The Treant of Death, a little after Nathan left

Year 2849 | Month 10 | Day 22

The two Class S magicians continue to stare at each other while their mana fights in between the two until eventually, the doctor stops, making Adalwolf stop his death mana as well. The doctor then mutters, “This is pointless,” and turns around while opening a portal. But right before he reaches it, he stops as a look of shock appears on his face.

At the same time, the skeleton’s eyes burn brighter, as if he’s acting smug as he says, “You only now noticed?”

A look of pure rage crosses Leodmir’s face as purplish-blue mana bursts out of him, and he turns around to glare at the skeleton. But despite his clear anger, he doesn’t say anything.

“Nothing to say in response, old man?” the skeleton says with the flames in its eyes flaring slightly when he says, ‘old man’, directly pointing out the doctor’s age, and therefore the amount of time he still has left to find immortality before his own mortality catches up with him. “I’m sure you still have the boy’s family as hostages, but you can’t exactly do anything to them if you can’t even contact the boy, now can you? Can’t lose your bargaining tools after all. Not unless you want him to never show up again till the day you keel over.”

The doctor grits his teeth before stomping his foot, sending a large bubble of spatial mana all around him that blasts through the walls of the tree. But just seconds later, a powerful miasma begins to leak from the tree itself in order to fight it back. And while the miasma is still too weak to stop it, the addition of Adalwolf’s death mana changes that and stops the mana from doing anything else.

“So tell me again,” the fallen king says while floating into the air and controlling the miasma and death mana to slowly push the spatial mana back inwards towards the doctor. “Just whose test subject was he?”

‘Damn death magicians!’ the doctor thinks with his teeth still gritted before walking through his portal and returning to the Barren Pass, knowing that it’d be pointless to search through the miasma-filled continent for a single person.

Adalwolf stares on as his death mana and the miasma of the treant he’s standing in close in and converge right where the portal was the moment the doctor’s spatial mana vanishes. And after a few seconds of this, he turns to look in the direction he had sent Nathan before muttering, “Got to pay off that debt and piss off the old man in one.”

He continues to stare for nearly a whole minute until the massive treant wobbles, making him look down at the tree and say, “It was worth it. Absolutely worth it.”

Nathan

Year 2849 | Month 10 | Day 22

It only takes me a few minutes to find a river with drinkable water, and I end up practically inhaling it instead of drinking it. To the point that I start coughing, even know I wasn’t actually dehydrated or anything. Seeing as that’s impossible.

I continue drinking the water in such a daze that it takes the sound of someone clearing their throat for me to notice the ten or so men standing across the river, each with guns trained on me. The men are all dressed in what looks like regular, non-magi-tech armor of black Kevlar, and none of them have any signs of their affiliation.

Uh…

I grimace as my bloodlust reacts to their scents, making the black veins reappear on my face and likely making my eyes glow red.

“Is it an undead?” one of the men whispers to another in a voice that I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be able to hear. And another one quickly whispers back, “It’s drinking water. Undead don’t do that.”

They continue to whisper to each other without taking their aim off of me, so I take the moment to stand up straight and wipe off my knees. Which only seems to convince them a little bit closer to the conclusion that I’m not undead.

Just a little though, as one of them asks, “Undead or not, it still seems to have bloodlust.”

Wait, they know what bloodlust looks like? Actually, scratch that. Why are they here? How are they here?

Shouldn’t this continent be full of just the undead?

“Ex-” I begin, only to be surprised to find that my voice sounds deeper than normal before I take a deep breath and clear my throat, making my bloodlust calm down as they all begin staring at me again, “Excuse me, but who are you?”

They all just stare at me. Then, after several seconds of silence, one of them – the one looking kind of like a leader – asks, “I’m pretty sure we should be asking you that. Or maybe we should be asking what you are?” He adds the second part while staring at my face as I see the black veins and shining red light fade away in my reflection on the water.

We all stare at each other for several more seconds, with many of the men’s gazes locking onto my magi-tech armor before one of the men steps closer to me, making their scent grow stronger and driving my bloodlust back just slightly. Not too much, but enough to make a faint glow shine from my eyes again.

“Guess I might as well start,” the leader eventually says with a frown after coming to the conclusion that I’m not gonna be talking. “We’re hunters from the nearby city of New Hope.”

A few seconds pass in silence before I ask, “What’s that?”

His frown grows deeper at this, but it just turns confused when he sees me wiping down my armor of the grime it had gathered from my trek over here from the large tree. Then it turns shocked once I clean my shoulder, revealing the insignia of the Republic of Arcadia.

“You’re… with the Republic?” he asks in a slightly shaky voice, only to shake his head and add in a quieter tone that I still hear perfectly clearly through my enhanced senses, “No… probably just found the armor somewhere from the war…”

So he’s afraid of the Republic? I guess that would make sense, assuming they’re who I think they are.

Remnants of the Kingdom of the Fallen from before it fell. The kingdom that was supposedly wiped out by the Republic.

It’s really the only explanation that is viable here.

But he seems to think it impossible for me to actually be with the Republic?

I frown at that before scratching my chin as the leader raises a finger towards one of his men and says, “Watch over him and make sure he doesn’t leave.” He then turns to me, adds, “We’ll be talking between ourselves for a moment,” and walks away with the other eight, leaving the one he singled out to stare at me with his gun raised and his finger on the trigger.

Huh. These people certainly aren’t soldiers, I can tell that much.

“What do you think we should do?” I hear one of the men ask from within the trees to the leader.

Okay. I think I could get used to my enhanced senses.

Although how I missed them approaching in the first place is still beyond me.