Teerom carried Adimia. Reben and Amasha carried Paley, who had become incredibly light, like a husk.
"Shouldn't we go back to mom!?" Reben asked Teerom as they rushed back to camp.
"Only Paley knows the way back! Plus, we don't know if they'd last that long." Teerom said as they finally arrived at camp. They lugged the two injured boys onto the grass next to the tent.
"I should've known," Teerom gritted his teeth, checking his right hand to make sure the eye was closed.
"Known what?" Reben asked as he wrapped up Paley's still clenched fists with his pants.
"Those cursed by demons attract monsters. I think that's why that giant rabbit was attacking them. Because it saw Paley as a demon."
"What!? Paley's a demon!?" Amasha jumped away from Paley.
"No! He's not a demon. He's just cursed by one. Someone in his past must've summoned a demon in exchange for something of his. He's not missing any limbs. He's probably not missing any organs. Maybe they took something from his mind." As Teerom explained, he was desperately trying to keep Adimia's footless foot wrapped up.
"What if..." Reben stuttered and gulped, "What if he was the one who summoned one. For himself? I mean, the chances of a commoner being a Quimnia are..."
"Where'd you hear that? Class doesn't determine your magic power. Knowledge and practice determine it. Unless..." Teerom looked at Paley almost dubiously. But in the end, he trusted Paley.
"Unless?" Amasha asked.
"Nevermind, he's not that kind of guy. The higher classes - especially nobles - are stronger mages than us because they have access to knowledge that we could only dream of having. If Paley was a noble before he lost his memory, then yeah, there's the chance that he summoned a demon to give him the power of a Quimnia. But that is not who Paley is. He worked as hard as he could by himself all this time. All of his power is his fairly. I bet he's even as strong as a Lord Mage now."
The boys fell silent, waiting for Adimia and Paley to recover somehow. Their hopes were answered when a firefly landed on Paley's nose gently. It had a soft, gentle purple glow.
The boys gathered around it, watching it as it sucked out white essence from his forehead.
"What are you doing!?" Amasha went to slap the firefly, but Reben stopped him.
"I think it might help. I mean, it told us that Paley and Adimia were in danger." Reben suddenly remembered the second message the fireflies created that he saw, "Uh, guys. I gotta tell you something."
"Spill," Teerom said, still watching the firefly intently.
"The fireflies made another message just after you two went to save them. It said: The half-blood will go berserk."
"The half-blood? As in Paley?" Teerom looked back at him with worry.
Reben nodded slowly and Teerom went back to watching the firefly. It had become fat with Paley's mana, barely able to fly. It struggled to Adimia's missing foot and sprinkled white energy all over it. In a very grotesque manner, Adimia's foot slowly grew back. It was as good as new.
"Eugh..." Amasha quivered after seeing bones and flesh wrap around each other like that.
"Is it... using Paley's magic?" Teerom asked himself as the firefly slowly flew to Adimia's right shoulder. The shoulder that the rabbit bit. In the same manner, it healed that too. The deep wounds of where the buck teeth penetrated the skin completely vanished.
"I don't wanna die!" Adimia snapped awake and sat up, slamming into the firefly. But it seemed more irritated than hurt, "What is that? A firefly?" He asked and watched it fly back to Paley. It landed on his chest and released a bunch of white threads of magic. They wrapped around him and dissolved into his body.
"That firefly healed you. It bought back your foot." Teerom explained in awe.
"Ah, my foot!" Adimia kissed his foot, "Thank you, Firefly!"
"There's something strange about this forest. What are you?" Teerom asked the firefly, but it flew away in a hurry as if it wanted to avoid the question. Paley suddenly woke up, coughing up blood and gasping for air. The firefly healed all the internal injuries he had given himself.
"Paley!" Amasha and Reben jumped onto him, hugging him tightly.
"What the- What happened?" Paley fell back, losing the battle against the two boys. He had a splitting headache, but at least he wasn't hungry anymore.
"A giant rabbit attacked you. Then a firefly saved your life." Teerom explained.
"Ah, what?" Paley couldn't be bothered to try and understand. He sighed and lied back onto the grass, "I'm exhausted. Can you get some food for me?" He asked - his body was starving for mana.
"The rabbit should still be fresh. Let's eat that," Adimia suggested.
"Alright, we'll go and get it. You two rest. And Paley?" Teerom stood up.
"Yeah?"
"I need to talk to you later," He said and walked off.
"Get well soon!" Amasha and Reben followed him.
Adimia finally gained the strength to stand up a few minutes later.
"Weird. It doesn't feel like anything even happened." He shook his foot around. It felt cold, like the icy sensation in your mouth when you have a mint.
"A firefly saved us?" Paley asked himself, staring at his knuckles. His memory was a haze, but he could blurrily remember clawing at the rabbit's eye. After that first spill of blood, it all went blank.
"Seems so. Maybe the forest's alive or something." Adimia put his ear to the ground to see if he could listen to the forest.
"I don't think forests have a consciousness,"
"They could. Some mage could totally give a forest a will." Adimia went back to Paley and sat down next to him, sighing, "Thanks man," He said.
"For what?"
"For saving me. I genuinely thought I was gonna die there."
"Oh, don't mention it."
"No, but you were amazing back there. Even though you were out of magic, you beat that monster with your bare fists." Adimia punched the air.
"It seems I went a bit overboard, though." As Paley said that, Teerom came back, dragging the giant rabbit's carcass along.
"Most of the blood's already drained out the- head area, and the meat is still fresh. So at least we got something to eat, eh?" Teerom wiped the sweat off his face. Amasha and Reben were also trying to push the rabbit along, but the sight of the crushed head kept overwhelming them.
"Oh ho! Thank the moons, I'm starving." Adimia sprung to his feet and walked over to help the boys. Paley stared with mixed feelings at the head.
"I'll heat it. You guys add all the spices and stuff." Paley dismissed his thoughts and went to light a fire under the rabbit. Nothing happened. Now that he thought about it, he could barely feel any mana coursing through his body.
He tried again, this time making a more obvious gesture with his hand, but nothing again.
"Firebolt," He made the diamond with his hands and even said the incantation, but his mana was completely missing.
"You're out of mana from the fight. Just rest up. We'll handle this." Teerom said and tried to lift the rabbit.
"It's fine. I don't need magic to cook a rabbit." Paley said, "We should probably cut it up to make it easier to move around."
"Ooo, sounds fun!" Amasha exclaimed as the other boys fell silent awkwardly.
"I'll pass on that." Reben and Adimia, despite their excitable nature, felt sick at the sight of flesh.
"We can go and gather some wood for a campfire?" Teerom joined them subtly.
"Sure, we'll cut it up."
Paley and Amasha began cutting most of the fur off the rabbit. They removed the crushed head, and Amasha buried it a few paces away.
"Alright, you ready?" Paley asked after they finished cleaning off the fur. Amasha nodded, excited to cut the rabbit, but he would soon be horrified by the grotesque flesh and bone.
"Ah! Eww!" He yelled and nearly jerked the knife around, but Paley kept him still.
"Steady, you don't wanna ruin the meat now, do you?" In contrast, Paley was calm and collected.
"I hate this. I hate this!" Amasha expected the rabbit's insides to look like the ones depicted in the picture books that Jurie passed down to him.
"What were you expecting?" Paley finished driving his knife down and separated the right leg from the body.
"I don't wanna do this anymore!" Amasha shivered and pulled away from the rabbit.
"Too scared?" Paley teased and grabbed Amasha's knife, still stuck halfway down the rabbit's belly.
"Of course not, why would I be scared?" Amasha would go back and forth like this until they finished cutting up the monster.
It was about twenty minutes before they finally finished slicing the rabbit up into hundreds of different cuts of meat. Amasha dropped down to the ground and lay on his back, breathing heavily.
"See? Wasn't so bad was it?" Paley picked up the fresh meat and organized it. The cubes of meat were on the left. The full legs were in the middle. And the high-quality meats like the fillet and ribs on the right.
They weren't professional butchers, so there was a lot of wastage, but at least they got most of the meat out.
Teerom, Adimia, and Reben returned with a bunch of logs. They placed them down and made a campfire which took too long to set ablaze.
"Can you make a bunch of kinda thin straight sticks?" Paley asked Teerom.
"Sure," Teerom replied and took a part of a log. Luckily, he bought his trusty chisel along, so he could easily carve out the sticks. Paley and the other boys worked on making a stand on which they could cook the meat.
After Teerom finished making the sticks, they placed them in a net-like assortment on the stand.
"Hopefully they don't burn," Paley referred to the sticks over the fire. He took one of the pieces of meat and placed it on the net. The boys watched it slowly cook as Paley added salt and pepper.
"Woah, that looks delicious," Reben and Adimia were salivating at the sight of the meat glazing.
"You only added salt and pepper and it's shimmering like that? It must be super high quality." Teerom said.
"Maybe it's because of the mana zone," Paley added and took the meat off the grill with impromptu chopsticks, "Who wants to try it first?" He held it up.
"Me!" Amasha jumped up and swallowed it whole, "Ack! It's hot!" He huffed from the burn.
"You should've let it cool down a bit,"
After Amasha drank some water and settled down, they filled the grill with meat. They experimented with different combos of spices, and Reben found one that made the meat shiny and juicy. It was the tastiest, so the boys all used that combination of spices to cook the rest of the meat.
They ate about half of the rabbit by midday. Paley ate much more than usual. Most likely due to his shortage of mana. He thought to use Dyaahn breathing to recuperate it. But he decided otherwise because it caused him to go into a sort of mana debt, meaning that his body had to shut down to pay back the debt.
(Everyone uses Dyaahn breathing to strengthen the mental connection to spells and make it easier to cast spells with good strength. Paley can use it to absorb mana from his surroundings. Since he was in a mana zone, there'd be a great deal of mana available, but he'd pass out immediately after using the technique. He was still too weak physically to withstand the burden of sucking in mana that wasn't originally his.)
'Eh, who cares? At least I'm alive,' Paley thought to himself.
"I wanna climb the trees," Amasha said all of a sudden.
"Wait until I've got my mana back. I don't want you guys getting hurt."
"Bummer. What do we do now, then?" Adimia asked.
"We could play Hide and Seek?" Teerom suggested.
"What's that?" Paley remembered the game slightly.
The boys explained the rules of Hide and Seek, and they played that for about three hours until Paley managed to recuperate some mana. It was hard to find people in a forest, but Paley won most of the rounds with his sense of smell. (The boys, apart from Teerom, didn't shower often).
After Paley could cast easy water spells again, they all rushed off to climb up the giant trees. Teerom stayed on the ground with Paley.
"You guys not coming?" Adimia asked them.
"Nah, I'll be fine down here," Paley replied. He wanted to be able to see everyone to make sure he could create a bed of water for them to land on in case they fell.
"S-Same," Teerom, on the other hand, was scared out of his wits of heights.
"Okay then," Adimia ran off and jumped onto a tree, gripping its bumps tightly as he moved up like a spider.
"Man, I hate this fear of heights." Teerom sighed.
"Want some help overcoming it?" Paley offered.
"How do you even overcome this fear?" He asked.
"You just dive. Literally."
In about ten minutes, Adimia managed to climb up to the top of the tree. The leaves were very far apart, creating an open, cozy interior under the canopy. Adimia sat down against the trunk and looked down.
"Woah," He felt a shiver go down his spine. The ground was at least fifty to sixty meters down.
"Don't go too far or I won't be able to catch you!" Paley shouted distantly.
"Got it!" Adimia shouted back and stood back up. A small blinking green light among the leaves caught his attention. He hopped along the branches and made his way to it. It was a firefly.
"Hey," He moved closer to it. It must've been drifting to sleep since its glow was slowly decreasing. "Thank you," He smiled, then noticed all the other unlit fireflies around it, "Thank all of you,"
"Adimia! There you are," Reben and Amasha popped out from behind him.
"Wanna play tag?" Reben asked.
"Let's do it!" Adimia replied, "I'm it!" He ran after them.