"News! Big news! The prophet lost control over his powers and blew up the Orteon Manor!

"He's corrupted by dark magic!

"The prophet has fallen!"

The paperboy's voice boomed through the streets, reaching the ears of travellers and locals alike.

Running down the street, he passed a fruit cart to his right, where a sparrow rested still on the wooden ledge.

A light breeze swept by, and the sparrow fluttered its wings.

***

MOSKY INN. NOLMES.

Slouching on his pillow, Edris savoured his cup of milk and sank deeper into the bed.

Sitting across the room was the young beast tamer, Celio. He hummed a joyous tune as he cleansed the sheath of his sword with a handkerchief.

Edris yawned lightly. Even though they destroyed the entire greenhouse roof, the ever-so-kind Duke Orteon had refused his proposal of offering recompensation (avidly, if he may add). In other words, Edris didn't have to waste a single yone for his actions.

Nodding to himself, he decided that this was the type of lifestyle he liked: simple, comfortable, and free.

"Are you planning to disconnect with your family forever?" He kept his usual laidback tone as he glimpsed at the boy across from him.

Celio visibly stiffened, his grip tightening onto the dagger. He didn't expect Edris to bring up his family, as he had avoided mentioning much about them during their time together.

But again, he also didn't expect to escape the eyes of someone as perceptive as Edris.

Now that Celio thought about it, in just a matter of weeks, Edris had managed to achieve extraordinary deeds.

Triumphing at the Wulin Tournament.

Befriending the Crown Prince.

Blowing up a duke manor.

"Master…" Celio glanced toward Edris, eyes twinkling. "Did you really come from the Realm of the Clouds?"

"No." Edris shut down the speculation without hesitation.

He stopped speaking ambiguously in front of Celio when he discovered that the young man would take everything he said at face value. Noting Celio's slightly sullen look, he put down his empty cup with a sigh.

"Celio."

"Yes, Master?"

"Do you know about wobbuls?"

At the unexpected question, Celio tilted his head, perplexed. "I've heard about them. The shell creatures that live in the Midpont Ocean, right?"

Edris nodded.

"Due to their vulnerable physique, wobbuls are considered one of the weakest underwater creatures. As a result, they always travel in large numbers."

Voices bounced off the windows, spreading a mixture of yelling, music, and laughter at the external.

"Wobbuls communicate through the antennas on the side of their shells. Studies from the Mage Faction have shown that, despite their disadvantaged position in the ecosystem, they have a surprisingly advanced language system among their kind."

Celio listened to this spontaneous lecture intently, not knowing where Edris was trying to go with this. The latter only smiled after seeing his absorbed-but-equally-dumbfounded face.

"However, even that is insufficient to make up for their shortcomings. Despite the wobbuls' communication advantage, they lacked initiative. None of them took the step to be the one that would lead the group. The thought of being a leader just wasn't biologically developed and this communication was only employed on a very individual level."

"But what you're born with doesn't determine everything," Celio retorted instinctively. "Just because a species doesn't inherently lead doesn't mean they can't."

"Perhaps so, but with no precedence, the whole notion of a 'leader' remains nonexistent in the first place." Edris shrugged. "They're already used to placing themselves as a priority, so communicating in clusters only function to optimise individual survival. And their current number in the waters has shown that it somehow worked out."

Celio's lips thinned into a line. He wanted to criticise the wobbuls, but found himself unable to grasp a starting point. There was a sense of inevitability in this whole situation that he didn't even know where to begin.

Before he could secure his thoughts, Edris spoke again.

"I am like a wobbul."

Celio blinked twice. "…Pardon?"

"I am not a leader." The dark-haired man lightly tapped the pillow in his lap, pensive. "I am in no position to tell you what to do, nor do I want to put myself in that role."

Responsibility was a strong, even troublesome, word. No matter how much potential laid within the young boy sitting across from him, Edris wasn't going to take responsibility for his moral cultivation.

"I'm like a wobbul, but I'm ultimately not." His grey eyes confronted Celio's unyielding gaze. "As an older human being, the only thing I'd say is not to do something that you'll regret."

The best advice he could give was the accumulation of his own experience, from his perspective and his alone.

At that moment, Celio understood something.

Wobbuls were innately born without knowing the concept of a leader, but they were not wobbuls. They were humans. While Celio felt regretful for the species, he was reassured of his own position.

Unlike the wobbuls, he was a human, capable of self-autonomy and free thought. And unlike the wobbuls, he was going to take advantage of being human.

The beast tamer again made eye contact with the man across from him. After getting to know Edris, Celio truly felt relieved that he had stepped out into the world. Although Edris had an artful way with words and sometimes liked to mess with people, he was undoubtedly a righteous person.

He thought back to the afternoon tea event. Even when the nobles tried to bribe him, Edris still protected them.

The man had set himself analogous to a wobbul, but in Celio's eyes, even if he were a wobbul, Edris would be sure to be the first to step up. The first to lead.

He would find a way to lead the group, even if the meaning of "leader" itself was nonexistent.

Precedence, then revolution.

Celio gulped as the two words popped up in his mind.

"I understand, Master!"

Edris stared blankly at the young beast tamer that seemed to be blazing with determination. He opened his mouth a few times, but decided to swallow the questions down his throat.

Instead, he shifted his attention to the pink fluff floating in midair, seemingly meditative as he surrounded himself with a condensed wall of aura.

Narrowed his eyes, Edris silently studied the pink fluff.

At first, he assumed that Ace was an elemental or some kind of spirling as Celio mentioned. However, he soon dismissed the thought after realising that Ace was not only capable of teleportation, unlike elementals, but he was also very smart.

The possibility still remained that Ace was a spirling, but definitely not just any spirling. Edris reasonablly held his suspicions.

After all, what spirlings were capable of absorbing the knowledge of an entire library?

The more he thought about it, and the more Edris sensed that the pink fluff in front of him was enshrouded in mysteries.

With such thoughts circulating his mind, Edris's gaze intensified as he continued to scrutinise the ball of pink.

Ace, noticing the man's stare, finally opened his eyes.

— Fuck off.

A vein popped on Edris's forehead as his lips forced into an unnatural smile. "Look at you, being considerate around little kids."

While Ace sometimes spoke aloud when it was the two of them, he always communicated telepathically with Celio around. As a result, the naive beast tamer remained under the impression that Ace was your average spirling to this day.

"Master, is there something up?" Celio cocked his head to the side.

"No, it's nothing," Edris sighed, fiddling with the cup in his hand. At the gesture, the beast tamer shot up from his seat.

"Please give that to me! I'll go refill it for you!"

"...Thanks." Edris dazedly passed Celio a glass of milk and watched as the boy left for the inn's lobby.

Now alone in the room, he redirected his attention back to the fluff of pink in the air.

"I've been wondering about this for a while now…" Edris popped a sugar cube into his mouth. "You said that this wasn't your original body?"

— No.

"Then what does your original body look like?"

— I don't remember.

As he said that, Ace tightened his concentration as the surge of mana thickened around him. He was gradually rebuilding what remained of his mana so he could someday regain his physical form.

"Your physical body…" Edris couldn't help but wonder about the appearance that would suit someone with a voice as deeply dead as Ace's.

Frankly, his voice didn't sound like it would belong to a human.

Maybe he was a book spirling that was burnt in a fire? Those existed, right?

Or maybe a human subspecies? Perhaps a machina like Alan Grennor? But again, machinas could only use their mana for crafting, so teleportation was out of question.

In that case...

"A rock?" Edris blinked twice. He thought that Ace's deep voice was fitting for a rock spirling.

Suddenly, a knock pulled him out of his line of deductions.

Before he could get up to answer, the door opened by itself as Celio sprung into the room with a newly filled cup of milk in one hand and an envelope in the other.

"Master! The pub owner said there was a letter for you." He gestured toward the doorstep, only to find it empty. "Oh? Is he gone already? Come to think of it, he did look kind of nervous on his way up. Maybe he has to go do his business?"

No, he was just scared.

Edris sheepishly averted his gaze.

Thanks to his efforts at the Orteon Manor, Edris attained a reputation that enabled him to get around places without being stopped by others.

Luckily, he was still allowed stay in the inn, but that was only after signing a strict contract with the owner, which included a pledge that he wouldn't blow anything up.

Slitting the envelope open, Edris found himself reading a short note from none other than a certain machina.

While freedom was an upside, a downside to this reputation was that all efforts to get in contact with other merchants fell in vain.

"Master, what does the mail say?" Celio's golden eyes flickered curiously.

"It's from Alan Grennor, a merchant," Edris replied, a noticeable smile on his face. "Apparently, some interesting things are in store."

***

THE NEXT DAY — ALAN'S MERCENARY CORNER

"Welcome to..." Alan Grennor's voice trailed off at the sight of a familiar face. "I see you've received the letter."

Standing at the doorfront, Edris removed the cloak from his head. The machina unintentionally breathed a sigh. Naturally, he had heard about his deeds at the noble's manor.

Although he expected it, Alan didn't think Edris would manage to single-handedly throw the kingdom into chaos after arriving in the capital merely weeks ago.

"And the items?" The latter didn't bother with the pleasantries as he strolled past him.

With a helpless shake of the head, Alan made his way to the back of the room, returning shortly with a wooden box in his hand. He slid it towards Edris, who then flipped open the lid.

"It's called the Mysterious Veil," he explained as Edris examined the dark piece of clothing.

Upon hearing the name, Edris entered a frown. "You're bad at naming things, as usual."

Ignoring the traveller's remarks for the sake of his mentality, Alan continued on, "The veil is made of mana-infused materials found in the Crystallized Chasm. By wearing it, the user gains invisibility.

"The veil is designed to withstand extreme temperatures, damage, and most magic examinations, and it's expected to maintain effective unless exposed to exceptionally powerful magic made for detecting invisibility."

Edris eyed the cloth meaningfully as the machina finished his explanation. After a few seconds, his lips curled into a smile. "How impressive. I'll take it."

"I knew you'd be interested in things like this."

"There's something else I want you to take a look at." Not waiting to be prompted further, Edris gently tapped the surface of his cloak pocket.

As Alan was about to ask what he meant, his eyes widened as a pink ball leisurely floated from the pocket, resting itself on Edris's shoulder.

"This is quite…Interesting." He couldn't hide his fascination as he examined the fluff of pink before his eyes. "Is this a spirling?"

Spirlings were creatures hard to come by in civilisation. When they did appear, they often appeared in pairs with an elementalist. Even as someone with a broad network connection, it was Alan's first time seeing one in the flesh.

Seeing that the machina also didn't know much about the situation, Edris shook his head. "It's still unsure, but he seemed not to be a normal spirling. He also doesn't remember anything from his past."

"Amnesia?"

"Since you're an informant, we figured you might know something about this."

"Hold on." Alan stopped him with a lift of the hand as he examined the pink Ace. "I didn't expect you to be able to inspect spirlings. How did you know he's amnesiac?"

"Inspect?" Edris brushed him off. "He just told me."

"Spirlings can't talk."

"…They can't?"

The two men looked at each other, then simultaneously turned towards the pink fluff floating in the air.

"I thought you just chose to speak in my head at times because you were shy of strangers?" Edris blinked twice.

"What kind of nonsense is that?" Ace stared at him in disbelief. "I already told you that you were the only one that could hear me."

Edris turned to Alan, jabbing a finger toward the pink fluff simultaneously. "You can't hear him talk right now?"

Alan stared at him as if he was insane.

The melodious trickle of the front doorbell interrupted their conversation, and the trio instinctively looked towards the entrance.

"Sorry, we're on break right…" Alan couldn't finish his sentence as his eyes widened at the visitor standing in front of the door.

With a slight pant, the visitor closed the door behind him as he came face to face with the two men. Under the large cloak, strands of fiery red hair fell into sight as the person lifted his head.

"Y-Your Highness?" Alan visibly stiffened at the sight of the Crown Prince.

Dolan Zacriya seemed equally surprised as his gaze shifted from Alan to Edris, then to the pink fluff between them. His lips parted slightly.

"Prophet Edris?" Dolan said. "What are you doing here?"

At the Crown Prince's question, Alan instinctively turned to look at the so-called "prophet" beside him, only to see that Edris already stood prepared, with one hand in a wave, another in his pocket, his face innocent.

"Greetings, Your Highness. It's been a while."

Seeing Edris's smile without a tinge of its original slyness, Alan's usually expressionless face sank into disbelief.