Toz had slept like a baby in the dark and narrow cave, while Nil set up traps and Lucy kept watch. But all good things co to an end and he eventually woke up. Nil and Lucy ran over to him with excited looks on their faces that said more than any words could, they wanted to look at the treasure as soon as possible, preferably at once.
Toz couldn't bear to make them wait so he obediently pulled out the orb. As the two cats saw the perfectly orange orb, slightly bigger than Toz's head leaving one of his pockets and being placed on the ground in front of them they were confused, to say the least.
Before they went into the familiar space Toz had ntioned that the changes in climate might be because of the appearance of treasure. And although they couldn't yet see into the outside world when in there, they had a basic understanding of what happened anyways. Toz had gotten the treasure. So where was it? Why had he pulled a seemingly useless ball out of his pocket? Where was the chest of gold, the shining swords, and jewels?
Although the two were dumbfounded, Lucy couldn't sate his curiosity and approached the orb, seeing his reflection in it was fun but weird since it was all wrangled. He touched it as well but it only felt and looked like an orb made of orange glass. Surprise and curiosity quickly turned into disappointnt. However after a few seconds hope reignited in Lucy's eyes as he said,
"Haha, real funny Tozzie, now bring out the real treasure now."
"I am not being funny, the treasure I found in that pit over there is this ball of orange"
"...I recall there being promises of treasure. I see no treasure, only junk! It's a scam! Give! ! Back! My! Money!"
Although Toz didn't know what the orb was he knew it couldn't be junk since it had first emitted and then sucked away all the mana in the air, in addition to that it had absorbed a bunch of mana from both Toz, and the ground for who knows how long.
Although Toz was only a second level mage his mana reserves were out of the ordinary thanks to being twice refined and using his cats as sources of mana. With the amplification of his natural inclination for cats, the benefits were nurous. Not only was he more effective in refining his body with mana and had an easier ti manipulating attributes of the sa kind as his cats he also had a greater capacity for mana from his cats. Kind of like a second integrated storage room, exclusively for cat-sourced mana.
Since different inclinations and people's natural talents were difficult to compare and account for, Toz wasn't completely sure, but he knew he was stronger than most second level mages thanks to his inclination.
An orb that could emit mana enough to cover a mountain range and the grassy hills and plains around it, before storing that sa amount in itself, and then so, was definitely not useless junk.
But since it was in a seemingly dormant state without any mana fluctuations whatsoever it did indeed look lacking for being called a treasure so Toz understood Lucy's response.
"I know what it looks like but that is indeed what drew all the wild beasts here, it's also what emitted that terrifying fire mana and turned the mountains into a sauna. I think we just need to wait a bit for it to show its true value."
"So we didn't get scamd…?"
"No"
"And I didn't waste my money...?" Lucy asked carefully with a pitiful look on his face as he stared up at Toz.
"Not at all, so investnts just take longer to bring profit" Toz answered while gently, lovingly, patting Lucy.
Although Lucy hadn't used any money for this endeavor he still let out a sigh of relief and crawled into his lap after hearing Toz's consolations.
As Lucy decided to take a nap, Nil investigated the orb closer and ca to the sa conclusion as Lucy, it looked like a useless piece of orange glass. But he wasn't as obsessed with treasure as Lucy was and as a forr street cat felt rather close to sothing others might consider garbage.
With inspiration from Lucy's go-to position when laying on Toz's head, Nil laid down on the orb in a star shape and relaxed. Although the orb was solid it wasn't uncomfortable and instead gave a soft hearty feeling, like relaxing in front of a fireplace, on top of a blanket in the favorite chair during fall.
Nil continued enjoying the feeling before it slowly shifted to the feeling of laying in a stroke of sunlight. Then it was the spot on a table where a pot of tea had just stood. Different similar feelings were projected to Nil as he lay on the orb. At first, he didn't notice but one feeling stood out as it was extrely clear, almost like he was reliving a mory. During a cold winter, before he had t Toz, Nil and a few other street cats had borrowed several blankets before grouping up and cuddling to share body warmth, next to a chimney. The feeling had been so close to what he had personally experienced he ca to, leaving his dreams of warm happiness.
Nil looked around before looking down on the orb below him, perplexed. Was the orb responsible for making him feel so relaxed, was it a trap to lull him into a false sense of comfort before eating him in his sleep? Although he might be overthinking he quickly jumped off the orb and the pleasant feelings imdiately left him. His thoughts might be an exaggeration but his instincts telling him sothing was out of the ordinary were definitely not wrong.
Nil's alard appearance had shocked Toz since the cat had gone from laying on the orb, drooling, to flying off it and staring at it with strong vigilance. Toz personally didn't feel any danger but he still readied himself before sending a questioning look toward Nil.
"I don't know what its purpose is, but that orb is way too relaxing, suspiciously so in fact," Nil said without moving his eyes away from the orb.
"Too relaxing, huh? Maybe you've been working too hard lately?" Toz said jokingly but without actually joking.
In preparation for their journey, all three, mostly Toz and Nil, had read up on all kinds of dangers to watch out for, one pretty obscure danger was related to beings capable of making their prey fall asleep, without them even knowing they would never wake up again. They had found various similar thods and since it was so scary they had made it a point to rember it, and of the thods had been to put the unsuspecting prey into a relaxed state, after which they would fall into a deep sleep and after that an eternal slumber.
The orb was beginning to look a lot less like treasure and a lot more like a ticking ti bomb as there seed to be an ominous air coming from it.
Nil and Toz kept looking at it vigilantly, waiting for sothing to happen, for it to try and make them relax, attack them, or run away, anything really. But even after a long while, long enough for Lucy to wake up, ask what happened, and fall asleep again, nothing happened.
Since nothing seed to be happening anyti soon, Toz decided to store it away again. But when he tried to shove it down his pockets it wouldn't enter no matter what. It surprised both Toz and Nil on several levels, apart from it having already been stored in the pocket previously there were only a couple of reasons the pocket's enchantnts would block sothing from entering. Either the object was larger in so way than the spatially expanded pocket, or it harbored a soul.
Since the space between the outside and the inside of the pocket doesn't match in their dinsions, when objects pass through they get temporarily stretched out and distorted. The distortion affects physical and immaterial things differently, and while inanimate objects can handle the distortion, souls tend to not withstand getting bent out of shape, like a balloon animal. If one is lucky the soul just get's detached and floats away before dissipating or getting reattached but in most cases the soul just shatters on the spot. To prevent any such accidents most items with a pocket space have enchantnts to prevent souls entering.
Since the orb had already been inside the pocket earlier there was nothing wrong with the size and available space. This ant it could only be because the orb had started containing a soul.
With the ominous air around the orb Nil and Toz had felt earlier, and with the suspicion it contained a soul, there was an obvious conclusion. Toz reached the answer a mont faster than Nil and looked at the cat with an aghast expression before throwing the orb away from them.
The orb was haunted!
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