Hopping Celestial Fox

Day two of our expedition started with a much more somber atmosphere. Even Frank seemed quieter than before. He kept glancing at Wi for some reason, though. The girl in question still looked upset and was avoiding Casey even more than before.

I sighed to myself.

Curiosity killed the cat… Ignorance is bliss… and so on. Maybe we shouldn’t have asked where all the mana came from. I could have lived without knowing the truth. But then again, maybe it was better we knew so that Casey could be more careful about how she changed the world now.

With barely any conversation to start off the day, we packed everything up and continued our journey in silence, save for Casey pointing out the crabs to us.

We trudged through the rough terrain for several more hours before coming up to a steep cliff.

Casey pointed down at the valley and said, “We’ll need to fly down there and then follow the river. The entrance to the laboratory isn’t too far from there.”

Wi’s expression didn’t change and she didn’t say a word as she picked me up again and floated me down. It was even more uncomfortable than yesterday because of the mood, but I didn’t say anything.

At least I didn’t need to climb down the steep cliff. Casey had probably picked this path because we had Wi, otherwise it would have been way too dangerous to traverse.

I looked around the valley while Wi floated everyone else down as well, even Casey. Mom carefully floated down herself though, still trying to get a hang of using her wings.

Once we were all down, Casey took point once more, walking along the tiny river coming from the mountains.

There was no sound other than the flowing water right next to us. There weren’t any animals. No golem crabs, not even any insects.

Something about this place made me feel uneasy. There was this odd oppressive air that made me want to turn around and run. The others must have felt it as well with how everyone was looking around.

“It’s… It’s a magical device that Cradence set up. It turns nearby mana into something that irritates living beings. It’s meant to keep intruders out,” Casey explained.

Right. We were heading to his laboratory to loot his magical items. In other words, he had to have been some kind of researcher or inventor. I just didn’t expect a dragon inventor to build an intimidation machine.

After what felt like several tense hours but had to have been only a couple of minutes, Casey stopped and stared at a cliffside.

“It’s here… But… Ugh…” Casey groaned. “I’m so stupid. I forgot that I can’t…”

“Uh… What’s wrong? Is it like… invisible?”

“No, the cliff face opens up but… It needs a passphrase.”

“Okaaay…? Then say the passphrase. There’s no way you don’t know it, right?”

“I do know it, but I can’t pronounce it,” Casey explained, gritting her teeth.

The rest of us exchanged a confused glance.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s…” She sighed. “The Truth Seekers have developed other original magic besides the time travel one. One of them is what they call Seeker arts and it’s what they would have taught Wi.” She glanced at the elf in question, whose expression still didn’t change. “It has two parts. The first part is listening. It’s basically sensing the flow of mana in other people’s bodies in a specific way that makes them come across as mind-readers to other people.”

Huh. That was probably why she had said that it was impossible to lie to them… 

“The other part is speaking. The ability to turn their thoughts into meticulously crafted mana packets and broadcast them to others, who perceive it as pure meaning. No words or language required. Everyone understands pure meaning. It’s the ultimate method of communication.”

We stared at her. Sardonically, I noted that we had been doing that a lot in this expedition.

“But I can’t do that! Seeker arts are an incredibly difficult magic to master and I haven’t even been able to make a simple fireball yet!”

“Well, shit… Can’t you just say the password in English? Maybe it will still work.”

Casey gave Frank a withering glare to which he just shrugged.

“Hey, who knows? What is the password anyway?”

She kept her glare on him while muttering, “It’s hard to put into words… It’s like… ‘Open the gates to a better future’ or something like tha–”

Suddenly, the entire cliff face moved. The rocks making it up each moved out of the way in a smooth organic motion that created an illusion of the cliff face flexing out of the way like opening a book rather than a door. It looked incredibly unnatural on something that was supposed to be rigid.

We stared in shock for a moment.

“Hey, uh… It worked?”

“He’s expecting us… He’s listening to us. He was just waiting for me to say the passphrase to confirm,” Casey explained, looking a little disturbed.

“Riiight… Well, then we better not let him wait, right?”

“I concur. It seems like he’s inviting us,” Elyssa agreed.

I swallowed, still feeling the unease of the supposed machine, but nodded and stepped forward. Then I remembered something, turned to look at the others, and reached down to my pocket. I unzipped it, pulled out the ruby seed, and put it under my tongue, with deliberate, slow motion. Once I was sure everyone understood the message I was trying to convey, I turned to the ominous entrance and stepped inside. 

“Let’s go,” I declared with a nod.

The others followed after me.

The inside looked like an artificial cave. The rocky edges were all smoothed out and symmetrical, and the whole place was lit up by regularly spaced glowing stones embedded inside the walls and ceiling. It was also very much dragon-sized and made me feel very small and vulnerable, which only amplified my anxiety because of the intimidation machine.

To top it off, the cliff face closed behind us as we all entered, making us all spin around and stare with wide eyes.

“Oh, uh… Did we accidentally trip into a horror movie? This is starting to get kind of scary, actually…”

I agreed with Frank. This whole sequence of events made my skin crawl. We had literally entered a dragon’s lair and the entrance had shut behind us. The only thing calming me down was the ruby seed still under my tongue.

The first to recover was Elyssa. She merely stepped forward without a word and continued further down the massive corridor. The rest of us eventually followed.

There were various rooms connected to this corridor, each housing a variety of tools, weapons, gems, and other clearly valuable items.

The dragon was nowhere to be found, however.

“So… Where is he…?” Frank loudly whispered as his eyes darted around.

“Hiding… Invisibility magic… He’s observing us,” Casey explained, trepidation obvious in her expression.

I swallowed once again but didn’t say anything. Everyone else also stayed silent until Casey gradually led us to one of the rooms connected to the massive corridor.

There was a massive magic circle on the ground, surrounded by glowing crystals. The edges of the room had all sorts of weapons, armors, and other pieces of metal scattered around it. The whole place was lit up by a massive diamond wedged into the center of the ceiling.

But none of that was what caught my attention. Instead, I stared at just above the middle of the magic circle in shock.

There was a floating crack in space. A closed portal.

I hadn’t checked my portal sense at all since we’d started our journey, but I did recall that the nearest portal was roughly in the direction of the mountains.

But that wasn’t why I was stunned.

No, I was staring at it because the closed portal wasn’t purple. It was blue.

And it wasn’t the lighting of the place making it look like that. Now that I saw it with my own eyes, I somehow felt that this portal was different from all the others I had seen.

I was about to say something when I heard Casey gasp, saw her staring behind us, and turned around.

The sight made me immediately forget about the blue portal.

There was a massive scaly beast looming over us, its piercing blue eyes gazing into our souls. Its scales were bright azure, shining in the diamond’s light, but the shadows under its snout made it look as menacing as a full-sized dragon ought to be. Its ivory-white horns and claws added to both its intimidation and its beauty.

The dragon, who could only be Cradence, stared at this world’s goddess and she stared right back. I could see her doing her best to not falter in the dragon’s presence despite her body visibly shaking.

His eyes then glanced at Mom and twitched, before sweeping over the rest of our party and landing on me. I froze completely for a moment and even forgot to breathe as the curious eyes studied me for what felt like an eternity.

Finally, after what could have only been a couple of seconds, Cradence spoke.