"Who are you?!" the girl shouted in a panic the second she woke up and ca to her senses.
Still lying on the ground, she threw a quick look, only to push herself away with her legs and feet alike.
"Calm down," I ordered, not moving an inch from my seat by the fire. "If I wanted to do you any harm, I would've done so already, don't you think?" I added before turning my attention back to the flas.
Sure, I was eager to interrogate her, but there was no point in doing so when she was in a state of shock. And to be honest, I already learned enough about her to take my ti thinking it through.
'She is speaking a language I can understand... Or is this the system's influence?' I asked myself, annoyed by the potential capabilities of my system in this regard for the first ti in this second life of mine.
"Who are you?" the girl asked again after taking her ti to calm her heart down.
"I'm Arthur," I replied, reaching out to grab so stick before turning the charcoal in the fire to kick its heat up a notch.
Even though I was likely immune to frostbite, I could still feel cold. And with how tired I was, both ntally, spiritually, and physically, I had no wish to let myself be cold.
"You do realize how little does this tell ?" the girl pointed out, still fully on her guard.
"The thing is," I started, finally turning my head to the side and looking at the girl, "right now, I'm the one asking questions," I explained before taking a deep breath and standing up.
"Roughly an hour ago, you descended into a nearby town, coated with a massive amount of energy... that's not of common in this world," I stated.
Judging from the girl's reactions, she had no clue about what happened. As such, I saw no point in bullying her by hiding the past from her.
"Huh?" the girl only shrugged in reaction to my words.
"That alone, I wouldn't care much about," I pointed out before letting the expression on my face darken. "But that energy of yours sohow took a form of a monster," I said before raising my hand and allowing a bit of the energy I stole from the girl's past form to dance atop my palm. "And that monster killed quite a lot of people," I added, not holding back the punches of the truth.
"I..." the girl hesitated, clearly shocked by my words. Then, her expression llowed down, only to get replaced by sadness. "I see," she finally voiced out her reaction. "What are you going to do to , now?"
For a mont, I simply stared at the girl, trying to figure out just what was going on in her head.
Her reaction to learning that she killed people... was strange, to say the least. Or rather, it was a strange reaction in the eyes of soone who grew up in a relatively peaceful civilization.
For soone born and educated in this world, having blood on their hands shouldn't be that much of a trouble, though.
"I'm not going to do anything to you," I replied with a deep sigh before lowering my hand and then returning to my seat by the fire. "What I need you to do is start talking, though," I added, focusing my eyes on the fires again.
"Talking?" the girl swallowed her saliva so intensely that I could hear the motions of her throat. "What do you need to talk about?" she asked, slowly lowering her guard.
"First off, who are you?" I asked, once again playing around with the charcoals within the fireplace. "Where did you co from? What is this violet energy that you were coated in?"
I threw my questions out to the air but didn't press the girl for the answers. Given the situation, she was likely far more confused than I was.
"You really do know nothing, do you?" the girl quickly managed to prove my guess wrong.
I turned my head towards her, curious what the fuck she was talking about. Yet, instead of a look of confusion or guilt, her face was filled with shock and devastation.
"Know nothing about...?" I echoed her words, quickly losing my patience.
If she knew sothing, then what the hell did she want to achieve by staying silent?
"Judging by how we are sitting on a solid ground, this isn't the continent I was born at," the girl explained, only for her words to introduce far more questions than they did answers. "I an," she added, raising her eyes and slowly inching closer to the fla, clearly starved for its heat, "I can't summon even a silver of the energy that naturally occurs in my world," she said, only to sit down by the fire and hang her head low.
"And that ans it really did collapse," she stated sothing massive, only to turn silent and copy by gazing into the flas.
"I understand that it's hard for you to digest your situation," I said in a calm voice, "but I need to understand what's going on. Especially given how your descent is only the beginning of the series of disasters that are about to strike this land."
Despite urging the girl, she remained silent for a few more monts. Only after taking her sweet ti did she bother to open her mouth and sate my curiosity a little more.
"If I'm right, then what you saw was coated in all the power that I managed to cultivate back before my continent shattered and collapsed into the void," the girl explained, her face blank as she kept on staring into the flas. "To be perfectly honest, I never expected this asure to work," she added before turning silent once again.
'Shattering? Collapse?' I repeated those words in my mind before raising my eyes to the skies. 'Could it be that this world is nothing like the one I ca from on a cosmic scale?' I thought, trying my utmost to figure out just what the hell was going on.
Following the rule of an Ockham's razor, she likely lived on a different continent... that was sowhat above the one we were in right now. And from what she said, that violet energy that she brought with herself was just a different kind of mana that perated her world before it collapsed.
'Could it be that it's like matter and anti-matter, then?' I thought, adding the stuff that I discovered on my own to the equation. 'Surely, it doesn't work exactly like that, given how those two kinds of energies refuse to rge... But how else can I explain my engine?'
Even though the conversation so far was pretty short, I already learned so much stuff that I had to take so ti to process it all.
Yet, before I could think anything further about those topics, a sudden, silent rustling alerted and forced up.
"What's wrong?" the girl asked, surprised by my sudden move.
But I couldn't care less right now.
"There is soone here," I muttered, scanning the area in search of any signs of familiar mana.
It took just a single look to locate the source of the noise. Yet, even though I knew where that soone was hiding, they were still pretty well hidden amongst the forest vegetation.
"Co out!" I shouted, raising my Mage's Tower while making sure to pull all my mana from the girl's proximity.
Given how the violet energy worked on , the mana of this world was likely the sa kind of poison to that girl!
"Arthur?" the person hiding in the bush suddenly called out my na. And then...
Mia ca out of the bushes with a peculiar look on her face.
Step by step, she marched closer, her face filled with uncertainty and fear.
My heart trembled, only for my mind to steel up my resolve.
"Don't co any closer!" I cried out in panic.
Just like back at the outerpost, I couldn't afford to let Mia anywhere close. Not while I was still full of that violet energy that would likely kill her on the spot!
Mia obidiently stopped in her place... and then tears started to stream down her cheeks.
"So you really don't want to have anything to do with anymore?"
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