The braised ribs were tender, and each bite unleashed a new kind of flavor. The rich flavor lingered in my mouth, making me want for more. Unfortunately, the dwarves preferred to waste their night with alcohol and refreshments. Not my jam! WELL, it would’ve been for the old me, but I’m trying to change here.

I finished the meal with ambrosial drink. It was fruit punch of some sort. It was not very sweet, with hints of delightful sourness to it. And left a very savory mild sweet taste in mouth.

Rubbing my stomach I burped loudly. All I needed was sleep for now. The depression started gnawing once again. Before I left my limbs stringless, I left the cart outside the door and crashed into the comfy bed.

The bed was welcoming and it reminded me of home. The soft caress of feathery mattress, the way it engulfed whole of me slowly! I felt myself sinking slowly, slowly into a state of torpor. I was physically sleeping, or so it seemed from others perspective, I guess. But I was very much awake, and was at awe and the sharpness of senses that covered almost half of the hotel I’m staying.

This was a great boon with some serious drawbacks. The senses did gave me inflated sense of power. Well, you guys certainly don’t look like someone who’d too survive all those years without knowing what to do? Without knowing what you are planning to do, it wouldn’t be wise of me to show all my cards.

The hotel for some reason felt way off. First of all, Sig was quite unnerving. I couldn’t feel his presence at all, and he seemed to be shrouded in darkness. I’m sure he is a big fish hiding in the stagnant waters.

I’m not even sure what to do? Should I just leave tomorrow, or stay here to check the waters. Certainly, they won’t be trying something, right?

“Sandy, why are you being awfully quiet?” It’s been a while since Sandy blabbered some nonsense, or made fun of the bits and pieces of my memories.

Sandy seriously needs to learn to give people their privacy.

“I’m busy,” Sandy’s voice tremulous.

“With what exactly?”

Getting no response, I dived in my subconscious space to check, and the first thing that gandered my attention was me proposing Sandy.

“For FUCKS SAKE!” I shouted, the hologramic footage instantly vanished and Sandy’s eyes bugged out, she maintained a nervous smile.

“Master, what’s with this unwarranted visit?”

“You need to stop that,” I glowered at Sandy.

“Stop whaa...tt,” Sandy stammered trying her best to avoid my scornful gaze. She protested wobbly, “I didn’t do anything, Master!”

“You suck at acting!”

Sandy pouted; eyes watery.

“Not working,” I turned around, walking to the sapling that dwindled slightly at my approach, “You are forbidden from watching any part of my memories that includes way too personal contents.”

“But...”

“No but,” I glared at Sandy, over my shoulder. She looked downwards, and made circles with her left leg.

“What do you think about this place? What was its name again?” I was busy feeding the sapling with a small amount of life essence, and a bit of space essence. I thought it would reject the space essence, but to my utter amazement it gulped the last bits of the essence I offered it.

I scrutinized the sapling, no change, not even a bit. I wonder what will grow out of it.

“Evergenolis, Master.” Sandy paused before continuing. A second later, “If it’s the same thing as mentioned in your mums’ journals, I think it would be good to get on the good side of this Siggal guy.”

“And, you’ve already finished reading mums journal, you sure have been busy.” I shook my head in dismay.

“What are you, tech-illiterate?” Sandy gave me a narrow stare, lips curled for the slightest fraction of second.

“That’s mean,” I complained, “Where did technology came in the equation?”

“Just how stupid can you be at times,” Sandy sighed, “No offense, Master.”

“I can just search for specific information as long as the information is stored in my archive.” Sandy explained.

“That’s handy,” I whistled, realizing. My eyes narrowed in doubt, “Did you...”

Sandy instantly broke our gaze, and tautly said, “NOO!”

“It seems otherwise!”

I slowly walked towards sandy, maintaining a plain expression, “Why even bother with my personal affairs, there are interesting things in my memories from my young days.”

“Check them, and come up with new moves. Just skip the wet parts of my memories, and I’m not even asking much, I’ve been lenient, so don’t ask too much.”

Sandy nodded.

“Delete them from your archive, and now.”

Sandy saluted, “Yes, Master!”

“What do you think about Sig?”

“He seems to have at least master some sort of concealing technique, or just have reached insane mastery in dark essence or night essence.” Sandy stopped, eyes furrowed, she seemed to be look for something, “Evergenolis is a oligarchic organization, and they have their own rules and legislative structures. And they certainly don’t like it when someone sticks their nose, somewhere they aren’t supposed to. One thing mum emphasized on is not to make enemy out of them. They are quite the extremist.”

“Yeah, someone who can trespass my senses, even at one-hand distance is someone to be awry of.” I closed my eye, tweaking the sub-conscious space a little more. The landscape was now covered in lush green with occasional patches of grainy stone bits, and added some spider-lily in full-bloom. Should I add cherry blossom? Or oak? Sigh, I’ll decide later. And as for the little sapling, I added a superficial light source with fixed cycle of 2:3 day-night cycle.

“I’ll be taking my leave,” I waved Sandy goodbye, “And You better delete those.”

I discovered myself staring at the white ceiling. And the pervasive aura was still lingering around my room, I felt it for a while now. I was waiting to see what it does, but it was just there, at the end of the corridor, staring intently towards my door. The stare disgusted me; I didn’t know how much it could see. I didn’t even know what it was.

As far as I could guess, it was a humanoid figure, with not so much of a humanoid figure. It was rude to stare at someone’s door like that, but the moment I got up from the bed, it just disappeared from my perception.

To be sure, I walked myself out of my room and checked the corridor, it was empty.

Sigh~

I’m really not liking this place. I slumped into a couch facing diagonally at the rectangular box, and a familiar remote in one hand. I pressed the power button and it came to live.

Good heavens! I was baffled for a slight moment; will I even miss anything. I surfed the channels to check if anything caught my eyes. Well, there was lot of things, I wanted to watch, there was news anchored by voluptuous elves in tight suits, documentary of wild life of Cetaz, a south-western plain of Prima. It looked awfully similar to African rainforest. I was fascinated at seeing very similar looking wildebeests migrating in millions. Well, it did seem a bit different from the wildebeests, but nonetheless the similarities were much more visible.

Then I was glued to a channel that played anime, I mean yeah it was anime cuz’ the artwork was same. The name of the character was gibberish and the language was not something I was familiar with, and it sounded forcibly translated to me, well I could understand it just fine, but I am not ready to indulge myself in anime, when I know I can be the protagonist of a magical world... Just kidding, sigh~

I really don’t want my chunni syndrome back. I’m a grown-up dude! Fuck!

The next channel, kept me awake for the whole night.

It showed highlights of different adventuring parties and their journey. The hot topic among the adventurers for now was ‘Abyssal Ridge’ it was the deepest dungeon to be ever found, and it was even life threating for awakened ones. So far it was explored till 253rd floor. But there is no point in exploring the dungeon, because it’s ever changing in nature and the topography and the setting of the dungeon changes every now and while.

“But the most unfortunate event for today was the wiping out of the ‘Howling Fools’, a balanced party of seven members. The whole team got killed in the 159th floor, while facing the twin headed hydra, the floor boss.” said the anchor with a saddened sigh, “The party had most promising adventurers of this season, Abiskred Elix, the 2nd prince of the Onoming valley, and Bela Tyvalin, another promising rookie, without much of background.”

The anchor played footage, showing a muscular guy, rampaging in buildings and killing civilians. The footage came to halt abruptly, the camera-man or whatever was doing the feed surely got toasted.

The anchor continued, “As you can see, Elix Srundrec, the self-proclaimed king of the Onoming valley, is outraged. He was a revered figure by the peoples and the rulers of the surrounding regions. He was the guardian of the Onoming valley, but now his own peoples are fleeing to keep their life intact from the wrath of Elix Srundrec. The neighbouring autonomous rulers are not showing any hint to stop the rampaging guardian.”

Our reporters talked with the king of Oshiwocan Empire. from our reporters, “He will not do anything to stop the rampaging Elix. He commented, let the old dog vent, Abiskred was his favourite son. It’s just natural for a father to feel angry to see his son get killed. And he laughed it off.”

The reporters ended his report with a commercial break.

Well, I wasn’t surprised at the news, afterall, I’ve no idea as to who and where those places are. But I halted, on seeing the pov of the battle, and most probably the whole match was recorded.

Man! I feel sad for the rest 5 bastards of the party, they deserve more fame than that. They are totally overshadowed by those two. Honestly, Juney, the support, I don't know what she was, but from the light green appearance of her body and also the vines for hair, made it a dryad.

And Sandy chimed in to agree with me. She asked, “What are your thoughts on Luke and Bartar?”

“Wait, how did you watch it?” I shook my hand. Sandy won’t be fixing her peeing habit anytime soon I guess.

“Hmm, Luke did good, they wouldn’t have lasted a minute, if it wasn’t for Luke. As for Bartar, his buffs did some work but not enough. By the way, what class he had do ypu think?”

“Umm, Bartar seemed like a bard, and he had decent mastery in Sonomancy.”

“Sonomancy, huh?” I found his movements and attacks quite entertaining. He was the only one of the party who managed to make the twin headed hydra stall for a whole second.

The whole fight lasted roughly a minute. From my point of view, it was rather Abiskred’s fault. Upon descending on the floor, Abiskred and Bela instantly unleashed their ultimates, not waiting for the buffs to take effect. It was amateurish and it costed all of their lives in the end.

Abiskred used the spell, ‘Fire Pillar’, and the entirety of the hydra was engulfed in a pillar of flame, and Bela worked quick to set up the ‘Thousand Swords Array’. Both of them carried the onslaught for five seconds.

They laxed triumphantly, in the next fraction of second, the tail of the hydra slammed against Bela, sending her flying at an ultrasonic speed. If Bartar didn’t used some sort of spell to slow down the speed of trajectory, I would've betted on finding a splattered Bela.

Bela was healed by Juney, but the brunt of the hit was still there. The second tail whoop was stopped by Luke, as he interpreted it for Abiskred, who was now engaged in melee with the hydra. But before Abiskred could even exchange some blows with the hydra, it vanished. This moment was nerve-wracking for all the party members, even I was at awe to see it move at such a speed. It appeared behind Luke and before he could react he got smushed. Luckily, he was still breathing.

The next instant it vanished to chomp the upper half of Bela, but was intercepted by Juney, she sacrificed a hand to puh Bela on time. The hand did recover in an instant, but before the hydra could pull another trick, Bartar, used a spell, making the hydra totally freeze for a second. In this time Bela gained some distance, and started attacking. Abiskred was in absolute awe, he froze for at least a few seconds.

Juney was busy bringing Luke back to shape. The mage and the archer were totally useless. Well, it wasn’t their fault though, the Hydra seemed resistant to pierce type of damage.

The hydra unleashed a huge fire breath, when Luke unleashed his ultimate, ‘Guardian’s Shade’ but still none of them managed to come out of it unscratched, Luke even needed to intercept the last second of the breath, his heavy shield was a goopy mess. The second breath came just after a fraction of a second, and Luke died. It was a miasmic breath of purple color. Luke literally melted.

Next the hydra threw a volley of homing missiles, killing the elf and the mage. Bartar was next, he got slapped mid-air, and was turned to paste, by continuous stomping.

Abiskred was next, he literally dropped his daggers, and he had no will to fight. I could clearly see despair in his eyes. And down he goes to the belly of Hydra.

Bela was more quick, she tried to flee using her glorious wings, but was shot down with a barrage of homing missiles. And with that the footage ended.

I wondered how I would bare against the Hydra myself. I won’t even last a second, I guess? Or were they too weak. Well, I don’t care, honestly. I looked at some other footage. Most of them had a happy ending.

I particularly liked the coordination of a party called, ‘Blight Dusk’. Anyway, I don’t have to worry about getting bored in this world, I guess.