I found myself in the forest clearing once more. The warm afternoon light shone down gently against my skin while the cool breeze kept me from overheating. I felt like my mind was once again foggy and I felt so very tired that all I could really do is continue to lay on the slightly damp grass and listen to the sounds of nature in the distance.
"This place..." I muttered quietly.
"This is the Spirit World, the world where all spirits come from." I heard that same familiar voice coming from beside me.
I turned my head and looked upon the visage of the beautiful girl once again for the first time since she warned me of the attack months ago. I felt like I knew who she was but she never appeared in any of the old Tensura works. She looked back at me with a wide smile, seemingly happy about something. As I continued to stare into her golden eyes she turned her head upwards into the air and continued to speak.
"Sometimes, the consciousnesses of mortals occasionally appear here in their dreams. Children's minds especially make their way here, though as they grow older and more cynical they tend to appear less and less until eventually, they stop coming altogether. I guess they gave up on such a fantastical place to dream." The woman spoke before turning her head back to me and smiling cutely.
"But you are special you know! I've never seen someone, especially a human, appear here fully conscious of their arrival! Normally those people are in a type of daze when they arrive but you are fully conscious of it! That makes you very interesting and I've been watching you for a long time!" She explained cheerfully.
I stared at her, digesting the information as it came before chuckling to myself. "I guess the title of this story is 'I picked up a Fairy Stalker in another World' then?" I said humorously.
"Hey! I'm not stalking you! I do occasionally look at other stuff too!" She said, getting up from her place laying opposite me and sitting on me, looking me in the eyes.
"Your kinda close aren't you, Miss Stalker?" I replied nervously looking away from her.
She seemingly pouted as she withdrew her face from mine. "What the heck man? First fully aware mortal I've met and he's super mean to me!"
I looked at her before letting out a sigh. "Well it's also hard for me when a beautiful woman suddenly gets super close. Not that I mind anyway." I whisper the last part to myself.
She looks happy when I called her beautiful and begins to haughtily laugh. "Yea~hahaha! Go on, praise me more and more!" She says as she gets started but stops after my whisper.
"Hey, you. I thought you were all about getting a harem when you were younger. Aren't you being a bit timid now?" She asks
My eyes go wide for a moment before I calm myself down and let out a tired sigh. "Well, does it matter anyways? It seems like whenever I have something good going on, I lose it. In my previous life, just as I was starting to make decent money, I end up in that world. Then my parents are killed just as I start mastering my skills to become an adventurer and it turns out my best friend and mentor who I looked up to were actually lying to me my entire life. Even recently, one of the members in a group of friends I thought I could trust, betray me before the others all die a painful and horrible death..." I begin to lament as tears form in my eyes. I use my hand to cover my face as I don't want to show anyone that I am breaking down. "I guess the universe just doesn't want me to be happy right? Can't have a single girl, much less a harem."
"Well, I don't know. It seems to me like rather than you not being allowed to have anything good, its that fate doesn't want you to die yet. That you have a role to play in everything." She says.
I smirk slightly, hand still covering my face. "You sound like one of those religious folks back home trying to get me to join their religion," I speak with slightly broken crying-laughs.
She places her hand over mine and removes it, taking a long look at my face for a minute before pulling me up into a hug. "It's ok, you know. I don't think you're weak because you want to cry."
I'm temporarily stunned by this and open my mouth to refute her claim but I am cut off. "You're only human. You're not god, and yet, here you are. You survive, you persevere when no one else will... but even still..."
"It hurts when your friends die..." I completed her sentence and hugged her back and let the floodgates burst.
...
"That was so embarrassing." I lament as I sit up.
"Don't worry about it! I'll keep it a secret you know, that's what friends are for!" she replied happily.
She got up from her place on my lap and plopped down behind me, as we sat their, backs to each other in silence.
"Friends huh?" I muttered, more to myself than anything.
"Of course, I wouldn't go out of my way for just any old chump you know?" She replied.
"Normally friends at least know each others names though." I joked.
"Eeehhhh!?! I thought I told you my name already!" She cried out in annoyance.
"Sorry, I woke up before I could catch it." I replied somewhat sheepishly.
"How rude! Well, I'll tell you again just because I'm feeling generous! Make sure to praise my magnanimousness later ok!" She laughed again before going silent for a moment.
"My name is Ramiris, Queen of the Spirits." She said.
I turned my entire body around in an instant to look at her in shock. I opened my mouth to say something but was silenced by a peck on the cheek from her. "When you wake up, come and find me, my boss would love to meet an interesting human like you! I've already sent someone to pick you up!" She said with a smirking face, knowing I wanted to say something but the world suddenly went white before even a syllable was uttered..
...
'Ramiris!" I yelled as I quickly sat up and reached out my hand.
"My name's not Ramiris, it's Sylvia El-Ru. How do you even know of that fairy's name?" A woman called out from my side.
I turned to look at the woman and was surprised to see the elf, no high elf sitting across from me in the room I now found myself in. It appeared as though I was moved from my initial position, laying in a pool of my own blood in an abandoned theatre to the room of a spacious palace. The high elf was a beautiful woman with long light greenish silver hair and bright green eyes sitting there. She wore a form-fitting black dress with long sleeves, and four high-cut leg slits that showed off her shapely long legs. She was also armed with what looked to be some kind of small object that I hadn't seen anywhere before.
Sylvia must have seen me staring at it, because she picked it up and held it in front of her as if to show it off. "This is called a Vajra. It helps me channel lightning magic and can be transformed into a sword." She stated, pouring in a slight amount of magic power which transformed the weapon into a shortsword.
My eyes opened wide at seeing this. "Ok, that was kinda cool," I muttered before looking the woman in the eyes, waiting for her to begin explaining what was going on to me.
We kept staring at each other for a solid thirty seconds before I finally cracked and asked. "Aren't you supposed to be saying something about now?"
"Well you were the one who didn't answer my question yet." She responded with a smile.
"What question?" I asked back seriously. 'Did I miss her saying something to me earlier?' I thought.
"I asked how you knew Ramiris." She replied bluntly.
"My eyes suddenly dropped into half-lids as I stared at her with a 'really?' expression on my face, but when I realized I wasn't getting anywhere with her, I gave up and sighed before opening my mouth to speak, only to be rudely interrupted.
"Well, I guess it's not important anyways! You're currently in the capital city of the Ultra Magic Kingdom, Soma in the Royal palace. One of our top magicians led a team to Duskshield and found you as the only survivor." She replied, quickly cutting me off.
'She's doing it on purpose!' I yelled inside my own mind before calming myself down again and making a snarky comment. "Its Duskhild, actually. Noone calls it Duskshield anymore."
"Well I was there when Alya Duskshield died and we named the town that cropped up around her grave after her. I don't care if you humans call it something else, its called Duskshield to me!" Sylvia spoke in an annoyed tone.
I raised both my hands in surrender at her snap-back. "Alright. Alright then, Duskshield it is-"
"Was" She interrupted me again.
"Huh?"
"I just said you were the only survivor right? Well, that place has lost all meaning as a trading post and military fortress town. The Super Magic Empire is gone too." Sylvia said, shivering a bit at the implications before looking at me with cold eyes.
"What happened?" She asked in a clearly hostile voice.
I was temporarily stunned by the sudden change and it was at that moment when I realized that I couldn't detect anything around me, as my [Magic Sense] had seemingly been disabled.
"It's useless. Noella might voice for you, but as the only one alive in that part of the world, there had to be a reason for it. Its my guess that you are somehow responsible for it all!" She said, gripping her Varja in sword form tightly.
I looked her in the eyes, not wanting for any more misunderstandings to occur. "I don't know. I was too busy at the time fighting against some group of slave traders and a traitor name Da- Ezekiel at the time. All I felt was a wave of dizziness before I started bleeding and pain... It was a new type of pain though, one that hurt something deep inside me, not just my physical body..."
"I see. Then it was as the Magician's Corps suggested. It was the forbidden Nuclear Magic {Deathstreak}" Sylvia said, more to herself than anything.
"{Deathstreak}?" I asked.
"Its a type of Nuclear Magic that rapidly destroys all living things in its area of effect, decaying them into their basic components, turning most things begins to ash... It was believed that only spiritual lifeforms could survive this type fo attack, however, you have proved to be an exception to this rule." Sylvia stated, pointing her finger at me.
"Sorry I guess?" I replied confused as to how I was supposed to respond to that.
Sylvia sighed before putting her head in her hand. "Well, whatever. I left that kid Oberon to manage our people and look what happens. He lets one of our cities get wiped off the map. It's probably because he was too happy to see his daughter again after sending her away."
I raised one of my eyebrows in intrigue. "So YOU are the real leader of Soma?" I asked.
"No. I'm the True Ancestor of the Elf Clan and first High Elf." She responded matter-of-factly.
'Since when was that a thing!?!' I yelled in my mind.
There was an awkward silence after that while she kept looking at me intently and I matched her gaze. I thought we were going to forever be stuck in a stalemate like this so I changed the subject.
"Umm. Why isn't my [Magic Sense] working here?" I asked, looking around the room.
"Oh that is because this entire room is under the effects of an anti-magic barrier. If you were actually responsible for the devastation then we couldn't let you access or use any magic now could we?" She replied with an amused smirk.
"Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?" I mumbled to myself but Sylvia picked up on it.
"What's that? Can you eat it?"
I began to rub my temple with my hand as I spoke again. "You know, you're giving me worse pain in the form of a headache than from the {Deathstreak}."
Sylvia smiled before sticking out her tongue at me in a playful manner and turning to exit the room. "You seem to have been healed up. There are some things I need to take care of first but Twilight should be here in a little while to pick you up and bring you to the big boss. You've caused quite a stir you know." She said as she walked out.
'Who the heck is Twilight? They sound like they might be a vampire but I thought Hgh Elves and Vampires were at war with each other?' I thought before feeling my [Magic Sense] suddenly reactivate. It seems they saw fit to remove the anti-magic area barrier after Sylvia left the room, which was nice.
I began to stare out of the large glass window not far from my bed that overlooked a large city. It looked like something out of a nature-themed magic-steampunk setting with tall buildings that looked like they were made out of bronze and large trees that towered over the streets below. Vines decorated every building with flowering fruits hanging from seemingly every branch or bramble.
"Heh, looks like it was ripped out of a painting," I said, throwing my feet out from under the covers and walking over to the window to get a better look.
Just then I detected the noise of rapidly approaching footsteps on the floor in the hall outside the room. I turned around just as the door came bursting open and a blob of white hair came diving toward me. I could have dodged the tackle attempt, but I decided it was fine to let it go and endure the tackle, after all, the red eyes I saw from the woman were tearing up and looking as pitiful as ever.
"ALASTER!!!" Evelyn yelled as she grabbed hold and held me tightly. "I'm so glad your okay!" She continued weeping happily into my shirt.
I smirked and began to pet her head as I felt a warm feeling come over me. "Hey, Evelyn. I'm glad to see you're alright too."