Where is this?
Leon gazed at the towering dome above.
He was in a lavishly decorated palace; exquisite carvings and tapestries adorned the columns and walls. However, when he looked further away, his gaze was denied by an unfading vague white fog.
An unknown impulse made him look again to the front, where a staircase between the halls led to higher ground. At the end of the staircase stood a majestic throne.
Leon slowly lifted his feet, step by step, he strolled up the staircase.
He walked for a long time, but the throne remained elusive, always out of reach.
"This is not the place you should come to yet, go back."
The voice was very familiar.
Darkness descended swiftly.
...
......
When Leon groggily woke up, he saw the uneven cave walls, and shadows flickered uncertainly on the stone walls, cast by the fire flickering in the wind.
It seemed to be a natural cave between mountain crevices; outside the cave, he could hear the sound of wind and rain intermingling, leaving him momentarily disoriented.
Another traverse? Leon was stunned for a moment, but as the drowsiness and confusion faded away, he remembered everything that had happened before.
He recalled how the flash of light from his hand severely injured the mercenary, and then, unexpectedly, he lost all strength and consciousness. So now... Leon turned his neck, which felt slightly stiff, to look beside him.
In his sight appeared the slightly comforting figure of his companion.
Next to them, was a simple campfire built up with stones; Azeryan was lying not far from him, asleep with a shield for a pillow, holding a sheathed long dagger.
And at the entrance of the cave, shirtless with chain armor draped over him, was Lokhak. He wore an iron helmet and held the one-handed sword that had belonged to the now-deceased mercenary, gazing out at the stormy, thunderous, and rain-swept night, obviously on watch duty.
The rain was heavy outside, Leon had no idea of the time, but seeing the dark, lightless outside, he guessed it must be night.
He propped himself up to sit, and although his spirit still felt tired, at least his body was unharmed.
Lokhak, hearing the noise of Leon sitting up, looked over. Seeing the companion he had been most worried about finally awake, he breathed a sigh of relief, "You're awake."
"How long was I out? And where are we?" Leon sat cross-legged, removing the thick armor lining that someone had covered him with and rubbed his temples to ease the dizziness. His hands were free from the manacles, and the freedom to move them felt extremely comfortable.
"You've been asleep for almost a whole day. As for where we are, you probably don't mean this little cave? Azeryan said we should now be in Mamor County, Kantadar."
Mamor County? Well, that's as good as not asking—since the original owner of Leon's body had never left his hometown from birth. He didn't know anything about the geography of the enemy Kantadar Kingdom, even if inside the Seryan Kingdom itself, apart from knowing the way from his settlement to the Holy Land City.
Oh... not that he had no concept of it at all. At least, he knew that the invading Kantadar Kingdom was to the west of the Seryan Kingdom. He seemed to recall merchants who traveled far and wide saying that further north, there was an even more powerful Orland Kingdom, that was on good terms with the Seryan Kingdom, unlike the hostile Kantadar.
"Do we have any water or food?" Leon asked.
"Yes, there's still some food left," Lokhak said as he stood up, took a water flask and some dried bread from a torn cloth wrap, and handed them over.
Clearly, these items originally belonged to the Kantadar mercenary they had killed.
"What happened after I passed out?" Leon asked while eating and looking toward Lokhak.
"...We killed that guy, then stripped him bare and dragged him into the woods to bury..." Lokhak briefly described what happened after Leon fainted.
"You handled it clean enough; just don't leave the body on the road, that's good. The muddy path was trampled with footprints and horse tracks; it must be the route the mercenaries frequently used. If the body was discovered too early, someone might have tracked us down." Leon nodded.
"Uh, cough cough, it was Azeryan's idea, I'm not that quick-witted," Lokhak scratched his head awkwardly and said.
To be honest, he had only wanted to carry Leon away as quickly as possible, without realizing that Azeryan wasn't in a hurry to leave and even went as far as to superficially turn over the blood-soaked mud to cover it up.
There was a bit of a dispute between him, eager to leave quickly, and Azeryan because, without suitable tools, digging a hole big enough to bury a body was very laborious.
"Thank you for not abandoning me as a burden," Leon expressed his gratitude with relief.
"Are you kidding? We owe our survival to you; how could we possibly abandon you and flee for our lives?" Lokhak shook his head and thought of the other's incredible performance that day which he still found unfathomable.
The young man's eyes sparkled with curiosity as he tentatively asked Leon, "Speaking of which, that day... what was that? Woosh—In an instant, I only saw a beam of light break that Kantadar bastard's hand."
He stuttered for a moment, not knowing how to describe the Light Arrow he saw. Holding up his right arm with a piece of Chain Armor sleeve missing, he exclaimed in admiration, "That's amazing, it even pierced through armor. Is that witchcraft?"
Leon shrugged his shoulders with a wry smile, "I don't know how to explain it to you. I heard a voice; just take it as a miracle of divine protection, since I'm not sure it can happen again."
He remembered the mysterious voice saying there was only one chance, and although Leon was unclear about the workings of the spell, he didn't believe that a simple gesture could materialize the Light Arrow out of thin air.
Recalling the sudden excruciating pain as his blood boiled when releasing the Light Arrow, Leon instead considered that at most he had served as a "launch platform," and the one who truly cast the spell... was not himself.
However, recalling the powerful impact of the glowing arrow, he was deeply impressed. It completely shattered the mercenary's arm, Chain Armor, and the thick armor lining in one shot—something even some ordinary caliber bullets in his past life could not achieve so easily and cleanly.
But the cost was also unexpectedly high. Leon had not anticipated passing out after releasing the Light Arrow.
He looked at the torrential rain flickering with thunder outside the cave. If these two young men had been heartless enough to run away and left him unconscious in the forest to fate, then even if he wasn't captured back by the mercenaries, he might have fallen prey to wild beasts during his unconsciousness, or simply died of hypothermia in the pouring rain.
"A miracle? A voice?" Lokhak was startled and didn't continue to pry. Such power beyond comprehension was hard to understand. Since his companion attributed it to a miracle, he would also have to believe it was the manifestation of Saint Sol and the Holy Prophet, "Illaril above, it seems the great Holy Sun has not abandoned us. If we can return to Seryan someday, Leon, you might become a Priest of the Church."
Seeing that power as the protection of faith, the young man's emotions were uplifted, a feeling he hadn't experienced in a long time.
Hearing the young man's statement, Leon was happy to keep it simple without explaining further. As a modern-day soul, he naturally didn't have any particular sentiment towards the Holy Sun and the Holy Prophet of the Seryan Kingdom, but it was indeed a fact that he was saved by an incomprehensible power.
He was grateful to that mysterious voice he could not yet respond to, and what if it was really a divine being showing mercy? After all, even the utterly absurd event of being transported to another world had happened to him, so who was to say that this strange Otherworld didn't have real deities.
"What should we do next, any ideas?" Leon swallowed a piece of dry bread, slightly easier to eat than the stuff given in his cage, and asked Lokhak who sat across from him.
"I want to rescue my sister," Lokhak stated with unwavering certainty.
"You're planning to go find her now?" Leon felt helpless about the young man's recklessness.
"Of course! I can't let her fall into the hands of those Kantadar bastards, those devils who should go to Hell. They're not human! If my sister gets..." Lokhak's eyes suddenly reddened, and he couldn't stop recalling the cruel slaughter of his family by merciless mercenaries on the day the city fell, his voice growing increasingly clenched with anger.
"Do you know where she is?" Leon countered, "Without knowing her location and having no refuge, how do you plan to find her?"
"This... I..." Lokhak's brow furrowed increasingly, not knowing how to respond.
"Alright, brother, let me ask you something else. Do you speak the language of the Kantadar people?" Leon asked pragmatically.
Lokhak opened his mouth but fell completely silent, his expression bitter and helpless.
"I understand how you feel," Leon sighed sympathetically. It was not merely lip service since he shared the profound memories of the original host's parents' tragic deaths. However, if the drive from hatred and anger isn't unleashed in the right direction, then it's entirely pointless.
"We're still in enemy territory, neither you nor I speak the language of the Kantadar people and can't pass as locals. Once we make contact with outsiders, we could be caught by Soldiers and thrown back into prison or even tortured," Leon explained, glancing at Lokhak's tense expression and added, "Besides, even if we knew where your sister was sold to, you alone couldn't save her. The man who bought your sister seemed to be more than a mere civilian; even if I wanted to help you, I'd be powerless to do so."
"He's right," another voice suddenly interjected.
Leon and Lokhak looked towards Azeryan by the fire, the fair-skinned young man having been woken up by their conversation.
Azeryan moved his slightly stiff shoulders from sleeping and continued to Lokhak, "The person who bought your sister is a noble of the Kantadar Kingdom. Judging by the emblem on the cloak, he's at least a Knight. Trying to confront him to take her back now would be nothing more than a suicide mission."
Suppressing his fury, Lokhak clenched his fists tightly and bowed his head, hating his own weakness and helplessness. Indeed, going after a noble from the enemy nation alone was a foolish act, only courting death.