What was the Crimson Coast anyway? From where did its miraculous powers originate? And how did they work exactly? Mac had not asked. He did not care and did not want to know. It was not like he was planning to use it anyway. That was not what his journey was about.
With a gasp, Mac opened his eyes, swallowing a mouthful of water. Mysteriously, he did not feel the need for air as his body floated aimlessly in the pacific red horizon.
Mac watched as his left arm twitched uncontrollably. The side effects of the forceful mending of his broken bones were at work. The convulsion of the bones tore open his tendons and veins, but the red sea did its magic and immediately healed his injuries. This circle repeated seven more times before the water mended his bones altogether. Mac had not felt a single ounce of discomfort throughout this whole ordeal.
The cracks in his skull disappeared, too, before he even noticed. It was as if he was all fresh and new like his injuries were never real in the first place. Mac realized that now his mental faculties were working as they should, and that idea terrified him. His hands moved to his dantian area, where his Small Orbis was. "Is it... IS IT...?" He had a panic attack.
Mac desperately tried to go back to the surface, back at the shore. He was unnaturally good at swimming, so even after floating a decent distance away, he reached where his feet could touch the sand in no time. He awkwardly forced his way through the water until only his legs were submerged.
The air felt too cold on his upper body. With haste and fear, Mac examined his condition. He still found his scar right above his navel. It was similar to the ones the people of the Sun Grow Tribe had, which was not surprising since Macs also originated from the same type of weapon. He furiously touched the area as if he wanted to make a hole in his own skin.
"Was it fixed?" Mac asked no one. "Maybe I need to be submerged for a lengthier period for an injury of this level to be healed. I need to get out of here now! I-I-I need to..."
For once, Mac heard his own words. His pathetic and disgusting pleads. It was as if the waters had cleaned his mind and forced him to face reality. And no matter how hard he tried, he could not ignore the truth.
"What am I doing?" Mac fell to his knees, and once again, most of his body was underwater. "Argh! This sea is messing with my mind! Come on, Mac! Put it together! You are a Hevi-!" And then he realized something, and the tears would not stop flowing.
Kneeling was suddenly not enough anymore. Mac allowed his whole body to submerge and be taken away by the gentle flow of the soft waves.
"A Hevi..." Mac mumbled to the immensity of crimson. "Can I even call myself that anymore?"
It was as if his mind flowed with the currents. Things he usually tried to ignore suddenly were at the forefront of his thoughts. Mac's nightmares had escaped his sleep.
"This is not who I am supposed to be," Everything was unusually apparent to him. "I am supposed to be better. As a Hevi, I am supposed to be grander. I am supposed to face my problems with a smile, not to live in eternal anguish because of them." The wine sea dissolved his worries and flaws alongside his tears. "This is it, then." Mac made a decision. He would let the magic of the sea mend his Small Orbis.
A finding that sounded so simple, yet it took so much for Mac to reach it. As he floated, both Hai and Ira came to his mind. "Those two tried so hard to help me, to the point that they challenged me to a duel. Me, of all people! What a display of courage and determination!" Not even the mystical Crimson Coast could cure Mac of his arrogance. "Both of them could make tremendous Hevies. Too bad they will probably refuse me after the way I treated them."
With nothing to be done but wait, Mac spent his time reminiscing his life choices and encounters. It was a weird activity for him, who had so vehemently sought the next adventure to busy himself from his responsibilities and moral obligations.
Mac found himself sighing much more with his past regrets than enjoying his previous glories. Maybe when his Small Orbis healed, he thought he could try his hand at the many mistakes of his life. Although he was conscient that nothing would rid him of the shame of taking so long and so much to do things right.
The future seemed hopeful, and the past looked redeemable, but the present was not so forgiving. It had been a long time, but Mac did not feel anything different concerning his lower dantian. He had exhausted his vast collection of tales and adventures to ponder, save some extreme anxieties he did not dare to touch at that moment. There was nothing else for him to do but stare at the unending red.
Eventually, Arani left Mac's bush of hair and started swimming around, enjoying the water too. Mac's phobia acted up as he observed his pet spider's creepy way of swimming, where it used all of its legs simultaneously for an uncanny stable movement. Mac had reached his break point soon enough, so he returned to the surface to sit on the underwater sand as he waited with his lower half submerged.
But his overly attached arachnid was still the same, so it followed him around and swam on the surface to stay close to Mac. The saving grace was he could ignore the big bug and focus on other things, like the beauty of the Crimson Coast, or check on how Hai/Ira was doing, which he realized was probably one of the first things he should have concerned himself with, but he was too self-centered to notice.
Luckily, the situation seemed ok. The tribe folk had moved the second time knocked out Hai/Ira to lay on the border between the beach and sea to recover from their battle. Mac could not tell which of the girls were as the body looked serene and peaceful with a smile on their face.
There were even a few local people that came to check on him, who he quickly dismissed since he was not in the mood to entertain them at that moment.
Mac felt the cold air again on his face, and as he tried to warp his mind into enjoying the feeling, his thoughts wandered into new territories while he observed the Eternal Sea. On his journeys, he visited many magical places, but he also learned how much more was there to see. It had been a long time since Mac felt excited about living and enjoying his life. But there was something he needed to do first before that, an obligation he had been ignoring for far too long.
"There is still much to do after the sea heals my Small Orbis." Mac sighed. He could not tell if he was more hopeful or despairful about his future.
"That is not how Small Orbis works, Mac Key Kast." A coarse and old voice came from his side.
"When did that get here?!" Mac's heart beat stronger for a moment. The red sea red brought him something unsightly. It was like a skeleton covered in tar, which had been eroding for the past one hundred years. But Mac noticed the needle of light in its eyes. "Lapido?" The elder who wanted Mac as his disciple was nearly unrecognizable.
"Indeed, It is I." The skeleton's body trembled. Mac assumed he was trying to get up, but there were no muscles remaining to help him with that.
"What happened to you?" But then Mac realized that was not the question he wanted to ask. "No. What did you say about my Small Orbis? Can it- can it not be healed?"
"Fundamentally, no. It can not." Lapido said. "From what I learned about your story, the Small Orbis that you were born with shattered before your eleventh, isn't that right?"
Mac frowned. It would be hard for him to take anything Lapido said seriously since he did not have a high opinion of this pile of bones. But the fact that he knew about his past, which he did not even share with his closest friends, made him reconsider. "So what if you are right?"
"Mac Key Kast, you need to understand that our Orbis is the connection between the mundane and the spiritual," Lapido had not blinked in a while. "It is a magnific organ of our body that defines the nature of our reality by itself." That was a tad bit of emotion that came from the talking corpse. Maybe if it could, the rest would be crying right now.
"Yes, even I know about that." Mac was getting restless. "That doesn't answer my question."
"Oh, but it should." The skeleton said. " I meant for you to understand that once broken, it is no easy matter to "fix" an Orbis. Especially after so long. The shattering of your Small Orbis at the ripe age of ten severed your connection to the spiritual world, child. And the years you spent adventuring and exploring were long enough for your spiritual veins to dry and rot."
"What?! How is that possible? Does that mean- No, you are making this up. To get back at me for not accepting being your disciple." But in his heart, Mac knew Lapido was being truthful.
Lapido released a lukewarm and dried air from his mouth that could barely pass as a sigh. "Do you know why your Small Orbis split in half, Mac Key Kast?"
"I know. Obviously, it is because someone used a spear to pierce it," Mac said, getting unreasonably angry. "When I was a child." He added for good measure.
"The children of this tribe also had their lower dantian perforated last night. Some of them are even younger than ten." Lapido went on. "Yet I can assure you every each of them can cultivate and are still connected with the spiritual world, even if slightly. Do you know why that is the case?"
"Guess I am just that lucky!"
"You guess, but I know," Lapido said confidently. "The Small Orbis is not something one can destroy just by poking at it with a sharp stone. It was a cultivator who hurt you, that I am sure. With the intensity of their awakened Orbis, the cultivator used their strength against your underdeveloped Small Orbis. That was the difference in power needed to destroy your path permanently and scar you for life." The skeleton hesitated. "Which usually should have been very short. I still am not sure how you survived the shock."
"But I didn't." Mac did not say. He touched the scar near his half-point. "So basically, you are saying that I am doomed to keep with this crippled Small Orbis forever?"
"Nothing lasts forever, Mac Key Kast," Lapido sounded wiser than he was. "Especially you. I assume that you don't have more than a decade ahead. Without a Small Orbis, your body will reject the spiritual energy, but the world will not ignore you. Slowly but surely, you will rot. You will end up like me, now that I think about it. As long you keep your birth Orbis, there is no salvation."
Mac squinted his eyes. Despair and depression were trying to snatch him again, but it was as if the Crimson Coast helped keep him hopeful and cheery. "Hm, I see what you mean," He had not forgotten what Lapido had once promised him. "I sure am in a pickle. You wouldn't have an alternative solution for me, would you? Weren't you the one creeping on me the past weeks, claiming that you could heal my Small Orbis?"
"That was a purposely laid twist on my vocabulary," The elder said. "I thought that would be more likely to make you understand me with more uncomplicated terms."
"You should stop assuming how others will react to your antics. You are not good at it."
"Nevertheless, you ordered me to stop pestering you with my desires until you have dealt with all of your issues."
"Oh yeah. I used my Hidden Will on you." Mac remembered how weak Lapido was to his control. The last night under that tree appeared to be so long ago when things were so much simpler. There was a change that happened inside of him since then, and he for sure did not like it. He could not ignore his future anymore. "Arani, with me!" He snatched his spider from the water as he got on his feet.
"Have you resolved all of your problems, Mac Key Kast?" Lapido asked with a tinge of hope that had not yet eroded away.
"Not at all! Holy shit, not even close!" Mac was getting cold feet, even though they were the only part of his body still on the crimson water. "So I better start now to make up for the time I have lost horsing around. Let's go! I need your help with my Small Orbis." He said without his Hidden Will, but with his right hand extended to Lapido.