"Welcome aboard! Our next stop is Barl. Please remain seated and keep all belongings clear of the aisles."
The train conductor's voice echoed around the station as the train passengers moved to their respective assigned seats. The doors opened and crowds rushed out, making way for the new passengers.
Within minutes, the train filled to the brim and was on the way. Most were on holiday, some dressed in suits and carrying briefcases, heading for their business trips.
People crammed into the train, barely having space to keep their feet, enviously looking at the other compartment of the train. They could see a single man in the first-class compartment with all that space to himself.
Envious, but not complaining, because only nobles could afford such facilities. But little did they know, the boy had a commoner's blood just like them; the only difference was that he had a lot of money to spend.
Levi, along with Rika by the window, gazing out, had bought one of the first-class cabins. There were nine other cabins but empty, so it felt like he had bought the whole compartment of the train for himself.
"Wow, Eye, look, the city looks so tiny from here. I feel like a god,"
Rika said, her head pressed to the window. The train passed up the hills covering the city of Hilica city. Such a manoeuvre would not be possible by a train, but in the world of magic, only imagination sets the limit.
The central eye beside her just nodded and then turned back and glared at Levi, who ignored it.
Levi decided to reveal the central eye to Rika, not because it was necessary. She had been bothering him too much and he found the perfect sacrifice to get away from the ever-chatting parrot.
Rika almost fainted when the central eye appeared on Levi's shoulder out of nowhere. At first, she didn't even look at the central eye properly. After all, it was a dark floating ball, with bat-like wings, claws like hers, and a menacing red eye, the only feature in its face.
But once, as Levi ordered, the central eye started communicating with Rika via telepathy, the fear she had immediately vanished.
"You can talk in my head? That is so cool,"
and she just kept talking with the central eye, just for the sake of telepathic communication.
The most annoying part was Rika kept calling it "Eye," as if it didn't have a name.
[Wait-I don't have a name],
The central eye thought. It looked at Levi writing something in a red-covered diary. Serving Levi was its biggest gift, but maybe having a name wouldn't be so bad. Although the central eye didn't have the courage to ask him.
However, he did have the courage to say,
[Master, help, this annoying red-feathered creature will be the end of me. Please do anything, chuck it out of this window. Give me the order to strangle its neck right here or maybe debuff it to death.]
Levi blatantly ignored its message and kept focusing on the diary. The eye sighed from its non-existent mouth and accepted its fate, listening to the blabbering until its non-existent ears bled.
Though it was odd to see Levi writing in another diary, other than his black leather journaling copy he used every night or maybe doing his assignments. It had never seen Levi use the one he currently held.
And he had an odd expression on his face. A bit bothered and a lot more confused.
'[Essence]. I'm using it like a double-edged sword.'
The first power that he got from day one since being here, 'One Focus,' allowed Levi to believe in anything, activating [Essence] and giving him power as much as he believed.
Fascinated by the trait, every day Levi practised and observed how [Essence] functioned.
'And it is my fault.'
According to his observation, the trait itself disobeyed the law of conservation of energy as it gave Levi power out of nothing, which was overpowered. But once the suggestions stopped, the energy or mana his body held didn't disappear into thin air.
Instead, his body absorbed that vast amount of mana. Believing that he was an S-rank would create mana that an S-rank would need and once he stopped believing, his body would soak in that mana.
And a lower-ranking body can't completely handle such dense energy, destroying his internals bit by bit. The only thing stopping it from being destroyed was the Pure Mana Cultivation technique that he practised every day.
The technique given by God himself allowed Levi to store that adamant energy while spitting out the excessive energy in the form of sweat or pee but, at times, even the cultivation couldn't do much.
Three months of regular practice using [Essence] gave Levi a profound base on how he could [Essence] be properly used. And that is what he used the new diary for. To journal the most efficient way to use the best power he had and he had found three ways to do it.
'1. Use [Essence] to only increase one attribute of my body.'
Usually, Levi increased his strength, agility, and stamina at the same time. Doing so, the overload on his body increased so much that after [Essence] stopped, he couldn't properly make use of his body.
But when he would think about only increasing speed or any other attribute, the increase would be more than 90%, and he wouldn't feel exhausted after it. The time taken to increase the boost would be significantly less and feel more efficient.
'2. Create synergy between [Essence] and my skill.'
Levi observed that the skill which needed mana would often take the energy from [Essence], creating harmony between them. And again, the secret was to boost only one attribute.
He could use Snipe to increase the accuracy of the arrow and [Essence] to speed it up.
Now, the third way to use [Essence] was a bit more theoretical. Since his training with Yuki and Irina, Levi realized that mana control could solve the issue of his body breaking down. Not by controlling the energy but by letting it go.
'I practised doing this for a month but still nothing seems to happen.'
Levi's plan was simple, use [Essence] and chant,
"I have the mana of an S-rank."
He would chant it and immediately feel a surge of warmth brimming up in the pit of his stomach and forehead, then spreading across his body. Before the mana started breaking his body, he imagined compressing the mana and letting it out as an attack.
But to no avail, nothing had happened. He couldn't ask anyone about, it nor learn a new art to deal with it because of the curse.
However, he knew this was the right way to do so. He felt a spark, an epiphany reaching him every time he did this, but one thing was missing, experience and a bit of luck.
'I need to experiment with it a lot more.'
Levi closed his notebook stored it inside his ring and watched outside the window. The train had already passed most of the cities and almost all of the passengers had gotten off.
Silence filled the cabin, with the occasional sound of steam and the train's horn. The smell of the forest and the fresh air made its way through a small gap in the window and Levi started to open it halfway, drowning in the beauty of nature.
At first, Levi planned to use the teleportation gate but it was under maintenance and would take two days to be repaired. He could go to another city and use the gate there but it took eight hours to reach that city by train.
******
Six hours flew by and Levi reached Barl, the city that has the largest access point to the biggest ocean in Servania, called Rivera.
The moment Levi got off the train, a salty and marine smell filled his nose, to the point he had to hold his breath for a good half-minute. Levi had been to coastal lands but never had he experienced such a strong odor.
As he walked out from the station, the view in front was similar to what he would see in fish markets back on Earth. Except for the number of shops here were a lot more.
Barl's Infamous Fish Market featured more than 20,000 shops, and took 229 acres of land, taking one-third of the total land of Barl. Being connected to Rivera gave it an endless opportunity for exposure to marine life.
Some shops sold fresh fish, from any size to either feed a single stomach or a whole community itself. The skins of fishes were even being used as ornaments and decorations.
Seashells of different colours, painted or natural, were being sold as souvenirs. Not just food and decorations, but mana stones collected from sea monsters inside sea dungeons were also being sold.
Unlike regular mana stones that gave off a dark blue light, the mana stones from these sea monsters had a softer blue light, like that of a clear sky, but they were a lot more expensive.
Mainly because they were harder to hunt and rarer to find, and the mana they gave after being processed was the same. That's why they would mainly be used only as decoration or to make certain potions like underwater breathing potions.
However, unlike on Earth, the people here didn't exploit marine life. The fisherman would line their rod inside a sea dungeon from the surface. And since the sea dungeon produced an infinite number of fish along with sea monsters, the marine life outside those dungeons wouldn't be affected at all.
The only problem was the dungeon needed to be cleared from time to time by the awakeners.
Levi didn't buy anything special and only bought a single fish for Rika, sleeping inside the inner pocket of his black coat. It was best for Rika to not come out from the.
Most people would recognize her as the parrot of the Pirate of Rivera, and attract unnecessary attention.
Except for that fish, Levi didn't buy anything else and walked out from the fish market, and it took him more than half an hour to do so.
As soon as he got out of the bustling market, the scene in front of Levi completely changed. Large apartment complexes filled the outer region of the area, with some well-structured and designed buildings in the middle of it.
The structures on the outside regions were residential areas for the locals and hotels for tourists and the buildings in the middle were a few restaurants, large offices, and embassies dealing with shipping, porting, and trading.
The duality of the city fascinated Levi, from a busy market to a good accommodation system and business-focused sectors.
'If I ever get a chance, I want to come here to enjoy but right now-'
Levi had other jobs to do.
As soon as Levi stepped foot inside the sector, he felt the presence of hundreds of awakeners stationed in the city, especially in this region.
Residents of Barl for the past few months, had reported 102 missing cases. And all of them were children.
At first, most thought the children would be swept away by the sea or the monster lurking there but swimming or going near the ocean wasn't allowed unless one had permission or a fishing license.
The search had started a long time ago, and now it has become more extensive. Disappearance of this amount of humans wasn't normal and people knew some foul had their eyes on the city. The only thing left was to find them.
He walked around looking for a port to buy a ship, and Levi noticed a lot more city guards patrolling the city. Other knights, and mages dressed in normal outfits also kept guard. He made use of the status window and checked every person's status that came into his view.
Not just that, he assigned two lesser eyes to scout this whole area, because the odd sensation on his heart crept on even longer the more he walked into the region.
'Why is everything going worse at the place I visit? Am I walking talking bad luck?'
Well, his luck was G-rank so maybe it could be true. However, his instincts alarmed him, that something sinister happening inside the heart of fish markets and ship ports.