Chapter 20 - The Deviant Trio
Across the pond stood a girl, her bow aimed at Lucan in the darkness of the night. She could have easily killed him, and he knew it.
"It's okay!" said a voice behind Lucan.
He tried to get up and felt cold steel against his neck, the tip of a sword. He turned to see Alice.
"You can lower your bow, Anna," said Alice.
"Thanks," Lucan sighed in relief.
He was truly relieved. His body had healed from his wounds, but his physical and mental exhaustion were at their limits. Lucan felt he could collapse and sleep at any moment.
"You look like a wreck," commented the usually quiet Alice, extending her hand to him.
"You should've seen the other guy..." Lucan took her hand and got up.
For a moment, he looked himself over. He really was a mess. One leg of his pants was completely torn, his shirt was full of holes and bloodstains, and he looked terrible.
"You disappeared for three days."
He was shocked.
"Three days?" Lucan asked incredulously.
Impossible. Earlier today she left here, and then I went to the asylum...
"Yes. And judging by your face, you're very surprised. Actually, I've been here for three days."
Three days since she arrived? So, counting the two days she asked for, I must have been gone...
"Five days..." he murmured.
I was gone for five days! How is that possible? Could it have to do with entering a realm of entities?
"What happened to you?"
By this point, he took a better look at the other person. She was a girl slightly shorter than him, with striking natural red hair, different from Sasha's dyed delinquent look. She was also very pretty, which made Lucan even more embarrassed about his state, making him look like a madman living in a cave far from civilization... which wasn't entirely untrue.
He internally laughed at the thought of looking like a madman, considering he had just come from an asylum.
"Straight ahead in that direction is where I was teleported. I went to get revenge on the creature that almost killed me."
Alice sighed.
"We've been waiting for you here," said Anna.
"I apologize for delaying you, but I needed good items."
"So your solution was to throw yourself into a creature's lair and gamble on a fight to the death?" Alice asked, laughing and drinking from her canteen.
"Putting it that way... but I had a plan. The problem is that the monster had one too..."
The bastard tricked me by having a second form! Even if there were ten of me, we wouldn't have been able to defeat that thing.
When he saw her drinking water, he quickly ran to the pond to get his canteen.
"Found it!"
Entering the pond, he found his canteen. Grabbing it as quickly as possible, he tested if it worked and checked the color of the water. He even considered summoning his torch for better visibility, but since the girls were in the dark and this place was complicated to be in, he thought it best not to do so.
Using the dim light of the moon, he poured water from the canteen, and to his surprise, it came out almost crystal clear, unlike the dirty and somewhat dark water from the small pond.
No way! It's so pure that I don't even need to compare.
The pond water was slightly dark with small bits of dirt. His canteen, however, produced clean, crystal-clear water. Lucan submerged it again and poured it out once more to see if the water inside had changed in tone, but it remained pure.
"Great, I was worried you wouldn't have much to help you on the journey. I decided to wait here, and when I saw your bag, pot, and the rest of your things in the cave, I knew you hadn't abandoned this place. Having a second canteen makes it easy to store water and share it with Anna," Alice said.
"I lost my things in a chase..." murmured the redheaded girl.
Listening to them, Lucan was almost oblivious, so happy was he.
"We don't need to worry about water," Lucan said, holding his canteen and pouring the water back into the pond.
Alice frowned and then observed Lucan and his small canteen. He continued to pour water without stopping.
Then he tossed the canteen to her.
"It seems this canteen can store a large amount of water. I don't know its limit, but it's clearly much more than it appears to hold. It also has a special property; as soon as the water enters it, it gets purified. In short, we have something that can help us get potable water wherever we go."
"That's awesome, a storage item," Anna cheered.
"Water storage? That's... amazing," Alice was incredulous, pouring water from the canteen onto the ground. She held it upside down, and more and more water came out. After a few seconds, it finally stopped.
"When I almost got hit by an arrow, it fell into the pond in my shock."
Anna turned her face away, embarrassed.
"It seems while it was in there, it kept filling up. I need to test its limit. Since we're not traveling tonight... I think. I suggest a small test."
"Actually, there's been a change of plans, and we'll be delaying a bit, but what's the test?" Alice asked.
He took the canteen and threw it into the pond.
"I'm going to leave this canteen here until morning. Tomorrow I'll retrieve it and see if it has reached its limit."
"What are you going to do now?"
"Me? I'm going to lie down and sleep. Tomorrow, I'll take a bath with genuinely clean water from that canteen."
Part of Lucan wanted to stay up and clear all his doubts, but an extreme exhaustion weighed on his body, forcing him to sleep. After nearly dying, he allowed himself to trust the two girls momentarily while he succumbed to sleep, keeping a part of himself alert as a precaution.
And so, the trio of Deviants gathered. Lucan didn't mind not staying inside the cave. Using his leather bag as a pillow, he slept on the ground outside by the pond. The girls, seeing his terrible state, decided to leave him be after confirming he wasn't injured.
I'll gather some decent clothes from those houses. I can't go on like this. I need something decent to wear under the cloak, now that I've ruined what I had. I'm all ragged and worn out, but exhaustion has won over any vanity I had left.
Letting his mind relax, he still struggled to understand what had happened to him. That place had scared him; logic didn't apply.
As soon as I entered there, I had a strange feeling. Most likely, at that moment, I entered another plane of existence. The architecture was similar but still different to me. Did I somehow bring part of the asylum to that plane? Maybe, since even the corridors didn't follow the same path as before. However, I wasn't completely disconnected from the physical world, as I was directed to the chapel when I returned to this plane. I entered through the main entrance of the asylum and exited through the chapel, which means I truly traversed that building. Yet, the door vanished as soon as I entered and found the book... or diary.
So, I was in a plane of existence belonging to those beings while still connected here. The situation worsened when my blood came into contact with the diary, causing the structure I was in to start collapsing... It was at that moment I fully entered the material plane of those creatures. I played with death... I made a mistake. Those people with empty eyes... that terrifying white rabbit. The circle forming a lake around a stone platform. What was that? There was a completely black pillar. I know that deranged creatures don't easily die from simple things... that pillar killed an Advanced Monster. I keep thinking, if that wendigo hadn't fallen on that pillar and died... if I had touched that thing, it might have been my end... or worse, I could have been taken by the rabbit.
If it weren't for Miss Moon... whatever she was, she saved me. She also mentioned that the diary's malevolent influence was removed. So, what happens when a cursed item is purified? My curiosity is urging me to read the diary's entry, but I shouldn't do that now. Not when I'm this exhausted, barely able to hold that hammer, and without the protection of my cloak.
I'll leave this problem for my future self to handle because I definitely don't have the mental capacity to deal with it right now.
Lucan cleared his mind and slept.