Running through the tall grass and bushy terrain, we had unanimously decided on going all the way back from the direction we came from, east, so as to make it to the center of the continent, where the war is being waged. In the center of the battlefield, proudly standing in the middle of Lake Divide, one of the Six World Wonders, Auros’ Throne, could be located. It is said that whichever side climbs atop this golden and bloodied throne first will be proclaimed the victor of the war.

That is what Auros’ Throne is, and that’s exactly why we gotta be the ones to climb it! Surely, if three unexpected outsiders suddenly swoop in outta nowhere and steal the seat away from both sides, it’ll both confuse them into calling out a ceasefire, as well as essentially give us a proper stage atop which everyone will hear us out completely. After that, it’s as simple as making a speech about peace that includes the knowledge we have of both sides!

“So, what do you think of my plan?” I asked Cecily after explaining all this to them, “It’s foolproof, right?”

“Uh, no.” She immediately shut down my idea, “First of all, you make it sound like it’s a simple matter to just climb atop Auros’ Throne, one of the Six World Wonders.”

“W-Well, as long as we are together…?”

“Come on, Lune. I’m glad you feel that way, but that doesn’t mean we can afford to be optimistic, or unrealistic for that matter…” She rolled her eyes, “In any case, if it was so easy to climb it, then the war would’ve been over ages ago. Think for a second, would you?”

Yeesh, she’s really not making it easy for me, huh? What happened to family trust? Honestly I had two expectations up until this point – one would be that she’d blindly agree to this plan of mine and we’d just wing it, and the other that she’d just call me crazy, take Nelly and run back to the dock, leaving me to do this all on my own. But that didn’t happen, in fact a third option occurred that I hadn’t thought about at all.

“It’s difficult enough as it is with just the two of us, that crazy plan of yours.” She uttered, “But you keep forgetting that Nelly’s with us as well. We need to take proper precautions so that she doesn’t see or hear anything that goes on in a battlefield. I don’t want her to have to experience it so early on in her childhood.”

“Aww, but I wanna see!” Nelly wriggled around in her mother’s embrace.

“Sorry, Nelly, but your mom’s right.” I explained, “That’s simply not a place fit for a child in general. That being the case, we’ll just give her a blindfold and some ear plugs and I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

Simple problems require simple solutions. I can’t waste too much time on trivialities like this when there’s literally a war to stop. Nelly’s strong too, so I’m sure seeing a bit of gloom and doom won’t be anything too detrimental to her mental state.

“But even still, if we were to hypothetically reach the top of the Throne, do you really think that the people will just all sit down and peacefully listen to your ramblings?” Cecily voiced her complaints, “I mean, if it was me fighting down there and I suddenly saw a couple of randos compromising our mission for themselves, I’d probably just take a couple of pot shots at them for the fun of it. Now just imagine that multiplied by a million.”

“Right, it’d be a bullet hell…” I once again was reminded how stupid of an idea this was, “But there’s one other crucial thing you’re missing here!”

“What do you mean?” She asked.

Pulling out the thing I had kept safely tied around my neck ever since a couple of chapters ago, I had revealed to them the mysterious thing Auros had given me right as we were in the midst of teleporting to Meior. A golden bloodied amulet with a crest featuring a sword engraved on it that signified I was someone who had talked to the Fighting God personally. Surely, this much would be enough proof for the soldiers down below to listen!

“News flash, dummy.” Cecily once again denied my idea, “No one has such good eyesight nor hearing. Even if you had risen it high above your head, no one would probably even recognize what it is from so far out.”

“But what if…?” I paused for dramatic effect, “What if I’m not showing it to them, but to someone else?”

This confused Cecily even more, but Nelly quickly got the gist. Goes to show she really is my daughter, since she seems to have inherited my crazy ideas and can easily comprehend them! Good girl! Oh wait, we’re not blood-related, so that kind of makes no sense…

“Gasp! You wanna call out Mistew God!” Nelly shouted.

Turning to me as if to reaffirm her daughter’s words, Cecily gave me a worried expression, but one that also hid a slight grin in it. “Sigh, your crazy ideas never fail to amaze me…”

“Sorry, it’s a bad habit of mine.” I chuckled, “But it’s our best bet. The Fighting God wouldn’t have given me this amulet without reason. If there’s anyone the Aurolians will without a doubt listen to, then it’s gotta be him!”

Running through the swampy jungle-like terrain, we were muddy, beaten up and riddled with scratches from the nearby fauna, but we were undeterred. These wounds are nothing more than a flesh wound, and I can easily cast Heal to recover us to our previous state. But even still, if these wounds mean we’ll be able to reunite all of the people here with their families back home, then I don’t mind keeping the wounds to turn into scars.

Scars are medals. If you have a scar yourself, please take a look at it, and I’m sure you’ll immediately recall exactly the moment you got it. They are a part of history in and of themselves, as each scar holds a special story behind it. Even these scars all over my arms, I’ve gotten them when I had protected Anna from that Stray Wolf back in the hills of Wheats.

“Ah, seems we’ve hit an impasse.” Cecily shrugged, looking at the huge ravine that was separating us from our goal.

“Quite literally, an impasse.” I joked.

***

This sort of feels like one of those interactive books I’ve seen a couple times. Y’know, in front of you stands a giant gaping ravine, how do you advance? Now usually these types of books would be linear in nature despite them seemingly offering you vastly different choices. Thing is, whichever choice you picked would eventually lead you to the same singularity point where the branching paths would meet. So in this example, you could either jump into the ravine or jump over it, but both would lead to the same outcome – you’d clear it eventually.

That being the case, fiction and reality are two vastly different things. If we jumped into this giant ass ravine right now, there’s definitely be no way of getting out. It’s just that giant, like an endless abyss with no visible floor to hit, even after hours of falling. Obviously, we’d much rather jump over it…

“But that begs the question,” I pondered, “How exactly do we get over it?”

“It can’t be that hard, can it?” Cecily replied, “We just need to find a way around it. No matter how big it looks, it can’t be infinite in length. The ravine will end eventually if we just walk around it long enough.”

This idea was logical in nature, but the practicality of it doesn’t match up. We’re double-deserters right now, if any soldier were to find us while we’re out here, they’d shoot us on the spot. Another issue is that we could just stray from our original path too much and just get needlessly lost or sidetracked. No matter how you look at it, we can’t go around it.

“But what if dad just poofs us acwoss?” Nelly asked, “Whewe he does that thing with his eyes tuwning Blue.”

“You mean Materialize?” I explained, “That’s another option, but then we’d have to find a way to have me cross it. I can’t summon someone somewhere else other than in my hands.”

Looking around for more options, each one seeming to lead to the same outcome over and over again, we really were at a loss as for what to do. That being said, it seems Cecily got an idea after a few minutes of examining the trees barely hanging from the side of the ravine.

“That could work!” She snapped her fingers, “Those trees over there, the vines on them would allow someone to swing across if timed correctly!”

“Who do you think I am?!” I jumped.

“Oh come on, you could clear that with your abilities easy-peasy!” She groaned, “Just like you did back in the Palace when we were escaping from Silvia and her crew.”

Certainly, that could work, but even back then we all broke our legs from the fall. Thinking back, we were really damned lucky to have all survived such a fall. I mean, it must’ve been 10 meters, at the very least! And back then, the margin of error was way bigger, since no matter where we fell, there wouldn’t be a gaping ravine right under us.

“T-There’s gotta be another way…” I murmured.

“Nope!” She pushed me closer to the ravine, “Now hop to it, Color Boy!”

“Wha-! Color Boy!” I protested, “I’m conflicted! On one hand I hate the nickname, but on the other hand that’s the first time you’ve called me a pet name since we were in Great Hiana!”

“Off you go now~!” She tried to ignore my words, still bright red though.

Ugh, right. Guess there’s really nothing to it but to do it. Wait, how did I do it again? I think I first cast Materialize… Or was it Spark? Damn, since I did all that in the heat of the moment without giving it much thought, I relied too much on muscle-memory and didn’t at all focus on what I was doing. Huh, let’s see here, if I cast Spark, then that makes a flame…

Trying to slowly retrace my steps and figure out how I did this very same trick before. Can’t help it, I was in a life or death situation, so there was simply no feasible way for me to take the time to think about it consciously. In the end, it was an act based solely on instinct, so I didn’t understand the theory behind it. Apparently, though, I was making Cecily wait too long.

“What’s taking so long, jackbutt?” She shouted from a safe distance away, holding Nelly close to her, “Don’t tell me you’re scared?”

“I’m not!” I refuted, “How about you go ahead and do it yourself, if you’re so smart then!?”

This promptly shut her up, but it didn’t stop her from pouting about it. Cute.

“Alright then, one, two…” I ran with all my might and leapt just as I approached the drop, “Three!”

Creating a Fireball the size of my body, the largest one I’ve made to date, I had immediately cast Materialize and threw my hands under me, as if leapfrogging. This action effectively made the Fireball that was in front of me suddenly get transported to right under me, and once again propelled me in a similar fashion to how a gun would fire a bullet.

The boom was large, the sound reverberated throughout the swamp, and my pants were… On fire?

“Yeowch!” I tried padding the fire off as I flew through the air, “Hot! Hot, hot, hoooot!”

The fire didn’t stop though, and I had soon found myself engulfed in flames before I even realized it. Looking for a landing spot, I had found a small pond right beneath my current location. If I did nothing, then I’d overshoot it, so I figured “Hey, things can’t get any worse!” And blasted another fireball above me. This burned even more than the first Fireball, and it basically drained me off all the strength I had left in my body, but it did its purpose and dunked me directly into the pond, extinguishing the flames in the process.

“L-Lune?!” Cecily could be heard screaming out my name, “Lune, are you alright?!”

“Blub blub…” My reply was muffled through the water, coming out only as mere bubbles above where I was located, “Phah! Calling it right now, NEVER doing that again!”

Checking my hair just to make sure it’s still there, I was surprised to find out it was virtually untouched this entire time. I guess the fire never actually reached my head, I just thought it did. Normally, I’d feel relieved by this info, but thanks to Pierre I don’t really have all that much hair to begin with…

I then brushed all of the mud off of my clothes and washed my hands in the very pond I emerged from before Materializing Nelly and Cecily. The ravine was now officially cleared, so let’s just pray to the Gods that I don’t encounter any more difficulties, at least until we make it to the battlefield…