'Fear.
What is fear?
Is it a primal instinct? One that creates anxiety in the hopes of the host fleeing for the sake of survival?
Is it cowardice? An emotion that's meant to be overcome by willpower, enabling one to reach their true potential?
To that end, what does it mean to be fearless?
Is it to have courage? To overcome instinct? Or is it having the strength to fight to the end amidst despair?
Fear is the unknown, in my opinion. Everything unfamiliar and strange makes us humans wary if we're strong; fearful, if we're weak. That includes the many creatures and vistas found across the Mortal Plane. And, the concept of change itself.
To that end, fearlessness means acceptance. To be fearless means to face the unknown with no hateful feelings or a sense of altruism. It means accepting all the potential outcomes of one's situation, no matter the cause.
That's what I believe, for it is that belief that gives me true power.
I have long since accepted the potentiality of a life filled with suffering at the hands of humans, high-orcs, demons, elves, or even myself. More so, I've long since been resolved to accept the mortifying embrace of the Underworld with open arms.
Only then, after I had accepted everything, did I truly become powerful.
For it was then that I was stripped of anything I could ever lose.
And those with nothing to lose, are the most dangerous.'
"S.S.S. 1:2"
***
"I'm giving each of you an upgrade."
I, and everyone else, intently watched as our clones pried themselves from the floors or walls to form up in a line before our Lord, Amun.
Toril's was first. Standing just as the young knight would while an absurd amount of shadow mana poured through Amun's hand, palmed on the clone's head.
There was no visible change in the clone itself after the exchange of energy was complete. But, I and everyone else present could surely feel the strange, potent energy that dwelled within it while it stood there, listening to Amun give it a laundry list of orders.
As far as I knew, arcana was nothing more than mana in its most concentrated form. Enabling the smallest portions of mana to yield the most ground-breaking of results.
After taking that, and Amun's somewhat labored breath into account, I felt it was safe to say that Amun dumped his entire well into Toril's clone. Making me all the more curious about any increase to our clone's capabilities.
With the passing of a few minutes, Amun went on to empower Jaimess' clone with arcana and give him the same set of orders before sending him back into Jaimess shadow. Followed by mine, Ed's, Giorno's, and Letta's.
"What was that?" Princess Roheisa asked in shocked disbelief.
"Doppelgangers. Everyone who works for me gets one." Amun passively shrugged, then turned to us. "Anyway, there are a few gifts I want to give you all as well. So, form up in a line."
To no surprise, the greedy one ran to our Lord first, only to be visibly disappointed to learn that it was magic instead of money being given to us.
Though our Lord seemed to pay it no mind, it was an object of annoyance for all of us. Giorno told us he's had more than a few words with her and would set her straight once they separated from the party, causing most of the others to hold off on giving her a few words of their own.
I, however, would've taken my leave long before then.
A good thing, in my eyes. For I felt that Letta Sinclare wouldn't enjoy our conversation too much.
When it was my turn to approach our Lord, he first gave me a genuine smile. A somewhat rare occurrence for him, but a welcome one all the same. With my rising from a formal bow, Amun imbued his finger with one of his strange affinities and lightly tapped at my forehead, dissipating the energy through my body but causing no noticeable effect.
His next spell, however, was much more noticeable; rather, it was unignorable.
It took years to grow accustomed to it, death mana. Within that time frame, I tried everything to overcome the fearful effects of feeling death. But no matter what I tried, the cold, the darkness, the whispers, they all proved to be too much.
Strangely enough, though, all that changed once I answered the question Amun asked me and Jaimess all those years ago. Ever since then, I still felt its intense pressure, I always would, but it didn't seem as… threatening.
Or, at the very least, I was no longer fearful of it.
As such I intently watched him claw at his chest with both hands to pull out two masses of ethereal green energy and thrust them at me. Suffusing a warm, gentle feeling into my body
Like Princess Roheisa, I carefully observed the others receive much the same treatment. Only, my curiosity morphed into comprehension while hers only swam deeper into the murky waters of confusion.
Luckily, her inquiry was deflected by Amun distributing books and a small, slender gift box to the lot of us, including her.
"These are new theories based on what we saw during the assessment," Amun explained before anyone could ask. "I'm unsure of how well humans can manipulate mana, but the Association has shown that you all can at least create a mana skin of mana. It would be wise for you all to learn the technique. As for the other thing, they're glasses." He anticlimactically beamed.
"But not just any glasses." He added with a wagging finger a moment later. "I… acquired your styles from Giorno, and paid good money for these enchanted glasses. They give you dark vision. Just… not as good as mine. But the added benefit is that they were enchanted by either me or my forefathers. So, they should allow you all to see in magical darkness."
"My Lord, you-"
"I shouldn't have. I know." He cut Giorno's praise off with an impatient sigh. "Those of you going to the academy won't even be able to use them during our journey, but that's not the case for the rest of you. At any rate." He turned for the door. "That's all for now. I'll see you in two hours."
With his and Princess Roheisa's departure, I and everyone else scrambled to our rooms to prepare for our long-awaited departure. After secluding myself in my quarters, I first locked the door and then spread a domain of sound magic throughout the space. Rendering my actions silent to anyone outside the room.
With that done, I grabbed my bag from Jonet and retrieved the items given to us by the Guild Association. The first of them was the strange bracelet that distinguished us as Assessed Initiates.
I hadn't put it on yet. Namely, because I didn't know where to put it. Using it as a ring or bracelet like Ed, Letta, or Giorno would've made it too conspicuous for my role. As would've been the case if I used it as a piercing as Jaimess and Toril did. As far as I could tell, the only options were to be like the first three and place it inside my boot as a toe ring or ankle bracelet, do as Amun did and make an armband, or do as the others did, and place it under my shirt.
After making my decision, I pulled out the second and final item. An annotated Marulean Map.
While there were civilizations found throughout Phaegrath that I was curious about, my eye was focused on the Epethian Territories. In all, it occupied most of the land sitting west of the James Mountain Range. The port city we could see from the Summit was the largest civilized land in the north. From there, a slim film of territories hugged a coast lined with as many bays, coves, and inlets as there were beaches until the borders spread to encompass a vast peninsula in the southern end of the continent.
On the other side of the continent was a vast body of water that stretched from the peninsula all the way to the base of the mountain range, and reached as far north as a third of the way into the heartland. Iris Bay. Appearing like a mushroom on the map, with a channel leading inland to a bulbous pool dotted with a few towering islands. Around which sat the capital city of the same name.
A place I had no intention of going to.
My goal was the heartland. The realms far beyond the safety of the territory, but not too far away. In those regions, the map was annotated with a few small villages known to have, at the very least, quest boards in them.
The problem was, how to get there without being seen. Before I got my hands on this map, my plan was to go in by sea. With the tool given to me by Ed, however, it was clear that my plans had to change.
But, I need confirmation.
So looked to the ground and whispered. "Jonet."
Without delay, my umbral clone peeled away from the ground to stand next to me, haunched over the map much like I was.
"I agree." She nodded after a few moments. "We'll have to come in from the top."
"That means we may have to spend some time in the air searching for a landing zone," I added. "Are you fine with me peeing in your pocket?"
"It's your shadow." She dismissively shrugged. "Other than that, the plan is the same. You land under the cover of night. Then, your first priority is to find a place to hole up in."
"And then I start gathering information." I nodded. "Is everything ready?"
"Always has been." Jonet contemptuously snorted. "More importantly, are you ready, Jone? You know what the Master said."
"I know." I nodded. "He doesn't care. So long as it doesn't interfere with our jobs. That said." I pulled her and all my belongings into her world before stepping to the door. "It's not me you should be worried about."
As if to prove my point, Jaimess stood from the table the moment I came downstairs. While his attitude towards me was welcome and surely wasn't one-sided, it served to be a source of anxiety for me.
Putting the obvious aside, we found each other good company. Half the time, we didn't even talk. We'd just sit in the vicinity of each other or take private walks, much like now. Whenever we did talk, it was usually about things that didn't matter.
Unlike tonight.
"I knew this day would come. But…" He sighed deeply. "It feels so surreal."
"Four years isn't forever." I quipped. "This isn't goodbye. It's, see you later."
"I know that." Jaimess scoffed. "It's just… a bit daunting, is all. We're leaving the empire and crossing the Epethian continent on our own. And you… well." He huffed a laugh through his nose. "Only you know what you're doing."
"And our Lord," I added.
"And our Lord." He nodded. Then turned to me to say. "Are you scared?"
"Hmm." I paused. Both the conversation and our walk to think for a moment.
"Yes, and no?" I hesitantly shrugged. "Ever since I've come to terms with everything, I haven't been afraid of anything. But, I'm still worried."
"And what does that mean, Jone?" he patiently sighed.
"It means I'm not afraid of failing or even dying. But I'm worried I'll bring more harm than good."
"Ah, I see." He rocked his head back in faux understanding. But I saw through him completely."
"An oxymoron, I know." I shrugged, then continued walking. "Maybe it'll make sense if I write it down."
"I do believe that would be counterproductive to your occupation."
"And I do believe that I have a clone who can put things in a dimensional pocket." I mockingly laughed.
"Fair point." Jaimess chuckled.
With that, we fell into a companionable silence and made our way around the lush gardens of the guest wing. Upon our return to our accommodations, we turned back down the path for another go-around. At which time, I paused to take his hand and turned to face him.
"We need to be patient, Jaimess," I softly said. "As our Lord said, we have jobs to do. Jobs that I believe to be of the utmost importance. When our reunion comes, our jobs won't be anywhere near completion. They will have only just begun."
"I know." He deflatedly sighed. "The guild."
"Yes. And then the Empire." I lifted his chin and melted as the light returned to his eyes. "As our Lord decreed, we will one day become royals of our own empire."
"And then we'll have our time." Jaimess smiled. Reeled back and sighed with a little more… conviction.
"Yes." I stepped in for a hug. And tried not to melt as he hugged me back.
I don't know how long we stayed there; and frankly, I didn't care. I only know that little time passed between us splitting apart and the small pin in my watch to pivot into my wrist without end, signaling the rendezvous time.
"You didn't want to speak to your mother before you left?" Jaimess huffed.
It forced a little giggle out of me, seeing him struggle to converse and run at the same time despite the arduous training we went through; if only a bit.
"I've already said goodbye to my mother, and Aunt Ebbet. I've purchased everything I've needed to. I've had my talk with you. All I need to do now is leave."
That said, it felt strange knowing that the Archduke and the other royals didn't see Amun and Princess Roheisa off. The soldiers and guilders seemed to have been long gone as well. Turning the bustling capital city into a quiet utopia in just a couple of days. Looking around, it looked to be much the same as I remembered it as a little girl. A large and luxurious place filled with the same quiet, yet bustling atmosphere that could be found at the Cole Estate, only on a much larger scale.
When we arrived at the cove, Amun and some of the others were on the dock of a large ship mored at the dock that screamed the House of Cole from its appearance.
While I would've loved to ride on it, I was eager to get to work; and more so, excited to attempt something I've longed to try. So I turned to Amun at once.
In turn, he dropped what he was doing to float to my location and stand before me. "I assume you're taking your leave, then?"
"I am." I nodded.
Noticing the changed atmosphere, the vassals turned and began to approach as well, and before I could think, Amun spread his arms out and stepped in for a hug.
"I'll send Jaimess for you the moment we return to Maru." He whispered in my ear.
While there was the coldness would expect emanating from his body, there was also a strange warmth that I wanted to cling to for an eternity. I focused on it, held onto it until I remembered that he'd spoken, then I hurriedly nodded my head and he released me from his embrace.
After which, Toril, Jaimess, Edward, and all the others came in to give me hugs and words of encouragement. Even though they had no idea what my intentions were in departing, I could tell that they were all sad to see me go. I could hear the rhythm of their breath, of the pace of their heartbeats.
The feeling was so confounding, it resonated with me so much that I was nearly brought to tears. I did consider Aunt Ebbet my true mother, but she sternly raised me, rather than lovingly. Because of that, this was the first time I ever felt as if I truly had a family instead of a group of coworkers. Despite me having been around them for so long.
I only hated that it took me until now to realize it.
Rather than letting it drag me down, I held onto the feeling and used it to solidify my resolve, to motivate me into not failing Amun with the task he's given me. And so with a final nod to everyone, I turned, flicked a bit of ice mana into the choppy waters, and skipped off of the dock and onto a plate of white ice.
There, I took a second to reach into my back and down one of the many potions I purchased from the market. This one, Rich Blood, had a metallic taste and viscous texture that reminded me all too much of my namesake. But I pushed past it to down the entire bottle. Then turned to the waters before me to mentally prepare myself and go over the theories in my mind.
I recalled the fascination and excitement I felt after reading Amun's lessons on what he called, fluid dynamics. Specifically, on a subsection, he'd written down, about a phenomenon called supercavitation. I've read and reread that short paragraph so many times that I could recall it word for word at this point.
'Supercavitation.' I chanted to myself. 'A condition in which a skin of water vapor or gas flows around a submerged projectile or body, creating a frictionless environment and thus enabling high-speed swimming. Form a cone of gas around your body, with the nose above your head. Refine it until you get a system that works. And watch out for rocks and fish.'
The last sentence was what made me apprehensive to try it for so long, though with his later lessons, that apprehensiveness turned into unbridled confidence.
It happened after I awakened my cores. Then, in his applications of sound magic, he wrote about sonar. A sonic pulse that would spread outwards in all directions and bounce off of rocks, ships, and even lifeforms, and send the waves back to me. Revealing their distance, location, and relative size within seconds.'
With those two theories in mind, I dove into the frigid depths, propelling myself forward with water manipulation while I readied my sound magic in my mouth and imbued my body with thermal magic.
From the heat of my skin and my increasing speed, a thin layer of steam soon formed around my body, decreasing the drag of the water on my body and, in turn, increasing the propulsive force caused by the water being squeezed around my body until all that remained before my eyes was a blue-black blur.
With that out of the way, I made a popping sound with my mouth. Bringing an abundantly clear environment into view. A phantom visage of the seafloor, dozens of kilometers below, bloomed further away from me with each passing second. And the fast realm sitting between was filled to the brim with creatures of all shapes and sizes.
While they were generally spread out, I was sure that there were more of them than there were people in the entire Empire, perhaps even all of Maru. There were so, so many of them. Ranging from fish and crabs that were no larger than my fingernail to sea-floor dwelling leviathans that dwarfed anything that lived on the land in both size and ferocity.
Each sonar pulse brought out the next act in a never-ending performance under the sea. At any one moment, creatures were chasing or being chased; ambushing or being ambushed; hiding or searching; eating or being eaten, in an ongoing cycle that no one on the surface seemed to be privy to.
It was as breathtaking as the environment itself. Which only increased the irony me of breaching the surface every hour or so to take in a few gulps of fresh air, where I saw the drab lands I was headed to. Causing me to sort of lament that I couldn't spend more time in this vast blue world.
That wasn't to say that my time there was short. Contrarily, it took nearly three hours of swimming for me to see the glistening cities lining the coastline like a strip of light protesting to the black sky.
With the main leg of my journey complete. I formed an ice sheet to eat a few cubes of pemmican and mess around with my thermal magic for a bit before I took my new piece of equipment from Jonet.
It was nothing more than a harness stitched to a few bits of fabric that in turn was pulled taut over a wooden frame. Despite that, it was delightfully comfortable, and I was pleased to find that the many attachment points were easily accessible from the seat.
I took a moment to secure my waterskin under the left armrest and tuck a few pieces of fruit and pemmican in the side pocket before I secured my rucksack to the backrest and took a seat on the edge of my ice sheet.
After creating a gust of wind with manipulation and thermal magic, I pulled the cord on my harness. Allowing a bow-shaped sheet of fabric to unfurl and catch in the tempest. Plucking me from the expansive blue surface.
My flight was much less profound than my race across the sea. I've flown many times before with elemental manipulation. The only difference now was the blissful silence that came at no expense to my mana.
What was more evident was the stark contrast between the blue world and the black sky. The ocean made its presence known through a constant variation of sound. In turn, I was only made aware of the wind by the gusts passing over my ears and the soft fluttering of my parachute. In the ocean, I was surrounded by life I couldn't see. Here, I was alone in a vast emptiness that I could gaze all upon.
I eventually arrived above the Epethian heartland by around four in the morning. With the glasses Amun gave us, I could see the worn roads stretching through the rolling hills of this somewhat lush land as if it were high noon. Though everything was a dull gray, and instead of forests, those hills were filled with farms larger than anything I'd ever seen before.
Traveling further east brought me past more and more farms, ever nearer to the mountain range and ever closer to sunrise.
I started to wonder if I should ascend, double back to spend a day at sea, and try again tomorrow. Only to see exactly what I was looking for.
Perhaps a few hundred kilometers to the southeast was a rather vast lake that fed into a meandering river. While a large island sat near the center of the body of water, I was more interested in the rocky terrain skirting the waters on the eastern side. I felt that the likelihood of there being some sort of cave or chasm I could wriggle into was high. So I hovered above the lake and brought Jonet out before I jumped.
While she used her magic to store the entire construct in our pocket dimension, I use my magic to first silence our movements, then used manipulation to slow my descent and disrupt the water tension enough to dive into the still surface unharmed and give the lake a quick pulse.
As I expected, it was even deeper than it was large. And being this close to civilization, there weren't many creatures that pose a significant threat to anyone, nor were there many creatures swimming about near the surface. Rather, most of the wildlife here was found near the floor. Snails, bottom-feeding fish, and a whole army lot of crabs.
As for what I was looking for, there was a cave system beneath the central island, but that was far too conspicuous for my needs. On top of that, around half a dozen cave entrances were lining the entire coast. What was the most eye-catching of all, however, was the deepest opening in the lake.
It was near the bottom of the slope that rose up to form the northern shores. Close enough to the mountains for foraging trips and far enough away from the beginnings of civilization to the southwest and west. With my approach, I started to get a clearer picture of the cave's interior. In short, it was shaped like a horn. Wherein the opening led to a spiral cave that opened to a modestly sized underground lake.
Though it had its downsides, I felt as if it was the safest place to settle in for the night. So I quickly corkscrewed through the chasm and slowly breached the surface until my eyes were just above the still waters.
Much to my delight, I was a relatively spacious, single-room cave with many holes and small tunnels in the ceiling to provide some much-needed circulation and, hopefully, bring in some light. On top of that, the entrance was more than wide enough for a few of me, which meant that with a bit of bait and maybe some luck, I'd be able to fish in the comfort of my impromptu home.
Lastly, there was a cave wide enough for me to fit through near the back of the room. The only problem was, it was near the ceiling.
After stepping onto the main platform, my first action was silencing the room and calling Jonet out. Together, we set up a stockpile of wood and stone, then split up so that I could set up my tent, field chair, and a campfire to put on some food while she stepped through the shadows of the cave to see where the dozens of tunnels, chutes, and chasms led to.
I managed to not only finish my meal but set up a rather lavish sleeping setup for myself before Jonet returned with rather intriguing news, and shortly after, the waters next to me began emitting a radiant, sapphire light into the cave.
"Well, that's good." Jonet snorted, then turned to me. "What'd you find?"
"I found that we're here." I pointed to a rather remote region directly north of the capital region. "Under Crag Lake, three hundred or so kilometers from the empire's furthest border. The closest major cities are Droria, twelve kilometers to the west. Oretta, thirty or so kilometers to the northwest. And Colis, fifty kilometers due south. What about you?"
"This cave goes meanders for a few hundred meters before stopping at a dead end near the surface." She moved her pointer finger from the cave above to wave it across the walls and ceiling. "A few of these holes eventually make their way to the surface, but it's far too small for anything to pass through. I suggest you use those for chimneys and air circulation and use the cave to make paths to the surface."
"Then that's what we'll do." I nodded. Then stood to put out the fire and seal off the high cave with a wall of ice. "Come sundown."