast many more of these fireballs. ‘Luckily these beasts seem vulnerable to my flames.’

Vice thrust his palms forward, and with that motion, two massive fireballs went hurtling to the Jorogumo that were wrapping his companions into silky cocoons. The flames caught them by surprise. They were too close to each other and mitigated the damage taken by each other. Five Jorogumo were pushed back a couple of meters by the fireball explosion.

‘So I was right, the silk protected them a bit,’ Vice thought. Deafening screams of the Jorogumo caused him to instantly throw two more massive fireballs in their direction.

The flames crashed into the enemies and started to sizzle away at their skin. High-pitched screeches filled the air, and two of the creatures fell to the ground, unmoving. Vice stood still in shock as the remaining three Jorogumo opted to run into the silky dome instead of fighting him. ‘Why are they so scared of these flames?’ he wondered as he ran up to his companions, making sure to shield his eyes from whatever had petrified his group.

“What is going on here? Can any of you hear me?” Vice asked to no response. Vice continued to ask questions until finally his patience had run out and he grabbed Paul by the shoulders and shook him powerfully.

“Ahh, what’s going on? Vice, is that you?” Paul said in an almost inaudible tone. He looked at Vice with a grogginess in his eyes, which were completely fogged up with a gray tint. Slowly the grayness left his eyes, upon which he jumped out of Vice’s grip. “Woah what’s going on? Why’s everyone stood like that?” he yelped.

“Fuck if I know. We need to wake everyone up before more Jorogumo come here. I think putting flames on them will wake them up, and those beasts are also afraid of flames,” Vice said as he hastily grabbed onto Austin and Jake with his purple flames.

“Uhhh, OW OW OW,” Austin shouted as his body lurched back uncontrollably. He patted his shoulders and blew onto where the flames had touched him.

“Enough playing around, we’ve gotta get out of here! Wait, where’s Anne? Vice?” Paul said as he looked around.

“This way, follow me everyone. Keep your eyes to the ground, don’t look around needlessly, and if anyone seems like they are frozen to the spot, take some flames and touch them with it,” Vice said without taking a look back at the others who were still stood idly.

Vice walked up to where Anne was, and took the plant out of her mouth, before placing it back into his spatial pouch. It felt a little lighter than before, however, he didn’t think too much about that. Instead, Vice used his flames to touch Anne and she was quickly jolted awake as well with a spasm. Her back and knees cracked loudly as she got back up onto her feet.

“Ahh, my head. What happened?” Anne asked as she scratched the black hair that was in a bun on her head. “Woah easy there,” Anne shrieked when Vice slapped some dust off her back.

“We don’t have the time, we need to get out of here,” Vice said.

The group quickly went back into their previous formation and began to move in the opposite direction of the webbed dome. Vice was panting heavily as they sped away, his flames having died out already.

“Are you okay?” Anne asked, concern written all over her face.

“I’m fine,” Vice replied bluntly. His energy had been almost completely used up in the previous fights, and he hadn’t the time to recuperate yet.

“Take this, it’s a mana potion. It’s currently a prototype but it should help alleviate some of your issues,” Favor said and handed Vice a small vial filled with a silver liquid. Vice glanced at the liquid suspiciously, before she continued, “Don’t worry. It’s not poisoned or anything. Just ask your girlfriend over there she’s had some of these before. We don’t need dead weight here with you being all encumbered, you know that right?”

“Hey! I’m not his… Anyways if it wasn’t for him we’d all be seriously screwed right about now so be nicer,” Anne snarled. “You can drink the potion, Vice, I promise that it isn’t going to harm you in any way. It’ll just taste a little bit bad.”

Vice took the potion and poured its contents down his throat. A gelatinous sensation filled his mouth and a heavy metallic after taste urged Vice to throw up the contents of the vial. He held his mouth closed tightly with his hands as he began to retch uncontrollably. After a couple of moments, he no longer felt the need to vomit, but the disgusting metallic taste continued to linger on his tongue and the weird consistency made him gag as it rolled down his throat.

‘Huh, this feels weird, but in a good way. My arcane core is having its energy replenished a lot quicker, and the mana circulating my body is becoming denser,’ Vice thought. He could very vividly feel the arcane core, that was housed somewhere between his lungs and heart, pumping out lots of mana. The mana flowed around his muscles and tissue, repairing them rapidly which allowed him to feel replenished as if he’d had a short rest.

“Just don’t take too many of them in a short period or you’ll die,” Favor said with a wink.

“Okay, let’s keep going. We don’t have all the time in the world,” Paul said, after which the group moved onward. The twins continued to protect the front and rear of the group, whilst Vice and Paul were right in the middle, with Anne and Favor to either side of them.

‘Woah if I didn’t know that he was here, I’d have never noticed that Jason fellow. His aura is so elusive, I can’t even remember seeing him getting petrified,’ Vice thought. He frowned as he looked Jason up and down, noticing that there were no silk webs around him. His attire was far too clean. Suddenly, he stopped moving, and the cogs in his brain began to move at a thousand miles an hour. ‘Wait. I’m not thinking about this wrong, he didn’t get petrified. Then why is he here all fine?’

‘Ahh, my student is about to learn another fine lesson. Well, actually, you’ve already learned that not everybody can be trusted,’Favian mumbled.

Vice glared at Jason, allowing his aura to exude forth. As the dominating pressure reached the red-haired youth, he quickly turned around to look at Vice. “I-Is something of the matter?” he asked.

“I don’t remember seeing you earlier when I was rescuing everyone from their frozen state,” Vice grumbled. “Want to explain to me how that happened?”

Before Jason could get any words out, Vice had already let his mana burst forth into his hands, and two daggers materialized into them. A dark purple liquid dripped off the tips of the daggers, and when it touched the ground a sizzling sound emanated. Vice instantly held his daggers up in an offensive position.

“Wh-What do you mean? Paul used some flames to save me back there. Right, Paul?” he asked as he stared directly at Paul. Jason slowly cowered away from Vice, who was walking closer to him, until he was only a hair’s breadth away with his dagger pointed toward Jason’s neck.

“I smell bullshit,” Vice shouted.