The rocks were sturdy. Even with the power of Vega and Wyatt, the whole structure of the blockage stayed the same. Regret didn't change the situation they were in. Vega regretted not waiting until he was more powerful before venturing out. Wyatt thought about his future after killing the girls.
"Do you have any more spells to destroy them," Vega asked Wyatt again, hopeful even though zero chances whatsoever.
"Even if I were a genius, a fourth spell is impossible. With only three spells, my brain feels like it's gonna explode already. Hey, do you think your friend from the academy can help us?"
Hearing that questions, Vega shook his head, embarrassed. He didn't bother talking to anyone else besides Dion at the academy. Living on the streets, he learned the hard way not to make friends. More friends equals losses. He couldn't count how many of his friends lost their lives from starvation, thirst, or even sickness.
"I have one noble friend, but he left the academy earlier for killing scarlings. I am not sure he's…. Wait!" Vega remembered his medal.
The pattern on the metal surface felt familiar. Sitting in a meditation pose, Vega focused his mind and imagined Dion clearly in his mind. He felt nothing, not even a trace of feedback. Sighing, he opened his eyes, shaking his head, "Nope. Doesn't work. Do you have any method to call someone?"
Similarly, Wyatt shook his head, "No, I only know the girls and my mistress. If I contact her, it means I'm done."
Wyatt took something similar like the one Vega has. This one was made from a wooden material with a symbol of three lines engraved on the surface. He threw it on the ground and tried stepping on it, but the medal was still intact. He then took another flask containing black liquid from his pouch, opened the stopper, and poured a drop on it. A sizzling sound came from the wooden material. Not long after, the corrosive nature destroyed it until it became nothing.
"That, we can use that liquid to go out!" Vega had an idea.
"It won't work. Even the strongest apprentice poison only affects organic matters," Wyatt rubbed the surface of the cave. "Sadly, this isn't."
They didn't have any more choice but to work deeper inside the cave. Some moss in the deeper part meant water source. Wyatt didn't care about this thing, for he won't lack water.
Occasionally, Wyatt brushed his fingers on the moss or even weeds growing all over the deeper part. But after a while, Wyatt shook his head and stopped his action. Without the sun to measure time, they walked until they ran out of stamina that, after breaking through as an apprentice, had improved tremendously. After walking without knowing how long they had travelled, the pond and nowhere else to go, they stopped exploring and looked around.
Wyatt stopped his spell. Whatever the treasure was had gone. In front of them, a clearing with a pond looked bright with some glowing crystals. The water in the pond looked milky. Wyatt stopped Vega and threw a pebble inside. When the pebble was still near the surface, a creature jumped out of the pond and bit it.
"See! Not safe," Wyatt pointed at the pond.
"Yes, I can see that. What is this white water anyway?"
"A liquid mana that accumulated for centuries. That creature jumped out of the water and has been guarding this place. I bet thousands of skeletons on the bottom."
"So, nowhere else to go?"
"No, I don't think so, but meditating just close to the pond could help us advance fast and probably have another breakthrough for trying to clear the entrance?" Wyatt sat down, closed his eyes, and started his meditation.
Without anything else to do, Vega observed him. After waiting a few seconds, he also chose a place further from the pond's edge. If the creature decided to eat him for a snack, it would choose Wyatt first. He started his meditation.
From the base of his spine, he heard the regular tone. The air around him vibrated, making the air around him vibrate at the same frequency. Some books informed him a meditation could increase his soul power. Awake but unconscious. He felt his body had become lighter. Slowly he floated around, and his own body sat straight on the ground. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
Vega looked around but didn't see who was talking.
Vega felt his soul getting disturbed. A strong pressure pressed around him. Even though he couldn't see the attack, he felt like something had squished him. Slowly the edge of his sight started to darken, and he felt like falling asleep but slowly.
The book lit up from his back without anyone noticing, summoning a barrier around his mind. It slowly attack the soul invasions from behind.
Vega heard the sound. The pressure around him lifted, and he gained his consciousness back. This is dangerous! I need to go back. Floating, he reached back to his body and opened his eyes abruptly.
"What happened to you? You look pale like you see a ghost?"Wyatt awoke from his meditation and felt the shake from the mana around him.
Vega rubbed his face trying to feel the reality, "Nothing, the cave makes me feel scared." He lied. The feeling that your soul was trying to be consumed was not great. Something he didn't want to share with Wyatt now.
"Alright. I guess some people are scared of enclosed spaces. I'm bored now. How about we play some games?"
Wyatt was certainly still young. The way he acted made Vega wonder how the boy could become an intermediate-level apprentice, "what game?" he never played any game after arriving on the Islands. On the street, the common game was throwing pebbles inside a circle. That one was boring.
Wyatt took a chalk from his pouch and drew sixteen squares, "this is the simple version." He then gave a black-colored wooden slate to Vega and kept yellowish ones. "We play in turn. With this," putting one tile inside one square. "We have to make the lines with a similar color. Horizontally or diagonally. One line, one point. We played until one person gained one point and started the second round."
"Now you see here," he pointed at the empty square that hadn't been filled with the tiles. "We have to stack two, three, or a maximum of four tiles together and repeat. You can only move three times." Wyatt showed it by blocking Vega's tiles and stacking them on the bottom. Then proceeded to move two more times, releasing the tiles in the other place. "The game was basically the same but you can only move up, down, left, and right. Different from the first round where you can put the tiles anywhere. Here, you can move here, here, and finally here." Wyatt finished the game. Showing a line with the same color again.
The isolation felt better with the new game where Vega had to use his brain. No, that's not it. I'll probably lose again. The game had been going on for five rounds, and so far, Wyatt had won all game.
"This is what my mistress taught me to improve my mind and mental capacity to visualize the second-dimensional spell model. If you learn it now when you become an intermediate apprentice, you will be faster in mastering spells later." Wyatt helped Vega learn a lot, acting like a master teaching apprentice.
At first, Vega hesitated, thinking the exchange wasn't equal. Wyatt was a strange hoarder of knowledge. Anything he didn't know would be devoured akin to a moth to a flame. The boy also had a strong memory. Without notes, he named hundreds of different plants in a span of minutes. Knowing that he gained a lot of knowledge from the boy in front of him, Vega finally shared his personal life as payment.
Wyatt accepted any knowledge starting from the geographical location of the outer islands, architecture, or even occasional gossip from the streets Vega grew up in. In turn, he would teach about herbs, plants, sigils, and also the method of making potions. Of course, the knowledge of any spells remains a secret because it was a death sentence when a spell was shared to another person besides a master and apprentice.
Once, Vega tried to offer the rest of his magic crystals for the much knowledge he had learned but got rejected.
"A general information that everyone can learn with time," Wyatt proceeded by telling stories about some legends on the Islands. The stories were interesting, to say the least. Some were scary and especially told in a dark cave made Vega shuddered to hear those.
Another day Wyatt stopped Vega from disclosing personal information from a noble whose house he robbed.
"It's nothing. They're bastards anyway," Vega continued talking about the affair of a certain gentleman whose genitalia stuck after trying to pleasure himself with a pumpkin.
On the first day, Vega understood elemental reactions. By day four, he could almost win the game by one tile difference. By the span of a week, he could name different plants just by looking at the picture. He could explain in detail the process to brew a simple tincture to clot the blood. Most of them were of course only a theory but not practical things for they didn't have any tools to practice them together.
Pages to pages. Picture to picture. Vega's empty book was finally looking like a real time. One page detailed an explanation of how to diagnose a broken bone. Another was the list of names of common illnesses and potions. Three pages full of scratches with lines intersecting each other noted little common sigils and their uses.
The disturbance in the cave woke Vega from his daily meditation. The ambient mana around the pond gathered together, making a huge vortex around Wyatt. The boy sat there with a frown on his face. Sweats rolled down his back, and his mouth clamped shut. A breakthrough process was not something fun to enjoy. Vega experienced it firsthand after drinking the awful potion while sitting in front of a locked door in his home.
The disturbances lasted for about an hour. The mana calmed down, and even the milky white water stopped its ripples. Vega took a mouthful of water and then offered it to Wyatt, who was starting to open his eyes.
"You broke through," Vega stated obviously. "How do you feel?"
Wyatt stood and stretched his limbs, "Wonderful! I thought nothing is going to be different, but I can recall information faster. It's like… like your mind being opened for the first time."
Vega shrugged, not understanding the description. Some things better to experience myself. "So, do you have anything to help us get out of this situation?"
Wyatt looked pensive for a moment and then he took his chalk and wrote scribbles on the ground. After several tries, he stopped, tapped his chalk anxiously, and wrote something again. The process went over for several minutes.
Vega looked over at the writings on the ground. At first, he thought that it was a normal sigil. He recognized the sigil for fire and air, but mostly many lines didn't make any sense to him. Yes, he understood simple sigils, but that took him over a week to understand what each line and symbol meant. Not trying to disturb his friend anymore, he focused more on understanding his spell further. He was close to a breakthrough based on the full feeling he had already felt for a couple of days.
Strangely, the rocks and the ground had similar tones, with the first sacred point based on his spine. The air around him activated the tones inside his stomach, heart, and throat points. If he listened carefully, he could see a shimmering silhouette of what was around him. The image got distorted when Vega felt the stones of fire. His stomach felt intense pain, and by distributing his focus, he finally felt better. Vega stopped his meditation and looked over at the source of the fire.
The intense heat greeted him. At first, it was bearable, but after a while, it felt like it could melt metal, "Wyatt, what is happening?"
His friends were looking intensely at the pieces of rocks in front of him. Noticing the sign of melting on the rocks, he finally stopped whatever it was, "This and this." Wyatt finally looked at Vega and smiled widely, "We can get out!"
"You sure?"
Wyatt nodded enthusiastically. He started to tidy up all the things inside the cave. Wearing his loose robe, he waited for Vega.
After being in the cave for a month, Vega missed the feeling of strong mana around him. The intensity helped him tremendously in his journey during meditation. Already he felt full, and the sign of a breakthrough is coming to him. He would go on a closed-door meditation after returning to the academy.
They threaded along the cave together. With a slightly dim light from Wyatt's spell, they walked faster than the first time they got it. With vigor, the step turned faster and faster. After a while, Wyatt felt they didn't need the light spell anymore. The familiar entrance was right in front of them.
Wyatt ran first and took chalk, a flask of red liquid slowly turning black, and a strange empty bowl. After positioning the bowl at a correct angle, he poured the liquid. It dripped slowly and thickened after getting cold. Vega remembered it as a melting metal previously. A circle, a couple of lines, and a couple of symbols slowly filled circling the bowl. After examining the formations over and over again, Wyatt finally sat down and closed his eyes.
Vega felt the same sensations around his stomach. The heat gradually turned hotter and turned the liquid red. The symbols lit up, one by one. This process was slower compared to the one near liquid mana. Finally, with a clap, the bowl broke, and the entrance slowly melted. Afraid the liquid would touch his friend, he grabbed Wyatt quickly.
The spell stopped, but at least it had left them a hole formed on the top of the entrance. A slight smell of fresh air and natural light greeted them. Together they helped each other climb the rock formations.
Their feet touched the ground, and both hugged. Celebrating the fresh air and the scent of morning dew on the plants. The scarling had turned into a couple of pieces of shells here and there. Skeletons replaced the corpses of two girls. Their robes had disappeared, stolen by some intelligent creatures who in turn, used it to create their own magical tools. They view they enjoyed together the last time before finally parting ways and walking their own paths.