Chapter 13

Felt was quite positively exhausted. He'd been at it for the last seven hours straight. But still, to synthesize without using a mana would be one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of alchemy.

His first attempt was a failure, as was his second, third, and fourth, with the caveat being that he had learned to fluctuate his mana in just the right way to begin the process of physical transformation. Felt had managed, so far, to create a single, tiny shard of glass. It didn't seem like much, but it was about as far as Palaxius had ever gotten in physical transformation.

Felt could see now why Palaxius had given up and decided to go the route of trying to absorb Lilith. But, he had been working at it for only seven hours so far. Maybe all that talk of him being some sort of prodigy back in Eden had something to it. Felt had merely brushed it off as simple praise before, but then again, doing as good of a job as Palaxius in less than a day was extremely impressive-even if he had the benefit of Palaxius's research to aid him.

With this failed attempt, Felt decided to try one last time before quitting for the day. And so, closing his eyes, Felt channeled his mana into his conjoined palms, visualizing the cure jar he wanted to create. His palms grew hotter and hotter, the glass fragments were beginning to piece together now. His left hand stung as stray glass began to dance around his palm in a whirlwind, cutting and stabbing his exposed flesh, but still Felt did not give up.

Gritting his teeth so as to bear the pain, Felt redoubled his efforts, channeling as much of his mana as he physically could manage into the process. His palms began to glow a dull bluish purple, as the cure jar tried to obey and manifest fully. At this moment, however, his left hand spasmed, causing the process to fail-with shards of glass digging deep into his palm.

With this, Felt sighed, rising from the floor of the tent. His shoulders slumped as he began to idly pick the glass from his hands, thinking further on what went wrong. It must've been something to do with him losing focus due to the physical aspect's rough manifestation. Yes, that must be it.

"Felt, dinner's ready!" Came the semi-cheerful call from his fiancee, with Fee ducking into the tent, two plates of whatever it was she had made. It wasn't Felt's fault he had spaced out earlier when she was chatting about whatever it was, he'd not paid any mind to it.

"Ah, alright, just let me finish cleaning up over here first." Felt was almost finished cleaning the glass from both his hands, and the floor.

She had fried fish, what kind it was, Felt did not know, which only made it more apparent that he still had so much more to learn about this world. Felt's need to explore began to gnaw at him even more now, with whispers of possible destinations becoming more and more prevalent in his mind.

Fee shot him a sideways glance. "What do you have to clean up?"

Felt said nothing, instead showing her his bloody hands. He immediately regretted it when he saw a certain look in her eyes, the kind that all stupid men would get from their woman at some point.

Fee's shoulders tensed momentarily, before settling down in defeat. Felt had told her about his experiments, but for him to be attempting it even if it hurt him? This was unacceptable, but she knew how Felt got sometimes when he had his heart set on something. He'd do it even if he had to do it alone or-in this case, in secret. So, basically, she had to write it off as something to monitor from a distance, but interfere if it got too dangerous. Better to be able to ensure Felt didn't end up killing himself over mana transformation, as he'd put it.

She sat down her plate of pan-fried salmon, giving Felt a semi-concerned look. Which was completely missed by the man in question, as he was too busy none too gently trying to snatch glass from his hands. Oh. That was a lot of blood. There was simply no way around it, she'd have to do it for him. Fee rose, gaining Felt's attention as her shadow loomed over his seated form.

"I'll go get the first aid kit." She sighed, a small smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.

Poe came home from yet another bandit extermination, this time it was a smaller camp which had gotten a bit too close to Zwital. Smaller meaning only about thirty or so men. These camps were getting bigger and bigger as of late.

But enough about work, all Poe wanted to do now was to go home, eat, sleep, and maybe then count his money. Speaking of money, Poe had accumulated quite the fortune-not that he knew the exact numbers or anything, but he surmised that there had to be at least 150,000 cole in his savings. Probably more, those bandit hunts paid well these days.

Ah, there went work intruding upon his thoughts again. Poe physically shook his head to ward off his day-job's looming presence. He instead let his mind wander to his wife, Mitsue. She was probably just now waking up. Whereas he worked nights, she generally worked during the day.

She would be leaving for a three week tenure in a trading post somewhere near Tatalia again, which is why Poe had requested for a short leave of absence in his extermination missions. And boy, did he mean short-only two days reprieve before he had to get back in action. And Mitsue was leaving in two days, so it aligned perfectly.

Gray sighed in frustration. It had been a day and a half since Kreuz had signed off on the treaty. But Gray was still stuck in Eden for some reason.

Well, officially, he was waiting for the return message on the treaty-signed by King Max. For such a gut to become king... knowing Max, he'd already bailed on doing his paperwork. If that was the case, Gray would be here for days, or possibly even a few weeks more. not that he had anything against Eden, or anything, but Gray was a man of action. All this waiting around was incredibly boring to him.

Even meditation-one of his dearest hobbies-had gotten old to him rather quickly. He'd only meditate when there was something to fight and he needed to clear his head before battle.

Nothing better to do than to take a walk around Noir, again. Maybe this time he'd run into Viese. It would be nice to catch up after so many months had passed. And if he was really lucky, maybe he'd be able to get her to cook him some of the more local food of Eden. This fancy stuff had never really been palatable to him.

"Yes, the caravan will be leaving from Zwital in two day's time. So I want the men from the northern three outposts to trail the caravan until it passes near that graveyard here." The bandit queen motioned to a point of the handmade map of the Dark Forest, with the other bandit leaders following along with their eyes.

"Yeah, but what if they got that one guy with em? Y'know, that guy whose done fucked over all our operations south?" One of the more skittish leaders questioned.

The queen thought for a moment, as if considering deploying a few of her more elite units.

"If he's with them, then we go for that village. But, I think thats why they don't let him go too far from there, as you can see, he's only ever struck to about this far north. Or at least to our knowledge, after all, the Dark Forest has more predators than just him..." The queen trailed off for a moment before continuing her scheming.

In two day's time, they would have the man who kept dashing their expansion efforts by the balls, for what man wouldn't want to ensure his woman wasn't killed?

END HERE

It's nearly the end of November, so I have exams to worry about. So updates may or may not happen until December 7th at the absolute latest.