Chapter 11 | Be Welcomed, Cultivator

Several days passed like a blur for Theo and his newly made friend. They were now in a safe room, both sitting cross-legged silently, their backs touching so they were immune to ambushes. Satou wasn’t much of a talker, especially the last few days. Every word of his bled efficiency, only spoken to direct Theo’s actions.

Theo didn’t exactly hate that. There was a certain relief that came from just following the orders of someone you trusted. He had always thought of himself as a revolutionary in his previous world. A free thinker. Maybe he wasn’t all that in truth, and it didn’t feel like it really mattered anymore.

His experiences in this world were changing him ever so slowly, and he didn’t know what to feel about that.

Change was immutable and seemed more and more terrifying with every day that passed. For now, he had a clear goal. He had to leave the tower, yes. But then what? What would he do once outside? Follow Satou and live a slow life? That sounded like a dud. He had lived the slow life, and that wasn’t the way he wanted to live.

Would he aim to become stronger, running around to dominate everything under the heavens? Like some sort of weird murder-hobo.

No. Not that. I just don’t have the domineering personality for that kind of thing…

He had just come to a new world, and Theo was struggling with the same thing as before. A purpose.

Though… I at least do know that I don’t want to die like Melvin. Without realizing my potential.

He released a deep sigh and refocused on his current task. Another brick of mana appeared in his mindscape as he pulled on Flux. He carried it up to his mind palace and placed it down. He had erected a corridor from one side of the cube and was currently making another cube to increase his maximum mana.

[Mana 4.551 –> 3.712]

When he had taken out some bricks for the corridor he was installing, Theo’s mana pool had dropped by quite a bit. Completing buildings seemed to give a whole lot more mana than just laying bricks. He had managed to rebuild some of the loss with the sheer amount of bricks he had, but he would need to complete the mind palace to go beyond what he previously had.

“It’s about time we took off. Are you ready?” Satou suddenly asked. Theo brought one-half of his attention outside and found the man to have opened his eyes.

“Mm.” Theo nodded. He calmed his mana flow and got up. They started heading down the corridors once again. “Say, how long do we have left? Until we find an exit, I mean.”

“Shouldn’t be much. I had to escape from some sort of entities the first time I entered this place, ran for more than a week straight. I say we have backtracked about ninety-five percent,” Satou said. His two daggers were constantly in his hands, his eyes looking around for signs of danger; his shoulders didn’t bob, and his body didn’t shake. He was weirdly inanimate in his actions. He radiated an eerie feeling when he did pretty much anything. It had taken Theo quite a bit of time to pinpoint what the problem was, but it had clicked quite well when he did.

“So today is the day that we are free, huh?” Theo muttered.

“Yeah. Or maybe tomorrow. Provided that we don’t meet the entity I mentioned,” Satou said. Theo facepalmed at the sentence.

That’s one way to jinx us.

Then, however, Satou raised his dagger and signaled for him to stop. His brows rose into a frown as his gaze settled onto something in the distance. Theo couldn’t quite see as far, so he could only wait for Satou to explain.

“There’s someone,” he said. Theo’s heart jumped at the mention.

“The entity?” he asked while taking a step back. Really? This fast?

“No. Not that. We would have known from the energy signatures minutes before it entered our eyesight,” Satou said. He twirled the daggers in his hands and continued. “It’s a person. But their vitals are low.”

Theo breathed a sigh of relief. Such were aura-users. He had come to learn that aura was much more precise in long-distance reconnaissance compared to mana, provided there were no spells involved, that is.

“What do we do?”

“Stay behind me. I will fight if I sense malice. If I don’t, we will try and see their alignment.”

“Mm.”

Theo jogged five steps behind Satou as they headed for the life signature he had sensed. Eventually, Theo felt the signature through his mana sense, too.

It was like a faint dot in the distance. An infinitesimal disturbance. He could only sense it if he really focused. If not aware of it beforehand, he wouldn’t have noticed at all. Inventing some new spells was long overdue. A simple arcane shot was nowhere near enough. With how the spell only seemed to work against spectral entities, he would be completely defenseless once outside the tower.

“I can’t believe…” a breathy, rough voice traveled up the corridor. Unfortunately, the rambling kept becoming more incomprehensible with each passing moment.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“The life signature is getting weaker and weaker,” Satou said. “I am going in.”

Theo nodded along and took off into a miserable dash behind the assassin, lagging behind. He stopped right in front of the person only after a minute of full-on running.

It was a young man with rather feminine features, long black hair tied into a ponytail that reached halfway down his back. He wore a disheveled, long, black and white robe stained with a considerable amount of red. Probably blood. He was walking with shaky steps, holding onto the walls with the measly amount of strength he had left.

The person’s overall get-up had already betrayed what kind of person he was. But before Theo could speculate, he was blasted with a system notification.

[New main character detected.]

[Archetype: Fallen to a Lower Realm, I Cultivate From Zero to Dominate the Heavens!]