Otherworld Adventure

Cecil woke up early the next day and moved away from the campsite to check his discoveries from yesterday. He pulled out Corruption and noticed that the blade"s aura as well as runes was back to their normal states.

"If I remember correctly... I have to evoke the runes on my body and the runes on the Thorn at the same time for it to work..."

Cecil began circulating his mana and ki and tried to activate the runes. It took him a couple of tries, but he was eventually able to do it.

"Ugh...so this...was why... my mind..."

There it was again, the ominous aura coming from Corruption and the sensation of his mind being invaded by something.

"Kill...kill...kill...kill..."

Cecil frowned, but didn"t break the connection between the runes just yet. He let the Corruption continue to affect his mind and he tried to keep himself in control.

"If I can stay... in this condition without being affected..."

Cecil wanted to stay in this condition for as long as possible and resist the Corruption"s control. If he could do this then he"ll be able to use the Thorn normally at its full power. It was going to be hard and arduous, but Cecil welcomed this.

There was also another benefit that he didn"t overlook. He could temper his mind by resisting the Corruption"s control. There was a pa.s.sage inside his family"s martial arts texts which stated that the tempering of the mind and body were needed to advance into a higher realm of power.

He didn"t know whether this was the kind of mind-tempering that the texts meant, but now he could test things out with the Corruption and make sure. If there was indeed a change to his mind after enduring the Corruption"s mind influence, then Cecil would have a good way to temper and train his mind.

After enduring the Corruption"s influence for about 30 minutes, Cecil immediately cut off the runes" connection and exited out of that state. He collapsed on his b.u.t.t and wiped the sweat on his brows.

His face looked a little pale, but when he spread his Mana Sense, one of the few techniques in his a.r.s.enal that was directly linked with his mind, the boy smiled in satisfaction.

"It worked...haha...ouch, my head..." Cecil immediately retracted his sense when a piercing pain a.s.saulted his mind.

Once the pain subsided, Cecil waited a bit before he continued training again. After another hour or so he finished up and moved back towards the campsite.

Lucia greeted him and had already filled up a large basin of water for him to shower. She also cast cleanse on him afterwards as usual.

The caravan was ready to move after another couple of hours and the group began making their way up the mountain again. As usual, C-B rank monsters occasionally attacked them, but since everyone was still uptight and alert, there was no damage done to the cargo.

The other adventurer parties were still wary of the Night Plague coming back to attack them, but it was an unfounded concern since it was truthfully, already dead.

Cecil and the rest had a leisure time going up the mountain and it took them another 2 days before they finally reached the rest area at the mountain summit.

After taking a break for the whole day, the group continued their trek down the mountain. And just like their way up the mountain, the journey down the mountain took 3 days as well since there were no mishaps.

"We"re finally down the mountain! It"s a good thing the Night Plague didn"t come back to attack us!"

"I know right? I can"t believe those kids actually drove away that disaster! I was totally prepared to die that night when the monster raided us..."

"They"re a platinum ranked party for a reason! We were lucky to have them on this time"s journey. Just imagine if they hadn"t applied for this quest..."

Many of the adventurers grew relieved and began to talk among themselves and expressed their heartfelt thanks and grat.i.tude to Cecil"s party.

Cecil couldn"t be bothered, so he kept meditating and continued to spread his mana sense into the area. The quest wasn"t over yet, and who knows whether they"ll face any more unfortunate "disasters" on the rest of their journey.

During the past few days, Cecil continued training with Corruption and his mind was tempered to the point where he could resist the weapon"s influence for a full 15 minutes before he had to stop.

His mana sense was now able to spread in a radius twice as large as before. Previously, Cecil had trained his sense till it could spread to a radius of 1 kilometer around, but now that had doubled to 2 kilometers.

Cecil continued to temper his mind and upgrade his mana sense, but the gains weren"t as substantial as when he initially started however there were still improvements, albeit a little minor.

He tried to test out the other Thorns and just like he thought, whenever he evoked the runes on both his body and the Thorn, he"d be able to activate the hidden ability and full power of the sword.

Corruption had the ability to corrode and corrupt everything that made contact with it. It also would try to influence Cecil into doing something destructive, but it also helped in tempering his mind.

Providence, just like Cecil thought, allowed him to "dream" or "see" the future. It wasn"t a set future since every time he evoked the runes; the vision would always be different. The most useless thing about the future vision was that sometimes he would see events too far into the future or events that weren"t anything major, like him suddenly tripping over and falling on top of Serilla and accidentally groping her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Better avoid that."

There wasn"t anything that tried to influence his mind when he activated the Providence"s runes, but Serenity did however. Just like Cecil had predicted, the weapon calmed his mind and let him fall into a deep state of meditation when he activated the runes.

There weren"t any other effects, but Cecil did gain the most out of activating this Serenity"s runes. He finally gained his long-awaited Sword Intent from just one round of meditation using the Serenity. Cecil had been so excited that he went out of his way to ask Serilla to spar with him using their Intents.

Cecil was already adept at using Intent in battle so he emerged victorious, but ever since then Serilla and Lucia had been asking him to spar with them using only Sword Intent. Lucia did it in hopes that she too could awaken hers if she was exposed to it on multiple occasions while Serilla wanted Cecil to be her whetstone so that she could improve and better control hers.

Cecil was more than happy to oblige. At least this took their attention off of any weird things they wanted to do to him.

The odd one out of all his Thorns was Perseverance. When he activated the runes, his mind and senses were directly influenced and he couldn"t even resist it. Cecil also labeled the Perseverance as the most dangerous of the Thorns that he acquired.

With Perseverance"s runes active, in a positive light, he became tough and unyielding, but in a negative way of putting it, Cecil became dull or sedated, he could still move however, he wouldn"t feel anything.

He tried experimenting during their journey down the mountain, and Lucia had furiously flared out at him once the experiment was finished.

In this state, Cecil fought very, very recklessly. He"d fight with no regards to his life and try to efficiently take down the monster he was facing despite receiving injuries in the process. And he"d continue doing this until all the monsters around him was thoroughly wiped out.

Then he"d just stand there like an unresponsive idiot until the runes effects wore off. He wouldn"t even feel any pain from his injuries and no matter how much Serilla and Lucia called out to him he wouldn"t reply and just blankly stare around.

Serilla had him seal the sword and if he so much as touches it, the two girls threatened to flip out in anger and cause problems for him the entire day. It wasn"t as though Cecil needed them to remind him since he himself also didn"t like the state his body was in. He could clearly observe what was happening, but he couldn"t control his body, like it was on autopilot or something.

He decided to never use the Perseverance, except in cases where he was heavily injured, but needed to move his body no matter what.

The group traveled through the western side of the empire for another week and a half before they were able to finally make it to the capital.

"It"s the capital!"

"We made it! Thank the G.o.ds!"

The adventurers cheered when they finally saw the silhouette of the city walls far off in the distance.

During their journey towards the capital they were besieged by plenty of monsters and on 2 occasions they were attacked by large sized bandit groups. When things got out of hand, the Wanderers would step in to control the situation.

Cecil and Lucia were already used to this, but Serilla was exhausted from the constant traveling and the nights of light sleep where she couldn"t even fully immerse in a deep sleep because of the need to stay alert just in case a night attack happened.

When Serilla saw the city"s walls, she couldn"t help but tear up and cheer.

"We"re here!!!"

"Yeah...now we can finally get some hard earned rest..." Lucia added as she stretched her body.

"We can"t. Remember we have to quickly find information on the humans" whereabouts and quickly make our way out of the capital." Cecil said in a lowered voice.

"W-why?!"

When Serilla heard this, she couldn"t help but cry out in distress.

"Remember...we"ve gained a bit of fame from driving away the Night Plague, so we can"t stay inside the capital for long. Most importantly, if the adventurer guild sends a recon party to check on the situation in the mountains, then they might find out that the monster is dead, so we have to leave quickly. Later, I want you, Lulu and Yuna to go and search for the humans" location."

"And you Cel?" Lucia asked.

"I"ll look for a carriage. Once I find a suitable one, I"ll spend the whole day modifying it so you guys can rest on the journey. So bear with it for a while okay?"

"...Okay..." Serilla replied a little deflated.

"Hehe, I know you"re not used to this yet, Seri. But lighten up. It"ll only get harder from here on out and you"ll quickly adapt to it." Cecil said as he patted Seri"s head gently.

After another couple of hours of traveling, the caravan finally made it to the city"s gates and pa.s.sed through it after showing the guards their papers and identification.

Once everyone arrived at the adventurer"s guild, they were immediately paid handsomely. Cecil"s party received a little extra and some of the parties reported to the guild about their journey and how Cecil"s party, the Wanderers, had successfully repelled the Night Plague.

Before the guildmaster or any of the administrative guild staff could get a hold of them, Cecil and the rest had long since fled the guild. They didn"t need the attention and went about to find information about the humans.

Lucia handed everyone large cloaks that they could use to cover their face and bodies so as to avoid meeting up with anyone that could identify them. They didn"t want anyone to be dragged back to the guild.

However, the best place to look for the information about the humans was obviously the adventurer guild, but they couldn"t do that so Lucia and the rest decided to go to a tavern or listen around to some gossip in the marketplace to find the info instead.

After Cecil found directions, he made his way over to the capital city"s crafting district to search for a place that sold carriages. On the way, he looked around and took in the sights of the city.

"Hm, other than being bigger and having beastmen civilians, not much is different..."

There wasn"t much difference in the magnificence between Anglaria Kingdom"s Capital, Angla and the Orca Empire"s Capital, Orcus.

"Ah, there"s the place!"